The appallingly unappetizing dishes and photography of 50s-70s cookbooks have been choice fodder for mockery for a long time, and it’s easy to see why. The unreal colors produced by the era’s photographic and printing technologies do nothing to help the repellent appearance of mystery meats and bizarre assemblages in aspic. I even keep a few old school cookbooks around solely for the photos—I doubt I’ll ever actually cook too many of these things, as almost everything pictured resembles the symptoms of loathsome diseases, and no recipe with “delight” or “surprise” in its name has ever lived up to its billing. Here are a few exemplary images from my copy of the 1961 edition of Betty Crocker’s New Picture Cookbook (and looking at the asking prices for that book: thank you, mom, for never throwing that away). Unappetizing though these are—I don’t love ham salad, but I also don’t think it’s supposed to put one in mind of an Eldritch Abomination—they’re tame compared to what’s to come below.
 

 

 

 
More—oh you know there’s more—after the jump…