Cookbooks: The Modern Method of Preparing Delightful Foods

I stumbled across this the other day in a huge batch of old cookbooks and found myself drawn to it. It's a tiny little thing from 1927, and has this sweet art deco design on the cover. The tiniest bit of inspection of the book's interior reveals the purpose for its existence. Every single recipe, when some sort of oil or fat is needed, calls for Mazola corn oil. When sweetener is needed, it calls for Karo corn syrup. Yes, indeed, this is a book to glorify and extol the virtues of corn when the corn industry was trying to gain a foothold as a main agricultural product. It was even published by Corn Products Refining Company, and has a little card in the front where you can put the names and addresses of five of your friends and (if you send ten cents per person) they'll send each of them a copy of the book. It was like early viral marketing.

The author, Ida Bailey Allen, was something of a rising star in the homemaking industry around this time. Just five years after this book came out, she wrote a Coca-Cola tie-in cookbook called When You Entertain, that sold over 375,000 copies in less than six months. She was the proto-Martha Stewart, known as "The Nation's Homemaker," who went on to star in and produce her own two-hour radio program devoted to homemaking, and pioneered the idea of selling advertising spots instead of having one company sponsor the whole show. That was quite a feat, especially for a woman in that era in U.S. history.

The book itself is a nice snapshot of the time period. It begins with Allen's prologue, called "The Planting," in which she says:

Through my work with The National Food Administration during the Great War, I became convinced that as a Nation we were drifting away from simple, wholesome living. We did not know how to use Corn--and the Great Products made from it.

Random serial killer capitalization aside, the intro gets to the heart of the matter, which is that even though industrialization was changing the way we grew, bought, and ate foods in the U.S., it wasn't always easy to get the public to accept new food technology. I mean, it never is, but it was especially difficult during this era, when changes were quick and plentiful. A lot of families were coming to terms with the fact that the ways they brought with them from the Old World were falling by the wayside, and with them a connection to kith and kin. Connecting the new, fancy corn products with a good, wholesome, American way of life allows a connection, a branding, if you will, of the new as something safe and familiar.

The recipes in the book are standard fare for this time period. Coddled apples, jellied corned beef and vegetable salad, and lobster canapes all make an appearance. But more than that, in keeping with the idea of connecting the corn products with a wholesome way of life, this slim volume aims beyond just doling out recipes. There are sample menus at the beginning of each chapter; the breakfast chapter has ideas for early breakfasts, late breakfasts, and tray breakfasts (aka just eat that shit in bed). There's a two-page ode to corn near the end of the book, discussing how the different parts of the vegetable are used for the specific needs of the modern homemaker. There's also a little chapter after that called "Napery and Its Care" that explains in almost mind-numbing detail how to choose the proper linens for your home, how to launder them (using corn-derived products, of course), and how to fold and store them.

The book's epilogue, "The Harvesting," takes the cake:

Sunset.

Lives well spent.

Success, accomplishment

Enough of this world's goods.

Children--grown to glorious maturity.

They in their turn to plant--and reap good health--fresh as in youth, tempered only by experience.

A Harvest of poised nerves, happiness, joy, affection--many friends--years of usefulness--ambitions realized.

A progressive attitude of mind--a youthful spirit.

This is--THE HARVEST.

 Again I say--life and its forces depend on food.

Planting time and harvest.

We plant.

We reap.

Each home dictates its crop.

Mondamin--the Indian Spirit--changed his life to corn.

Corn tassels waving in the summer breeze.

The golden ears are garnered, milled, and sold.

Corn is the seed of life.

It's a fair (if perhaps an awkward, self-consciously arty) summary of this era's forward-thinking, backward-looking mindset, whose progressive attitude of mind had to be bolstered by images of the land, of the harvest that was slowly becoming the first step in a long, winding, industrialized road from field to plate.