Food, Glorious Food

greater jello recipe book

The Greater Jell-O Recipe Book (G.F. Corporation, 1931)

I’m currently working on a big special collections project (it’ll be ready to roll in a few months, and you’re going to love it – stay tuned!). Today’s post, however, is about another set of items that are inadvertently crossing my path during my adventures in collections acquisitions. Specifically, hilarious historic cooking pamphlets. Like The Greater Jell-O Recipe Book. Because who doesn’t want to whip up a gelatinous Ham and Celery Loaf? Mmmmmmm.

green loaf in greater jello recipe book

I bought this for my personal collection. It’s a little 7up recipe pamphlet.

9 ways to spark family favorites

9 Ways to Spark Family Favorites (The Seven Up Company, 1948)

With a recipe for ham basted with 7up.

ham basted with 7up

Or hey! 7up with milk for the kiddies???

7up and milk

As it turns out, Katie also had a small horde of these pamphlets, and we started rifling through them with gusto. Check out the During Scalomatic instructions. Honestly, I’m not sure if the woman’s expression on this is excitement or horror.

during scaleomatic pressure cooker

During Scalomatic Pressure Cooker (During Developments Inc., 1946)

Or how about New Cake Secrets? Because everyone already knows the old cake secrets.

new cake secrets

New Cake Secrets (G.F. Corporation, 1931)

Here’s one of Katie’s favorites. Both for the title and the illustration. Those are some FIERCE skirt pleats. Apparently part of the standard uniform in Health Defense.

meat in the meal

Meat in the Meal for Health Defense (National Live Stock and Meat Board, 1942)

And just in case you are needing 99 tempting pineapple treats…I wonder…did the 100th recipe not quite meet the “tempting” threshold…?

99 pineapple treats

Ninety-Nine Tempting Pineapple Treats (Association of Hawaiian Pineapple Canners, 1924)

Here’s Some of My Favorite Good Things to Eat, a vision in plaid:

some of my favorite good things to eat

Some of My Favorite Things to Eat (Church & Dwight Inc., 1940)

Funny. In one of the illustrations, the mother’s waistline appears to be smaller than that of her her 6-year-old daughter. Also, call my picky, but last time I checked, sour milk was not listed under my top 5 “Good Things to Eat.”

some of my favorite good things to eat interior

There were quite a number of Jell-O pamphlets. Here’s the “Mordor” of Jell-O towers.

jello recipes cover

Jell-O Recipes Pamphlet (G.F. Corporation, 1934)

One the back cover, instructions to delicately inhale the bouquet of your freshly opened box of Jell-O. Which I never thought to do, honestly. But now I’m totally going to try it.

jello recipes back cover

Another Jell-O pamphlet, this one from 1920.

many reasons for jello

Many Reasons for Jell-O (Genesee Pure Food Company, 1920)

I want to frame this center spread. The “Strawberry Brick” is giving me pause, however.

many reasons for jello ice cream interior

I save the best for last. This is a pamphlet for Spry, a product that is still going strong!

124 spry recipes

What Shall I Cook Today? (Lever Brothers Company, circa 1950)

The hilarity continues on the back. This is my favorite panel. Because I don’t know about you, but I do all my grocery shopping in a hat, lipstick, and white gloves.

can of spry

Happy Birthday Harry!

happy birthday harryIt’s July 31st and we’re celebrating with some delicious pumpkin pasties! I can tell you, they were perfect. Flaky, buttery, with just the right amount of filling and spice. The recipe is at the end of the post, but you might be interested in the story behind them!

The chef’s name is Melody Edwards. At the time she created these stupendous goodies, Melody was a senior at Princeton University. Her final semester, she was enrolled in a “Literature, Food, and the American Racial Diet” course. The goal of the course was to explore – through novels and cinema – how food and taste informs race, nationhood, gender, family, and class.

One assignment was to bring to class “1. A dish based on a “literary” recipe. This can be a recipe found in or mentioned by a novel or by a literary figure or belonging to a particular historical period; Or, 2. A dish from your childhood.”

At least that’s how the assignment started. Over the course of the semester it morphed into a full-on cook-off that allowed student chefs to interpret the course “historically, archivally, contemporarily, globally, and more.” There’s an interesting article about it here.

Team Wingardium Leviosa (which consisted of Melody, Samantha Essig and Daniel Ling) decided to make pumpkin pasties. You’ll find their awesome academic analysis of the pasties here.

Melody graduated from Princeton last May and is headed to the The Institute of Culinary Education (a.k.a. ICE) in NYC. It’s no surprise. Her pumpkin pasties, which she adapted from several recipes, were AMAZING. Especially when you consider that she was working in a very hot, very small, dorm kitchen. Let’s take one more look at them.

pumpkin pastiesMmmmmm…nom nom nom. Here’s the recipe! I’ll leave you with a sweet quote from Melody about her connection to the Harry Potter series:

Perhaps I was an anomaly of the Harry Potter Generation, but when I was first reading the books, I did not look forward to the confrontations with Voldemort. I did not drag my parents to the bookstore before the sun was up for the dark, action-filled scenes that always came at the end of Rowling’s books. Rather, I relished the most mundane passages. Nothing brought me more joy than learning how wizards celebrated the holidays or reading intricate descriptions of breakfast in the Great Hall. While this reveals that I’ve been obsessed with food for my whole life, it also speaks to Rowling’s gift for creating a fully fleshed-out world for our delectation.

Happy Birthday Harry!

Top Secret Fooj

foojA recent re-reading of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang inspired today’s post! This highly entertaining and action-packed book was written in 1964 by Ian Fleming. Yes, THE Ian Fleming. Who knew the book would lead us on a mission of the chocolate variety?

Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang follows the adventures of the Pott family and their fabulously magical car, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. At one point in the story, some gangsters force the Pott twins, Jeremy and Jemima, to assistant in the robbery of Le Bon-Bon, the world’s most famous chocolate shop. The clever children manage to save the day, and, as a reward, the shopkeepers reveal the secret recipe for their famous fudge (which they pronounce “fooj”). The recipe is included at the end of the book (click the image to enlarge it).

recipe in book

From Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Random House, 1964.

So…what does the famous fudge taste like? Does the recipe hold up after 51 years? Katie decided to test drive it in her kitchen. Take it away Katie!


With my trusty sous-chef son by my side, we gathered and set out all of the ingredients for the “fooj.” There were only a handful of items needed to make the fudge and most we had on-hand in our pantry. We did have to purchase corn “sirup” (we went with the clear corn syrup, not dark) and a bar of unsweetened chocolate (from Ghirardelli, yum!). We also had to figure out a few measurements, like how many ounces are in a tablespoon (the answer is 0.5 ounces).

We took a wild guess at how much evaporated milk to use because the recipe called for one small can, so we used a 5 ounce can rather than the 12 ounce. Trusting our guts and confirming measurements courtesy of Google, we set forth to make our own batch of fudge.

adding milkWe followed the recipe exactly as it was written. It took some time to slowly melt all of the ingredients together, but this step probably would have been faster if we hadn’t used frozen butter. It didn’t take long for the mixture to start boiling, and we were careful to not let the chocolate burn on the sides of the pot. Incredibly, the fudge did form into little balls when dropped into a glass of cold water! I was skeptical of this description listed in the recipe, but was amazed when we watched it happen.

water testWe even beat the boiling hot fudge mixture with a wooden spoon instead of the silicone mixing spoon we had been using earlier.

wooden spoon Once we decided it had been appropriately beaten, we poured the concoction into a greased pan to cool. I used a toothpick to draw lines and mark the fudge into small squares. This is when I had my first inkling that something was not quite right. The marks immediately disappeared. I figured the fudge just needed to harden and then I could redraw the square lines.

scored fudgeHowever, the fudge never hardened. It remained a gloopy, runny mess. I put the fudge into the freezer to see if that would help the hardening process. Freezing it worked great, but then the fudge was rock solid and nearly impossible to cut. Once it cooled, it was back to its original state.

Cue sad music. Fudge failure.

However, the fudge didn’t completely go to waste. We asked a number of kids to try the fudge to let us know what they thought of it. Here’s what they said:

Boy, age almost 9: I think it looks like fudge. It tastes good, really good! Can I have more?

Girl, age 10: I think the fudge kind of looks like brownie batter. Mmm, it’s good!

Boy, age 8: The fudge does not look like fudge. It’s not square. It’s flat and round, like a pancake. It tastes sweet, but it doesn’t really taste like fudge. It tastes like a Hershey chocolate bar.

Girl, age 9: It tastes like chocolate. I can’t tell if it’s milk chocolate, but I like that it is creamy. It doesn’t look like normal fudge, but I like it!

Monsieur Bon-Bon’s Top Secret “Fooj” recipe remains a secret because somewhere between the written page to my kitchen, the recipe got lost in translation. In an effort to discover what I may have done wrong, I again consulted Google and learned from experienced bakers that making fudge can be quite a difficult task. It has to be boiled to a certain temperature after slowly melting the ingredients together, and it has to be beaten for an exact amount of time before pouring it into a pan. Apparently I failed at one or both of these steps.

Perhaps the fudge needed to be shaken, not stirred.