Jun 8th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Learn to Cook With the Republican Politicians of the Roaring Twenties
Dave Noon somehow unearthed Google Books’ copy of an extremely amusing 1922 volume titled The Stag Cookbook: Written for Men by Men, teaching the men of the roaring twenties how to cook without turning gay. One recipe offers Warren G. Harding’s waffles and over you can learn about Senator Reed Smoot’s peach cobbler recipie. And, yes, that’s Senator Smoot from the Smoot-Hawley tariff.
34 Responses to “Learn to Cook With the Republican Politicians of the Roaring Twenties”
Register
RSSLogin
Advertisement
Visit Our Affiliated Sites
Books By Matthew Yglesias
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Abortion
Afghanistan
Basketball
Blanche Lincoln
Budget
China
climate
Congress
Crime
DC
Demographics
Economics
Economy
Energy
Environment
EU
Finance
Football
Gender
Health Care
History
Inequality
International Law
International Relations
Iran
Israel
Media
Monetary Policy
National Security
NATO
NBA
Palestine
Political Reform
Public Health
Public Opinion
Race
Regulation
Russia
Sarah Palin
Sports
Stimulus
taxes
Technology
Trade
transportation
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Contact Matthew Yglesias
Use this form to contact blog author Matthew Yglesias.
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
June 8th, 2009 at 8:38 am
I believe “peach cobbler” was just a euphemism for “trade war” in the ’30s.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Mmmm . . . ceach pobbler.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Chipped beef gravy on his waffles? Harding’s a wild man!
June 8th, 2009 at 8:49 am
That’s Hoot-Smalley to you, Workout Boy!
June 8th, 2009 at 9:02 am
“Extremely amusing” understates the case considerably. Hereafter whenever the name of William Jennings Bryan is mentioned, I will think first of the “Cross of Gold” speech, second of the Scopes Trial, and third, of the man’s fondness for onion rings.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:09 am
I especially like Joshua A. Hatfield’s prodigious collection of various foods “à l’Alexander.”
June 8th, 2009 at 9:11 am
There’s some interesting dialect attributed to so and so’s “wonderful colored housekeeper” and the like in there. Right at home in today’s Republican party.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Also, a radish salad from Jules Jusserand, the recipe for which is really a non-recipe, and that somehow explains on one short page the “Bench” which makes for the most enigmatic memorial in Rock Creek Park.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Sweet lord, this is a gift. Please, please do yourself the favor of reading page 31, Meredith Nicholson’s fine contribution:
It gets much better — and much worse — from there.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:21 am
see page 52, where Dr. Charles M. Sheldon writes,
“A recipe of my favorite dish is very simple – bread and milk with American cheese broken into it. I eat this dish once a day every day and find it wholesome and nourishing. It does not require any skillful putting together, simply a good appetite and a taste for that sort of provender. If there is an apple pie anywhere around to top it off with, I do not despise that.”
June 8th, 2009 at 9:28 am
This is absolute gold. I just stumbled on the following in John A. Moroso’s recipe for Spaghetti-for-the-Gang:
A clove of garlic tucked in with the seasoning goes well, if you have Wop ancestry. Pale people use onions. But surely one or the other.
Surely! Or Booth Tarkington’s recipe for… corn flakes?
My favorite dish is corn flakes. They should be placed in a saucer or hollow dish, then lifted in both hands and rolled for a moment, then dropped back into the dish. After that an indefinite quantity of cream should be poured on them. They should be eaten with a spoon. I don’t know how to prepare anything else for the table.
Charlie Chaplin. Eddie Cantor. John Philip Sousa?! Well, my morning just disappeared; off to continue romping through our forefathers’ testosterone-infused cuisine…
June 8th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Smoot is of course famous for the tariffs, but perhaps he should be better known as the subject of Ogden Nash’s fine poem on the subject of his other obsession; the crusade against salacious literature.
Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.)
Is planning a ban on smut.
Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.
And his reverend occiput.
Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
Grit your molars and do your dut.,
Gird up your l__ns,
Smite h_p and th_gh,
We’ll all be Kansas
By and by.
Smite, Smoot, for the Watch and Ward,
For Hiram Johnson and Henry Ford,
For Bishop Cannon and John D., Junior,
For ex-Gov. Pinchot of Pennsylvunia,
For John S. Sumner and Elder Hays
And possibly Edward L. Bernays,
For Orville Poland and Ella Boole,
For Mother Machree and the Shelton pool.
When smut’s to be smitten
Smoot will smite
For G-d, for country,
And Fahrenheit.
Senator Smoot is an institute
Not to be bribed with pelf;
He guards our homes from erotic tomes
By reading them all himself.
Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
They’re smuggling smut from Balt. to Butte!
Strongest and sternest
Of your s_x
Scatter the scoundrels
From Can. to Mex!
Smite, Smoot, for Smedley Butler,
For any good man by the name of Cutler,
Smite for the W.C.T.U,
For Rockne’s team and for Leader’s crew,
For Florence Coolidge and Admiral Byrd,
For Billy Sunday and John D., Third,
For Grantland Rice and for Albie Booth,
For the Woman’s Auxiliary of Duluth,
Smite, Smoot,
Be rugged and rough,
Smut if smitten
Is front-page stuff.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I enjoyed this instruction from Joe Tilden’s bouillabaisse:
Now have the Eighteenth Amendment repealed and add to the mixture one cup of White Wine…
June 8th, 2009 at 9:44 am
John Philip Sousa?
He apparently was in the habit of boiling his spaghetti for twenty minutes. I would’ve imagined the composer of such strong and masculine marches to be more of an al dente kind of guy.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:49 am
When I first saw this, I thought it was some bizarre book recently published. 1922!? Well, that explains a lot.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Oh wow, this is gold. In addition to those mentioned above: Houdini, Rube Goldberg, Booth Tarkington, Jerome Kern, Charlie Chaplin… I may actually have to make some of these.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:07 am
You can read Capt. Edward Salisbury’s recipe for his famous eggs a la Salisbury, but nothing for the steak a la Salisbury? (Maybe that one isn’t yet in the public domain?)
June 8th, 2009 at 10:08 am
…and there’s now one less copy available on eBay. Thanks for the tip!
June 8th, 2009 at 10:10 am
That’s Hoot.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I like the precise cooking instructions: “Cook slowly until you can’t stand it anymore . . .” Great find. Thanks Matt.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Charles Steinmetz FTW. AC current and a meatloaf for the ages.
Beef, veal, and pork… bacon… celery salt (to those who love Chicago dogs, you know)… lots of butter… cream gravy. Paula Dean weeps that she didn’t think of this first.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:45 am
That “Editor’s Note” to Smoot’s recipe is hilarious.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:45 am
that was moot-smally.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:00 am
[...] to Google books and via Yglesias, find out how to be manly, sated, and presidential in a 1920s sort of way with the 1922 The [...]
June 8th, 2009 at 11:05 am
He apparently was in the habit of boiling his spaghetti for twenty minutes. I would’ve imagined the composer of such strong and masculine marches to be more of an al dente kind of guy.
The spaghetti of our conservative ancestors was made of sterner, more resolute stuff and required longer boiling. This changed when Roosevelt created the WPA (Weak Pasta Administration) in 1935, ushering in the era of mushy, liberal macaroni.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
For a real treat, try
The White House Cookbook My mom has a copy or two, and it’s well worth the nostalgia. Even the “American Toast” recipe shows that anti-French sentiment has been around more than a hundred years.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Twenty minutes for boiling pasta is nothing. Another spaghetti recipe in the book recommends boiling it for an hour……..yes, an hour. Then again, that’s probably how they made spaghetti in the Groton dining hall circa 1880, so our authors thought that that’s how it was done.
June 8th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I especially enjoy how many of the recipes say “I don’t actually know how to make this, but it’s really good” or words to that effect.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
“Also, a radish salad from Jules Jusserand, the recipe for which is really a non-recipe, ”
There are at least 5 different non-recipe “recipes” in the book: Jules Jusserand’s declaration that radish salad is really tasty (ok…….but how do I actually make one?), the idiotic Sheldon bread+milk+cheese glop, Tarkington’s meditation on corn flakes, Irvin S. Cobb’s idea that stating the name of a dish is a recipe and William Johnston’s raw oyster feed. With that level of competition, even Houdini’s and Chaplin’s mediocre concoctions sound great.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
My favorite recipe from this is Montague Glass’s for bouillabaisse. I wouldn’t dream of following the recipe since it sounds half remembered, but the guy has obviously eaten it — Booth Tarkington’s recipe for corn flakes shares this distinction — and liked it, and he has a taste for the finer things. He knows wine and Paris and books and seems almost modern in his attitudes.
June 8th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Bonus tidbit: Dr. Charles M. Sheldon, who likes bread and milk, came up with “What Would Jesus Do?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sheldon
June 8th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
In addition to the famous names mentioned above, you guys missed a few.
John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., of Battle Creek, Michigan and breakfast cereal fame.
Will Hays, of the film industry’s Hays Code.
Thomas Ince, film director and famous murder victim.
Stephen Vincent Benét, author of “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”
Luther Burbank, the botanist.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Another contributor: Bruce Barton, a founder of the major ad agency (BD&O, later BBDO). He also wrote the best-selling The Man Nobody Knows about Jesus Christ, portraying him as a salesman and businessman. WWJD indeed. Food related, wiki says he created “Betty Crocker”.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
how to cook without turning gay
this find was a bit late for Messrs Yglesias and Klein