Betty Crocker’s Absurd, Gorgeous Atomic-Age Creations

For all of you mid-century fans out there, you may have already enjoyed perusing this article that ran last week in the New York Times. It's a delightfully eye-popping attempt to make sense of the strange culinary concoctions from the 1950s and 60s. 

Betty Crocker’s Absurd, Gorgeous Atomic-Age Creations   

The iconic brand’s midcentury recipes evoke the era’s peculiar optimism, encased in gelatin and smothered in mayonnaise.
 

Photographs by MAURIZIO CATTELAN AND PIERPAOLO FERRARI and TEXT BY TAMAR ADLEROCT. 27, 2015

One of my favorite passages from the article:

And yet maybe because I was born too late — because I am unscarred by the trauma of festive buffets abundant with canned green beans in white sauce — I see qualities in the Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library that do not seem ridiculous or deserving of pillory.

Its recipes weren’t written to appeal to the palate. Their instructions were designed to make the Teenage Fondue or Party Sandwich Loaf look a certain way: theatrical, performative, misleading. The focus on tuning precise colors and shapes — the shocking green of ‘‘Lime Ribbon Delight’’ or the perfect heart shape of ‘‘Cherry Berries on a Cloud’’ or simply the persistent symmetry of concentric circles and shingles — is here, as in all arts and crafts, a means for triggering observation.

There is something very human in the desire to turn food, which we are impelled by biology to notice, into a spectacle.

It certainly speaks to what I've enjoyed about writing this blog--and maybe a little of what you've enjoyed about reading it. :) 

So feast your eyes on this delectable spread and come back here soon for my latest take on such a fascinating era of food. You know, maybe it's time to break into the gelatin recipes...