The other day, I happened upon this little horror show of an article, about the long-running column, “Can this Marriage Be Saved?” in Ladies Home Journal. The 1950s issues of the column were real beauties, mostly counseling women that it was their fault when their husbands acted like jerks. (If you don’t find the advice in the old articles disturbing, just read the comments, since clearly they’re written by your kind of people.) Anyway, I later found this academic article from the Journal of Social History, about what 1950s cookbooks have to say about the women who read them. The author, Jessamyn Neuhaus, is careful to point out that there’s a big difference between what these cookbooks suggest and how those suggestions were received, and, in fact, part of her argument is that 1950s housewives were probably more subversive than most people give them credit for. Even so, it’s hard not to read some of these lines and cringe, and I think it’s fair to say that whoever wrote these cookbooks probably wouldn’t be too impressed with my performance in the kitchen. Here’s why:

1.  I do not demonstrate adequate fondness for Jell-O.
Nothing against Jell-O Jigglers, which I always found kind of awesome, but these cookbooks would have you believe that you could survive on Jell-O alone. Neuhaus calls it a “fantasy food” that could be transformed into anything, and believe me, they tried. Tuna and Jell-O Pie, anyone? Jellied Tomato Refresher? Or how about the delicious Lime Cheese Salad, which involved putting lime Jell-O and cottage cheese into a mold and then filling the center with seafood salad?!

2. I have never felt the desire to throw a themed dinner party.
Apparently, 1950s cookbook authors thought it was a scream to stage things like a “Hawaiian company dinner” or a neighborhood party where “everyone on the block is dressed for the hoe-down,” (though I would sort of like to witness the bafflement on my West Indian neighbors faces if I really tried to sell that hoedown idea). I think the closest I got to a themed dinner party was in my early twenties when my college boyfriend threw a Food that Will Get You Drunk party, mostly to showcase some whiskey-drenched chicken wings that someone wanted to make. A vegetarian, I found it more expedient to stick to mixing cocktails.

3. I have a husband who can actually cook.
My favorite quote from Nussbaum’s article was from a cookbook that suggested that if you have to leave to, say, nurse a sick neighbor, you should leave your husband a note to get him through this ordeal: “40 minutes before dinnertime, turn on oven to 425 degrees. Take chicken dinners out of freezer. Package directions tell what to do. Slice tomatoes and arrange on lettuce leaves (both are in the crisper drawer—bottom right-hand side of refrigerator).” Despite Jason’s peculiar penchant for stir-frying radishes and his goal of putting every spice in the kitchen into the same dish, that man can definitely find a crisper drawer. In our case, probably by smell alone.

4. I don’t keep a 3-way mirror in the kitchen.
Here’s a gem of a quote from the General Foods cookbook about those pesky husbands wanting to eat in front of the TV:  ‘If… he wants to eat dinner cum television every night, you had better look to your dinners, or yourself, very quickly indeed. It is hoped that the recipes in this book will help take care of any dinner deficiencies for a while. As for any deficiencies in your dinner-self which a full-length, 3-way mirror may disclose, you can do something about those too. In fact, you had better.”

I like to cook and eat in my pajamas. Enough said.