Moistening and heaping

My mum very kindly gave me a copy of Florence Greenberg’s Jewish Cookery Book. Ms Greenberg’s husband was editor of the Jewish Chronicle, and he rather politely published her work. The 1963 edition contains a mixture of staggeringly 1960s adverts and staggeringly 1960s recipes.

Let’s start with the adverts.

“The Kenwood Chef does everything but cook – that’s what wives are for!” Enough said about that one. But even better, it’s accompanied with a gorgeous spread advising readers that “Tesco – the housewives’ friend – has a chain of supermarkets and stores”. No way!

Unfortunately, that is pretty much the only gorgeous spread one is likely to gain from this book. Let’s take a peep at some of the recipes now.

For instance… “Banana and spaghetti curry” anyone? Or, for those who aren’t vegetarian, “Meat cakes with savoury balls”?

If you’re less ambitious, you could opt for “Mince with toast or spaghetti”, the recipe for which, oddly enough, involves making some mince and then serving it either with toast or with spaghetti.

“Sheep’s heart,” we are assured, “can be cooked much like calf’s heart.” However, over the page, “Fried brains” look rather more complicated, as do the many, many recipes whose lists of ingredients begin with: “2 calf’s feet”.

A rather adventurous “Creole salad” involves lettuce leaves, tomatoes, spring onion, salad cream and (naturally) banana, while “Scandinavian salad” requires “equal quantities of cooked sausages, diced apple and potato, moistened with salad dressing and heaped up in the centre of a dish”. Delicious! On a similar theme, “Rice and cheese salad” entails, you guessed it, rice and cheese… “moistened with salad cream and heaped up, garnished with tufts of watercress”. And “Rice and sausage salad” is very much the same, bar the obvious substitution. Lots of moistening and heaping basically.

A lengthy recipe for “Anchovy puffs” adds: “For sardine puffs, use sardines in place of the anchovies.” And for banana and spaghetti puffs… erm…

Suggestions for “Savoury toasts” include “finely flaked smoked haddock, moistened [yes, really] with white sauce and garnished with a slice of pickled walnut”, and “sardines pounded with vinegar and cayenne”. Another proposal to enliven toast is “cooked sausages and rice moistened with tomato ketchup, heaped up”.

Then follows a whole section on “Invalid cookery”. That first word can be interpreted in multiple ways. “Raw beef tea” (“Take lean, juicy beef, put in a cup, pour over cold water; strain and serve in a coloured glass to disguise the colour”) sounds more likely to create an invalid than to nourish them, as does “Albumen water” which, it turns out, is precisely what it sounds like.

“Cheese dip,” Greenberg informs us, “appeals to the younger folk.” It involves mixing cream-cheese with tomato ketchup, although, disappointingly, neither moistening it nor heaping it up.

A recipe for “Bottled tomatoes” appears to accomplish little other than some tomatoes ending up in a bottle, while the instructions for mint sauce entail “putting a few spoonfuls of golden syrup in a basin and stirring in as much chopped mint as it will absorb”. Truly a fate worse than death for the mint leaf.

And “Stuffed necks” is presumably not so much a dish as a description of those who’ve enjoyed a delicious meal based on this cookbook.

Anyway, that’s all. I just wanted you all to suffer, as I have, with the prospect of being served banana and spaghetti curry. Peace out!