Eggnog (or egg nog, or egg nogg) has almost as many recipes as it does spellings — rather to be expected given its venerable history. Generally, the traditional eggnog recipe involves raw egg, dairy (milk and/or heavy cream), sugar, and alcohol, with a light sprinkling of nutmeg on top. The alcohol of choice doesn’t matter much, although if you’re getting a retro recipe from a booze advertisement, it’s going to call for a particular brand. (Not just rum — Myers Jamaica Rum! Bacardi! Gold label Puerto Rican rum!) To give the egg-dairy mixture additional body, it is gently mixed with either stiffly-beaten egg whites, or (more rarely) whipped cream. Alternatively, go with the modern convenience method of just adding alcohol to commercial eggnog.

But every now and then, there’s a crazy variation that makes us squint and wonder what crazed cook decided this recipe was worth sharing with the world…

ETHAN ALLEN EGG NOG

2 qts. ready-made chilled eggnog
1/2 cup orange juice, chilled
1 pt. (2 cups) rum
2 cups whipped cream
1 orange rind, grated

Mix eggnog with orange juice and rind in punch bowl. Fold in whipped cream and keep chilled. Add rum. Add a slice of orange for decoration and serve immediately.

This reminded me of Hong Kong Fruitcake, in that I have very little idea how this is possibly related to Ethan Allen. While eggnog certainly dates back to the Revolutionary War, and Mr. Allen presumably enjoyed a mug or two in his day, I don’t think they had much commercial eggnog — and I have honestly never heard of adding citrus to eggnog. Frankly, I’m afraid this will just curdle.

Since we weren’t throwing a huge party, and were worried this would be undrinkable, we made a quarter recipe: 2 cups eggnog, 1/8 cup orange juice, 1/2 cup rum, 1/2 cup whipped cream, and less grated rind. I also skipped the decorative orange slice. (Lazy!)

The worst moment was adding the orange juice. Just not right.

Folding in whipped cream helped it look relatively normal — but there wasn’t really enough whipped cream to help give it much structure, and it only slightly thickened the eggnog.

And adding the rum didn’t look interesting at all, so I didn’t even take a picture of that step.

In a desperate attempt to salvage the recipe, we served it in gold-chased martini glasses. (We got these as a wedding present, as well as a selection of martini recipes. I think they’ve actually been used all of four times, and only once for a martini.) So if nothing else, this looks pretty impressive and dignified. That effect is probably ruined by my foregoing explanation of what is in the glass.

I was hoping that, somehow, it would miraculously come together, but it completely failed to do so. It tasted how I expected — bad! Imagine store-bought eggnog, with a terrible aftertaste of orange juice and rum. The bits of rind, while cheerful and decorative, add an additional taste of weirdness. Buzz dislikes store-bought eggnog and was expecting to loathe it, but just found it “ordinary bad.”

Hey, at least it didn’t curdle. And I guess it has the health benefit of warding off scurvy while you’re getting drunk and guzzling heavy cream? (Yeah, that’s a stretch.) Well, Happy New Year anyway. May your 2012 recipes be better than this!

Ethan Allen Egg Nog comes from Americana Punch Recipes, a 1977 pamphlet from Anchor Hocking — and was shared with the internet on the Flickr stream of Eudaemonius.

Even crazier, I decided an excellent introduction to sardines would be through a retro recipe.

(I have clearly learned absolutely nothing over the last couple of years.)

SARDINES AND SCALLOPED POTATOES

Costs 40 cents (November 1952)
4 servings    Woman’s Day Kitchen

1 15-ounce can sardines
6 cups diced, cooked potato
1 can cream-of-celery soup
1/2 cup diluted evaporated milk
Buttered crumbs
Paprika

Drain sardines; reserve liquid. Put potato in greased, shallow, 2-quart casserole. Combine celery soup, milk, and sardine liquid; heat, stirring constantly, until smooth. Pour over potato. Sprinkle with crumbs and paprika. Bake in moderate oven, 350°F., 20 minutes. Top with sardines; bake 10 minutes longer.

This doesn’t actually look all that bad. Well, unless you’re me. I don’t like much seafood, and I’ve never been able to bring myself to actually open a can of sardines to see what’s inside. (If Buzz orders the occasional anchovy pizza, I make him eat it in another room, or preferably outside. Poor guy.)

This was my damn idea, so I braced myself and opened up the sardine can, and promptly fell to pieces. One sardine had a length of spine sticking out of its neck, left over from the decapitation process presumably. As I fled the kitchen, I begged Buzz to debone them for me, and I’d be back in a minute.

A few deep breaths and I returned to start working on some non-fish thing.

I took one look at the results of Buzz’s deboning efforts and had to leave the kitchen again.

Moving on to something I can actually stand to look at, here are some lovely buttered breadcrumbs browning in a pan. Mmmmm.

(Actually, they were pretty bland. But at least they’re not vertebrae!)

Cream of celery soup isn’t all that bad, but mixed with sardine juice, you get fishy cream of celery soup. This is a bad flavor combination.

Adding a heavy dose of paprika helps the breadcrumbs pick up some flavor. No doubt this level of spice would horrify the 1950′s housewife.

Buzz laid the fish on top, since I still was completely unable to touch them.

I did request at least half the casserole be covered with sardine flakes, rather than whole fish. Given my reaction just to the visuals, I knew I wouldn’t be able to actually put my fork into an unbroken sardine.

And then, unfortunately, after an all-too-short baking process, it was time to eat this.

Heaven help me.

What utterly shocked me about this was who enjoyed it. The kids and I had the sardine flakes, while Buzz had a serving from the whole-fish section of the casserole. My son took one look and declared he hated it. (He does this for everything that isn’t cheese, though.) My daughter took one look and eagerly cried, “Is that TUNA FISH?”

“Um… Yes, yes, it’s tuna fish.” And she starting stuffing her face. This kid never stuffs her face, she’s dainty and picky. She thought the fish tasted amazing, the potatoes were pretty good, and she even asked for an extra fish. Meanwhile, Buzz, the fan of sardines, was slowly taking bites while trying to ignore the flavor.

So this is pretty hit-or-miss. Don’t make it if you hate sardines, don’t mix the fish juice into the potatoes, and consider a small batch rather than a whole casserole. It may be an affordable family meal, but it’s expensive dog food!

This and other terrifying sardine recipes are originally from Woman’s Day 1952, and have been preserved online by Curly Wurly. Thanks?

This week we’re apparently sampling “stuffed celery canapés,” made with deviled ham and cream cheese spread.

(I think I may need to let Buzz stop picking recipes.)

Actually, this was a nice, quick idea, and let us use up a can of deviled ham that had been in the pantry for a while. In fact, it had been there so long our toddler son had decided to be a Very Big Help and rearrange the canned goods (he particularly likes putting them into boxes, or dropping them on the floor to make loud noises to startle the dog). And while moving things around, so fruits and tomatoes and peas and tuna fish were all stacked together as they so obviously should, he also started taking off labels.

So I was fairly sure that we had deviled ham. At the very least, I had a mystery can, and I had a label for deviled ham.

UNDERWOOD DEVILED HAM STUFFED CELERY CANAPÉ

Clean and cut celery stalks into two-inch lengths and stuff with UNDERWOOD DEVILED HAM moistened with Roquefort or cream cheese. A little finely chopped green pepper gives an added touch of flavor and attractiveness.

WELL. We didn’t have Roquefort. I’m going to that as the explanation for why the majority of this batch was made with cream cheese — if I was going to eat scary canned ham, I wanted something as creamy and delightful as possible to go with it. Roquefort, while a nice enough cheese, isn’t really subtle.

The worst moment was when I opened up the can, and the deviled ham smell wafted out. Actually, it didn’t really smell like deviled ham, it smelled uncannily like cat food. And it looks like cat food. In fact, we put a bit out for the cats, and it vanished rapidly — normally the dog is the only animal in the house that eats absolutely any retro recipe we create, so maybe that tells you something about deviled ham.

Straight deviled ham isn’t terribly delicious. Mixed with cream cheese, however, it gets smoother and more mellow, and was surprisingly pleasant. Buzz dug out some blue cheese (from a very cool cheese farm in Vermont), so I did add that to a small batch of ham stuffing. It didn’t really make a noticeable difference, either good or bad.

Once it’s combined with the celery and green pepper crunch, it was downright ok.

Well, it was ok until you tasted more than one canapé. After one, it went back to being salty and weird, and eventually all you could taste was ham sludge again. So… maybe this would work if you had a really large party, and no guest was going to take more than one? However, if they knew each other well enough to say, “Wow, don’t touch those barf-covered celery things,” you’d have a lot of uneaten canapés.

But your dog or cat would sure be happy!

Recipe originally preserved for the ages by the wonderful Found in Mom’s Basement blog.

Because of Father’s Day, I gave Buzz the privilege of picking out this week’s retro recipe. (Doesn’t that sound so much nicer than, “I didn’t want to take the blame if it tasted nasty”?) For some reason he decided to go with… prune salad.

We’d picked this on Friday, and then on Saturday afternoon, Rosemary (of Romantoes) commented on another post:

BTW, saw this recipe on the “Awful Library Books” blog and thought of you: http://awfullibrarybooks.net/?p=11728

Spooky — she was on exactly the right wavelength. (Plus I now have another hilarious blog to follow.) That 1960 Home Ec textbook has the same recipe the Del Monte proudly advertised.

Stuffed prunes were clearly not a passing fad — they could even be holiday festive!

With such a surfeit of stuffed prunes, how could I possibly choose which to make? It’s Father’s Day — let’s just splurge and have them all!

Each recipe is built on the same basic platform: something in stewed prunes. The simple first step, therefore, is to stew some prunes.

A bit of hot water, and 25 minutes later we have some soft, stewed prunes. Time to get started on the different fillings…

4 servings prune salad

Stuff cooked Del Monte Brand Prunes with cottage cheese, nuts, sliced celery (at right). Easy eating — because Del Monte’s “Natural Flavor” process protects both flavor and delicate fruit tissues while it “plumps” the prunes with moist, sterile heat.

(Side note: I worry when something like natural flavor is in “sarcastic quotes.”)

It was actually a little hard to put nuts and celery on top of the cottage cheese; prunes aren’t that big, so there isn’t much filling, and not much room to add toppings. It looks a little elegant, though.

Next up is the Home Ec recipe — the only one that gives any sort of measurement of information.

Stuffed Prune Salad

12 large dried prunes cooked to avoid breaking the skin
3/4 c. creamed cottage cheese or 1 3-ounce package cream cheese
Salad dressing

1. Wash prunes. Cook as directed on page 77 or steam in the top of a double boiler. Cool. Then slit the prunes to remove stones.

2. If cream cheese is used, mix with enough salad dressing to moisten. Stuff prunes with cheese mixture. Sprinkle with paprika. Arrange on a bed of salad greens. Serve with your favorite salad dressing.

We only made six, and also chose to use cottage cheese rather than cream cheese — we couldn’t decide which salad dressing would really work well, and just avoided the question.

The most difficult part of this was sprinkling paprika on top. It’s easy to spill, although we had no idea whether a light or heavy sprinkle of paprika would be better.

Finally, from the “sugarplums” assortment…

Spice the filling! Add ginger to cream cheese for stuffing pitted SUNSWEET Prunes. Place on fresh orange slices with salad greens. Result: Oriental Prune Salad!

These seemed the most promising, since cream cheese (about 3 tablespoons) mixed with ginger (about 1 teaspoon) made a really interesting spicy mixture.

They also look the prettiest, with the nice contrasting colors of the mandarin orange slices underneath.

When it came time for dinner, we plated one of each prune type alongside the main dish (barbecue wings).

I was discussing the assortment with my daughter, and explained I wasn’t going to make her eat a lot of them, but she did need to at least try one of them. “One of each?” she said, a rather horrified expression creeping onto her face. I said she could pick one — which frankly just concerned her more, as she tried to decide which sounded least horrible.

But I’m proud to say, she tasted every single one! We made a game of it — everyone put one flavor on their fork, and ate it all together. And all went “Ewyeargh!” together, too.

Everyone agreed: the celery-walnut stuffed prunes were worst (celery just added a weird texture), the paprika stuffed prunes were underwhelming (you tasted cottage cheese, not paprika or prune), and the ginger-orange stuffed prunes were pretty adequate. The orange and cream cheese really made the difference.

So if you have to eat stewed prunes and can’t stand them plain, toss in some mandarin oranges and a bit of ginger cream cheese. It might not be worth it to slit and stuff the prunes, but it makes the presentation prettier!

Aside from a bundt pan, I don’t have any nicely-shaped molds that help transform your molded salad from frightening, to frightening-but-aesthetically-pleasing. Luckily, the Frosted Lime-Walnut Salad just calls for a loaf pan.

FROSTED LIME-WALNUT SALAD

1 pkg. lime-flavored gelation
1 cup boiling water
1 #2 can crushed pineapple
1/2 cup finely sliced celery
1 tbsp. chopped pimiento
1/2 cup chopped Diamond Walnuts

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water; cool till syrupy. Stir in remaining ingredients. Turn into 8 x 4 x 4″ loaf pan rinsed in cold water; chill. When firm, unmold or leave in pan; frost top (recipe below) and decorate with golden Diamond Walnut halves.

Frosting: Blend and beat till smooth, 1 3-oz. pkg. cream cheese, 1 tbsp. mayonnaise, 1 tsp. lemon juice.

People still make this, or at least post the recipe online. It’s even in the Blue Ribbon Country Cookbook, the most recent edition of which was published in 2007.

All the ingredients are fairly mundane, but not the sort of thing you really want to see sitting next to each other. Especially since you know they’re going to be mixed together.

I tried to make myself feel better by making the ingredients feel better. (It didn’t work.)

It’s charmingly colorful when you pour everything together, but then when you mix it…

Urgh.

I found a handy website here, a University of Nebraska Food, Nutrition & Health page that correlates can sizes, such as #2, to useful measures, such as 20 oz. Alternatively, just buy whatever size can is standard nowadays, dump it into your mixture, and think retroactively “Gosh, that looks like an awful lot of pineapple.”

It looks like even more pineapple when you read the dire warning that Jell-O will fail if you add fresh or frozen pineapple. (I am honestly not sure whether canned qualifies as “fresh” or not. Guess we’ll find out?)

One of the things I found worst about this recipe was the way it glistened.

It doesn’t really come across in the photographs, but it was pretty creepy.

I was secretly hoping the pineapple would cause disastrous problems with the gelatin setting. But, it didn’t, everything unmolded quite easily. “Yay.”

The few ingredients needed for the frosting are a little more reasonable.

The frosting was rather thick, making me worry I’d damage the loaf. (Sadly, I didn’t damage the loaf.)

I went the extra foot — not the extra mile — and added pimento garnish with the walnuts; it would have benefited visually from a bed of lettuce or such to decorate around the base, but I didn’t feel like throwing away perfectly good leafy vegetables on this.

Slicing was kinda hard; the loaf wanted to squish rather than separate, and you can see the curds and pineapple still clinging to the knife.

This actually wasn’t quite as horrifying as I expected. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was unappealing. The more you ate, the less edible it became; my mouth just stopped letting me put more forkfuls in. But I think it was the lumpy texture more than the flavor that I really disliked. The sweetness of pineapple and lime jello really masked every other flavor, but there was nothing to hide the crunchy celery and walnuts in the gloppy fruit. (I didn’t even notice the cottage cheese.)

But it was bad enough that I threw most of it away, since it sat in the fridge for four days without being touched and I needed the shelf space. There’s nothing in this recipe, except perhaps pimentos, that wouldn’t be better off without all its loaf neighbors. Despite its widespread “appeal” (and I base that solely on how ridiculously easy it was for me to find it online — maybe it’s some sort of recipe meme, ALL YOUR LIME-WALNUT SALAD ARE BELONG TO US) this is not something that should be cooked, served, or eaten.

You wouldn’t expect this, though, would you? Found in the Flickr stream of Shelf Life Taste Test, “Delight Fantastic” is apparently a dubious marriage of cream cheese and mini marshmallows. Actually it’s a pretty busy dish, they’ve also included gelatin and lady fingers!

To be fair, I don’t know if I would have been able to come up with a more descriptive name. “Colored bits and marshmallows in lemony cream gelatin” doesn’t have the same zing. It really doesn’t call to mind elegant, easy, light, AND dazzling — you need a name like “Awesome Superness” or “Terrific Wonderful” or “Super Happy Fun Time.” I suppose “Delight Fantastic” has the dubious advantage of being a silly pun.

1. Dissolve 1 3-oz. pkg. lime-flavored gelatin and 1 3-oz. pkg. raspberry-flavored gelatin using 1-1/2 cups of boiling water for each. Pour each into an 8″ square pan. Chill overnight; cut in cubes.

2. Dissolve 1 3-oz. pkg. of lemon-flavored gelatin using 1 cup of boiling water. Cool, while you soften 1 8-oz. pkg. of Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Add gelatin mixture gradually blending until smooth. Chill until slightly thickened.

3. Fold in cubed gelatin, and 6 cups (1 pkg.) of Kraft Miniature Marshmallows. Pour into 9″ spring form pan, lined with 2 3-oz. pkgs. of split ladyfingers.

Chill until firm. Serves 10 to 12.

I firmly believe that recipes like these were written by a bunch of Mad Men characters while drunk (and/or stoned). I can absolutely picture an episode where they’re up against a deadline, the peons create a series of recipes to feature a company’s products (“Let’s add gelatin IN the gelatin! BRILLIANT.“), Peggy snarkily observes, “None of you have ever cooked anything, have you?” and Don saves the day with a profound soliloquy about marshmallows and family.

And then Betty throws a plate of Delight Fantastic at somebody.

Back in our modern world, it’s time to make Jell-O — lots of it!

I had lime on hand, but ended up using strawberry instead of raspberry.

I realized have a lot of gelatin sitting around, including vegetarian versions (based on agar agar) for when I make kosher gummy snacks for the kids’ lunches at summer camp. So this bizarre recipe let me clean out the cupboards a little bit.

My daughter took the majority of these photographs; her goal in life is to be an artist, and she loves playing with the camera. Digital photography is perfect for her more “experimental” shots.

Mixing Jell-O with cream cheese led to another culinary “discovery” (in this case, something I’ve repeatedly demonstrated in both retro and regular recipe attempts) — liquids and lipids don’t like to mix. Stir all you want, you’ll just get small lumps of fat in a water soup.

Finally I gave up and asked Buzz to run it through the blender; it was smooth and well-mixed in under a minute. (And oooooh did it taste nice.)

But then we had to mix in the marshmallows and Jell-O cubes, and we found a problem. The recipe called for a ridiculous quantity of marshmallows — 6 cups, which was way more than the approximately 2 cups of lemony cream cheese mixture. So we ruined the tasty lemony cream cheese by using it as a paste to stick a bag of marshmallows together.

And we ran into more trouble: the Jell-O cubes weren’t quite solid enough to endure being folded into the other components. They sort of smeared around. I stopped using the spatula for a moment because I was afraid I was crushing them too much.

In that brief pause, Buzz said, “I know!” and started mixing with his hands. All this accomplished was getting goo all over his hands instead of the spatula.

There is something about how glisteny this is that just disturbs me.

Oh well. Time to put it into the lady fingers, I guess. (eww!)

Spending the night in the refrigerator did not improve the Delight Fantastic. I at least did some productive work in the meantime, but it just sat there getting more soggy-looking.

Every step of the way I seemed to find something that made me laugh at this completely silly recipe. When I un-molded the Delight (or should it be the Fantastic?) after 24 hours, it immediately puffed out an inch around its perimeter. It’s like I’d asked it to wear a pair of jeans that was just a little too small, then after a long day it finally got to take them off — foomp!

After that, I was a little worried it would just continuing expanding horizontally until it oozed off the plate and became a strange, gelatinous pancake; however, it held its post-mold shape until we were ready to have dessert a few hours later.

I refused to serve this on a stack of balloons, by the way. That risks turning “elegant ‘n easy” into “briefly explosive, then all over the floor.”

This is probably the most excited I’ve seen the kids get about any of the retro recipes; they know these things are risky, although to their credit they always taste a bite. But they loved every part of Delight Fantastic — the name just sounded so ridiculously good, the bright colors, the Jell-O making process, the marshmallows… they knew this was going to be the Best Thing Ever.

Especially when I told them they could have as much as they want. (I looked generous and kind, while secretly knowing they weren’t going to really enjoy the mushy sugar overdrive enough to eat it all.)

The marshmallows totally killed this. Oh, wow, those marshmallows. They were in every bite, and they had soaked up moisture from the surrounding gelatins so they tasted squishy and weird. Even the kids quickly got tired of it; my daughter picked all the marshmallows out.

Opinion was divided regarding the lady finger “crust.” Buzz thought bites that included lady fingers were the only edible parts, since the dry spongy texture contrasted with the slimy gelatinous innards; I thought they were too dry and flavorless, perhaps because my taste buds were hiding from the overly sweet filling.

I will admit, it was sort of fun to make, in that “wow this is going to be so horrible” way. Each step just built up the silliness; like a bad movie that you just can’t walk out of because you want to see what stupid plot twist is coming next. It would almost be worth making to take to a potluck supper just so you’d have a great story to tell everyone at the party. “Yeah, I thought it would be an elegant centerpiece, but it’s really sad looking, isn’t it? Haha!”

If you ever try making this:

1. Check if there’s any other options… such as, perhaps, not making it.
2. Use only as much water as the recipe calls for (I used slightly more, following the package directions), and refrigerate the Jell-O as long as possible.
3. There’s still time to reconsider. Maybe you can just bring cupcakes to the office holiday party?
4. Use less marshmallows and more lemon-cheese mixture. (Look at the original recipe picture — it’s lots of yellow, not lots of white.)
5. Throw it away. Seriously. People like a nice cheese plate or assorted vegetables.

Wow. Just… wow.

Mix chilled 7-Up and cold milk in equal parts, by pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. Do not stir. The 7-Up adds a light and delicate flavor making a delicious blended food drink.

I have no idea what a “blended food drink” is really supposed to be. But that’s nothing compared to the rest of the ad:

Mothers know that this is a wholesome combination.

Now, I do have a pretty good idea of what wholesome is supposed to be: “conducive to bodily health.” That can apply to the milk, but the soda? Nuh-uh.

Anyway, this is (obviously) easy to make. Pour soda into milk. Make a kid drink it. Done!

The addition of 7-Up gives milk a new flavor appeal that especially pleases children.

The kids liked it, but when I asked if they wanted more, they requested the milk be left out. They weren’t “especially pleased.” Flavor-wise this is fairly mediocre, but their asinine claim that it’s wholesome is what disgusts me.

Shrimp Lamaze. Blend 1 can Campbell’s Tomato Soup with 1 cup mayonnaise. Add 1/4 cup sweet pickle relish, 1/2 tsp. grated onion, 1/2 tsp. prepared mustard, and 1 tbsp. lemon juice. Makes about 2-1/2 cups dressing. Serve over cooked shrimp, lettuce wedges, hard-cooked eggs or mixed greens.

At first I had no idea what Shrimp Lamaze was supposed to be; I mean, it’s apparently shrimp in thousand island dressing. Where does the name “Lamaze” come from? I’m not entirely sure. There was a famous restaurant in Los Angeles, Cafe La Maze, founded by “Legendary and influential Restaurateur & Maitre D” Marcel LaMaze. According to this web page, one of its signature dishes was Shrimp Lamaze. According to Wikipedia, Shrimp Lamaze was created at the Philadelphia Warwick Hotel by Johann Lamprecht, and takes its name from George Lamaze — who was Marcel’s brother.

So the dish was definitely a fancy shrimp salad served in both a LA restaurant and a Philadelphia hotel. Most Shrimp Lamaze recipes don’t call for tomato soup, though — they call for chili sauce, a very different flavor in many ways.

One very nice thing about this recipe was that the prep work was minimal — almost nonexistent, really.

(1) Assemble ingredients.

(2) Stir. (And at this point I was annoyed by the very liquid consistency of the dressing — soupy, if you will — so I put it in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.)

(3) Pour onto shrimp and serve.

After tasting, you’ll probably want to consider including an additional step: (4) Feed it to the dog and order a pizza.

The verdict is that this falls somewhere between “meh” and “disgusting.” If it was very good thousand island dressing on shrimp, I could see it being moderately nice; if this was 1935, I could see it being almost luxurious. But this recipe is a really half-assed version of the dish. You simply can’t make a good dressing starting from tomato soup. It was a runny, bland disappointment. Buzz took one bite and went back to the kitchen to find hot sauce to give it some flavor. Even the kids wanted hot sauce, and they hate spicy food.

Original image of Campbell’s adver-recipe found on Flickr, thanks to SA_Steve.

Credit where credit’s due — the image is originally from jbcurio’s Flickr set. There’s lots of crazy old stuff in there.

Venturing back into the realms of probably-horrible, this week I decided to try Pie Plate Salad. It’s a pretty typical-looking example of vegetables put into gelatin, and also seems to strongly support the theory that gelatin was just a way to flaunt the fact that you could afford a refrigerator. Why else would you want mixed vegetables and lemon Jell-O in the same dish?

When shopping for ingredients, I was taken aback to actually find Veg-All on the shelves. I’d never heard of it before seeing the ad, proving I’m not an expert in canned mixed vegetable brand names. (Nobody’s perfect.)

Making this is only slightly harder than making plain lemon Jell-O… so, really really (not) hard. Mix water with Jell-O and pour in vegetables… and wait.

If you get something that looks like the Jolly Green Giant sneezed on your plate, you’ve done it right.

The most surprising thing about this recipe was not that it was disgusting — I fully expected that. But it wasn’t the Jell-O that was bad. It tasted… well, edible, if you concentrated on the carrots and corn. Unfortunately, the Veg-All brand of mixed vegetables doesn’t stop with just carrots and corn; it also has peas, green beans, lima beans, potatoes, and celery, and possibly a few other vegetables that are too traumatic for me to remember. And lima beans, bad enough on their own, are incredibly revolting when paired with sweet citrus slime. Don’t even get me started on the mushy celery.

And that’s something about vintage recipe advertising that I never really understood. After making Pie Plate Salad, I will never, ever, under any circumstances, buy Veg-All mixed vegetables, even if I’m shopping for a food drive. Claiming that Pie Plate Salad is a great use of your product is a quick way to convince me you’re a liar and possibly also dangerously insane — is that really the image you want your product to have?

1. When you want to cook, have a recipe.
Unless you’re Masahari Morimoto, it’s risky to just throw things together and expect them to taste good. It can work for stir fried vegetables, but not for baked goods.

2. Having a recipe in the house isn’t enough. Know where your recipe is and look at it before you start
Unsurprisingly, this is where my problems started. I knew I had a lemon meringue pie recipe on an old Jello advertisement I’d previously used for a retro recipe.

I also knew I had some lemon gelatin. So, I started making the lemon gelatin.

3. When you have found your recipe, and when you realize you haven’t been following it at all, and in fact it’s not a recipe but an instruction to look somewhere else that doesn’t exist, don’t start combining other recipes.
When I decided to actually look at the recipe, I panicked. There wasn’t a recipe there at all, just this annoying little note:

Directions on the box?!?

At this point, I realized (a) I should have been using Jello Pudding, not Jello Gelatin and (b) Jello Pudding does not print lemon meringue pie recipes on its Lemon Jello Pudding boxes any longer. Arrrrrgh.

So I had no recipe. Thanks to Google, I managed to find one that called for lemon Jello combined with Cool Whip, and then made another critical mistake…

4. “Whipped topping” and “cream cheese” are not the same thing.
While it’s possible to combine cream cheese and gelatin (I’ve seen it done and it’s quite tasty), it’s almost impossible to do so by hand with cold cream cheese.

Before:

After (in crust):

See the little white bits? That’s teeny chunks of cream cheese which weren’t properly blended. Whisking by hand just won’t work for this.

I tried to repair my mixer (which won’t turn off and smells of burnt wiring, ever since it sucked up Election Cake batter), and Buzz and I each wasted a good half hour trying to remove this one stupid two-inch-long bolt that was holding the damn thing together. All the others came out fine, but THAT one had to strip. And if you can’t get into a mixer, you can’t clean out the gunked-up motor, so you can’t keep it from wildly sparking and potentially electrocuting you while mixing.

5. You won’t get nice stiff peaks in your egg whites if you whisk by hand.
Same problem as with the lemon filling… not enough mixing power without my mixer, although I came close before my arm fell off. The peaks were present, but wimpy rather than stiff. My pie topping desperately needed Viagra. (Meringue lasting more than four hours… ?)

Without those spiky little peaks, you don’t get the same light browning and drying-out that makes for a really tasty meringue.

6. Meringue is not spelled with a “Q”
I don’t know why, but I have a constant compulsion to type MERINQUE. No wonder my blog only rates at a junior high school level.

It isn’t the worst pie I’ve ever had, but it’s down there. The filling was bland, the meringue was insipid, the overall experience was thoroughly pointless. It was a refresher course in culinary stupidity, though, as well as a compelling argument to buy a new mixer