The Gallery of Regrettable Food
by James Lileks
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Book Reviews of The Gallery of Regrettable Food
Book Review: Americana Stewed in its Own Juices
Summary: 5 Stars
Lileks' book is a clever ruse: constructed like a cookbook, it is instead a pastiche of bizarre recipies and "entertaining ideas" from actual, honest-to-god cookbooks of the time. Most of them appear to come from the '40s through the 1960s, but his website showcases an even broader range of 20th century eatery. God only knows if people actually did eat any of these things back then (I certainly hope not), but it makes those Edward Hopper diners a lot less appealing to me. Divided into sections with names such as "Cooking With 7-Up", "Blur-B-Que", and "Horrors from the Briny Deep" The Gallery is leavened with the wit of our own burgeoning cynicism and mistrust, and that is what makes it so very, very funny. Lurid photographs of these terrible dishes beg for descriptions like "sneeze juice" and my favorite, "scones and Pepsodent in a banana placenta sauce". James Lileks brings our own desire for mockery out with his brilliant witticisms, and we wish we could be that off-the-cuff hilarious.
You get the impression a lot of the creations were merely marketing hopefulness: there is a series of A-1 Steak Sauce recipies that have celebrity names attached to them (don't worry; the celebrities are now mercifully long-dead). The 7-Up book prominently places The Uncola in every shot. Hopefully the guys and dolls of that Golden Age were immune to subliminal advertising, but...I suspect they felt that temptation, that desire to be just like the happy people in the Rockwell paintings. Or at least like the blithe cartoon bachelors exclaiming silent joy at yet another platter of meat.
The final thread of Lileks' three-pronged assault on our culinary senses is the people. He spends a great deal of time pointing out the implications behind cookbooks titled "How to Cook for a MAN!", and the very strange "10 PM Cookbook", a guide to cocktail-party cuisine that looks like someone threw it up in the bushes out front before the serious drinking got underway. I have never read something so unbelievably funny and yet unmistakably genuine: it's like Mystery Science Theater 3000 used to be, a great poke in the pompous eye of our past.
Reading through the website was what prompted me to buy this book. The two complement each other: there are book entries that are well worth the price, website listings that didn't make it into print (but are fun nonetheless), and very little overlap between. I have since donated to Lileks' bandwidth fund and purchased multiple copies to give to friends. Much as I hated using terms like "side-splitting" in this review, I had to: it was simply true that on more than one occasion I have been reduced to tears of laughter, eyes shut tight, gasping for breath as I try to recover from this fantastic book. Visit the website and see for yourself, but don't forget to buy a copy of this fantastic treasure of American history, the other coffee-table book that can sit opposite your copy of The Century and jeer at it.
Book Review: Silliness at Its Near Best
Summary: 4 Stars
Try reading this well-researched gem while having the Food Network on across the room, and you'll find yourself indulging in the occasional scribble of a recipe bound to hit the update edition 40 years from now. Regrettable food has been with us for a couple hundred years and it's about time someone documented with both humor and affection one of its most hyperactive eras. Lileks is very adept, and altho his humor falls flat once in a while, one always has the comfort of falling back on the hilarious reproductions of original ads, recipes, pics. And at times he had me laughing so hard that my worried cats ended up recommending a nice beef brain gelatin mold to perk me up. I told them I would only consider such a thing if it were en croute and nested in a surround of bottled artichoke hearts interspersed with slices of the ubiquitous kiwi, sprinkled with a mixture of canned garbanzo beans and pitted calamati olives that had been in the brine a bit too long, and delivered to my dining table by a squad of egg & olive penguins.
I even got out my selfsame edition of Joys of Jell-o and hugged it and screamed at it that now someone besides my mother and I appreciated it for what it was, and that it was now truly in the silly cookbookette Hall of Fame !! Altho I haven't seen the crown mold she ordered from them at the time she first got the book for years, I swear I'm gonna find it soon. Not to worry, readers, we NEVER made that recipe - but she hung it on the wall in the kitchen as a warning to family members who had the gall to whine about some minor flaw in her marvelous meals that they didn't know what bad food was, and that she could prepare it any time they went over the line.
Lileks also gives us an occasional peek into a deeper understanding of this era's social-cultural history than a humorous book on such a subject would normally reveal - his rundown on the effect of the Great Depression on the American psyche is very touching and probably quite accurate. This is a very perceptive writer who is not lacking in sensitivity to the era in which all this food took place. I would love to see him rip loose on a longer, more serious history of this period and its food, decor, and kitchen.
All in all, having this book tucked into my extensive and constantly growing collection of 30's - 50's food company and kitchen appliance cookbookettes will explain a lot to my executors. They may not LIKE what they determine, but I won't be around to argue with them about it, so who cares?
This is an author I'm going to keep my eye on. Check out his web page - it's got some great stuff.
Book Review: Does this pass for wit in Minnesota?
Summary: 1 Stars
James Lileks is apparently one of those annoying "sophisticated and urbane," Elvis Costello-listening, self-anointed "hipster" newspaper columnists (every mid-level rag, usually the mediocre "alternative" weekly, has one) who cracks himself up by poking fun at things in the American past he doesn't understand. "Oh gosh, look at all the funny hairdos. Oh gee, look at those goofy fashions. Did they really laugh at Soupy Sales and Phyllis Diller? Did these 1950s monster movies really scare people? Oh what rubes! They probably voted for Nixon instead of Hubert Humphrey!" Here, the painfully unfunny Lileks excerpts the most unappetizing dishes from old cookbooks and holds them up to ridicule and scorn. He thinks this makes him a "humorist" or "penetrating social commentator." In fact, Lileks is waging war on creativity. Sure, some of these 50- and 40-year-old cookbooks had some stupid misfires and bad ideas. The creative process always produces a lot more bad ideas than good ones. Does anyone need Lileks to tell you this? I mean, what's the point? This book does have nice graphics and layouts (and the original cookbook pages are still interesting to look at). It probably wouldn't be so godawful if it were not for Lileks' smirky, self-satisfied margin notes. Hey, Lileks, have you ever created anything? (Your stream-of-consciousness Weblog is embarrassing and your Web site, like this book, is built upon the ideas of other people.) I'm not one of those people who say critics can't criticize "until they've tried to do it themselves." I happen to think social criticism is fine, except THIS BOOK AIN'T IT and Lileks doesn't cut the mustard as a critic of value. "Funnyman" Lileks adds nothing but his... "witty observations" and "bon mots." If you are interested in mid-20th Century American cooking or cuisine or kitchen culture, the only benefits you will get from this book are what you can glean on your own from the reprinted texts and illustrations. The author hates Middle America (he must hate being in Minneapolis) and -- this is the only funny thing associated with this sorry product -- he no doubt sniffs at the wives, sisters, mothers and aunts and uncles who are buying this book and giving it five-star reviews on this page. Buy this book used if you really want it; the secondhand shops soon will be filling up with gift copies that have only been skimmed through once.Book Review: Hilariously unappetizing
Summary: 5 Stars
When James Lileks unearthed an old recipe pamphlet from the back of his Mom's closet and viewed the culinary nightmares within, he made it his life's work to discover other such cookbooks and food company ads from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. The results of his tireless research are now brought together for your amusement and indigestion in "The Gallery of Regrettable Food."Through photos and witty commentary, Lileks displays some of the most unappealing foods and recipes I have ever seen, and he does it with flair. Whether using the recipe names from the original cookbooks, with such labels as "pepper pups" and "liver spoon cakes," or providing his own descriptive phrases like "cross section of the Swamp Thing's brain" or "grubworms and lawnmower clippings," he kept me laughing. He presents a parade of incompatible foods thrown together into gastronomic horrors, such as peppers baked and stuffed with creamy marshmallow sauce, frankfurters in aspic, or tongue mousse. The photos illustrate a parade of dishes that are unidentifiable at best and nauseating at worst. There are pictures of gray, fat-shrouded mystery meats, objects drowned in cream sauce, and gelatin molds with bizarre foods suspended within. The pamphlets produced by food companies urge us to cook everything using their products, whether 7UP or ketchup - and I mean everything! I could go on and on about the gems here, but I don't want to spoil your appetite for dinner.
This book also provides a look at the days when advertisers depicted homemakers in dresses, pearls, and frilly aprons when serving meals to the family. This was the era when cholesterol and sodium were not yet flagged as health hazards, and where salmon usually came out of a can. It was a time when families at the dinner table were idealized and stereotyped to the extreme. Through a recipe booklet produced by Spry shortening and its spokesperson Aunt Jenny, we learn that a new bride's biggest worry is whether her biscuits are up to snuff or not. We learn that cooking man-pleasing meals is of the utmost importance to the homemaker. The only cooking a man does in this world is when he dons the barbecue apron and grills a steak. I recommend this as a great gift for anyone who loves collecting cookbooks or who enjoys a humorous look back at the good old days.
Eileen Rieback
Book Review: Mystery Science Cookbooks 1950!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not a cookbook. If you cook from this book you should be shot, for indeed, that would be more merciful than eating the meal. But the truth is, thousands of moms in the 1950s and 1960s *did* cook from the cookbooks that James Lileks so hilariously skewers in "The Gallery of Regrettable Food," and if you ever remember your mom proudly plopping down a new recipe that had dad and the kids staring at each other in disbelief, then this book is for you."The Gallery of Regrettable Food" does for the cookbooks of yesteryear what the robots from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" do for bad movies. And hoo boy, is this *bad* food...bloated with lard, tasteless, shiny, and topped with some kind of sauce that you swear must be made from radioactive by-products. These "classic" dishes are shown in photos from the original cookbook, photographed in their various original shades of gray, mauve, and pink--just looking at this requires a strong stomach, and Lileks is to be commended for having the nerve to page through them all.
But most of all, Lileks is hilarious--his caustic commentary pulls no punches ("This is a meal. It is also a scene from "The Andromeda Strain." "Satan himself could not invent so fiendish a dish.") and he spares no sarcasm in his horror and contempt for the way America was "supposed" to cook. ("This is some of the most tortured, attenuated garnish a steak has ever had; it looks as if El Greco had attempted to paint the mask from the "Scream" movies.") and most of all, the bizarre and disturbing oddities of "classic" cookbooks (Why the Sam Hill is that cartoon chicken FRYING UP A CHICKEN LEG?!?!). The hilariously dated and macabre cookbooks include such "classics" as "You're Really Cooking When You're Cooking With Seven-Up!," "Cooking for a Man: Tested Recipes to Please Him!," and the infamous "How Famous Chefs Use Campfire Marshmallows." (Answer: to slap on any kind of dish from toast to (urp!) peppers.)
Buy it for your mom for Christmas...and be prepared to have her take down her hilarious collection of bad 1960s cookbooks to show around. Just, for God's sake, don't ever, *ever* let her cook from them.