Two Fabulous Mid Century Mash-Ups: Cooking & Smoking or Food Porn & Cigarettes
Here are two classic bits of stealth advertising by tobacco companies cleverly disguised as lifestyle cookbooks for the sophisticated. Both were published in the face of encroaching bans on any kind of tobacco use, or advertising, anywhere, at any time. These might make a great gift for the right person under the right circumstances, or just look nice in your own kitchen library.
Cookbook #1 is from Benson & Hedges. This edition is from 1980, and features recipes from 32 of the most prestigious restaurants of that era including Windows on the World, the Russian Tea Room, Chesapeake Restaurant, Berns Steakhouse, Brennans, Ma Maison, Frog, Ah Wok, Washington Square Bar and Grill, and my favorite, the old-school Portland standby, Nendels. Each restaurant has a beautifully styled photograph of a plated meal, followed by the recipe itself and a bit of history regarding the restaurant. Great corporate restraint was shown by not employing product placement of their coffin nails with the food porn photos in this book. Instead, these books were meant to play on the sophisticated lifestyle that Benson & Hedges aligned themselves with, ie, a high-style life that included status dining. I doubt that many readers actually tried to cook any of these complicated dishes, but I am pretty sure that they were able to connect the dots between Benson & Hedges and the elite status of the featured dining establishments. Excellent condition. Hardbound, spiralbinding, 4" x 8" pocket sized.
Cookbook #2 is a later entry into this game published by Better Homes and Gardens, through the sponsorship of R. J. Reynolds' NOW brand of "low tar" cigarettes. Folks you gotta know that the B H & G seal is your guarantee of high standards and taste appeal, and this little gem is full of quickies you can whip up in 15-30 minutes. Whether or not you'll be able to actually taste them after smoking up a half pack is another question. NOW was originally introduced in the 70's to compete for the growing female smokers' market (It was no small coincidence that NOW was also the acronym for the National Organization of Women.) But also as a healthy alternative to more established brands that were being associated with cancer. As the 80's came to an end NOW was a faltering brand, and this book was part of Reynold's last big push to try to revive it. That push failed, and even though NOW is still manufactured, it no longer receives any ad support from Reynolds and is basically orphaned. Regardless, "Lowest Calorie Favorites" was a complimentary gift during its time and was geared toward the health conscious female consumer: "Low tar cigarettes brings you low calorie food!" One of their slogans was "There are many reasons to smoke NOW!" 92 pages, nearly 100 recipes, with dozens of full color seductively staged, food porn shots. Excellent condition. Hardbound, spiral binding, 4.5" x 7" pocket sized.
Benson & Hedges' "Entertaining With Style."
Better Homes and Gardens "Favorite Time-Saving Recipes"
The Mid-Century Origins of Food Pornography
When I was flipping hotcakes at a Sambo's Pancake House back in the mid-century era my manager (I'm looking at you Leon) sometimes tried to impart restaurant food wisdom to my foggy mind. One of his firmly held beliefs was that we were first and foremost "Selling the Sizzle" rather than the actual food we served. A 1938 New Yorker article attributes that bit of sublime wordsmanship to a Mr. Elmer Wheeler: "In the 1930's Mr. Wheeler adopted the profession of seducing people in the mass with words including Wheelerpoint No. 1: 'Don’t Sell the Steak—Sell the Sizzle! ....the sizzle has sold more steaks than the cow ever has, although the cow is, of course, mighty important."
Up to that point cookbooks were created with the intent to produce a meal of some reliability and variety. However, around the mid-century a whole new kind of cookbook started popping up that was made for Looking, rather than Cooking! This nascent industry was first documented by Alexander Cockburn in 1979: "True Gastro Porn heightens the excitement and also the sense of unattainability by proffering colored photographs of various completed recipes." Cockburn defined Gastro Porn as a glamorized presentation of food using forms of photography and styling that presents food provocatively, similar to pornographic photography. More importantly he noted that the photographs in this genre "always repress the production process of the meal and are always beautifully lit and touched up." Soon the market was flooded with this new style of cookbook featuring glamor shots of gleaming meals for an audience of eaters who coincidentally seemed to no longer have the time, or desire, to actually cook. This was a generational shift which eventually led to the current norm for younger generations to routinely post visually appealing videos and photos of food and drink across social media: Food Porn was Born and Normalized.
Most of what we have in our Vintage Food Porn section is the early-on-mid-century work of professional pornographers. Better Homes and Gardens was a major contributor to this trend (whether they knew it or not) and we have a constant supply of their myriad iterations of this work along with many other examples. So, pull down the shades, take the phone off the hook, and find a comfortable nook to stretch out in while you browse along with us: https://www.ebay.com/str/portlandpandemonium/Vintage-Food-Porn/_i.html?store_cat=38704219017
We Will Scratch Your Vintage Itch
