July 8, 2008
Aunt Jenny’s Magic Meat Pies
I have to admit that I adore vintage cookbooks and print ads for domestic products. I just found this one in the Flickr Mid-Century Supper Club pool. The guy on the right looks like Salvador Dali.
comments
17 Responses to “Aunt Jenny’s Magic Meat Pies”
Leave a Reply
Amy, I just know you’d like my Campbell’s Great Restaurants Cookbook (1969). Signature dishes from a sub-pantheon of Fine Dining Establishments of the late 1960s, modified for the home cook. And yes, every damn one includes at least one can of Campbell’s soup.
For the hostess who recalls browsing that copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking back in her newlywed days and, now that her husband got that promotion and the boss and his wife are coming over, regrets having shelved it with the encyclopedia set.
I also like the idea of “Aunt Jenny starting a bride off right” with Spry, the product touted by this booklet. But that’s on account of my dirty mind.
Spry, for those who don’t know, was a ‘vegetable shortening’. Crisco under another brand name. Nothing like a can of Crisco to start a bride off right.
No doubt Spry made a lot of things much easier for a new bride.
Oh dear. It took me about five minutes of browsing before that meaning sank in. Jenny’s niece is also fed up with all those jokes about bride’s biscuits. I can only imagine.
In related news, Mastering the Art of French Cooking navigated me successfully through my first cheese souffle this evening. Baked in a Pyrex bowl, but we don’t stand on formality around here.
Cheese souffle on a south Floridian evening. You are a brave man, Mr. D.
My ma was a kamikaze chef; she’d toss a stick of butter, an egg and the juice of a lemon into the flimsiest pot you’ve ever seen, crank up the burner, beat the hell out of it, and somehow a perfectly set hollandaise would emerge. I’ve adopted her tendencies, if not her proficiency.
Last November, I stayed up all night brining and cooking a 25 pound turkey, on crutches with a broken ankle. That is, I was on crutches–the bird was fine, just dead. My college buddy and I had leftovers for weeks.
Oh, a dollar for every time MGS said to me, “marvelous fritters, darling!”
Kathy: No tired jokes about your biscuits, I bet.
Not Dali in pix, just some old geezer
Yes, and “Aunt Jenny” — well, she’s not much older than her niece (the bride in need of a can of Spry). Know how you can tell? “Aunt Jenny” does not have that body that oldish women used to have. That body shape that seems to have vanished utterly. Thick around the middle, great pendulous breasts — yet so unlike the shape of the ‘overweight’ oldish woman of our own time.
Or maybe bodies just look different in fleece sweatsuits. I’m thinking of aunts and grandmothers in figured rayon dresses, their swollen feet squeezed into tight spectator pumps.
It’s amazing that Aunt Jenny can keep any type of figure considering how much lard she’s ingesting.
Cheese souffle… yum! I’ve yet to make a souffle of any type. I don’t think I’m fulfilling my bridal duties in the kitchen.
Amy, it’s okay that you’ve confined your bridal duties to other rooms. Formica is damn cold.
Oh, but “Aunt Jenny” uses Spry — a pure ‘vegetable shortening’ — not lard! That’s how she stays so trim.
I’ve got to look up that word ’shortening’. Always did wonder abut that.
Okay, now I’ve refreshed my memory about ’shortening’, but it still bears about as much relation to my perception of reality as ‘dark energy’.
Thanks, Mike. I got a magic meat pie in the bedroom, so who gives a damn if I can make one in the kitchen?
Yeah, women dig a guy who can always get his souffle to rise. (Pictures!)
I didn’t even need Spry.
That shot of the souffle in the oven is so poignant, Mike. The thought of your removing it brought tears to my eyes.