Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Recipes for the "Male Cook"



When I was at my mom's for Christmas, she gave me a stack of old recipe booklets that she had and I am having a ball going through them. Some of these are pretty old. The one pictured above is from 1953. It's a "measured heat" cookbook.

You might wonder what it means by "measured heat." It means an oven with a thermostat! Go figure! I thought they always had one. Well, at least ones that you didn't have to stoke the fire before using it to cook your meal.

It's funny how time and energy efficient they tried to be too. They have entire meals planned out so you can cook your main course, side dishes (both starch and veggie), bread or rolls, and dessert in one shebang. I would not waste the brain cells today trying to find all those recipes that worked at the same temperature and the same approximate time frame. It's hard enough trying to shake up the color scheme of my meal so everything isn't pale and bland looking on a plate.

Thankfully more than meal planning has changed too! I about swallowed my tongue when I read this section of the book titled "Special Recipes for the Amateur Male Cook."




If you have trouble reading it, click on the picture to open a larger image. But, beware. Your eyes might bug out at how sexist it is! Tell me. Am I masculine for liking to experiment in the kitchen? After all, I thought a woman's place was in the kitchen. Barefoot and pregnant to boot! Ah, but we don't have the ability to be true epicurean gourmands. The first chef was a man according to this book.


Note: For some reason the second picture doesn't open up. I forgot that it would do that if I moved a picture around in the entry. I don't know how to fix it. I'll upload it to Flickr and do a link to there if you want to see it in more detail.

7 comments:

Donna. W said...

I love old cookbooks. The only real collection I have in my house is of all the Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks, starting in the 1940's. Love, love, love 'em!

Wil said...

Must have been a momentary glitch -- I had no problem opening the 2nd pic to view and expand(zoom).

Not going to worry about the extreme chauvinism of the 50's. Still too much around to worry about what they were doing a half century ago!

Lisa :-] said...

I find it interesting that "male cooks" were even considered that long ago. But they made it look good by being properly sexist. Gag me! LOL!

Cindy said...

Robbie, I'm shaking my head over the fact that in 1950-whatever they even printed the word "SEX" in that cookbook. Crazy!

So, whatcha cookin'??? :)

Phin

Anonymous said...

Robbie!!! I love this entry. I love those old books like that...I was able to read the 2nd pic.. that was too funny!!!! of course it probably was a man who wrote the cook book... LOL... come by and see my new journal...

Remo said...

Of course the first chef was a man. We dragged something dead back to the cave and dropped it on top of the fire and voila! BBQ!!

Hey! We killed it didn't we? Isn't that enough? LOL

Seriously, I can't imagine how much work it was cooking meals from scratch. I've tried it and we usually end up eating pizza.

Gordy said...

Worked fine for me to read.
g.