From The Heinz Book of Meat Cookery (1930), HJ Heinz Company

I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.

Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.

Previously - Vegetable Supper Salad

From The Silent Hostess Treasure Book (1931), Knox Gelatine

I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.

Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.

Previously - Brain Loaf

From Cooking with Soup (1968), A Campbell's Cookbook

I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.

Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.

Previously - Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters

From 500 Snacks: Bright Ideas for Entertaining (1941), Culinary Arts Institute

I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.

Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.

Previously - Corned Tongue in Aspic

From Dainty Desserts for Dainty People (1915), Knox Gelatine

I'm interrupting the semi-regularly scheduled Midnight Sausage series to share molded food images and recipes from my personal collection of early-to-mid 20th century cookbooks. There will be aspic. There will be mousse. There will be various gelatins. All will be semi-solid and of debatable degrees of edibility.

Please feel free to shimmy and shake your way to the comments section to share your very own magical, masticable molds of yore.

Previously - Ham Mousse

Not only does Betty Crocker's New Dinners for Two contain a wealth of retro recipes, it also offers some rather unusual advice. Specifically, I am referring to the "Sunset Years Guide", a list of dietary tips found at the back of the book. It starts off well enough, advising people to keep protein as part of their diet, but it then begins to fly in the face of what is now the typical medical advice to people in their "sunset years". In addition to recommending that one avoid high fiber foods, the book suggests that "eating creamed foods, custards, cheeses and ice cream" are good ways to keep calcium intake high. It also selects liver and egg yolks as being excellent sources of nutrients, along with green leafy vegetables and citrus. In fairness, the "guide" concludes by making the recommendation that high fat foods should be substituted for lower fat ones, although it seems as though that might prove difficult with all the egg yolks and ice cream someone in their "sunset years" should be eating.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Looking through older cookbooks is always entertaining. There are almost always lots of interesting illustrations and the recipes themselves even have entertainment value. Betty Crocker’s New Dinner for Two cookbook has some good recipes and some ones whose popularity didn’t last beyond 1964.  The book is geared for anyone who is a "bride, a buisness girl, career wife, or a mother whose children are away from home," so all the recipes serve one or two, with a few large-scale ones thrown in for entertaining purposes. This is the first edition of the book, those subsequent versions were released into the 1980s.

Perfection Salad made me laugh out loud, with a combination of pickles, pimento, celery and cabbage, suspended in lemon-flavored gelatin and served with mayonnaise. I wasn’t tempted by that one. Peanut Crunch Slaw and Tuna and Chips Casserole were not likely to make my mouth water, either. Strawberry Shortcake, Ham and au Gratin Potatoes and Grapefruit and Avocado Salad all sounded fine, though, and I think that I might even be persuaded to try the Pineapple Marshmallow cream.