A Different Light – 1st November 2025 – Retro cookbooks and the bizarre recipes that time forgot
Now, Steve Braunias writes a damn good column: hilarious, sharp and lyrical. One of his recent pieces resonated with me deeply. It was in the October 11 edition of NZ Listener and was entitled ‘Dinner is Cooked’. He wrote about old cookbooks. How funny they were. How awful they can be. Thanks, Steve, handy column fodder!
When I started to become enthralled with cooking- when I realised I actually could physically cook (this was shortly after realising my new girlfriend- now my wife- could not cook), I started to collect old cookbooks. I admit a hopeful nostalgia for retro cooking was brewing. This soon turned into a perverse masochistically curiosity about how grotesque some of the dishes were. My collection didn’t grow very large. My wife put her foot down fairly quickly.
“Enough is enough,” she said. “These are just too much.”
Even though my collection only grew to four books, they sure still pack a punch.
First, there was ‘The Festival of Meat Cookery’- a publication by Jan McBride from 1971 in New York. It had some rather inventive recipes like Hamburger Stroganoff which used a can of condensed cream of chicken soup, Enchilada Fiesta (to carry on the festival theme) and Baby Beef Liver with Bacon Gravy- need I say more.
The next book to complement my collection was ‘Meet with Beef’, a jolly use of homophones published by the NZ Hereford Cattle Breeders’ Association (Inc) in 1984. Its chapter on mince was extensive. Perky-Mince, eight meat loaf recipes, and a staggering twelve meatball recipes.
The third book in my tiny collection was Peter Russell-Clarke’s ‘Egg Cookbook’ from Aussie in 1979. While there were some mind-boggling recipes that were quite gripping (not in a good way) like Fungus Eggs, Steamed Egg Custard ‘n’ Seafood and Whiting and Grapes, it was the cover that grabbed me. It was a photo of Peter Russell-Clarke in full vintage ensemble gazing up at a raw egg that looked seconds away from being matted to his 70’s hair and beard. He also wore a necklace that was remarkable; it consisted of shells, metal and what appears to be a bullet-casing at the apex. I googled him and apparently he was one of the first Australian celebrity chefs. I found a short YouTube video. In disbelief, I watched as he cooked an omelette with a big slice of mango, half a raw fig and a large piece of salmon. Job done!
The crescendo of my collection is called ‘The Personality of Meat’. It’s a somewhat voyeuristic book published by the Cold Storage Commission of Rhodesia. Now, some of the recipes are truly horrific. In the section pre-ambled ‘Don’t forget the Variety Meats’, it has Stuffed Liver, Liver and Rice, Lip-smacking Liver, Poor Man’s Goose (a.ka. liver), Adam’s Liver, Barbequed Liver and not to mention- Calf’s Head Pie. However, as I explained to Steve Braunias, when I emailed him evidence of my collection at his request- to his readers’, the pièce de résistance of this book is pictorial. It’s a photo of the ‘Man-in-the-moon Salad’. It consisted of a plate of rice, complete with breakfast sausages for eyebrows, eggs and raisins for the eyeballs, and a singular slice of carrot as a nose. Hideous!
I never have cooked any one of these recipes. Instead, I would just sit there and read them out incredulously. No wonder my wife grew sick of it and put an end to my aspirations for a vast collection of grotesque recipe books.
Mind you, those fungus eggs sound intriguing….
Jonny Wilkinson is the CEO of Tiaho Trust – Disability A Matter of Perception, a Whangarei based disability advocacy organisation.