Category:
Cookbooks

The American Airlines Recipe Book

We recently posted about the American Airlines Wine Club, which allows people to enjoy wines served inflight at home. Turns out that in 1994 the company did something similar with its airline food, publishing a recipe book so that people could "prepare their inflight favorites at home". It was titled A Taste of Something Special.

The book was given to frequent fliers, rather than being sold to the public. But you can now download a pdf of the entire thing via Michigan State University Library.





Yonkers Herald Statesman - Feb 8, 1996

Posted By: Alex - Wed Apr 14, 2021 - Comments (8)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, Air Travel and Airlines, 1990s

Recipes for Cooking Domestic Rabbit Meat

During World War II, as the country faced meat rationing, the U.S. Government decided to promote rabbit meat as an alternative to beef and chicken. As part of this effort, the Department of the Interior released a pamphlet, "Recipes for Cooking Domestic Rabbit Meat". It included recipes such as "Rabbit Chop Suey," "Vagabond Stew," and "Wartime Rabbit Casserole". The pamphlet noted:

The growing scarcity of meat due to war conditions and the necessity of feeding our armed forces and our Allies makes it imperative that new sources of supply be developed. The domestic rabbit—easy to raise—is rapidly solving the meat problem in many American homes, and thus is playing an important part in the Food for Freedom program. Rabbit meat is not rationed.



Entrepreneur Martin French of Los Angeles must have had visions of the rabbit-meat market taking off. In 1940, he received trademark protection for "Bunnyburger" — his ground rabbit meat business.



I'd like to think that, in some alternative reality, the government's plan worked and it's possible to go into a McDonald's and order a McBunny with Cheese.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 18, 2021 - Comments (8)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, 1940s

How to eat your Christmas tree

Artisan baker Julia Georgallis recently came out with a book that promises to tell you How To Eat Your Christmas Tree.

Amazon Link


That sounds like an interesting challenge. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the book doesn't tell you how to eat the entire tree. Instead, it's mostly about using the needles and bark in recipes.

But some searching on YouTube produced a video that delves into how to eat the entire tree. The catch is that to do so you'll need to pulp the wood and transform it into cellulose powder. Which is probably beyond the means of most people. But the video notes that cellulose powder derived from spruce trees is in many products, including parmesan cheese, pasta sauce, and ice cream. So almost everyone has eaten (highly processed) Christmas trees already.

Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 15, 2021 - Comments (2)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, Christmas

Cooking for your cat… and you

For those who want to share meals with their cat, Skyhorse Publishing has a cookbook of recipes that both humans and felines can eat.

I don't think freshly caught mouse is included, even though I'm pretty sure that's what the cat would prefer.

Amazon link

Posted By: Alex - Fri Nov 06, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, Books, Cats

Cooking with God

Poe's Law, loosely paraphrased, states that it can be very difficult to tell the difference between parodies of extreme beliefs and sincere expressions of those beliefs.

Confusion of this kind occurred with the 1976 cookbook Cooking With God. The authors, Lori David and Robert Robb, intended it to be, in all seriousness, a religious-themed cookbook. But due to the title, many people apparently assumed it was some kind of joke.

Recipes included Manna Honey Bread, Oasis Stuffed Eggs, Caravan Sweet Potatoes, and Eggs Bathsheba.

If you want a copy to add to your collection of weird cookbooks, you can pick one up used on Amazon for $6.95.



Fort Worth Star Telegram - Mar 16, 1977

Posted By: Alex - Wed Aug 05, 2020 - Comments (5)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, Religion, Books

The Working Couple’s Cookbook

The gimmick of this cookbook, published in 1971, was that it was striking a blow for Women's Lib by offering instructions for what both HIM and HER could do to prepare a meal.

From a review by James Boyett (pictured below):

The book details what the man is required to accomplish and what the better half is to do.
While most of the tasks the man is required to accomplish require only the knowledge of how to use a rolling pin or knife, I will warn you now that a couple of the recipes require the man to cook the meat — steak, pork chops.
One recipe, heaven forbid, asks the better half to only lay the table and then relax—while the man is required to open a couple of cans and then slave over a hot stove while "she" sips the fruit of the vine and relaxes.

More info: Awful Library Books





Abilene Reporter-News - Jan 23, 1972

Posted By: Alex - Thu Jul 16, 2020 - Comments (4)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, Gender, Books, 1970s

Serve More Cottage Cheese

A 16-page recipe book published in 1954 by the National Dairy Products Corporation, Sealtest Division.

A better name for the cover recipe would be Vomiting Clam.





via reddit

Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 13, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, 1950s

When the Cook Can’t Look

A cookbook for the blind, written by Ralph Read, and published in 1981.



A sample of some of his tips and techniques, from a review in the Austin American-Statesman (Sep 22, 1980):

Many of his suggestions are common sense. For instance, for liquid measurements, he uses the dipstick method — having an index finger in the right place at the right time. He uses a teaspoon to spread instead of a knife, allowing himself “one finger to check corners.” And he initials canned foods with raised letters from a plastic tape marker and arranges them alphabetically.

You don’t need to alphabetize bags of things, he says, because you can just pinch them. Split peas do not feel like elbow macaroni.

Tactile memory is very important, for things like knowing which end of a milk carton has the spout. Spices don’t need labeling because you can smell them. Smell and hearing are important factors in cooking without sight. They tell you when things are almost done.

He generally cooks slowly to help “prevent things from getting away from me.” Read has no special gadgets for cooking, though he says friends have shown him catalogs with specialty items for the blind. “Ninety-nine percent of that gadgetry is useless — though I’m interested in the fact that Amana has a blind consultant working with them in Dallas to help develop a microwave oven for the blind.”

There are some definite “don’ts,” Read says, such as not using dangerous items such as an electric beater or broiler. You can get the same desired results without unnecessary risk by using a hand beater or pan-broiling a steak.

You can read the entire book at archive.org.



Posted By: Alex - Sun Nov 17, 2019 - Comments (3)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, Books, Differently Abled, Handicapped, Challenged, and Otherwise Atypical

The Bigfoot Cookbook

Created by Jean and Boyd Brougher of Salem, Oregon in 1978. The cookbook came with a giant-footprint baking pan.

Some of the recipes are below. They seem pretty generic. The only thing that makes them Bigfoot recipes is that they're supposed to be cooked in the footprint pan.

Amazon has a listing for the Bigfoot Cookbook, but notes that it's currently unavailable. And even if it were available, it no longer includes the pan (which, I'm sure, is probably considered a prize collectible among Bigfoot enthusiasts).

Jean and Boyd Brougher show off their cookbook.



Statesman Journal - Feb 28, 1979



Posted By: Alex - Fri May 31, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Cryptozoology, Food, Cookbooks, 1970s

The Exploding Recipe

May 1978: Random House issued a recall of a cookbook, Woman's Day Crockery Cuisine, after realizing that one of the recipes "could cause a serious explosion."

The recipe in question was for "Silky Caramel Slices." The problem was that it instructed people to heat an unopened can of condensed milk in a crockpot for four hours. A statement from Random House noted, "If the recipe is followed, the condensed milk can could explode and shatter the lid and liner of the crockery cooker."

What the recipe neglected to mention was that you should add water into the crockpot surrounding the can. Initially I thought you should open the can also, but my wife (who's heard of this technique of cooking condensed milk on a stove top) corrected me. You keep the can closed so that the milk doesn't boil out of the can.

Marilynn Marter, writing in the Chicago Tribune (May 25, 1978) explains:

The recipe in question was for Silky Caramel Slices and called for heating a can of sweetened condensed milk in a crockpot. Because of an unfortunately elusive line that should have instructed folks to fill the pot with water, following the recipe appears to have resulted in some unintentional pop-top cans and badly damaged crockpots...

The conditions that have made this underground recipe successful and therefore popular, especially with children, are water and temperature. By being heated in boiling water, the temperature of the can and milk do not exceed the boiling point. After a few hours of this, the sugared milk turns to a caramel pudding. In the Crockpot, however, especially without water, the temperature can build up rather like a pressure cooker. That was the most immediate cause of the problem.


Front Cover



Back cover
The 'exploding' recipe (Silky Caramel Slices) is listed third from bottom, right-hand column.



The Tennessean - May 9, 1978

Posted By: Alex - Thu Sep 21, 2017 - Comments (3)
Category: Food, Cookbooks, 1970s, Weapons

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Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

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