One of my favorite vintage things are menus. Home entertaining dinner menus to be exact. Drinks, two or three appetizers, main course, salads, breads, desserts, it's all there and in high numbers. For whatever reason, I just find it fascinating. Maybe because I make a meat, a vegetable and one other thing, bada bing bada boom and I'm out of the kitchen. lol Or could just be because it all looks so fancy.
At any rate, I was watching a collection of Christmas shorts by the guys at RiffTrax and one of the shorts was "Three Magic Words" from 1939, created to promote pork. In it, "Mrs. Newlywed" has to make a dinner for her husband and guests and for some reason has no clue what animal pork comes from. (?!) But get past her crazy high pitched wailing and you've got a cutesy short with a ridiculously long menu for a woman who thinks pork comes from sheep. I immediately grabbed a screen print of it:
Now is that a menu or is that a MENU??? I just love it although I admit I had no clue what the heck half of it was. I figured out that the "paprika lettuce" was just lettuce with the ends dipped in paprika. But celery stuffed with Braunschweiger and Cervelat Cornucopias filled with cream cheese mixed with butter? I had no clue. I couldn't find the specific recipes for these but I did find out that Braunschweiger is liverwurst and Cervelat is sausage and my chest immediately started to hurt. Although, I might have to try that sausage stuffed with cream cheese and butter. Sure, I'll probably die but I bet it tastes good. :P
If you're interested, I found the entire short, unriffed, on You Tube, enjoy...and eat more pork! ;)
