Skip to main content

The General Foods Kitchen Cookbook (1959)

 





For my friends who like history and cooking, I have a real fun one. The General Foods Kitchens Cookbook is from 1959 (436 pages, authorship credited to "The Women of General Foods Kitchens"). It's loaded with full-color, full-page photographs and two-color drawings, and has an unusual square-ish size. I think of this as one of the first "modern" lifestyle cookbooks in its look and feel. (Modern, retro and dated all at once!)

It has a marked difference in its approach to handling the recipes, which I think reflects the new prosperity in lifestyle and more leisure time that Americans found in the 1950s. 

Instead of grouping similar foods together in chapters (e.g, Meats, Breads, Vegetables), General Foods organizes eight chapters around "everyday and special situations," including family meals, daytime entertaining, parties, meals outdoors, and holidays. Each chapter describes various scenarios under the topic, with sample menus and recipes. 

Unique to this book are what are essentially troubleshooting tips. Under the various chapters, the authors present twists and turns and their tips on how to deal with them. Some examples:

  • How to outwit time when Susie's always late on Wednesdays and the family can't eat together.
  • So they gave you a blender for Christmas!
  • What to do when Dad comes home for lunch.
  • Company for dinner - how to present the seated dinner when you have a maid and when you're on your own.
  • Tea for two ... or 200. How to brew it and serve it.
  • When the committee meets at your house, and Pamela's dieting again.

    One chapter has the cringe-worthy title "Cooking 'native:' meals from home and abroad;" however, its introduction states that it recognizes how Americans are moving around more and need to open our minds to new customs and ways to preparing foods.  It offers American regional specialties (such as New England clambakes, Hawaiian luaus, and Midwest sportsman's dinners) as well as some "around-the-world cooking" (primarily European - paella, coq au vin, zabaglione- but also shish kebabs and sukiyaki) .

    Two additional chapters advise on how to feed a crowd and "how to rise to the occasion," with scenarios such as the electric power failing, drop-in visitors, and good meals on a diet (the first time I've seen a cookbook with recipes specifically for diabetics and sodium-restricted. Also different are the use of packaged mixes in some recipes, although they do not specify any brands.

    You may recall a previous post about Bettina, the fictional newlywed from 1917 whose cook book put her into hundreds of daily-life scenarios (unflappable Bettina always saved the day with her best recipes and advice). In a way this book is a throw-back to that, but this time around the authors set up the reader as the heroine of her (yes, HER) supposedly real-life dilemmas. 


    Popular posts from this blog

    Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book (1950)

      Here’s another history geek post for my friends into cooking: This is the first Betty Crocker cookbook, circa 1950. It’s a first edition “signed” by Betty aka a General Mills secretary. Betty herself is a fictional character used to promote General Mills products. Beautiful hardcover book with mostly black-and-white photos, although a limited number of full-page color photos were sprinkled in. This cookbook ushers in a new era after World War II. Middle-class homemakers had more time and resources to entertain. Also a notable time because more women were entering and staying in the workforce. Because women were needed so badly to work during the war, it was becoming more socially acceptable for a woman to leave the so-called purity of the home to work away from the hearth. For the first time, cookbooks included recipes that saved time and used modern conveniences (appliances such as electric blenders and mixers, store-bought packaged ingredients and prepared food) to help busy ho...
    Read more

    How to Eat Well Though Rationed: Wartime Canning and Cooking Book (1943)

      For my friends who like history and cooking, and in honor of the 4th of July, here’s a little gem from 1943. The government had some propaganda work to do to convince citizens to go to war again so soon after WWI, and booklets like this played a role in keeping patriotism and morale up as the war dragged on. Sacrifice then was considered honorable for the greater good. On a personal note, I’ve entered antique shows with my cookbooks only twice. I entered this one in the 1993 McHenry County Fair and it won a Best of Show. (I entered another one in the Walworth County Fair the following year, and the superintendents of that show damaged it with their poor handling practices. Because of that experience, I will not enter any more antiques in any show.)
    Read more

    Pillsbury's Bake Off Breads Cook Book (1968)

      This is kind of a history geek post 😊 ok, it’s completely a history geek post 😄 I have collected old cookbooks most of my life; I love looking at history through them. I found a couple this year at the Walworth County Fair’s used book sale that are too cool to not share. Bakers, check out the subhead on this Pillsbury bread cookbook from 1968 - when instant dry yeast was NEW to the commercial market. I can’t imagine not having it on the pantry shelf.
    Read more