What's The Strangest Food Book in Your Collection?

[srhcb]

Peter came across it today.  An early 60's supermarket pamphlet thing (the kind you get by the cash register).  The "Joys of Jello."  Did you know that they actually used to make celery flavoured Jello?

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I think they test marketed lettuce Jello about the same time.

SB (can think of a few uses )

[melonpan]

Peter came across it today.  An early 60's supermarket pamphlet thing (the kind you get by the cash register).  The "Joys of Jello."  Did you know that they actually used to make celery flavoured Jello?

i guess they used to layer this with the tomato aspic...? why not just flavour your stock with celeries to begin with?

im not feeling too creative. how would you use this celery jello

[melonpan]

i was pleased to see two books that i really like listed.

al sichermans <i><b>caramel knowledge</b></i> is underrated. its funny, its got a lot of good recipes and the themes are creative. sicherman makes for great bedtime reading. i got it randomly more than 10 years ago and its where i learned how to make crepes. this book points out that you can use crepe batter to make yorkshire pudding.

the other book is <i><b>the decadent cookbook</i></b>. the recipes arent practical like <i>caramel knowledge</i>, but its not supposed to be... another book that is good for reading in bed. outrageous, utterly fascinating. beautiful. im glad someone wrote this.

i lovelovelove both of the above books. esp <i>the decadent cookbook</i>.

but i think the plain weirdest book that i have is <i><b>bull cook and authentic historical recipes and practices</b></i>. george leonard herter had a shitload to say about everything and its all here in this book. the 350-odd pages are PACKED, just PACKED with the drivel, half truths, secret tips and cooking methods and yes, some recipes that mr herter researched and (im guessing) made up. he easily gets distracted and randomly follows odd threads and gets off track for paragraphs before remembering what he was writing and going back to the original topic.

i dont like keeping this book around me, but i cant seem to let go either.<blockquote><i>...<center><b>JAPANESE METHOD OF MAKING A PORK ROAST</B></CENTER>

The first Japanese originally came from China and they brought with them traditional old Chinese cooking methods. The Japanese are great lovers of pork and through the centuries have developed a great many tricks in cooking pork. They were using sugar sauce in hams over 2,000 years before sugar was even known to Europe. Europe has had sugar only a relatively short time. Sugar came to Arabia in the 13th century, to Sicily in the 14th century, to Portugal in the 15th century. It was really late in the 16th century before Central Europe had sugar. In 1747 the German chemist Marggraf was the first to discover sugar in sugar beets and this made sugar plentiful in Europe.

The Japanese trick that I like in making a pork roast is as follows: Before putting your roast into the oven sprinkle it all over with cinnamon. Rub the cinnamon in well. Poke some holes into the roast with a sharp nail, or skewer and work a little cinnamon down into the holes into the heavy parts of the roast. Cinnamon has almost a miraculous effect on pork. If the pork is strong, and much pork is, it takes away any strong porky odor entirely. On good pork it give it a delightful, fresh taste. This method was standard procedure at lumber camps after a number of Japanese cooks served pork roast this way just once....

...

<center><b>HOW TO MAKE JERKY</CENTER></B>

Jerky is made up of meat that has been smoked and slow roasted until all moisture is out of it.

In case of an atomic bomb attack it would be very important to know how to make jerky, as it would be the only way left to preserve meat for long periods of time. With electricity knocked out electric freezers become useless. With the gas lines blown up gas ranges would be worthless. With the railroads blown up coal could not be moved in for cooking.

....

<center><b> SUKIYAKI AND A WORD ABOUT FISHERMAN'S WHARF</B></center>

...The Japanese as we know them today were a tribe who settled in Japan from Asia. The original inhabitants of the islands were a race much like Eskimos. They are now nearly extinct, only a few of them being left in present day Japan. The ancient Japanese unlike the Chinese did not care for games of chance, considering it a form of theft and highly dishonorable. There were fewer thieves in Japan than any country in the world as they hated stealing and punished thieves with death. White was a color of mourning and black and purple colors of celebrating. They spoke a language of their own not Chinese and had their own alphabet and number system. For the most part they drank Cha, a tea made from crushed berries of a mountain bush. They did not drink tea like the Chinese. Japanese food in Ancient times as well as modern times, is nothing like Chinese food in any manner. The Japanese people have never cared for Chinese food of any kind. Chow Mein, which means fried noodles in Chinese, and Chop Suey which means fine mixture, in Chinese, no Japanese ancient or present would ever think of eating. Japanese women are the cleanest of any in the world. If they have enough water they will take a bath twice a day. That really is something. Many an American soldier who did duty in Japan has regretted ever since that he did not marry one.

... [ingredients for sukiyaki. the first 7 ingredients cut] ...Two cups of celery sliced lengthwise and cut up into pieces about 1/4 of an inch square. Celery was not used in Sukiyaki to start with, as there was no celery in Japan. Bamboo sprouts were plentiful and cost nothing and were used. Actually bamboo shoots have no taste at all and the celery improves the Sukiyaki greatly. You can leave out the bamboo shoots altogether and just use 2 1/4 cups of finely diced celery and your result will be excellent. One two-inch square cake of soybean curd. This you do not need. Soy bean curd cake tastes like a sour piece of custard and looks like it and most people do not like it. Here again is an ingredient that was and is cheap in Japan and used simply because of this. You do not need anything to replace it at all, but if you want to be fancy and greatly improve on it, put in a two inch square or two of custard or one egg made into an omelette and cut up into one-half inch squares.

...

Now take 8 ounces of soy sauce and put it into an empty one-fifth of a quart liquor bottle. Add one level tablespoon of sugar to it and eight ounces of water. Shake well. Although there were originally no grapes of any kind in Japan a good modern day Japanese trick is to use 7 ounces of water and one ounce of grape juice instead of the 9 ounces of water with the soy sauce. It adds a great deal to your Sukiyaki.

[... more cuts this next part is a continuation of the sukiyaki entry] If you ever get a chance to go to the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco which is an area of restaurants, take this advice. The Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco is strictly phony atmosphere. There has been no commercial fishing in the whole San Francisco are for many, many, years and no fish come into Fisherman's Wharf. A few boats go out for crabs, but that is all. As you walk around the wharf, the mongers try to sell you what is known as a "Walk around Cocktail." This is a paper cup of small shrimp. All of these shrimp come from Mexico. If you go into one of the seafood restaurants you will find that the live lobsters are all from Maine, the large shrimp from Texas, the fist and abalone from Mexico, and the oysters from Louisiana or the east coast. The seafood is not bad, but no better than you can find in a good restaurant in your home town. In fact, as long as they have to import everything, they should have walleyed pike, shad roe, red snapper, sea turtle meat and catfish, which are some of the real delicacies in fish and sea foods.

There is a restaurant in Fisherman's Wharf that is very much worthwhile to go to however, and it is called Tokyo Sukiyaki. This is a very fine Japanese restaurant. Go there and have some Sukiyaki and you will have something to really tell your friends about when you go home. The Sukiyaki there is excellent, not as good as you can make at home, but very good. A beautiful Japanese girl right from Japan, and no phony, in true Japanese dress, will prepare your Sukiyaki just for you on a private little burner right at your table. You will find that she can just barely speak enough English to answer a few questions regarding preparation of your Sukiyaki. If you are a drinking man have a glass or two of warm sake before your meal and a bottle of Japanese Kirin rice beer after your meal.</i></blockquote>350+ pages where everyone's histories (picts, french, danes, hawaiians, mexicans, minnesotans, new orleaners... if theres a people, theyre discussed) and secret methods for cooking just about everything is all here.

[jmcgrath]

How could everyone have missed Lobscouse & Spotted Dog by Lisa Grossman Thomas, a gastronomic companion to the Aubrey/Maturin novels?

Has anyone heard from her recently? She used to be a regular poster here.

Jim

[Reefpimp]

Not bizarre, but unusual --- "Lobscouse & Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels" by Anne Chotzinoff and Lisa Grossman Thomas. Aimed at reader's of, and tied directly to, Patrick O'Brien's British novels, it includes nineteenth century recipes for Burgoo, Ship's Biscuit, Skillygalee, Drowned Baby, Sea-Pie, Figgy-Dowdy, Soused Hog's Face, Solomomgundy and much, much more. And no, I have not tried any of it.

Yes, that one is quite nice, actually. Makes me want to read the novels.

So true! I spotted this in a shop and thought that if someone had enjoyed the books enough to write this recipe collection then there had to be something in them. I went off and read them all, thought they were great, and duly bought my own copy of Lobscouse and Spotted Dog.

Catherine

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Pray, Mr MGrath, what be you about? A trio of others has already, but (dare I say it) you did not attend.

I credit Mr O'Brian for giving me something to live for besides methamphetamine; in a very real sense, you could add my name to the list of sailors Jack Aubrey has saved from foundering (note lack of an "l" in that word, please).

I love the cookbook. Everything I've made--most of the puddings; the Mushroome Ketchup; the Strasbourg Pie (use perhaps a sixth of the fat called for, for flash gimcrack modern taste); the "vulturine" sea-pie, cooked a little longer than the original; the Little Balls of Tripe A Man Might Eat Forever-- has been extraordinarily good. Note, however, the resemblance from very old Lutheran church cookbooks in which every other recipe seems to start with, "Take one pound of butter...."

No. Of all my antiquarian reproductions, it remains tied for first; grappled onto my 1909 edition of Audels Millwrights Companion which is a noble tome indeed if ever one has to set and sharpen a crosscut saw, set up jears, maintain a Scotch boiler (that nasty innovation) or simply build a full-framed house.

Do you see, sir, what you have made me to do? I'll be talking like this for a sennight, as God's my life; and surely will I be beset by undesireable elements in opposition; it will make me weep tears of blood, for all love.

Edited February 7, 2007 by Reefpimp (log)

[pigeonpie]

Extreme Cuisine, by Jerry Hopkins - similar idea to Unmentionable Cuisine (Calvin W. Schwabe).

He tells of taking the placenta home after his son was born, and making paté with it. The recipe for the paté is in the book, in case you are about to have an addition to the family.

Janet.

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I really, really wish I had not just eaten my lunch. And it was a nice lunch ...

[chezlamere]

The Crafts of the Country Cook

bought it at a funky hippy store in Nelson BC next to marijuana cloth clothing, bongs etc.

recipe include killing and cleaning turtles, homemade vinegar, handling lungs for the ever popular "Lungs and beans with basil"

[MaxH]

I love the cookbook.  ... the "vulturine" sea-pie

That scene -- the increasingly appalling meal, despite every hope -- well paced and narrated -- is memorable among many food moments in that series, I thought.

It's important to encounter the scene as it unfolds, in the course of the story. (This situation resembles one I know in some scholarly writing, where one co-author found an error while proofreading a long work -- an ordinary word rendered obscene by mistake -- but another co-author counseled leaving it, to reward any reader with the stamina to get that far through the whole thing. I counsel the same with O'Brian.)

... the list of sailors Jack Aubrey has saved from foundering (note lack of an "l" in that word, please).

Bravo, reefpimp! At your convenience, please tip off the New York Times.

(Today foundering. Tomorrow, parameters. Why not aim high?)

[Kent D]

I have a cookbook acquired in Germany that's hard to beat.

Jane Drews, "Haste Mopped, Kannste Kochen", or with dialect quirkiness ruined in translation, "Have bike, can cook."

This essential but slim volume, with a lobster attached to a tailpipe on the cover, offers practical advice on techniques for cooking with a motorcycle. Cooking times are generally given in kilometers, with some adjustments for engine size.

Among the essential tips include foil-wrapping techniques, methods for properly attaching foodstuffs to the bike, and how to adapt common household work gloves into a protective covering. Recipes include predictable items such as sausage and grilled fish, convenience foods such as fish sticks and frozen spring rolls, vegetarian options such as roasted mushrooms with parsley, and more ambitious fare such as coq au flens and one-pot stews. There's at least one suggested cocktail (a sidecar, of course).

The author indicates that she's tested the recipes.

Strangely, no longer in print. I can't imagine why not.

http://www.torpedo-emscher.de/wr/union/rak...oppedkochen.htm

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Alton Brown demonstrated the technique on his cross-country tour show "Feasting on Asphalt".

My strangest cookbooks would probably be my two "Hillbilly Recipes 1 & 2" that I picked up down in Branson. There are some usable recipes, once you figure out "pertaters" are potatoes.

[ermintrude]

"But the Crackling Is Superb: An Anthology on Food and Drink by Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society "

[Davydd]

War-Time Recipes compiled by John Wanamaker with an introduction by President Woodrow Wilson. Yes, the Great War, WWI. It consist of recipes to save on wheat, milk, meat, fats, and sugar. Also save on fuel, and use perishable foods and local supplies.

General rules:

Buy less; serve smaller portions

Preach the "Gospel of the Clean Plate"

Don't eat a fourth meal

Don't limit the plain food to growing children

Watch out for the wastes in the community

Full garbage pails in America mean empty dinner pains in America and Europe

EVERYBODY SAVING

2 cents on each meal every day for a year would save to America a sum equal to the first Liberty Loan issue - more than two billion dollars.

EVERYBODY SAVING

a single pound of bread weekly would increase America's wheat exports 100,000,000 bushels for a year.

Lot's of corn meal recipes so we can send the wheat to Europe and our troops.

[JasonTrue]

I'm sad I missed that show... I'm glad someone continued the research

Though I guess if any mainstream TV chef were to explore such techniques, I'd expect it to be Alton.

This essential but slim volume, with a lobster attached to a tailpipe on the cover, offers practical advice on techniques for cooking with a motorcycle. Cooking times are generally given in kilometers, with some adjustments for engine size.

...

http://www.torpedo-emscher.de/wr/union/rak...oppedkochen.htm

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Alton Brown demonstrated the technique on his cross-country tour show "Feasting on Asphalt".

...

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[_john]

I happen to be the owner of a very strange and rare cookbook by Salvador Dali called Les Diners De Gala. It is amazing, check out the pictures of some of the presentations in the link. The recipes are just as bizarre.

[Emily_R]

Mine would probably be the 50's classic The I Hate to Cook Book. Hysterical. Was shown it by an aunt who indeed did hate to cook... I wouldn't actually make anything from the book (hello jello moulds!) but read it for the very droll commentary.

[Carolyn Tillie]

I happen to be the owner of a very strange and rare cookbook by Salvador Dali called Les Diners De Gala. It is amazing, check out the pictures of some of the presentations in the link. The recipes are just as bizarre.

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I've owned it for years and way back in 1999 (before there were blogs and I had to PAY someone to build a website for me), I cooked a 12 course meal from the book. Thought you might enjoy looking through what I did...

[Diner Girl]

The two strangest, and yet most awesome, food books I own are:

The Jill St. John Cookbook

and

Liberace Cooks!

[andiesenji]

Manifold Destiny

How to cook in your car (engine that is.)

[dymnyno]

Manifold Destiny

How to cook in your car (engine that is.)

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THE EXPLORERS COOKBOOK by members of New York's Explorers Club

Includes such goodies as Iguana Thermidor (recipe for 25 people), Fried Bear Intestine and Pepper Python

[dockhl]

Well. To reference upthread, I am not a sweets lover and I LIKE the idea of celery Jello.........as long as it isn't sweet ! ACK.

Strange cookbooks. Well, not too strange but Martinis and whipped cream;: The new carbo-cal way to lose weight and stay slim

1966

I think this is one of the earliest entries into the Lo-Carb diet arena. You can get one on Amazon for .........

$0.65.

Kathy (who paid a whopping $1.50 for hers ....I've been HAD ! )

[Mar Calpena]

Don't forget the classics:

Leonardo's Kitchen notebooks is hard to beat when it comes to weirdness (hey, the fellow gives proper etiquette for poisoning other guests, invents a machine to chuck meat... from a live cow! and makes chairs out of marzipan. So much for becoming famous on one or two masterworks ).

Also, I've been meaning to buy Last suppers: Famous final meals from the death row for a while, but it both intrigues me and creeps me out. Anyone read it?

Edited May 25, 2007 by Mar Calpena (log)

[gfron1]

I've been searching high and low because it would be the icing on the cake...a friend of mine has shown me a cookbook for eating hair. Disgusting - yes. He's from Alaska and owns a missile silo in New Mexico if that explains anything.

[Carrot Top]

Just came across a copy of Mother Wonderful's Chicken Soup which probably would fit in this category.

It's mostly a photographic essay into how to make "Jewish Penicillin" from scratch. Including such invaluable advice as

When you arrive at the butcher shop, greet the owner as if he were your brother, rather than as a person who intends to sell you an inferior chicken. Pretend to consider the chickens the butcher displays. Pay no mind to claims of quality and freshness. Everyone knows butchers hide their prime stock "in the back" for their favorites.

It's quite an adorable little book.

[nanstey]

In response to The Old Foodie, mine would have to be Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide to the Unusual, Exotic, and Downright Bizarre by Christa Weil. There aren't any recipes, but it does have an alphabetical listing of a number of different weird, nasty and bizarre foods from around the world, such as dirt, human placenta, canned rotten herring (the more bulge the cans have, the better), botfly larvae, frozen raw meat, live monkey brain - it's quite a list. I don't know if it really breaks any new ground, but it's still a worthwhile read.

[Carrot Top]

Has anyone read Bull Cook and Historical Authentic Recipes and Practices?

[GlorifiedRice]

Manifold destiny

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Darn! Beat me to it!

I have that one, plus BOTH White Trash ones, plus The Trailer Trash cookbook, Creepy Cuisine, Calf Fries to Caviar and the Twinkie Cookbook.

I also have a rare copy of the Chicago Bulls Cookbook (when MJ, Scotty and Phil were there)

Edited June 10, 2007 by GlorifiedRice (log)