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| Pet Milk Company, St. Louis, Mo., 1941 |
The sponsor also brought radio listeners Saturday nights with Jessica Dragonette [they don't make minor celebrity names like they used to!]
The recipes are introduced by Mary Lee Taylor, hostess of Pet's "Radio Demonstrations of better food made at lower cost"—
The text is quite earnest, beginning, "You may be feeling that the word 'party' doesn't fit at all into your world as you find it today." This was published sometime in 1941—I'm assuming it was before Pearl Harbor, and that the remark refers mainly to the Depression.
The introduction continues for a full page, even including words of more than one syllable. It's always impressive—and more than a little depressing—to see how advertisers of the past expected the public to be literate. On the other hand, this is all in the service of claiming the housewife's cooking will be "extra wholesome" as well as thrifty, when she uses "Irradiated Pet Milk which costs less generally than ordinary milk."
The manufacturer's "scientific" pitch goes on to tout the product, "sterilized in sealed cans...as safe as if there were no disease germs in the world. Pet Milk is irradiated, enriched with extra 'sunshine' vitamin D..."
The appeal of the recipes is about as credible as that pitch. They are good old American stodgy: vegetables are rarely mentioned, with occasional exceptions for celery, parsley, or canned mushrooms.
A few recipes are illustrated with unfortunate period color photography—
Even more unfortunate is the small nod to exotic dishes: "[American] Cheese Fondue," and, "Pet Chop Suey." Although the last is frightening—the actual recipe, that is; forget the double entendre—the canned bean sprouts, celery and onions in the ingredients include more vegetables than most other recipes here. But, who needs vegetables, when you can have healthful Irridiated Pet Milk added to absolutely everything?
The recipes and nutritional pitch may seem completely dated. Yet Pet Fudge still makes its appearance at office pot lucks and family holiday dinners throughout the nation.
