Molded Luncheon Salad Art

My Granny Velma (83 years young) bought me the most awesome cookbook for my birthday.  It's a reproduction of a 1940s cookbook that was put together by the Modoc Historical Society.  Looking through the recipes is a bit like being a time traveler who steps back in time to peek in the pantries and refrigerators of the past. 

Some recipes like "Spiced Tongue", "Molded Luncheon Salad" and "Booze Cake" made me laugh.  I can't imagine bringing home a big cow tongue, plopping it in a pot and boiling it up with vinegar, cinnamon & cloves for dinner.  "Molded Luncheon Salad" combines condensed tomato soup, cream cheese, celery, onions, peppers, walnuts and mayonnaise all suspended in a mold of unflavored gelatin.  And if you are the chick bringing "Booze Cake" as your signature potluck dish, I'd be prepared for a lot of barbecue invitations. 

Reading through the ingredients tugged at my heart strings when I read recipes that called for:  "an ole' fat hen", "butter, the size of an egg", and "fat renderings".  There were a huge number of jell-o recipes (my Granny told me that Jell-O was kind of a status symbol back then because it meant you were wealthy enough to own a refrigerator), chiffon recipes, pudding recipes, pickled food recipes and meat shaped into loafs. 

The women who followed these recipes lived through the Great Depression and World War II.  They knew a way of life that I can barely fathom.  A way of life that knew how to sweeten up a cow tongue if that was the only meat you could afford.   A way of life that pickled foods instead of throwing them away.  I guess what inspires me the most as I flip through this cookbook is imagining these women tinkering over a hot stove, adding a pinch of this and a dash of that, turning something even as commonplace & unassuming as cow tongues and unflavored Jell-O into a something special for friends and family.  If that isn't art in it's most true and pure form, I don't know what is.