‘Joy of Cooking’ from ‘40s holds valuable lessons

It’s funny what appeals to us and why.

I’m not a cookbook collector, I’m not really much of a cookbook user, but that didn’t stop me from bringing home a 1943 copy of The Joy of Cooking from an antiques show last year.

I already have a copy of the book – the 1975 edition – that I use to look up the odd recipe now and then. But what drew me to the older version was the heavy oilcloth cover that had been hand-sewn over the book to protect the binding. And the preface.

At the front of the book in a special “Preface to the 1943 Edition,” the author, Irma S. Rombauer wrote that when the book was begun they had no idea that ration cards would become the norm and that adjustments to the book’s contents would have to be made. “It now goes to print with a number of emergency chapters added, written to meet the difficulties that beset the present-day cook,” she wrote.

The revised cookbook includes “sugarless and sugar-saving recipes for cakes, cookies and desserts” as well as tips for “meat stretching, meat substitutes and supplementary dishes.” There is also mention of the lowly soybean as a source of much-needed protein. Rombauer said cooks should be prepared to meet it “with proper patriotic enthusiasm.”

Cookbooks can be treasure books. I like the serendipity of discovering yellowed notes and recipes that a thrifty housewife copied or clipped from the newspaper and saved.

In the chapter dedicated to meat stretching, I found bits of paper with hints for preparing venison and even a recipe for duck and sauerkraut, complete with instructions for plucking and singeing the fowl.

The best find was a newspaper notice clipped from The Oregonian that said Portland housewives were expressing a great deal of enthusiasm for the new motion picture, produced for the National Livestock and Meat Board, titled “Meat and Romance.”

The 40-minute “dramatized educational story about meat,” featured Alan (spelled Allyn in the clipping) Ladd and was playing – free of charge – at Library Hall.

I found a description of the film online in a 2002 newsletter for the Archives Society of Alberta which said, “It stars Alan Ladd as a newlywed husband whose cute but dumb wife learns the intricacies of meat selection and cooking from her breathy-voiced, meat-goddess, home-economist sister-in-law.” Wow.

I was still grinning over the brittle clipping, and the idea of sitting through anything so silly, when it occurred to me that here we are, 62 years after the book was published, at war again. Only this time there is no scarcity. Nothing is rationed and those of us at home haven’t been called to sacrifice any of our comforts. We’re at war but you would never know it in our kitchens or on our tables. My smile faded.

I picked up the cookbook because it was charming. I brought it home because it appealed to me. But what I got for my money was a lesson – from a woman I never met – in making-do with grace and good humor.

Now that’s food for thought.