The Gallery of Regrettable Food

by James Lileks

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.

Genres: Humor, Food, Nonfiction, Cooking, History, Cookbooks, Pop Culture

192 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2001

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best damned diet book I've ever read!

If gazing at the photo of the Beet Pie Casserole doesn't put you off your feed, try reading all about the Creamed Brains on Toast OR the Tongue Rolls Florentine.


Traditional Pineapple-Carrot Salad, made with vinegar to make it extra . . . vinegary.

YUMMY! Makes my tummy rumble, but not in a good way...


Mmm . . . Face Steak

Crammed full of color photos of the least appetizing appetizers, most mysterious entrees, and unheavenly desserts (who knew it was so easy to ruin Jello?) you've ever seen, this book will having you laughing your head off and vowing never to eat again --- at least not any meat-by-products served in a gelatinous, peach-colored sauce...


WTF?

Favorite quote - "Garnish with shaved things; serve with whipped lard."

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the bad or naive food photography of the 1950's, even a well-meaning display can evoke waves of hilarity. Consider the simple weenies-and-beans casserole profiled in James Lileks' The Gallery of Regrettable Food, where the franks look as though they had taken too much Viagara. And when the recipes -- meant to empower underskilled housewives -- strained for higher levels of sophistication, they appear their most bizarre today. I think of one highly risible field -- the nearly extinct "molded salad" -- made overly sophisticated as "aspic canapes" in one party planner. Or a casserole involving creamed peas poured over Minute Rice and meat, in which each ingredient fails to support its unwilling companions. ("Synchronized vomit," said one friend of mine after viewing the magazine photo.)

I would call James Lileks' colorful GALLERY OF REGRET-TABLE FOOD a satire, but it really isn't -- the family recipes and party displays in this book were dead serious back in the Fifties. Now, though, changing social mores and superior photography make it impossible for us to view these atrocities without irony. All Lileks had to do besides curate the photos is add his own snarky lingo in describing them, and he did a very good job of that. Great fun to own or give.

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't often laugh out loud with a book, but I did with this one! It provided a great leisurely Friday night with some friends on the couch, reading aloud the witty commentary on 50's cookbooks.

I was quite shocked (with all of the biting feminist-style remarks about men) that this book was written by a very enlightened man named James Lileks. Go James!

I love food fads!

Some of my MANY favorite quotes:

"Perhaps there are situations where you are happy to be served this supper. Perhaps there's a time when you clasp your hands to your breastbone in genuine surprise and say, 'You actually have radishes in cherry Jell-O already made - and in two distinct shapes, as well?' Perhaps." (accompanying a picture of a radish Jell-O mold in a martini glass with a side of radish Jell-O mold in a bed of lettuce.)

"For truly distinctive desserts, cook with Ketchup. Well, there's no disputing that statement, is there? Here's the example they give: Ketchup-Pistachio Cake. And for truly distinctive dinners, cook with ketchup, tinfoil, and small ground-up Lego fragments! Good? Nay - but distinctive."

"Remember: This photo is supposed to make you hungry. It's supposed to make you want to eat this dish. I last saw this in a Star Trek episode; it stuck on Spock's back and made him go insane." (accompanying a dish of white gooey something with possible sea creatures embedded.)

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

My husband thought I was having a psychotic meltdown when I read this. I really sat in bed all night howling...tears streaming down as I toured the horrors of mid-twentieth century American cuisine. i read it cover to cover in one sitting and was left gasping -- thoroughly spent from the convulsive guffaws.

You want tuna in aspic? Check. How about those pigs-in-a-blanket? No problem. The "joys of jello"? Got that too.

This is not to be described. Just hilarious altogether. I want to start an entire new collection of vintage cook books after reading this. You have to love those grainy black and white photos of glutinous masses of quivery jelly studded with olives and gherkins...or the enormous Flintstone-Scale slabs of meat featured within.

As memory serves, this book was born from a web site of the same name.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I *love* James Lileks. Though I hesitate to say so on a site dedicated to books, his website may be a better way to appreciate his full hilarious awesomeness-

http://www.lileks.com/institute/archi...

Come on, Nazi grandma alone is worth the price of admission.
Or the "computers through time" series.

Get in touch with your inner snerk. Support this man! Visit his site. Somewhere in there waiting for you is that bizarre Wisconsin motel. And many other gems. It's a gen-u-wine laff-riot. And I am not one to use that term lightly, nosiree Bob!

[an infinite number of monkeys · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know I'm supposed to laugh, but far too many of the "dishes" here look familiar in a bad-flashback kind of way. I am certain that my mother owned and used the cookbooks used as references by Mr. Lileks. Some of the illustrations included in the Gallery appear to be black-and-white, but trust me, they are not. I grew up eating an awful lot of grey food that looked just like the pictures. It was odd that the more "time-saving" a recipe was, the more upset my mother was with a lukewarm reception. It was as if she was trying to find a magic sweet spot where she could expend the least effort and receive maximum accolades for her work in the kitchen. There's a memory I had buried until picking up this book. Thanks, Mr. Lileks.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is hilarious. I can remember going to family parties as a kid, and this icky looking grub was served up.

Mini marshmallows are suspended in just about any colored gelatin mixed with chunks of fruit or peas and carrots. You name it.

The classic 7 layered salad. Seven layers of anything will do.

The authors remarks on the photos of these alarming creations of gelatin castles, and dancing deviled eggs is priceless.

[Danielle Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book yesterday and started reading/looking at on my lunch break. WARNING!!!!! DON'T LOOK AT THIS BOOK ON YOUR LUNCH BREAK. Old pictures of food concoctions from cookbooks and magazines from the 60s and 70s. Made my stomach flipped and made me gag! However I did get a laugh at all the crazy food creations. Some of these creations were made to ward some guests away. A "How to"... to better sex, getting rid of the annoying relative and so on.

Thanks Brianna for recommending this book. I really at one moment wanted to not eat meat again. Gross, nasty and gag for a hot minute.

[Robu-sensei · Rating 5 out of 5]

An astonishing look at mid-20th-century American cuisine as depicted in classic cookbooks, with side-splitting commentary by columnist James Lileks. Lurid concoctions from an age when lard was considered a vitamin and spice, a deadly poison, will stir your gorge and permanently banish your appetite. Recoil in disgust from graphic illustrations of creamed brains on toast, radishes entombed in olive-flavored Jell-O, desserts whose defining flavor is Heinz Ketchup, and other horrors too numerous to mention. Lileks has several other satirical works out there, similarly making fun of the Americana of your grandparents, but this one, his first, stands head and shoulders above the rest.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the vintage ads.
The pictures of food made me never want to eat again. Savory Jello? Who came up with that?
I came across this lady (http://jellomoldmistress.com/category...) while searching for savory jello recipes. She is doing some interesting things, culinarily.
Lots of great historical information, too. I learned some stuff.
I think everyone alive should see this book.

[Toni · Rating 1 out of 5]

This reminded me of the typical high school or college geek trying to be funny. A bit of sarcasm can be funny, but an entire book of it is just annoying. Thank heavens I had only borrowed it from the library--I'd have hated to waste money on this.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

So funny, its comfort food, no pun intended.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! What a fun book. Humorous from beginning to end, I especially enjoyed the jell-o section. Who knew you could put hot dogs, cauliflower, green peppers, cucumber and fish in jell-O and call it lunch? Oh boy, I have so many recipe ideas now! HAHAHA!
Seriously, I remember eating orange jell-o with shredded carrots in it at a church pot-luck as a kid. What the heck were these people thinking? At least I never had to eat jell-o with hot dogs in it.

The book has great photos & humorous commentary on these 'recipe books' of the past, most of which (but not all) were released by companies trying to sell you their product (heinz ketchup, campfire marshmallows, jell-o gelatin, Spry hydrogenated vegetable shortening, swansons, mr. peanut & yes, even 7-UP) I bet you didn't know you could use 7-up & Bisquick mix to make delicious pancakes now did you? How nutritious.

If any of this sounds like a fun read to you, check out the website the author has at www.lileks.com for more humorous surfing.

[Jill Crosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is about my fourth time through this ridiculously funny book, and it probably won’t be my last.
“Regrettable Food” is a commentary/reinterpretation of all those mid-century modern recipe booklets that came with a new stove or could be purchased for 10¢ and a jello flap when sent in to Jell-o or Kraft or Heinz or whomever. Original photographs are set to modern captions which you should not read in public places, unless you are a silent belly-laugher; Lileks comes out of the chute snarkling, and only seems to stop when he runs out of recipes & photos to “analyze.”
*Added bonus: First released in 2001, Regrettable Foods’ commentary provides an anthropologist’s look at what notions of food controlled our diets at that time—eggs raised your cholesterol, animal fat was bad, plant oils were good, e.g. Nobody had “food sensitivities” and being unable to consume gluten was an actual disease with a limited number of sufferers. This unintended dated look at our knowledge and relationship with food is as much fun as the content

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book sounded hilarious (and when I say hilarious, I mean hooolarious), but I was really disappointed. Lots of potential, but I just didn't think it was funny. Trying to be funny? Yes. Funny? No. I see from other reviews that I am alone in my opinion - it's ok, I'm an engineer - I'm used to being alone. My opinion stands!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered James Lileks through a friend, who turned me on to his Institute of Official Cheer website. Lileks collections of horrifying recipes, food advice, and pictures of the most unappetizing "edible" items in the world would be funny enough . . . but the man's commentary on each picture is enough to make you cry with laughter for hours.

[Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another gift from the library. I'd've had no idea this book even existed if I hadn't seen it in returns. And upset stomach aside (the meat section is particularly disturbing), I'm so much the better person for having read it.

[Elyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A laugh out loud book. Pictures and captions depict some really strange concoctions from cookbooks of the 40's, 50's and 60's.

[Sabra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I choked on my own spit when I read a caption that included the phrase "banana-placenta sauce." Really gross, really funny.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

he is one the most entertaining writer I know

[MKF · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing but some of the pictures made me nauseous and lose my appetite.

[Megan Hex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, but not nearly as good as the website. The book format seemed to produce more forced jokes. Still a winner if you are playing Bring Your Own Book, though....

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 1 out of 5]

It has been a long times since I disliked a book this much. If you ever wondered if a person could 1 star a free book, I am doing so here. This copy was an out of the blue gift from a friend. All I can say is that he was in the middle of a bad time. There is a joke here, but it is the same one there and there and on almost every page. The real joke is that the premise had worked as a very short internet ‘thing’ by page 10 I hated it.

The premise is that there have been some terrible pictures made of food that was supposed to make you want to eat. Most of the examples in Regrettable Foods date back to the 1940’s with a few dated to the mid 1970’s. Sometimes the photographer was no good, or the black and white images failed. Basically the cook book promoters did not have food science marketers. These are people who use science to insure that every raisin or olive or French fry in a picture rate as “heroes”. A technical term. Milk for example is unlikely to be milk in a modern picture, for a while they were using glue, because it stood up to the photographers lights, real milk would not.

So Lileke gives us about 190 pages of some terrible example of what a pictures of food should not look like, but these were published as part of cook books. To this he appends whatever outlandish, exaggerated, lurid, hammer-headed idea of a joke he could include without using actual 4 letter curse words. Not to worry he is lavish in using the more polite or medical versions of the same words.

The pictures are laughably bad. But Lileke cannot stop at that. He will tell you the item tastes terrible. Except that he never says he actually tried to cook or eat any of these items. For example 7 Up Pancakes Pg 33 and 34 are a “nightmare”. The recipe, one of the few listed reads like a good idea. Here in the south, people have used Root Beer, colas and other soda in cooking for barbecue and cake and more.

Then again Lileke in this books is a vegetarian, at least he almost never has a good word to say about any meat and what seems like a total ignorance of barbecue. He does not seem to like Jell-O, any kind of molded food can barely tolerate salmon, plaid or almost any picture of a couple. The joke/outrage<?> about married women going under their husbands name is one of his many anachronisms and perhaps the least ridicules, but again he announces the jab and repeats it for about 5 pages. His first anachronism and one that announces that the will depend on them is on page 11 when he expresses ‘horror’ that a cook might add fat to a recipe. Yes James, yes they did, and do.

Oddly the one time he complains about the lack of meat is in Harlequin Spinach Pg 106. This item gets ground down 1st for not having meat, 2nd for having a man dressed as a harlequin and 3rd there is no picture of the objectionable food item.

The lamb on Page 67 does look like a cat, once he points it out, but the Fluffy omelet on page 102 is described as a folded Frisbee. It looks like a fluffy omelet. The ketchup sauce looks ghastly but it gets a pass in the sarcasm. Towards the end of the book there is a marked transition away from pictures and towards text. This is a relief rather than a late arrival of hilarity. More snark about people based on un-flattering pictures and clothing styles of which the author does not approve.

Finally, there are 5 pictures from the cook book that started this Gallery of ugly words and pictures. I can see how he was inspired and that done properly there is a joke to be made. Pg 189 clever. 188 seriously ugly picture of food but the commentary is weak.
This proves I suffered to the very end of this unpleasant book. You should not have to. I only did this for you.

[S. J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.3 Stars*

Scorecard: (Out of 10)
* Quality of Writing - 5
* Pace - 4
* Plot development - N/A
* Characters - 7
* Enjoyability - 5
* Insightfulness - 6
* Ease of Reading - 7
* Photos/Illustrations - 6
Final Score: 40/70 = 57%

*WARNING:


If pictures like the above leave you queasy, this is not the book for you. (I can barely look at this.)

*The Gush and Rant*

As I talked about in my review of Interior Desecrations, I have long enjoyed Lileks' website and spent many happy hours laughing until I couldn't take it anymore. So I was looking forward to reading this, as it was based on a section of the site I'd not really seen.

I wish it'd stayed that way.

First let me say, this is a funny book. Lileks brings his sarcastic wit to bare on some of the most wretched pictures of food you will ever run across.

However, I found this book extremely hard to get through for two reasons. The first reason is illustrated perfectly by just randomly clicking through a few pictures on his website. I'll warn you not to read this book right after a meal as I found many pictures to be physically nauseating. Some of his descriptions are very trying as well.

Which brings me to my second point. James Lileks is extremely funny and his descriptions of the horrendous interior designs as well as the food in these two books clearly show that. However, in this book he chose to be more...well disgusting and had infinitely more innuendos in this one book then the other. This book I would certainly classify as adult humor because of the type of things he eludes to. That is not to say it isn't funny but I find the other book funnier.

*Conclusion*
If you're looking for a good example of Lileks' humor, I'd suggest Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s. This is a good book, but not his best.

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

So this book looks like it would be awesomely funny; sadly, I do not find it so. I was looking forward to a book that dissected our hilarious food history with salad molds and silly canned meat casseroles, but instead, this heaps pile after pile of bitterness on the buffet table of our parents' generation. There really doesn't seem to have been much skill involved in creating this book, either. The author took some old cookbooks--some produced for specific products like 7-Up or A-1, others focusing on a particular kind of dish like dips or barbeque--copied some pages with dated, sexist pictures or kind of gross foods (frankfurters in some kind of aspic?!), then added the most basic adolescent snark as commentary. When I first picked up the book, I was excited. After two or three pages, I was skipping all the author's text and focusing only on the original ad and recipe texts, which was plenty funny enough. Too much time and space was dedicated to the author's sour sauce and not enough to the beauteous bounty of processed cheese foods and gelatin molds. Come on, wouldn't you rather read the actual recipe for a ketchup-pistachio cake than "And for truly distinctive dinners, cook with ketchup, tinfoil, and small ground-up Lego fragments"? Some of these exceptional dishes don't even get the respect of a name. It's a shame.

[Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recently, there has been a spate of some quite funny articles and videos online of people cooking and forcing themselves to eat some of the rather... inspired creations of mid-century American culinary arts; starchy, glistening, ill flavored blends of meats, gelatins, and overcooked vegetables in which pepper was considered too spicy. It is funny, then, that humorist James Lileks was showcasing the horrors of "classic" American cookery on the internet more than a decade ago, with his Gallery of Regrettable Food.

Lileks, a columnist at the Star Tribune known for his prickly sense of humor, takes these recipes, gleaned from 1950s-70s era commercial cookbooks to task for their conceits and ingredients (such as the joys of cooking with 7-Up). Instead of actually trying these insipid foodstuffs (he seems too sane for that), he lampoons the dreary photography, odd concepts, and grandiose descriptions of the recipes, though Lileks is nearly as harsh to our own modern sense of superiority. Whether mocking the unintentional hilarity of fictional spokespeople like Aunt Jenny (and her deeply sordid hidden life) or the alien horror of jello salads, Lileks writes with a caustic humor that caused me to laugh out loud several times. Like many humor books spawned on the net, though, it may be best read online.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on the website www.lileks.com, this book is a humorous look at cookbooks of the 1940s-60s. The commentary is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but mostly mildly amusing. The author points out that even then, people thought some of the marketing was ridiculous and saw company-sponsored cookbooks for what they are--a way to sell more product. Highlights include profiles of the books "How Famous Chefs Use Campfire Marshmallows," A-1's "Cooking for a Man: Tested Recipes to please HIM!," "So You're Going to Serve a...Salad" and the Aunt Jenny campaign for Spry brand vegetable shortening. Often the humor comes from the poor quality of food photography--most dishes look incredibly unappetizing by moderns standards. They also seemed to be exceptionally fond of Jell-O (but, who isn't?)
This is also an interesting glimpse into the history and customs of daily life for women of the era.

[Kathy Ferrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious! I keep this on my cookbook shelf so I can take it out and leave it lying plain sight when I have dinner guests. This and a few more of its ilk, such as "White Trash Cooking", "The Food Stamp Gourmet" and Robert Crumb's "Waiting for Food".

Mr. Lileks has given us a real classic. Chock full of photos gleaned from all manner of publications from about 1972 on back, you will laugh out loud at perfect examples of WHY some women really did BELONG in the work place back then. The abuses that they forced onto hot dogs alone should have been enough for a conviction. It's just hilarious. You will probably call up your aged mother and gripe "Remember what you used to do with Jell-O and celery? Well, DO you?!?" She'll have forgotten all about the incident, of course, but YOU haven't. God help you, you haven't.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Although the voice is a bit holier-than-thow, parts are hysterical.....and I even own one of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks! LOL! If housewives really made these dishes, how sad! Thank goodness I am not expected to produce a spread like is on the front cover!

And how much photography has advanced in 60 years!

After finishing: became VERY tiresome. As an indicator of 50's gender and family expectations, the research completed for this book is valuable. However, much of this lifestyle was the result of lack of money and women trying to make their lives a bit more beautiful. Yes, photography had not advanced to today's expertise so the food wasn't as delectable-looking as is today's, but one should not mock effort and hard work. Tasteless writing.

[WhatShouldIRead]

I got this book thinking I'd get a whole slew of recipes that should never have been, but alas, what I got was a guy writing snarky and mean-spirited remarks about the foods and advertisements of the time. Does he really think that, for instance, putting ketchup into an ice cream sauce, would be tried by any housewife of that time by simply mooing ahead with the pack to produce these inedible results? That is the impression I got from reading what I did of this ridiculous book.

And when attacking the recipes wasn't enough, the advertisements themselves got the same treatment. I mean, who cares if he thinks the woman's dress matched the tonic bottle? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Maybe I didn't 'get it', and I sure didn't want to keep reading what someone thought was funny.