I love me some vintage cookbooks. Both for the morbid “look at all this Jell-O ham salad” atrocities, but also for a unique snapshot of culture a few decades ago. There’s High School History 1954: Brown v. Board of Education, polio, McCarthy, Kerouac. Then there are the fine details of living, cooking, and eating in this era. A cookbook, by way of subtle and not-so-subtle cues on every page, gives more color to the picture of a time and place. Here are my favorite 1954 moments from The Betty Furness Westinghouse Cook Book. The previous generations didn’t start the fire—but they did cover turkeys in fat-soaked cheesecloth in the oven (see item 9), so that’s a miracle.
1.“Split pea or lentil soup always tastes better with a topping of frankfurters cut in one-inch lengths.”
2.“Sometimes children think they don’t care for soup, but a sprinkling of fluffy white popcorn over the soup gives them an urge to find out what is underneath the popcorn.”
3. “Years ago most people thought that deep-fat-fried foods were unhealthy, and so, though they yearned for the crunchy tastiness of these foods, they tried not to eat them too often.Today we know that deep-fat frying, or French frying, as it is sometimes called, can be a healthful way to cook foods as long as the fat does not become too hot so that it makes the foods indigestible, nor too cool, so that it soaks into the food. We are now able to eat these wonderful foods with a hearty appetite and an undisturbed conscience.”
4. You’ll also notice that in 1954, a vegetable soup starts with a full pound of ground beef:
5. … And “Mexican Style” soup contains zero ingredients iconic of Mexican food. “Ethnic” recipes in vintage cookbooks almost always consist of a standard American recipe (9 times out of 10, it’s a casserole), plus a splash of soy sauce. This is just flat-out impressive. Navy beans! Noodles! Parsley!
6. “This [chicken casserole] makes a wonderful Sunday dinner, because the chicken can cook while you are at church.”
7. Again, church. So much church.
8. “Turkey is available the year around due to the great development in turkey breeding and raising. The turkeys we find on the market today are uniform in quality: tender, plump, and juicy, with a wonderful flavor.” Things have changed a little.
9. Then there’s this mummy-inspired method for keeping poultry moist as it cooks: “Brush a piece of clean white cheesecloth … with melted fat. Lay over the turkey. Make certain the edges of the cloth are inside the shallow pan, otherwise you may get a smoky kitchen.” (Editor’s note: this basting technique is actually very effective, though yes, smoky kitchens are awful. Tuck that excess cheesecloth in the pan!)
10. Some aspects of cooking were more limited than today, but some were quite the opposite. Take the poultry options, for example: “The common classes of chicken are: broiler, fryer, roaster, pullet and hen, which is also sometimes called a stewing chicken. Capon is another class which may be found in some markets.”
