Recipes Of The Damned–Apr. 3, 2000: Raw Beef Sandwich
From The Metropolitan Life Cook Book, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, undated.
I’m not sure how old this booklet is, but I’m guessing it’s from the early part of the twentieth century. I think this because of several factors: the recipe’s recommendation that “meat for this purpose must be government inspected,” implying that many of the other recipes can be prepared with uninspected meat; the list of useful suggestions that includes pointers like “it pays to buy clean food from clean stores” and “food should be kept clean and covered;” and the following temperature gauge guideline.
Slow oven requires 1 burner halfway on.
Moderate oven requires 2 burners halfway on.
Hot oven requires 2 burners on full.
If the oven is equipped with a heat control, follow directions given by the manufacturer.
It must have been quite a shift from such guesswork to the prevalent use of exact numerical temperature measurements. How spoiled we are!
Mentioning things spoiled, of course, reminds me of another thing that strikes me about today’s recipe. Today we have technologically amazing ovens, refrigerators, freezers, and appliances; we have endless selections of carving knives, serving dishes, and even breads. Yet we have a food supply system which cannot be trusted to provide meat that could be eaten raw without risk of disease. It’s not just that we’re more aware of microscopic organisms that can live in raw meat and their harmful effects; it’s that we’re quite aware of such things, even periodically reminded of them by E. coli breakouts, and still we have a federal regulatory system that considers visual examination of commercially processed meat to be satisfactory. Myself, I can’t see germs with my naked eye, although now that I think of it I guess I did see some in a few of the houses I lived in during college. So I sincerely doubt it’s a good idea to fix the Raw Beef Sandwich today, even if it did sound good.
Finally, the recipe is a little confusing. Does the cutting in fancy shapes and toasting happen only to the bread, or to the completed assembled sandwich? If the latter, is it really raw any more?
Raw Beef Sandwich
Scrape beef with dull knife, place between buttered slices of bread. Cut in fancy shapes. Toast in oven. (Meat for this purpose must be government inspected.)
From The Metropolitan Life Cook Book, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, undated.
Side Dishing
The Pickle People
I’m on a mailing list of recipes, Worldwide Recipes. (For information, go to http://www.wwrecipes.com.) Recently they offered a reader request forum, so I ventured to pass on a query sent by a Recipes of the Damned reader: how does one make fried dill pickles? Some days after I sent my request, it turned up in the day’s share of reader queries, and that explained why I had about triple the usual amount of e-mail in my box! I received not only recipes (and I mean that in the plural—several different ways to make fried dill pickles), but tips for making them their best, sauce recipes, restaurant recommendations (apparently in Charlotte, North Carolina, Jack Straws is the place to go for fried dill pickles), web sites on which to find these and other recipes, and requests to pass the recipes along. The list is a truly amazing resource (offering daily recipes, conversion tips, and humor) and the people are kind and helpful. I urge you to try it out. Also, if anyone would like either the recipe list or the URL list, e-mail me and I’ll send it along.
Reader Mail
Thankfully, site readers don’t write me in quite as massive numbers as the pickle people did, but they do write, and it’s time for another review of reader mail. Some correspondents simply identified with the impulse to find and ridicule scary recipes, as one writes:
“I am a professional chef from Florida and just had to write you. Upon viewing some of your recipes, I now know what it was that made me want to do what I do; my mother made some of those crazy dishes and fed them to a very reluctant family, and somehow I knew canned beans, apples, and cheez whiz didn’t really belong together.”
I’m always glad to help people work through their childhood traumas, and glad I didn’t have to go to the trouble of getting a psychology degree to do it.
According to anther reader, the site is also useful for physical self-help as well as psychological; she writes: “I’m using your site as a weight loss tool! 60 lbs gone! I think at 118 I can quit dieting now. But, when I feel the urge to pig I log on.” Perhaps I should add a disclaimer like all the diet-pill ads have? Please, before reading through the archives of Recipes of the Damned, consult your physician!
And finally, the Donut Luncheon menu provoked quite a response, though I’m not sure if it was the same reaction in all readers. I had expected comments like “um……….IEEEWWWWWWWWW!!!!” but not the following, which came from an Australian reader: “I really liked the donuts luncheon main dish and my friends and I made it for the class and they loved it. Thank you!!!!” Remind me not to sign up for that class! I’d like to believe this writer was pulling my leg, but have no way to tell.
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