"Meals for Small Families"

I've been gifted an old recipe book with the above title, printed in Chicago in 1929. It has charming endpapers and chapter heads by Eleanore Mineah Hubbard who seems to have been a popular children's book illustrator of the time although I can't find anything about her.

The book is clearly aimed at the young married woman "cooking in a kitchenette" and the picture provides the social context: inexperienced young wife struggling to provide a piping-hot meal to place in front of her new husband when he gets home from his humdrum office job. (No kids yet, just a Scottie.)  Husband sits at linen-draped table, still in suit and tie, wife looks smart too, in heels,  and gift wrapped  by a big bow in her apron - she must not look sweaty and frazzled. Crockery and cutlery dance  congratulatory jigs in the corners.

What has she been slaving over all day to present to her man? She's holding a big steaming pie so that's OK but another offering might not be so enthusiastically received - unless intended to be suggestive!

CANDLESTICK SALAD
For each person allow one slice of canned pineapple placed on a lettuce leaf. Put one half a banana in the center, pour a little mayonnaise at one end to represent the wax running down, with a small piece of red cherry for the flame, Use orange peel or green pepper for the handle.
(Additional instructions recommend marinating the salad in a French dressing for 'an hour or two' in the ice-box.)

Imagine trying to get banana halves to stand upright on  lettuce leaves in a pool of gunk. Then balancing a cherry on top...


It will be another 20 years before Simone de Beauvoir writes The Second Sex, 34 before Betty Friedan trains a searchlight on women's political and economic status in the USA in The Feminine Mystique. By which time the wife will have raised a family, the husband may have gone to war and will they still be together sharing candlestick salad? I suspect not.