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Thread: 70s Dinner Party recalls the glory days when cookbooks were fucking horrorshows

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    Default 70s Dinner Party recalls the glory days when cookbooks were fucking horrorshows

    70s Dinner Party recalls the glory days when cookbooks were fucking horrorshows

    Source: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/7...ucking_horrors



    The appallingly unappetizing dishes and photography of 50s-70s cookbooks have been choice fodder for mockery for a long time, and it’s easy to see why. The unreal colors produced by the era’s photographic and printing technologies do nothing to help the repellent appearance of mystery meats and bizarre assemblages in aspic. I even keep a few old school cookbooks around solely for the photos—I doubt I’ll ever actually cook too many of these things, as almost everything pictured resembles the symptoms of loathsome diseases, and no recipe with “delight” or “surprise” in its name has ever lived up to its billing. Here are a few exemplary images from my copy of the 1961 edition of Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook (and looking at the asking prices for that book: thank you, mom, for never throwing that away). Unappetizing though these are—I don’t love ham salad, but I also don’t think it’s supposed to put one in mind of an Eldritch Abomination—they’re tame compared to what’s to come below.









    Journalist James Lileks has made plenty of hay on this sort of stuff—he’s long curated an online “Gallery of Regrettable Food,” which spawned an AWESOME eponymous book and the related follow-up Gastroanomalies. But this is 2016, and dead trees are for olds. You need ghastly food photography blasted to your phone! So allow me to recommend 70s Dinner Party on Twitter.

    Anna Pallai was brought up on 1970s stalwarts of stuffed peppers, meatloaf and platters of slightly greying hardboiled eggs. When she rediscovered her mother’s grease-stained 70s cookbooks, she knew she needed to share them with the world, and so the hit Twitter account @70s_Party was born.


    70s Dinner Party mines familiar territory, and if you find this stuff as goddamn hilarious as I do, it’s quality grist for that mill. It also appears in Tumblr form, and unsurprisingly, there’s a book. Just released last month, it’s earned high praise from both The Guardian and The Spectator. Here’s a selection of posts.






















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    Default Regrettable French Food Photography

    The following photographs are from the site by Jim Leleks of "The Gallery of Regrettable Food". All credit goes to Mr Leleks. For more horrible food, go to his site: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" to be found at: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

    Eggs Meurtte




    Ufff, indeed.

    Welcome to a thick tome detailing la glorie de la Fronch food. For all I know this stuff tastes incroyable, but the photos are the most unappetizing things I’ve seen in years. And I’ve seen a lot of peculiar food.

    Eggs, they say. Eggs. Really? Not Alien-fetus skulls in butterscotch sauce? Eggs? Not lumps of mashed potatoes soaked with cocoa power and dipped in gravy?

    The garnish calls for a quarter-pound of bacon, so it has that going for it, but I can't shake the impression the eggs are floating in a pool of severed and shelled crab legs.

    Also, they are sitting on Toast Pads. Kissing.

    And then there's the severed bird head stuck in the sweet potatoes. He looks like he's rolling his eyes and wearing a beret, so it's as French as they get.


    Hot-Cold Curnonsky



    “Hot-Cold Curnonsky” was a moody Pole who hung around the cafes alternately yelling at passersby and apologizing.

    Actually, “Chaud-Froid” is a “meat jelly that includes cream,” and it’s often used as a decorative element.

    A lot of people are happy when you tell them that smooth sole-mousse is the main course, but when you say “it’s surrounded by a moat of creamy meat Jell-o,” that’s when the salivary glands really kick into gear.


    Ancient Chicken



    Ancient Chicken? Well, resourceful cooks can do wonders with even the most elderly of birds. It's fricassed chicken, basically, with the addition of chaud-froid, or, as the Germans called it, "typically effete French nonsense that got in the way of the meat." The circular things are the chaud-froid, I presume, but is it fried creamy meat-Jell-O or hashed browns infused with chaud-froid? Unless the chaud-froid is the goop on the chicken, or goup de poullet.

    Easy to make, goup; start with a pound of fat. Then stop right there. You're done.


    South American Omlette



    It's like a clock from a rational future where they only had eight hours. I don't know what the nodules are. Pistachio marshmallows, perhaps.

    The spoon seems to be curious, like a dog who puts his paws on the counter when the chef's out of the room.


    Stuffed Salmon Brillat-Savarin



    Brillat-Savarin sounds like one of those treaties that banned some type of warfare. Close: it’s named after Jean Brillat-Savarin, lawyer, politician and epicure. He was known for great taste, passionate food writing, and piquant aphorisms.

    Such as: A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye. How true! But you should never look at a cheeseless desssert and say "its perfection is unutterably marred by the soulless expression of a dead glass orb."

    Wonder how many one-eyed women at the table stiffened whenever he said that.

    I like this: “"A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner. 'Much obliged', said he, pushing the plate aside, 'I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills’.”

    And I am not accustomed to taking my fish stuffed with spackle and gummis, but taste is a personal thing.


    The Queen of Sheba's Mocha Cake




    Wikipedia:

    The queen of Sheba has been called a variety of names by different peoples in different times. To King Solomon of Israel she was the Queen of Sheba. In Islamic tradition she was called Bilqis, Balqis, Balquis, or Bilqays by the Arabs, who say she came from the city of Sheba, also called Mareb, in Yemen or Arabia Felix. The Roman historian Josephus calls her Nicaule. The Luhya of Kenya call her Nakuti, while the Ethiopian people claim her as Makeda. She is said to have been born some time in the 10th century BC.

    Three thousand years later she is available in dessert form. Mmm! Polished chocolate Jell-O!


    Duck a la Margaux



    The olives have pinned everything and have no intention of letting them up until reinforcements arrive.


    Pig Trotters a la Canadienne



    I had the Pig Trotters once. Always made sure to cook the stuff thoroughly after that.

    Actually, it’s pig feet. Of course. Wikipedia notes, perhaps mordantly:

    The cuts are used in various dishes around the world, and have increased in popularity since the late-2000s financial crisis.

    Because they’re cheap. It’s hard to command a premium price for the things, but they can be prepared with skill. I had some in Paris many years ago. They were ordered for us, perhaps to have fun with the dumb young Yanks.

    Don’t recall whether they were drizzled with Elmer’s Glue, though.


    Veal Cutlets Pojarsky




    Always be suspicious of a dish that has five shots of vodka lined up so you can brace yourself. The cutlets themselves seem to be huddling together for support, as though they’d already gone through a bottle.

    The little bone sleeves went out of fashion here in the States, I suspect; they almost look prudish, as though people would be offended by the hard truth of animal infrastructure.


    Steak Tartare Tarass Boulba



    There's rare, and then there's "that stamp with the plane printed upside down" rare.

    I've no idea why the dish is named after a famed Zaporozhian Cossack, except that he was quite busy and had no time to cook.


    Shrimp Toast a la Rothschild



    Shrimp compacted down into cube form for future space travelers. Serve with a Crustacean Fountain - and engage the anti-grav before serving, so it floats above the plate just a bit.


    Lobster Moscovite



    Ever been walking down the street, and there's someone coming right in your path, and you both move to the same side, then back to the middle, and then to the other side? This is what would happen if if you were both slow and stupid.

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    Default Meat!

    The following photographs are from the site by Jim Leleks of "The Gallery of Regrettable Food". All credit goes to Mr Leleks. For more horrible food, go to his site: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" to be found at: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

    This is not meat. This is something they scraped out of the airfilter from the engines of the Exxon Valdez. Or perhaps it's steak-and-angel-food-cake dish.

    NOTE: the vegetables are strictly ornamental. Do NOT eat the vegetables.




    When decorating your meal, make sure to arrange the onions in the shape of Peter Lorre's face. It's steak a la Ugarte!

    Garnish with small, inedible onions. WARNING! The carrots here are not to be eaten. Vegetables are for commies.




    One of the more popular cuts: pressed shank braised with smoker's phlegm. It may take a few tries to get Uncle Hank to hack up enough Lucky sauce, so be patient.

    WARNING! Eating the carrots or the parsley will cause your testicles to retreat into your body cavity. Don't even chance it. Eat the MEAT.




    This has a name like "Snowplow-cut Butt Steak," or something. It's one of those attractive meat-meals that brings out the muscle striations to nice effect. You reeeallly want to know you're eating muscle when you tuck into a plate of meat. Muscle: ask for it by name!

    Note how they think that shredding the greens and sprinkling them around will get us to try them. Hah! Nice try!




    Apologies. Really. There are many meals in the Gallery I've described in terms of inadvertent stomach evacuations, but this is perhaps the most vomitous dish I have ever seen. Just Rupe 'n' Heat!

    What were they thinking? Didn't anyone remark how much this looks like a skillet full of spew? I'd suggest that this entire book was made by vegetarians, a sly piece of propaganda, but even the beans look awful.

    That concludes the Better Homes Guide to Meat, and I think I speak for us all: Thank God.

    Not to say you're out of the woods. Let's look at the Family Circle Guide to Meat.




    Take a good long look at this stuff, son, because it’s the last scrap of veggies untainted by meat-proximity you’re ever gonna see.

    It’s an interesting dish: enflamed rabbit testes heaped on a layer of warm cucumbers, arranged on flatbread, and served on a bed of river-washed stones.




    Despite a massive publicity effort from Texaco, the “magic Hav-O-Line Baste-o-Roast” technique never really caught on.




    Lung - the other brown meat.




    In the Court of Meat, this is the gavel. Verdict: Guilty - of being delicious!




    Two favorites, together again! What do I mean - Hitler and Goering? No, it’s two of the Institute’s most notorious offenders. You’ve a Jello dish on the left, and yes, that’s meat entombed in that gelatinous horror. On the right, the infamous Cabbage Stuffed with Meat, aka the Vegetarian Horrifying Loaf.




    This is cold curried chicken-paste arranged in the shape of a crown.

    May I never write that sentence again.




    The trick is to feed the beast olives coated in a type of plastic that breaks down over time. Then the olives are embedded in the meat the natural way!

    Or they can be shot into the flank with an airgun, but they have to be frozen first so they don't splatter. In this case, we salute the marksman: nice grouping!




    We break from meat to give us a reason to go back to meat as soon as possible. Yes, it's Bleach Cake with a side order of Martian Mutt-turds.

    Ready for meat again? Thought so.




    Fungus and filtration organs in grain-hat that falls apart upon first contact with a fork - how can one improve upon such a classic?

    Turtle-wax the kidneys, I guess.




    Creamed, pulverized, spreadable meat always has more eye-appeal when it's sheathed in a slice from the nervous system of trilobite.


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    Default Bar-B-Trix

    The following photographs are from the site by Jim Leleks of "The Gallery of Regrettable Food". All credit goes to Mr Leleks. For more horrible food, go to his site: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" to be found at: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/










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    Default Ten PM Cookery

    The following photographs are from the site by Jim Leleks of "The Gallery of Regrettable Food". All credit goes to Mr Leleks. For more horrible food, go to his site: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" to be found at: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

    Ah, the life of a cosmopolitan. Late-night guests arriving at the SINFUL hour of ten PM, looking for food and drink. Not to worry - you're ready. You're dressed in a white tuxedo. Your wife has been preparing for just such an event by studying her Good Housekeeping Ten PM Cook Book, which spells out the precise means for pacifying groups according to their age and gender.

    In the next few pages, you will be exposed to lurid, suggestive food imagery, so be warned. But that's what you have to expect when you're a night owl - when you're a Ten PM cook




    Freud never had to ask what men want. Men want liquor. They want a pistachio cordial that matches their ties, matches the coffee cups, and matches the salad and the relish. AVOCADO GREEN, the rutting stags demand.

    To remind them they're men, make sure to embed a batch of wriggling, erect weiners in a sea of beans.

    According to the illustration above, it was not unusual in the 50s for a party to include a friend who lacked a body. No one seems to notice, of course; why, it's Ten PM.

    But what are the kids doing? Read on.




    Ah, for the days when “Teen Triumphs” meant graduating without a record or a baby.

    Proof that sexual frustration - abetted by burger-teasing virgins, cheered on by a better-looking “popular” kid - can turn a kid’s hair GRAY.

    Unless he’s a 52-year old “friend, and likes hanging around with the teens. He likes their keen spirit; they think he’s the creepiest. But he brings liquor.

    Frankwiches?

    Mom! The gang's coming over for a sock-hop in the knotty-pine-paneled basement! Can you make those Benedictish Frankwiches again? You know, the ones that look like creamed tumor-balls? Oh, Mom, you're the absolute MOST.





    How can you make sure a Ten PM party doesn't last past 10:06?

    Serve them this.

    Somehow, creamed lobster in creamy lobster sauce (with cream) doesn’t go well with a bellyful of booze - particularly if the Stags have been hitting the bourbon, and the Gals have been knocking back sherry-soup for the last hour. This is a dish whose hue and unrelenting chunkiness prompts a rash of coat-gathering, pale faces, and muttered apologies. My, look at the time. Of course, Bob will try this, but Bob’s the one who always stays after everyone’s gone, and you know what? I don’t care if he is the boss’s brother, if he heaves in the shrubs one more time he’s no longer welcome.

    At least not after 10 PM.




    Hey, gang! Who wants a nice slice of purply cabbage-cream pie? You bet that's a hand-made sand crust!

    Perhaps a nice batch of Scones & Pepsodent in a Banana-Placenta sauce?

    Everyone? Hello? Where’d everyone go?

    At this point the husband and wife grin and wink: mission accomplished. Empty house, and it’s not even midnight.

    Honey? Let’s leave the dishes for tomorrow. Mr. Frankwich wants to come out and play.






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    Default Gel Cookery

    The following photographs are from the site by Jim Leleks of "The Gallery of Regrettable Food". All credit goes to Mr Leleks. For more horrible food, go to his site: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" to be found at: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

    Garden Salad #1

    Imagine you're hungover. Deeply hungover. Someone presents you with this - and shakes the plate so it wiggles. Frankly, it already looks like someone heaved into a mold and stuck the result in the fridge. But that's Gel-Cookery!




    Meat Thing

    Bleached, washed, plucked Scalp of Klingon.




    Garden Salad #2

    Here the food seems trapped in a shiny force-field, the individual items looking with sad envy at the olives and tomatoes relaxing outside the hated Invisible Barrier. This dish takes a little more time, because it requires constant Simonizing prior to consumption. But that's Gel-Cookery!




    Main element contained therein: Kidney Beans.

    Personally, I don't eat anything that's the same color as a 1997-era computer.

    That concludes our journey into Gel-Cookery, TV style. Keep in mind that the show only featured the dishes being made - and then whisked, fully chilled, from the fridge. What they didn't show was the hours between construction and consumption. The moment when the housewife put the dish in the gleaming white Fridgedaire, looked at the clock to see if it would be ready for supper, mentally calculated the time until the kids came home, then realized that three hours of chores laid ahead and only two hours remained. It was enough to make a lady drink a Pink Squirrel in mid-afternoon, say To Heck With It! and let the house just BE for a day. Sit down. Turn on the TV and watch Merv. Maybe he'll sing; he's funny when he sings. Dot down the block is probably watching Merv; she has a lady who comes in three times a week to clean . . .and of course, she doesn't have any kids . . .but of course, she drinks. Still, she seems happy and all, and if her husband is bothered by anything HE doesn't show it, being a doctor and all. Probably carrying on with a nurse, though . . .poor Dot.


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    Default Vegetables in all their glory

    The following photographs are from the site by Jim Leleks of "The Gallery of Regrettable Food". All credit goes to Mr Leleks. For more horrible food, go to his site: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" to be found at: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/






















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