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The Gallery of Regrettable Food Hardcover – September 11, 2001

by James Lileks (Author)

245

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WARNING:

This is not a cookbook. You'll find no tongue-tempting treats within -- unless, of course, you consider Boiled Cow Elbow with Plaid Sauce to be your idea of a tasty meal. No, The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a public service. Learn to identify these dishes. Learn to regard shivering liver molds with suspicion. Learn why curries are a Communist plot to undermine decent, honest American spices. Learn to heed the advice of stern, fictional nutritionists. If you see any of these dishes, please alert the authorities.

Now, the good news: laboratory tests prove that The Gallery of Regrettable Food AMUSES as well as informs. Four out of five doctors recommend this book for its GENEROUS PORTIONS OF HILARITY and ghastly pictures from RETRO COOKBOOKS. You too will look at these products of post-war cuisine and ask: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" It's an affectionate look at the days when starch ruled, pepper was a dangerous spice, and Stuffed Meat with Meat Sauce was considered health food.

Bon appetit!

The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes from the Golden Age of Salt and Starch. It's a wonder anyone in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s gained any weight. It isn't that the food was inedible; it was merely dull. Everything was geared toward a timid palate fearful of spice. It wasn't nonnutritious -- no, between the limp boiled vegetables, fat-choked meat cylinders, and pink whipped Jell-O desserts, you were bound to find a few calories that would drag you into the next day. It's just that the pictures are so hideously unappealing.

Author James Lileks has made it his life's work to unearth the worst recipes and food photography from that bygone era and assemble them with hilarious, acerbic commentary: "This is not meat. This is something they scraped out of the air filter from the engines of the Exxon Valdez." It all started when he went home to Fargo and found an ancient recipe book in his mom's cupboard: Specialties of the House, from the North Dakota State Wheat Commission. He never looked back. Now, they're not really recipe books. They're ads for food companies, with every recipe using the company's products, often in unexpected and horrifying ways. There's not a single appetizing dish in the entire collection.

The pictures in the book are ghastly -- the Italian dishes look like a surgeon had a sneezing fit during an operation, and the queasy casseroles look like something on which the janitor dumps sawdust. But you have to enjoy the spirit behind the books -- cheerful postwar perfect housewifery, and folks with the guts to undertake such culinary experiments as stuffing cabbage with hamburger, creating the perfect tongue mousse when you have the fellas over for a pregame nosh, or, best of all, baking peppers with a creamy marshmallow sauce. Alas, too many of these dishes bring back scary childhood memories.

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Print length

192 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Crown Publishers
Publication date

September 11, 2001
Dimensions

7.75 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0609607820
ISBN-13

978-0609607824
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Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Ketchup Pistachio Cake. Meat Pie with Meat Crust. Baked Peppers with Creamy Marshmallow Sauce. Daring readers will come face to face with these and worse in this excellent book that's bursting with photographs, recipes, and bits of text and "tips" taken from mainstream American cookbooks of the 1940s-70s, when "the only spice permitted in excess [was] fat." Fascinating and valuable in their own right as cultural artifacts of the era, the entries are irresistible when accompanied by Lileks's hilarious running commentary. Jell-O gets its own chapter, and deservedly so; other sections include "Horrors from the Briny Deep" and "Cooking for a MAN: Tested Recipes to Please HIM!" YAs already familiar with the author's popular Web site "The Institute of Official Cheer" (www.lileks.com) will be thrilled to see that the book is just as wonderfully designed as the site. Those encountering Lileks for the first time are in for an even bigger treat than the "foamy prune whip with cherry gel" found within.

Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Lileks pokes fun at food advertising and promotional ideas from the '50s nascent food industry. Making sport of the assumptions that underlay American cookery at mid-century is an easy target. The reigning belief that anything technological or manufactured was by definition superior to nature's bounty today appears naive at best. Add to that the mindless nutritional opinions of the era, and there's plenty of laughter to be found in these ads. A vibrantly rendered shot of a thick, untrimmed porterhouse steak slathered with ketchup and then topped with sliced hard-boiled eggs looks ready to clot every coronary artery, not to mention its complete void of fresh flavors. Most hilarious are advertisements showing pretentious "French" chefs promoting their favorite ways to use marshmallows. How a dish of scrambled eggs topped with cheese, ketchup, and cream of mushroom soup earned the moniker "Eggs Oriental" goes beyond the inscrutable. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

WARNING:

This is not a cookbook. You'll find no tongue-tempting treats within -- unless, of course, you consider Boiled Cow Elbow with Plaid Sauce to be your idea of a tasty meal. No, The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a public service. Learn to identify these dishes. Learn to regard shivering liver molds with suspicion. Learn why curries are a Communist plot to undermine decent, honest American spices. Learn to heed the advice of stern, fictional nutritionists. If you see any of these dishes, please alert the authorities.

Now, the good news: laboratory tests prove that The Gallery of Regrettable Food AMUSES as well as informs. Four out of five doctors recommend this book for its GENEROUS PORTIONS OF HILARITY and ghastly pictures from RETRO COOKBOOKS. You too will look at these products of post-war cuisine and ask: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" It's an affectionate look at the days when starch ruled, pepper was a dangerous spice, and Stuffed Meat with Meat Sauce was considered health food.

Bon appetit!

The Gallery of Regrettable Food is a simple introduction to poorly photographed foodstuffs and horrid recipes from the Golden Age of Salt and Starch. It's a wonder anyone in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s gained any weight. It isn't that the food was inedible; it was merely dull. Everything was geared toward a timid palate fearful of spice. It wasn't nonnutritious -- no, between the limp boiled vegetables, fat-choked meat cylinders, and pink whipped Jell-O desserts, you were bound to find a few calories that would drag you into the next day. It's just that the pictures are so hideously unappealing.

Author James Lileks has made it his life's work to unearth the worst recipes and food photography from that bygone era and assemble them with hilarious, acerbic commentary: "This is not meat. This is something they scraped out of the air filter from the engines of the Exxon Valdez." It all started when he went home to Fargo and found an ancient recipe book in his mom's cupboard: Specialties of the House, from the North Dakota State Wheat Commission. He never looked back. Now, they're not really recipe books. They're ads for food companies, with every recipe using the company's products, often in unexpected and horrifying ways. There's not a single appetizing dish in the entire collection.

The pictures in the book are ghastly -- the Italian dishes look like a surgeon had a sneezing fit during an operation, and the queasy casseroles look like something on which the janitor dumps sawdust. But you have to enjoy the spirit behind the books -- cheerful postwar perfect housewifery, and folks with the guts to undertake such culinary experiments as stuffing cabbage with hamburger, creating the perfect tongue mousse when you have the fellas over for a pregame nosh, or, best of all, baking peppers with a creamy marshmallow sauce. Alas, too many of these dishes bring back scary childhood memories.

About the Author

James Lileks is a columnist for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune. His popular website, "The Institute of Official Cheer," on which The Gallery of Regrettable Food is based, can be seen at www.lileks.com.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown Publishers; 1st edition (September 11, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0609607820
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0609607824
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #265,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #118 in Cooking Humor
- #312 in Gastronomy History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
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4.6 out of 5

245 global ratings

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Trenton Bennett

Americana Stewed in its Own Juices

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2003

Verified Purchase

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.

19 people found this helpful

Robert I. Hedges

The Little Book of Gastronomic Nightmares!

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2004

Verified Purchase

Columnist James Lileks has hit a home run with this pungent assemblage of comestible horrors. Noted for his amusing website ([...] the author has been collecting humorous bits of Americana for a while, and this is essentially the greatest hits of horrifying food that he has thus far uncovered. The book is very tongue in cheek and profusely illustrated with recipes for and photographs of hideous and disgusting real recipes that somebody thought were a good idea at the time, but in retrospect seem amazingly daft.
The book is divided into chapters largely by food type ("Poultry for the Glum", "All the Smart People Eat Toast", "Glop in a Pot!", etc.) but there a couple organized more by genre ("Swanson's Parade of Lost Identity", "Eat Brains and Whip Hitler!", etc.) All told there are 192 pages of revolting and hilarious monstrosities of the kitchen. Most are descriptions and photos of the dishes, while some include the actual recipes. I actually wish more of the recipes were included, as I can't imagine what ingredients make up some of these dishes, the sardine dish on p. 76, for instance, the appearance of which is accurately described as "piscine torsos in a vinyl sauce colored with melted peach crayons." Some of the recipes, on the other hand, find the reader wishing they knew a bit less about the contents of the dish, for instance on p. 31 under the heading 'Aspic Entrees', the recipes for "Tongue Mousse" and "Jellied Calf's Liver" spring to mind readily.
This book is a wonderful addition to any library; I plan on putting mine among my cookbooks for easy future reference! Highly recommended!

11 people found this helpful

A Cure for Modern Ills

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2008

Verified Purchase

Had a rough day? Stressed about the looming Apocalypse and your dwindling bank balance? You need James Lileks. You need The Gallery of Regrettable Food -- actual food illustrations and photography from the Depression through the swinging 70s. There are a few recipes, but the focus is on the unappetizing pictures and Lileks's delicious commentary. Imagine the mind that could dream up hot dogs in aspic. No, don't. Not if you're eating. Or about to eat. Or ever want to eat again.

Most of the content in Lileks's books is no longer on the website, so truly the book is worth buying. He describes a loaf of mottled red meat sludge in aspic as "a core sample from a mass grave." He tells the hidden stories of the people in those illustrations. Truly, he is the MST3K of old advertisements -- and his wit is as sharp as his eye.

The effect of reading anything by Lileks is, first, laughter, tinged with horror. Then, as you read on, uncontrollable spasms of laughter. Then choking, screaming convulsions of something that might be laughter or agony, garnished by tears. Then full-fledged hysteria. It's absolutely guaranteed, and it's one of the best ways I know for dealing with a horrible day.

Why yes, I had a . . . regrettable day. Any day in which one's automobile, freshly emerged from the shelter of a warranty period, demands repairs that will cost almost a month's rent (which, incidentally, has just been raised again), that day cries out for Official Cheer.

(It worked, too.)

6 people found this helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

Recommend this Seller

Reviewed in Canada on October 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

Book arrived earlier than expected. Book was, as described, in “good” condition...actually, better. Would recommend this Seller.

C. J. Richardson

Far too funny for a book about food

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2002

Verified Purchase

James Lileks was inspired and unsettled by the discovery of his mother's unused cookbooks from the 1950s. The Gallery of Regrettable food is a hilarious trawl through those books and the now improbable dishes they attempt to encourage you to cook.
As someone who escaped life in the 50s by a couple of decades, I'm utterly amazed by the food he showcases. How can they have expected people to be eat that stuff? Lilek's commentary is almost unbearably funny, but there are also occasional moments of social history. Was life in the 50s really like this? Was the highlight of your culinary experience really radishes and assorted salad items encased in cherry flavoured jelly? How could people stand it?
Buy this book and be hugely entertained. It's now sitting in our bathroom - there can be no higher praise. I'm waiting for his forthcoming book on 1970s interior decoration.

25 people found this helpful

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