Why Perfection Salad?

One of my many obsessions is collecting old cookbooks, especially the ones with scary, Technicolor pictures of dishes made with scary combinations of ingredients. I would never go all Julie and Julia and attempt to make them, I just love reading them. Something about them conjures up the notion of a time when Mom spent all day trying to come up with new and exciting things to feed her adoring family. This was not my home. My Mom worked all day, went to school at night and expected us to feed ourselves from an early age. This was actually a good thing because my mother, with all of her many gifts, is a terrible cook. She is the anti-McGuyver of the kitchen, taking recognizable foods and combining them in such a way that they form nonfood-like structures.

But I digress…

Another unfulfilled dream I have is to actually decorate my house. The plan for the kitchen was to comb through my cookbook collection to find pictures we could color copy and frame to hang on the walls. I got about 10 minutes into this project before I got totally distracted reading. In Better Homes and Gardens, Jiffy Cooking, c. 1967 I discovered something called Perfection Salad, a revolting concoction involving lemon jell-o and a can of sauerkraut, garnished prettily in the picture with a carrot curl and black olive floret.

I wondered if this recipe was unique to this cookbook or if other homemakers had been asked to inflict this torture on their unsuspecting families so I combed through some other cookbooks. Sure enough, there was Perfection Salad. The recipe varied, sometimes calling for unflavored gelatin and lemon juice, sometimes shredded cabbage instead of sauerkraut, occasionally calling for the cook to put the mayonnaise directly in the salad instead of on the side but always… perfection.

Another treasure from my trip though Post War Boom American Cuisine was a chapter of "Tips for the Homemaker" with a cheery picture of a housewife using all five of her arms to offer up delicious treats. Who knew there was a Hindu Goddess of Housework?

The look on her face was so utterly gratified and fulfilled, it occurred to me she must have achieved Perfection Salad. Forty-some years later, we're all adult grandnieces of codependent rageaholics, totally possessed with the pursuit of but completely unable to achieve such a gelatin nirvana. But I keep trying. The fruits of my efforts will be archived here, mostly recipes, but I predict some rantings about food and restaurants and all things gastronomic will show up from time to time.