Cookbook Archaeology

Now right off you know this is going to be something special, because the cover has a picture of a guy hovering over a charcoal grill that is covered with at least six steaks that can't be a millimeter less than four inches thick. He's wearing his Big Boy Barbeque toque and his Big Boy Barbeque apron and I assume those are Big Boy Barbeque brand oven mitts on his hands. In front of him are what are obviously supposed to be his adoring wife and his equally adoring daughter who apparently find it entertaining to watch Dad wrestle around slabs of meat bigger than his head. I know things were bleak in the Fifties, but I'm pretty sure they had books, radio, television and possibly other forms of entertainment to divert them from having to watch the paterfamilias scorch animal flesh. And what's with the six steaks for three people?

The fun doesn't stop there. On the first page we learn that the recipes were developed by the barbeque experts at the Kitchen in the Clouds, located on the Fifty-Ninth floor on Fifth Avenue in New York. Now, nothing says barbeque to me like cooking it in a kitchen in a New York skyscraper. It's true they had help from the experts at the Big Boy Mfg. Company, which one assumes was not located in a high rise. Or possibly it was.

The book is spiral bound and I suspect that it was prominently displayed in the same area as the grills at the local retail emporium. Perhaps the books were even thrown in with the purchase of your very own Big Boy grill when you also bought the matching Big Boy Electric Fire Starter, Big Boy Barbeque Thermometer, the Big Boy Barbeque Apron, and a plethora of other handy accoutrements.

Leafing through the book, one is quite struck with the fact that all of the meat is pretty much the same color. I don't know if this is due to the color photo printing fading over the years or rather because the original book was fairly cheaply made. But it is a little disconcerting that the only way to tell the difference between chicken and beef tenderloin is from the description -- because they're exactly the same color. Even the lobster is the same uniform shade of pale brown. It's not a very appetizing shade of brown either. Strangely enough, the shrimp shown is yellow. I'm pretty sure I'd pass on yellow shrimp, but then I'm kind of strange that way.

The recipes are for the most part pretty much a product of their time. No fancy rubs or marinades here, thank you very much. No maitre'd hotel butter or horseradish sauce or fancy homemade ketchups to sully the pristine flavor of massive slabs of meat.  It's pretty much meat and meat with a side of starch. There are two fish barbeque recipes which consist of Barbequed Small Whole Fish and Barbequed Large Whole Fish. When you think about it, that covers pretty much everything piscine. Well, unless you're one of those elitists who want fish fillets or steaks or skewers, or pretty much anything else but whole grilled fish.

One of the more unusual recipes -- well, pretty much the only unusual recipe -- is for liver, bacon and onions. Personally I can't think of anything that's likely to get the kids more worked up than announcing that tonight we're having liver and onions but it's Barbequed liver and onions! I'm sure they'll be clamoring for seconds.

Vegetables are notable for their almost complete absence. There's one page with a few recipes that mainly consist of wrapping the vegetables and butter in foil and throwing them on the grill till any nutrient value is extinguished. The single vegetable page is notable only because there's equivalent space devoted to barbequed breads, which are prepared in exactly the same manner as the vegetables, wrapped in foil with butter.

Other handy tips include how to have a Teen-Age Party with lots of hamburgers and hot dogs and of course, the requisite mugs of milk will be welcome by everyone. Even in 1963 I think the average teenager would have probably rather have a soda.

The only recipe that has even the slightest foreign influence is one for shish kebob though even this whiff of exoticism is quickly extinguished when one learns that the recipe calls for bacon wrapped beef instead of lamb. One thing I think you can safely say is that there is no possibility that the inhabitants of the romantic Near East as the cookbook writers refer to it, would be terribly thrilled about bacon wrapped anything.

Overall, I love this cookbook as a little piece of Americana. I'm going to hold on to it and treasure it always. In subsequent entries I'm going to also go over my other two cookbooks: Ma's Cookin' Mountain Recipes and the Wild Game Cookbook.