RetroLife

Pineapple Duchess - 1954

From "250 Luscious Refrigerator Desserts" -- 1954

One of the factors that helps me decide which retro recipes to try is if I see a picture and say "what on earth is that?" Of course, this happens quite frequently with vintage cookbooks because there's something about that 1950's cookbook photography that manages to make everything look strange and unappetizing. Something as simple as ice cream on fruit pie will look like lard chunks on top of entrails. And so this very strange looking beast is nothing more than elaborately prepared gelatine, fruit and whipped cream. See full recipe.

Let me first just say: This is one of the most difficult recipes I've done insofar as there are so many opportunities to completely screw it up. Step one is to arrange all of your pineapples and cherries in a bowl, which you will use to mold this desserts' jell-o exoskeleton by placing a second, smaller bowl inside it. Your first peril is to pour your liquid Jell-o between the bowls without disrupting your careful arrangement of cherries and pineapple. After chilling, your second peril is to remove the small bowl without damaging the jello it's resting in. After putting in your creamy fruit filling, chill again and then face peril number three: turn it upside down on a plate and unmold it without damaging any of your jell-o/fruit shell! While I didn't ruin my pineapple duchess, I'll admit I disrupted a few cherries and broke the jello in a couple of places and had to just try to hide it. All the while I was reminded of the movie "The Hours" where Julianne Moore is icing her lopsided cake, cripped with depression over her failure as a housewife...this recipe would have pushed her over the edge.

In the taste department, it was all fine and good. It's jell-o, fruit and whipped cream...I think we all know by now what that tastes like. A few other people tried it and seemed to like it. Texture-wise, it definitely wasn't as rigid as it looked in the picture and spread out a little when I unmolded it, looking like a festive jellyfish. Once we cut into it to eat it, it quickly became a messy pile of the aforementione jell-o, fruit and whipped cream, leaving me thinking: "all that work...FOR NOTHING!" I mean, I understand that presentation is important, but come on.

Harlequin Eggs -- 1950

From "500 Tasty Snacks -- Ideas for Entertaining" --1950

I wanted to try out some kind of hard-boiled-egg recipe in time for easter, so I decided to whip up some Harlequin Eggs: an appetizer similar to a deviled egg, but with a beet, carrot and greenbean filling (full recipe here.) Having learned my lesson with recipe experiments, I halfed the recipe down to a "tasting portion," but totally forgot to make it when people were around so I could use them as my taste-testers.

The recipe was very quick and easy to make. I used my rotary cheese grater to make quick work of shredding the cooked vegetables and the dish was done in no time and looking rather pretty. When I took a bite, my first thought was "weird..." This is largely because I've always thought beets tasted weird and the beets are the dominating flavor here. The texture, a mixture of creamy and crunchy, was enjoyable, but I just couldn't quite get into them.

My assessment on this recipe is that if you like beets, you might like this, but if you don't, steer clear.

Jell-o Rainbow Cake -- 1962

From the cookbook "Joys of Jell-o" 1962

Last summer I was invited to a pot luck party whose theme was that everybody had to bring something that started with the letter "J." Naturally, my first instinct was to go with Jell-o. Since I wanted people to actually eat what I made, I decided to go with a recipe that looked non-threatening and pretty: the Jello Rainbow Cake.

The only ingredients in this "cake" are multiple flavors of Jell-o and whipped cream (see full recipe), but it was still rather difficult and time-consuming to make. The most interesting thing I learned from this recipe was the concept of whipped jell-o. The trick is to take the jell-o when it's in it's not-quite-liquid/not-quite-solid state and beat it with an electric mixer until it whips up into a light, fluffy froth. When it solidifies, it is a new, spongier jell-o experience. This cake is composed of layers of whipped jell-o carefully poured into a wax-paper cylinder, left to solidify and then "iced" with whipped cream. Not wanting to press my luck, I made mine four layers instead of the recommended five. While I managed to pull the recipe off, my cake didn't look much like the cake in the picture.

The biggest warning I can give to anyone who attempts this recipe is this: DO NOT TRY TO TRANSPORT IT! This is a stay-at-home dessert. I only had to walk the cake three blocks to the pot-luck, but it was jiggling like crazy the whole way and the heat melted the whipped cream until it was falling off in blobs on my shoes. I managed to get it there in one piece, but it was a little worse for wear.

On the bright side, everyone ate it and seemed to like it. Some people even commented that the whipped jell-o tasted different and compared it to Sweetarts. I'm sure this was just an illusion created by the difference in texture, but the novelty of whipped jell-o seemed to be enjoyed.