the future of the cookbook

War Shipping Administration, Food Control Division. Cooking and Baking on Shipboard. Washington: GPO, 1945. 358pp.

The Food Control Division of the War Shipping Administration (the agency that oversaw Merchant Marine ships during WWII) published several books about managing food and cooking while at sea. Though I don’t use it much for recipes (they all serve 100), I have a copy of one of them, Cooking and Baking on Shipboard. Published in 1945, it is full of bland food and remarkable illustrations of butchery. Pages and pages of how to cut up a cow. Followed by pages and pages of how to cut up a pig. And then a couple of recipes for biscuits and mashed potatoes thrown in for good measure. In the earnest letter that accompanies the book, Harold J. O’Connell (Director, Food Control) explains that it provides “the most up-to-date and efficient suggestions for planning and making better meals,” exactly what the stewards, cooks, and bakers need to run “the best-feeding Merchant Marine in the world:”

What Mr. O’Connell doesn’t say is that being the “best-feeding Merchant Marine” appears to have involved a lot of beef and some creepy illustrations. In the spread below, our friend the cow has been enlisted to point out his “less-tender” cuts and how best to use them. He seems so happy! He’s gleefully pointing at the butchery chart while rubbing shoulders with the captain and the cook! He’s even (in the lower left corner) carrying a box of “WSA Beef,” looking pleased as punch to play his part. Is he happy that it’s not him not cut up into tiny pieces in that box? Or is he just thrilled that the WSA likes beef? Hard to say.

The chicken in this next illustration doesn’t look quite so happy, unfortunately. It does, however, provide a fascinating look at the changes in chicken anatomy over the last sixty years. Aside from the fact that this chicken still has its head and feet, unlike its neatly packaged modern supermarket counterpart, this chicken is clearly different. Just look at its breasts: small and seemly. Not at all the puffed up, bloated chicken breasts that are de rigeur today. The legs clearly have at least as much meat, if not more, than the breasts! For an idea of just how much things have changed, look at this. It’s as if someone took the chicken below and blew it up with a bicycle pump. Yuck.

More publications of the War Shipping Administration: How to Keep Food Records on Shipboard; How to Stow and Take Care of Food on Shipboard.

Erlanger, Baba and Daren Pierce. The Compleat Martini Cook Book. Illus. Elizabeth Fraser. New York: Random Thoughts, 1957.

My mother barely drinks at all, and while my father does, it’s in a decidedly unglamorous cans-of-bud-lite and jugs-or-sometimes-even-boxes-of-red-wine kind of way. Either because, or perhaps in spite of my upbringing, I’ve always liked the idea of serious, yet controlled, drinking, the kind done by ad men and literary types in movies from the 1950s and 60s. Hence my fondness for the The Compleat Martini Cook Book. Clearly a farce (the authors report being “shoved” from their “Newport nest” at the tender age of 34), the book nonetheless includes some fairly edible-seeming recipes, arranged in order of how many martinis should be drunk before attempting to cook them. The instructions take into account the sobriety of the chef, suggesting, sensibly, that knives should probably be avoided after four or five drinks. I chose the recipe below because it includes pickled beets (yum!) and because I LOVE the illustration. I think it perfectly captures that green, yet languid, state that can be reached after a night of hard drinking:

In keeping with the book’s boozy, breezy tone, the authors made a few mistakes. But such funny mistakes! I have to admit, I’ve never been so charmed by errata. They forgot to list peas as an ingredient in “Mrs. Joseph Erlanger Peas Wild or Tame;” they left a spoon sitting in the “Cartier Chowder;” and they forgot to list the tuna in the “Tuna Princess.” The mistakes sound suspiciously like mistakes a tipsy cook would make, and the skeptic in me wonders if the errata were more a joke than honest omissions. Either way, they made me laugh:

Baba Erlanger (real name: Jane Trahey) and Daren Pierce went on to one more glorious collaboration: Son of the Martini Cookbook, which I will write about another day.

Marinetti, Fillippo Tommaso. The Futurist Cookbook. Trans. Suzanne Brill. San Francisco: Bedford Arts, 1989.

Written by F. T. Marinetti, The Futurist Cookbook was published in 1932 in Italy. The book aimed to bring the tenets of Futurism into the kitchen, via “aerofood” served at meals with grandiose names like the “Synthesis of Italy Dinner” and the “Get-Up-to-Datee.” Marinetti had a special vitriol for pasta; he felt it made the Italians sluggish and complacent. He proposed a radical new cuisine, based on the idea of food as art rather than food as sustinence. Lesley Chamberlain, in her introduction to the cookbook, argues that Marinetti’s proposal was, in fact, “one of the best artistic jokes of the century.” The thrust of the book does seem to be more about performance than consumption, but serious or not, it’s certainly good fun.

The names of the dishes are all fantastic. Some of my favorites: Tasty Equator + North Pole; Like a Cloud; Futurist Risotto with Cape Gooseberries; Carnaleap; More-Less-By-Division; Fisticuff Stuff; Manandwomanatmidnight; Strawberry Breasts; Senate of the Digestion; Pocket Book Turnips; and, of course, Carrot + Trousers = Professor. A few of the recipes are also accompanied by helpful little illustrations, like the Tennis Chop below:

I’m also fond of this illustration for the Elasticake. I think the prune looks like a tiny beret:

The recipes are, on the whole, more lyrical than useful, more focused on the placement and consumption of the ingredients than on their taste. For example:

Words-In-Liberty
(formula by the Futurist Aeropoet Escadamè)

Three sea dates, a half-moon of red watermelon, a thicket of radicchio, a little cube of Parmesan, a little sphere of gorgonzola, 8 tiny balls of caviare, 2 figs, 5 amaretti di Saronno biscuits: all arranged neatly on a large bed of mozzarella, to be eaten, eyes closed, letting one’s hands wander here and there, while the great painter and word-in-liberty poet Depero recites his famous song ‘Jacopson’.

It all sounds so round and lovely, but I can’t imagine it would actually be a nice snack. Nor would most of the dishes; but they do make for excellent reading.

More by Marinetti: The Futurist Manifesto, The Untameables, Futurismo e Fascismo, and Mafarka the Futurist.

Be Bold with Bananas. New York: Crescent Books, [1972?].

Cookbooks that focus on one ingredient are often published by companies with a vested interest in promoting filberts, or mayonnaise, or what have you. According to Amazon, Be Bold with Bananas was produced for Fruit Distributors Ltd, Banana Importers of Wellington, New Zealand. When a company trying to sell bananas decides to put together a cookbook about bananas, all sense of perspective apparently goes out the window, with predictably hilarious results. The basic premise of the book is that bananas will improve and enliven every meal you cook, from dinner (banana meat loaf, anyone?) to dessert (perhaps you’d like the banana jelly custard?). Things really begin to fall apart, though, with the photography:

I’ve seen a lot of questionable food photography, but this “banana candle” is in a league of its own. What, you have to wonder, were the editors thinking? Did they somehow (and it’s hard to imagine this) fail to notice the incredibly phallic nature of that banana? Was it some sort of elaborate practical joke? Did they actually think it looked nice? Why anyone would want or need to make banana candles is a question for another day. The recipe, should you want to try it at home:

3 bananas
2 tablespoons lemon juice
6 pineapple rings
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
3 glacé cherries

Halve the bananas crosswise, dip in lemon juice and place each half, end uppermost, in a pineapple ring. Drip mayonnaise down the sides of the bananas.
Using a toothpick, fix half a cherry on top of each banana. It will resemble a burning candle in its holder. Place each “candle” on a small plate, lined with lettuce leaves.
Orange slices can be used instead of pineapple rings.
Serves 6.

Are bananas and mayonnaise even edible together? Are they meant to be? None of this is made clear. Instead, the authors move blithely along to other banana delights: banana paella; potato and banana nests; salad mould (featuring green peas, pineapple, and banana, all suspended in gelatin); banana marshmallow; banana jelly; iced banana; nine types of banana cake; four kinds of banana tart; and three different kinds of banana chutney. The tone of the book is upbeat, encouraging readers to try the banana sambal (”Something new at a barbecue! Why not try it next time?”), the caramel banana (”It is popular with children!”), and biriani (”a particularly tasty dish!”). The authors REALLY want you to try cooking with bananas, that much is obvious.

The back of the book promises “easy-to-prepare recipes [that] will garnish your table, delight your palate and turn your mealtimes into truly festive occasions.” Though I remain a little dubious about the “delight your palate” claim, these recipes are nothing if not festive. Banana candles would delight the guests at almost any dinner party, I imagine, if not in quite the way that the authors intended.

More banana books: Everyday Banana Recipes, Bananas Take a Bow, The Chiquita Banana Book, and The Banana Lover’s Cookbook.

Bonus: A frighteningly comprehensive banana bibliography.

Ruth Lowinsky. Lovely Food: A Cookery Notebook. London: The Nonesuch Press, 1931. 8vo. 127pp

Published in 1931, Lovely Food was the work of an English socialite and hostess, Ruth Lowinsky. Her husband, Thomas, was a Surrealist painter, and they collaborated on the book. She wrote the menus and the recipes; he drew centerpieces to go with them. Lowinsky’s emphasis was more on entertaining than on cooking; many of the recipes are mere outlines. When preparing clear mushroom consommé, she simply tells the reader to “make a good consommé,” neglecting to go into what that might actually involve. The result is recipes that read more like instructions from mistress to cook than tips for a novice in the kitchen. The references to servants sprinkled throughout the book make it seem likely that this is, in fact, what Lowinsky had in mind.

Lowinsky, merits at the stove aside, was clearly an energetic and entertaining hostess. The menus in the book are all centered around witty, and occasionally improbable, dining scenarios. In one, she imagines that the reader’s stuffy father-in-law is coming to dinner, “prepared to judge you as either the laziest housekeeper in Europe, or the most extravagant, or even a subtle combination of the two.” Under the circumstances, she suggests consommé, smelts, chicken, meringues, and a centerpiece that looks like it might have been made from a slinky:

In addition to in-laws, Lowinsky addresses a number of other possible dining companions: those who don’t eat red meat (a rarity, one would assume, in 1931); those who fancy themselves gourmets but really only fancy their own opinions; and my favorite, a “dream party” made up entirely of her intellectual crushes. She acknowledges that “one can never hope to meet, or if met, be remembered by: Einstein, Mr Charles Chaplin, Freud, Virginia Woolf, Stella Benson, Mussolini, P.G. Wodehouse, Mistinguett, Lydia Lopokova, and Jean Cocteau,” but she suggests a menu nonetheless. Apparently, they would best enjoy a slightly exotic meal, interpreted through the lens of classic French cuisine:

Her old stand-by, consommé, makes an appearance, but this time it is bolstered by the addition of some curry powder and “desiccated cocoanut” (perhaps for Mussolini’s benefit?). The tomatoes are Spanish, the salmon “en suprise.” The centerpiece looks like a wedding cake.

Though the menu suggestions may seem a bit over the top, and the recipes occasionally under-developed, Lovely Food has an undeniable charm. It’s worth reading for the centerpieces alone. And who else would tell you what to make if P.G. Wodehouse was coming over to dinner?

Ruth Lowinsky’s other books include: More Lovely Food, Food for Pleasure, and Russian Food for Pleasure.