Frosted Sandwiches?

This week, loyal foodies, it’s time to look a familiar standby, inspired by the recent post on lettuce. A very important standby. No, not candy corn. This is even bigger (than a bread box)! Sandwiches. Frosted, shaped, and/or layered sandwiches.

Our collection of culinary materials here at Special Collections helps to document the history of recipes and of managing a household—both of which have close ties to entertaining. And entertaining is a pervasive theme of the impending holiday season. Here’s an opportunity to re-visit the history of cheese and bread (a relationship thousands of years old) and think about how it can influence us today.

Three of the images above come from “Cheese and Ways to Serve It,” produced by Kraft (then Kraft-Phenix Cheese Corporation) in 1931. This small publication includes recipes and images on pages the size of recipe cards, perforated for easily removal and addition to your home recipe collection. The fourth comes from an undated advertisement for Spam. A few of us here at Special Collections (okay, fine, just me, your loyal archivist/blogger Kira) had to read the recipe to realize this wasn’t, in fact, a coconut cake filled with Spam and sprinkled with pineapple—or possibly a Baked Alaska gone wrong.

So, as you think about what to serve family and friends, consider coming by Special Collections for a visit. We have recipes of all kinds for your parties and holiday feasts, including those you WANT to eat!

And be sure to ponder the misleading appearance of the cake-like frosted sandwich. Don’t expect it to bring everyone to the table…though it will certainly inspire conversation. Then again, it could be just the thing to encourage those lingering guests to find the door. 😉  Happy hosting and happy feasting!