I don’t especially care for antique stores, but sometimes they do have interesting books, especially things like The Southern Junior League Cookbook. This book dates to the late seventies, and has recipes from about 30 different Junior League cookbooks from North Carolina to Florida, and Georgia to Texas. A lot of it is the sort of thing you’d expect, home cookery recipes and what we might now call ‘hacks’ for most of your basic categories from Appetizers and Soup to Meat and Poultry to Grains-Beans-Peas and Sauces to Vegetables and Salads, to Breads to Desserts to Beverages.
Some of the historically interesting things include how various recipes are titled and some key ingredients; “oriental” or “orientale” seems to mean “includes either canned bean sprouts or water chestnuts or both”, “Russian” means sour cream, a “sweet and sour” broccoli which is basically frozen broccoli and sweet pickle relish, “party venison”, half a dozen things to do with a dove, “avocado salad” which involves lime gelatin, a “fresh fruit salad” that calls for apple gelatin (to my knowledge you can’t buy this premade anymore), “Charleston Light Dragoon Punch which calls for an entire quart of grenadine and 3 gallons of rye whiskey (not the only alcohol in the recipe either), and “banana punch” (eew). “Wine rice” is basically a risotto made with red wine that doesn’t get all the stirring; I’ve heard of not stirred risotto before, but the red wine seems a little odd. Then again, there is also some tomato, so that pairing might actually work out. The recipes for ‘nachos’ and ‘English muffin sandwiches’ are almost funny, and for the life of me, I cannot tell what makes “Canadian Cheese Soup” Canadian.
It’s not all that surprising that quite a few recipes call for canned items or mixes, and considering that this copy had to have been pre-owned I would expect some signs of use. Really the only evidence or prior ownership is one recipe marked with “ok” (“Curried Shrimp with Wilmington Green Rice”) and another with a few handwritten notes for how to improve the printed recipe; “Shrimp, Mushroom, and Artichoke Casserole” is apparently “good! w/ Revisions” that consist mostly of adjusting amounts and adding a “splash of lemon”.
I seriously I doubt I’m going to try much of anything here except maybe a few things out of curiosity possibly for a church potluck. It’s still a rather interesting look to a few decades ago in a certain region of the country; I also find it interesting that in order to find one of these things, you really probably do have to go to an antique store.
