Much of the straightforward advice in Julia Child's cookbook is as relevant and reliable today as it was when her book, *Mastering the Art of French Cooking*, was first published in 1961. One exception? Her insistence that washing raw chicken is "the safest thing to do." It has since been shown to spread bacteria, including salmonella and campylobacter, through infected water droplets that travel up to half a meter from the sink. The final piece of advice is to avoid the practice altogether.

Never put salmon in the moonlight.

The advice in Amelia Simmons's book, American Cookery (1796), applies not only to cooking but also to storing and purchasing ingredients. In the preface, Simmons noted that one should only buy beef that has been brought to market in wagons and not in bags "that fly about on a sweating horse." She also said that salmon—"the finest and richest fish caught in fresh water"—is best after four days out of the water only if it is "protected from the heat and the moon, which have more harmful effects than the sun."

Use eel to make flan.

In 1393, the medieval household manual Le Ménagier de Paris, sometimes known as The Good Wife's Guide, summarized the everyday excesses of the period. Its advice, written from the perspective of an elderly husband, ranged from tips for hiring servants to tricks for hosting sumptuous banquets. Meanwhile, one of its 14th-century tricks was to make a sweet flan using pounded eel meat boiled with saffron and sugar.

Making Pizza on a Bagel

We had a love affair with all things Italian in the '90s. Pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar were just a few of the ingredients that became pantry staples, but the idea of authenticity hadn't yet taken root. We introduced the pizza bagel, topped with store-bought sauce and stretchy mozzarella. The perfect after-school snack or a culinary aberration? You decide.

Beat the cake mix for two hours.

Before the invention of the electric mixer, baking a cake was a difficult task. In her 1747 book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, author Hannah Glass recommended taking two hours to gather all the ingredients needed for a seed cake. The recipe called for 35 eggs, fine flour, and double-refined sugar. After all that beating, it was just a matter of putting the cake in the oven for three hours.

Sprinkle baking soda over raw cheese.

In 1896, Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cookbook revolutionized home cooking. This book was the first to introduce step-by-step instructions and standard measurements, becoming an instant bestseller. But not all of its precepts have stood the test of time. "Cheese is difficult to digest in its raw state," she noted. "This is somewhat controlled by cooking it and adding a small amount of baking soda."

Microwave your cereal.

The title of Marie T. Smith's 1986 cookbook, Microwave Cooking for One, is so obscure that it has appeared several times in pop culture, including on the American television comedy series The Mindy Project. Smith's recipes for blueberry pie and French toast ushered in the mug cake era, decades before the trend became fashionable. However, on the downside, she also recommended microwaving cornflakes and milk until warm.

Start your day with a clam frappé.

Despite Fannie Farmer's sometimes unconventional advice, her 1896 Boston Cooking-School cookbook became a classic. A version called The Fannie Farmer Cookbook wasn't published until 1990. Many of her ideas were ahead of their time, and she championed everything from coconut butter to frappé coffees—or, if you prefer something savory, a clam frappé made with half a dozen boiled clams and 3 tablespoons of water. Go Starbucks!

Serve the fried eggs on lettuce.

"I think this variation is, in a way, like a little culinary joke," said Nigella Lawson of the infamous Caesar salad she created on her show Simply Nigella in 2015. This recipe was a little easier and much less appealing. It involved grilling half a romaine lettuce and topping it with a runny fried egg. Separate toast was optional.

Browned Beef with Worcestershire Sauce

Although invented years ago, it wasn't until the 1980s that the microwave became a kitchen staple. A whole new world of simple recipes opened up for home cooks, but traditional roasting presented a problem. How to brown beef without an oven? Gail Duff's solution in her 1984 book Microwave Cookery was to simply brush the meat with a combination of Worcestershire sauce and mushroom ketchup. What a Delicious?

Assist peanut butter with your steak.

Celebrity memoirs never disappoint when it comes to interesting cooking tips, but few are as eccentric as Elizabeth Taylor's Elizabeth Take-Off. In 1988, the Hollywood star revealed that she started her day with a mixture of cottage cheese and sour cream on fruit and enjoyed a peanut butter and steak sandwich for dinner. She also favored unexpected flavor combinations when it came to burgers, serving them with a generous portion of peanut butter.

Bake an apple pie without apples.

Necessity was the mother of invention during the Depression, when money and fresh produce were scarce. For the savvy marketers behind Ritz crackers, it also represented opportunity. A recipe for “Mock Apple Pie” that appeared on the side of a box of crackers in the 1930s became popular during the war years. The apples were not harmed during the making of this dessert. The filling consisted of nothing more than crushed Ritz crackers, water, cream of tartar, lemon, and cinnamon.

Include ice cream in two meals a day.

A potentially dangerous trend emerged in the 1940s: abstinence advice. The advice to stay slim in the mid-20th century was unconventional, to say the least, but sometimes surprisingly appealing. You'll have no trouble guessing what advice Marion White's 1946 book, Ice Cream Diets, was based on. That's right: add scoops of ice cream to two meals a day. Its pages also included "healthy diets for the social person" and ways to "diet at the soda fountain."

Injecting the lamb with hypodermic needles.

Alice B. Toklas wrote her eponymous cookbook, now titled Murder in the Kitchen, published in 1954. Interesting and unconventional, it combined recipes with insights into the author's life with his partner, Gertrude Stein. The most popular recipes to grace the pages were Toklas's spiced fudge ('a fun refresher for the ladies' bridge club') and 'gigot de la Clinique'. This leg of lamb was marinated for a week, with no mention of refrigeration, and was injected daily with a hypodermic needle containing cognac and orange juice.

Make Eggs Newlywed (Benedict) with Bananas

We have McCall's Great American Recipe Collection to thank for the more outlandish cooking tips that emerged in the 1970s. What could possibly make someone want to try making Eggs Benedict with bananas instead of English muffins? This dish, called Ham and Banana Hollandaise, makes six meals: two servings of baked bananas topped with hollandaise sauce. No, thank you.

Making Mashed Potatoes with Chips (crips)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the 1980s were a time ripe for questionable culinary advice. Crispy food was also a typical trend of this decade. According to Cooking With Crisps, mixing crushed potato chips with mashed potatoes creates the perfect crunchy coating for fishcakes. If you decide to follow the latest book, Potato Chips: 101 Recipes with Potato Chips, the snacks can also be incorporated into delicious home-cooked dishes like crispy chicken salad.

Top your salad with Jell-O.

No one presents culinary fails like Betty Crocker, the fictional home cook conceived by the Washburn Crosby Company. In the mid-20th century, dinner parties weren't complete without some of her exquisite creations. One of her greatest achievements—a monstrous Jell-O centerpiece made with pineapple, cream cheese, cream, and celery, all inside a lime Jell-O mold—was published in the 1982 Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook.

Beat eggs to test their freshness.

Tips on how to shop for ingredients were common in early cookbooks, including Richard Briggs's 1788 The English Art of Cookery. The one-time chef at London's Globe Tavern and Temple Coffee House advised that 'you should put the thick end of your tongue in to choose the right eggs.' It was said that warm eggs were fresh, and cold eggs were stale – but unless the eggs had just been laid, it's hard to say how this technique worked.

Boiled Cucumber

Crudités are another unintentional staple that earned Elizabeth Taylor the treatment she received in her book, "Elizabethan Takeoff." Cucumbers weren't served raw, but peeled, sliced, seasoned with dill, salt, and lemon pepper, and boiled "until slightly crisp." Taylor also set aside one day a week to indulge her wildest culinary fantasies: something more traditional like sundae with hot fudge sauce followed by a whole pizza.

Roasting and stuffing cow udders.

The 19th-century cookery manual, *The Cook and Housewife's Manual: A Practical System of Modern Home Cooking and Family Management*, mentions considerable use of eyebrow enhancement for cow udders. "Beef udders can be boiled, sliced, and served with tomato or onion sauce," it noted. "Salted udders are eaten cold with oil and vinegar. They should be boiled very slowly."

Fry eggs in butter.

Richard Briggs's 1788 book, The English Art of Cookery, contains many ideas on how to cook eggs. However, while creations like the omelet with buttered eggs and Parmesan on toast might look like something out of a modern cookbook, "eggs round like fried balls" are a bit further removed from today's brunch staple. These unusual delicacies were fried in clarified butter, left to rest for half an hour, and then garnished with Seville orange slices.

Cooking radium chocolate.

Although the mid-20th century saw great advances in cooking, some foods remained downright dangerous. Between 1931 and 1936, the German company Burke & Brown promoted and exported radium chocolate (chocolate made with radium-laced water). Incredibly, this highly radioactive confection (eaten in squares or melted in hot chocolate) was said to have miraculous rejuvenating powers.

Use catnip as an aphrodisiac.

By the mid-18th century, aphrodisiacs were already on the menu. In 1742, Eliza Smith's The Complete Housewife became the first cookbook printed in America, having debuted in London nearly 20 years earlier. Its soups, puddings, pies, and preserves became American staples. However, its pages also contain a number of medicines and ointments, including an unlikely tonic to "promote growth": three pints of good beer with catnip, dates, raisins, and three whole nutmeg seeds.

Let your meat soften.

Who better to ask for culinary advice than French chef Guillaume Tirel, one of the founders of haute cuisine? His famous 14th-century recipe collection, Le Viandire, transformed feasting at the French court and had a lasting influence on French cuisine. Yet its pages recommend roasting peacocks and geese and keeping the cooked meat for up to a month. Simply remove the mold and you'll find something white, beautiful, and solid underneath.

Frying is one of the worst ways to cook food, as it bathes it in oxidized fats, denatured proteins, and glycosylated sugars. The high temperatures used during frying produce several toxic compounds that can increase the risk of cancer.

What is slow cooking?

It means making smart or clever adjustments that make cooking faster and easier. Think of it as pandemic 2.0: good, healthy eating simplified. It involves sheet pan dinners, pressure cookers, and any meal you can make in one pot. It potentially involves fewer steps and fewer ingredients.

What does Generation Z understand by pika?

Generation Z loves to mix and match words, which makes "cooked" a versatile term. It's used humorously to describe unsolvable situations or to call out someone who's made a mistake.

Summary

The Worst(vilest) Cooking Advice of All Time

Tags:

Related Posts

Comments ( 0 )

Leave a Reply

Popular Posts

Categories

Random Posts

Tags