Terrible Recipes

My wife's parents came over for brunch yesterday and brought us a copy of a cookbook Nina's grade school put together when she was young, with contributions from parents.  There's apparently a couple of recipes in the book they've enjoyed and so we figured we'll add it to the bookshelf....

After they left, I started flipping through the book.  Where I very quickly discovered some recipes that I can't resist sharing, because they really do sound like The Worst Recipes In The World.

I recognize that back in the '80s, there weren't really Whole Foods and farmers markets and places to buy fancy ingredients.  I understand that.  But these tragedies go far beyond that.

Liver Knishes.  Take slices of white bread, cut off the crusts, put chopped liver inside, dip in an egg batter, and fry.  This is french toast + liver.  Made with white bread.  I thought this, on page 9, would be the worst of what I'd find.  Turns out it wasn't even close.  Because on the very next page:

Gefilte Fish Ring.  Gefilte fish is a Jewish holiday dish that most people don't like, but my grandma happened to make delicious gefilte fish and I grew up enjoying it.  It's basically a fish hamburger, held together with onion and egg, salt and pepper, served cold with horseradish and carrots.  But even liking gefilte fish doesn't excuse this recipe....  Even if I ignore that it uses jarred gefilte fish (which is to real gefilte fish what canned tuna is to a piece of a seared tuna steak)....  The recipe has you make LEMON JELLO, mix it with the liquid from a jar of horseradish, place slices of the jarred gefilte fish in this mixture, and refrigerate it into a ring mold.  This is GROUND BALLS OF FISH SUSPENDED IN LEMON JELLO, in a ring mold.  To be eaten.  By humans.  Bizarre.  But it gets worse.

Pistachio Cheese Ball.  2 pounds of cream cheese, mixed with heavy cream.  1 cup of pistachio nuts.  4 drops green food coloring.  Mix everything together and roll into a green cheesy ball.

Salmon Ball.  Same idea, but with canned salmon, and the instruction "remove as many bones as possible."  Yeah, how about removing all of them?  Of course, in your ball of salmon cheese, bones are probably the least of your concerns.

Oriental Salad.  Yeah, yeah, I know, oriental was an okay word when this was written.  But what is "oriental" about the following salad: 2 to 3 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 onion, 1 bunch parsley.  Mix with the juice of 1/2 lemon and 2 to 3 tbsp. olive oil.  That's it.  This is salad with oil and lemon.  Oriental?  What?

Antipasto Salad.  There quickly emerged a theme in the book.  Cans of tuna fish.  Jars of mayonnaise.  Bottles of ketchup.  This salad uses two of those things.  Take cans of tuna, mix with canned artichoke hearts, canned olives, canned chickpeas, canned anchovies, canned mushrooms, and a jar of roasted peppers (did we not have fresh produce in 1987?).  Mix all together WITH AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF KETCHUP.  Serve.  Vomit.  Cry.

Cold Pea Salad.  I love the name.  Frozen peas.  Sour cream.  Mayonnaise.  Mix.  Suffer.  Die.

Chinese Tuna Salad.  Again, the inappropriate use of ethnic modifiers.  Can of tuna.  Romaine lettuce.  Mushrooms.  Bean sprouts.  Wide "Chinese noodles".  Sunflower seeds.  Mix with A BOTTLE OF ITALIAN DRESSING and 2 oz. soy sauce.

Cranberry-Jello Mold, where cranberry sauce is mixed with 1 pint of sour cream.

One of my favorite finds:

Tuna and Sweet Corn SOUP.  Yes, that's right.  Tuna soup.  Can of tuna fish, can of creamed corn, cup of milk, onion, butter, flour, CURRY POWDER.  Cook it all in a pot.  Eat.  Vomit.  Cry.  Can of Tuna... Soup.  Who would ever... ever... ever... ?

Pasta Salad.  Sounds innocent, right?  4 cups of ziti mixed with: 1/4 cup olive oil.  1/2 cup heavy cream.  1 cup mayonnaise.  And a cup of dill pickles, y'know, to keep it healthy.

Meat Noodle Pudding.  Do you even want the recipe?  Oh, you do.  Because it's not actually even meat that's going into this dish.  It's noodles, 1/2 pound of liver (beef or chicken), 1 cup of chicken fat, and 1 cup of orange juice.  Liver + orange juice = ????

Tuna Quiche.  Canned tuna.  8 oz. swiss cheese.  1/2 cup mayonnaise.  1/2 cup milk.  Mix.  Bake.

Chicken in Festive Fruit Sauce.  Chicken cutlets, covered in a sauce made from: cornstarch, brown sugar, ketchup, soy sauce, and the juice from cans of fruit cocktail.  Isn't there anything else in the pantry we could add to this dish?

Apricot Chicken Roll-Ups.  Chicken cutlets mixed with one bottle of Russian dressing, a jar of apricot preserves, and a package of dry onion soup mix.

Sweet Brisket.  Brisket mixed with a package of onion soup mix, a cup of ketchup, and 12 ounces of ginger ale.

and I've saved the best for last:

Cold Veal With Tuna Sauce.  In a blender, combine a can of tuna with oil and lemon juice until smooth and creamy.  Pour over cold cooked veal slices.

Comments

[Bryan]

Well, you just saved me money... not eating lunch today.

[Andrea]

My favorites are the antipasto, which sounded shockingly edible until you got to the bottle of ketchup, and the "pea salad." The last one, though, made me laugh, because it's "vitello tonnato" - look it up, it's supposedly a long-time delicacy that's always sounded gross to me.

[RES]

My mother gave me a similar cookbook. The thing that drove me nuts is that the recipe authors assumed that EVERYONE buying the cookbook lived in the same square mile and shopped in the same stores as them. Instead of measurements for key ingredients, a recipe might read "Ingredient X - the kind that comes in the red package, not the yellow one."

[Sean S,]

This is hilarious. I'd think when they gave you the gift, they were in on the joke--it's hard to believe that anyone could give this as a gift thinking that the food isn't inedible.

It's almost as if those who made the book went out of their way to screw up even the recipes that might have had some potential. For example, if they had a recipe for pizza, after the dough, cheese, and sauce, they'd add, " top with one extra-large cup of cat food, preferably open and spoiled."

[Michael]

I don't believe it. Not possibly real.

[PG]

The Pistachio Cheese Ball and possibly the Sweet Brisket recipes sound like the kind of thing people would serve in the South.

[Jessica]

I could be totally wrong, but I thought "Oriental" was only offensive when applied to a person? I thought it could acceptably describe a recipe or an object. But like I said, open to education on this!

[PG]

Jessica,

I think "Oriental" came to be recognized as a somewhat problematic term due to Edward Said's writings on the subject of Orientalism, which he described as a kind of mindset in which that which is Other -- non-Christian, non-Western, non-White -- is all lumped together as "Oriental." For example, Oxford's Oriental Studies department covers basically everything that interested 17th c. scholars and was non-white: East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, etc. It's this vague lumping together of All Those Brown People and Their Weird Food, Music and Culture Generally that came to have a bad name as Orientalism, and then the word "Oriental" itself fell into disrepute in the U.S. (though less so in other English-speaking countries).

But a similar idea can apply elsewhere; for example, it can be offensive to someone who is Latino to have all Spanish-speakers lumped together as "Mexicans," not because there is anything wrong with being Mexican, but because it indicates that the person making such generalizations doesn't care about actually knowing your origins, just about labeling you as something different from himself, even if the label is inaccurate.

[Jessica]

That makes sense. I don't use the word really, so now I know why...

[Brooke]

OK< let me just say that I started law school last week, and withdrew this week, so you have an idea what kind of flipped out roller coaster mind I'm coming from right now...and...reading this was the first time I've laughed this entire time,and man did I need it. Thanks!!! ( Bad law school, non-ABA, have to start whole process all over again)

[Debbie]

Jeremy, a few of the recipes you mention -- you might have eaten them sometime in the past in some jewish household. They're not atypical 1950's fare. Scary time: post first nukes, IKE, and packaged foods. My mother still cooks with packaged soup mixes and ketchup -- and she was a home ec teacher... oy.

The liver kugel, though, that's just plain SICK.

[fioricet online]

I don't believe it that's terrible,....any ways thanks.

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