New Pamphlet Round Up #7!

It’s about that time we look at some new pamphlets! As usual, they’ve been making their way into my office and piling up for addition to the Culinary Pamphlet Collection (Ms2011-002). This batch haven’t made their way into the finding aid just yet, but I hope to get these, and some others, added next week. I picked out six, including three that fit in with materials we already have from the parent companies, and three that represent companies for which we don’t already have items.

First up, our existing companies:

The collection already includes La Rosa & Sons, Inc.’s 1949 pamphlet, “101 Ways to Prepare Macaroni.” This pamphlet focuses entirely on tiny pastina shapes (though there’s an ad in the center for some of other shapes the company made). About half the recipes are labeled as “recipes for children.” While one might expect a lot of soup recipes, one 1/3 are for soups. Another 1/3 are for entrees or “pastina as a vegetable.” The last 1/3 are all–you guessed it–desserts. Apparently, you can fill your puddings, custards, and even cake with tiny pasta!

“Good Things to Eat from Out of the Air” comes from Proctor & Gamble. So far, most of our pamphlets from this company are related to Crisco and some other baking staples. Rather than a single product, this pamphlet, published in 1932, includes a wide range of recipes from radio cooking shows. Essentially, these would be the precursor to modern food-based TV networks, and such programs were quite popular in the 1930s.

The Worcester Salt Company is what we now know of as the Morton Salt Company. To date, we have a handful of pamphlets from the company that, of course, talk about cooking with salt, but also it’s history. “The Worcester Cook Book” was written by Janet McKenzie Hill (a name common on our blog!). It contains recipes, information on the new “free-running salt” that didn’t clump, and the interestingly title section, “The Romance of Salt.” This latter turns out to be a combination of facts about salt, as well as lore and legend surrounding it. For example: “Love-sick maidens at one time, depended on salt to restore to them their straying lovers.” Romantic, huh?

In addition, some of the items waiting to be added to the collection represent new companies!

“Coldspot: Modern Menu Magic Recipes” comes from Sears, Roebuck and Company. About 1/3 of it is about how to use and care for your “coldspot” refrigerator and the other 2/3 is recipes, mostly of things you would store or make using your refrigerator, of course.

This 1975 Tupperware catalog features some of the new products that year, how to use it (yes, there are directions for proper opening and closing of items), and a list of products and potential uses around the home. This catalog may be over 40 years old, but the company is still around. You might recognize some of the pieces, old or new, in your kitchen today!

Premier-Pabst Corporation from Milwaukee might sound familiar. What are advertising here, though, isn’t beer. It’s cheese! (The spreadable, pasteurized kind–sort of like a spreadable velveeta?) This little booklet uses the cheese baked on fish, in a frozen salad with prunes, and perhaps slightly more traditionally, in a sauce for rarebit.

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