Before Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet hit the airwaves there was Mary Margaret McBride. Well, kinda sorta - Mary Margaret McBride really was not a cook. MMM was a popular radio personality from 1935 to 1955. So why am I talking about her? Well, to me Mary Margaret McBride is synonymous with the Encyclopedia of Cooking - 1536 pages of recipes, how to carve and how to set a proper table. This book is THE cookbook to get if you want a glimpse into 1950s/1960s food. Apparently in the late 1950s and early 1960s you could purchase a section to this vast encyclopedia and assemble it week by week. Our version is from 1961, but over the years I purchased the 1959 edition as well. So why is this book such a bid deal? The illustrations provide a glimpse into how chickens and turkeys appeared prior to all the engineering in the last 40 years, how marbled beef once was and what was once considered 'exotic' is accepted today. And on top of it - the recipes really are great. If you only had one cookbook this is the one to have - forget all the trendy crap you find in books by the Food Network celebrities.
And if you are fortunate enough to have that Frigidaire Flair unit - then this is what you want next to it. Oh, and she is who the "Mary Margaret McMertz" character was based on in I Love Lucy.
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