On 7 Apr 2004 07:41:40 GMT, Nick Maclaren wrote:

As a modern example, I know some of those 1940s and 1950s cookbooks,
and none of them include the food that was routinely eaten in areas
that I know, and communication with other people indicates that it
was generally true. Most of them were written as attempts to get
the peasantry to improve its diet, after all!

The same kind of thing happens on this side of the pond too. "The
White Trash Cookbook" purports to document the food of poor
southerners; a school of cooking legendary for any number of
gastronomic sins.

In reality, while a fair fraction of the recipes are of that
nature[1], a number are for dishes that my own mother (a born and
bred South Carolinian) used to make. And those aren't bad! Yet
those very dishes are totally unrepresented in the standard
American cookbooks, Joy of Cooking, Fannie Farmer, etc.

On the other hand, the annual recipe compilations from "Southern
Living" magazine include some dishes that make ones eyebrows and
gorge both rise. There's a William Bolcom song "Lime-jello
Marshmallow Cottage-cheese Surprise" that captures something of
this ambience.

Going back to the topic at hand, I have always been suspicious of
books that blithely urge the reader to add chopped rue leaves to
their salads -- which more than one "herb" book does.


[1] Hypothetical example: take a can of this, a can of that, a
bag of chow mein noodles, six dill pickles chopped fine, and a
jar of peanut butter, mix them together and pour a can of
Campbell's condensed cream of mushroom soup over it all, bake and
serve.

--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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