20 Unholy Recipes: Dishes so awful we had to make them

**Aella** · February 18th, 2010, 10:12 AM

20 Unholy Recipes: Dishes So Awful We Had to Make Them

By Nick Lucchesi in List Mania!, Throwback of the House
Tue., Feb. 16 2010 @ 1:26PM

After about a year of perusing old-school cookbooks looking for weird recipes and spotting bizarre trends (hot dogs + eggs, inside a Jell-O mold) from the '50s, food blogger Robin Wheeler compiled her twenty most stomach-turning concoctions. (Do not view this list before lunch. Jeez, or maybe after lunch either. Either way, consider yourself warned.)

We've presented those twenty worst below as a warning to enthusiastic cooks out there: Creativity isn't always a good thing, and in relation to high-quality food porn photos, please consider these pictures the equivalent of a snuff film.

Now, on with the countdown!

20. Aspic Entrées: Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters

From 1953's 500 Tasty Snacks: Ideas of Entertaining. Read about this dish here.

19. Apricot Salad Ruins Teeth, Christmas

Here's a snippet of the recipe: "Boil apricot Jell-O with eight pounds of sugar (approximately) and water. Whip with cream cheese. Consider a welding mask for this job, lest molten Jell-O-cheese fly into your face. Add a giant can of crushed pineapple with syrup, Gerber's and chopped pecans." Read more here, if you dare.

18. "New-Look Cocktail Spreads"

This recipe is from 1967's Perfect Parties by Good Housekeeping magazine. From our original story on these red and green cheese balls: "The recipe instructs that the cheese balls should be rolled in foil, chilled and then coated in dried beef (red) and chopped curly parsley (green). Joke's on you! It'll look nothing like the photos in the cookbook! Good Housekeeping molded the cheese balls in fluted molds and topped them with hairdos of garnish that look like 1970s porn pubes." Read more here.

17. Fruitcake Slices: All the Fun of Fruitcake with None of the Booze

This recipe was pulled from Pillsbury's 1976 Festive Baking for All Seasons: Dunk them Oreo-style in Jack Daniel's -- not just because you need to take the edge off, but because the lack of liquid in the recipe makes the cookies dry as coal. The cherries distract from the dryness with a rubber crunch and a mouthfeel that can come only from a marinade in high-fructose corn syrup. Read more here.

16. Scandinavian Sandwich

The Scandinavian Sandwich in 1972's Better Homes and Gardens' Jiffy Cooking has ingredients from England, America, France and Italy. And it has exactly one thing in common with Scandinavian cuisine. It tastes like flavorless crap. It's char and mush. Read more about this recipe.

15. The "Triple Play Warmer"

The master of all advertising cookbooks, A Campbell's Cookbook: Cooking with Soup, spawned this recipe. The "Triple Play Warmer," like 98 percent of the recipes in the book, wasn't created because it tasted good. It was created to sell as many cans of soup as possible. Read more about this heinous recipe.

14. The Good: Hot Dog Nutty Fritters. The Bad: Hot Dog Salad Dressing

These recipes were pulled from 1968's Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Cookbook and came out not-so-bad and vomit-inducing, respectively. Read more about these recipes here.

13. Reuben Chowder

"I knew I'd hate the Reuben Chowder recipe from 1983's Better Homes and Gardens Soups and Stews Cook Book. Canned corned beef pisses me off almost as much as hunger itself. But as a little experiment, I opted to fast in preparation." Read more about this recipe here.

12. Salmon Rice Casserole

"Thanks to Pyrex Prize Recipes, I'm over it. With its Salmon Rice Casserole recipe, Pyrex hasn't just turned me against my beloved pimiento cheese, but I don't think I'll be able to eat rice, salmon or olives in any form ever again." Read more about this recipe here.

11. Jellied Chicken

This recipe was taken from The Blender Way to Better Cooking -- 200 pages of recipes, all requiring a blender. Enough said. Read more about this recipe here.

10. Vienna Sausage Shortcake

"Leave it to those jackasses at Good Housekeeping to bring Vienna sausages back into my world with their 1967 Keep Cool Cookbook," writes Robin Wheeler about this dish. "The Vienna-Sausage Shortcake involves baking a batch of cornbread, and simmering cream of chicken soup, cheese, green beans, and Vienna sausages. That'll sit just fine in your belly during the dog days." Read more about this recipe here.

9. The Pickle-Stretcher Salad

"Oh, the hilarity of the Pickle Stretcher Salad recipe in 1969's Salads Cookbook! Over 500 salad recipes, and not a one contains fresh vegetables!" writes Robin Wheeler about this recipe. "The Pickle Stretcher Salad gave me the most visceral reaction I have ever had to a food-like item. I love olives, dill pickles and just about anything limey, but combining the three left me with a shiver that wouldn't stop traveling my spine. One bite, and I'm sure I will never, ever forget the texture of slime and crunchy, the taste of ammonia and acid." Read more about stretching your pickle here.

8. Gooey Buns: Not What You'd Think.

"Gooey Buns sound like a yummy breakfast pastry. They're not. Grind bologna, American cheese, mustard, mayo and relish into a paste. Spread inside buttered hot dog buns, wrap in foil, and place in the oven until the buns are stale." Read more about this awful recipe here.

7. "Dad's Denvers"

Take a French roll and spread with deviled ham. If you have a really good relationship with your dad, substitute canned cat food, which is made with higher-quality meat than Satan's pork-meat product. Cook a green onion omelet in bacon fat and place atop the Devil Chow. Top with tomato and broil. Do not serve to dads with heart conditions. Read more about this recipe here.

6. "Circle Pups"

This mustard-covered dish is included in the 1963 edition of Better Homes and Gardens Meals in Minutes, the same bastard that gave us Friday Franks. This time it's Circle Pups, which sounds like something dirty that might happen at a fraternity initiation. Read more about this mustard abomination here.

5. "Crown Roast"

This crown roast tells your family, "I had ten minutes and five dollars to waste on you people. Eat up." It tastes like...hell, does it even matter? It's Treet covered with orange marmalade and baked. It tastes exactly like you think it would taste." Read more about this royal recipe here.

4. "Busy Lady Beefcake"

There were lots of busy ladies in 1966, entering recipes in the 17th annual Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off in hopes of winning the $25,000 grand prize. Read more about this recipe here.

3. Prune Whip

At first glance Prune Whip looks downright dangerous. With its raw whipped egg white folded into cooked prune puree, a kid could die from the combination of salmonella and nature's laxative. Read more about this recipe here.

2. Asparagus-Macaroni Loaf

Meat and bread aren't the only foods suitable for the loaf treatment. In 1968's Favorite Recipes of America - Vegetables, I counted four rings, eight loaves and a mold in its 370 pages. Since it's spring, I opted for the Asparagus-Macaroni Loaf. Read more about this recipe here.

1. "Stellar Sauce"

You know the top spot had to go to a sauce of some sort, especially a sauce with such a promising description as "stellar." The secret to this sauce? Cream of celery soup with melted Gruyère. Read more about this recipe here.

20 Unholy Recipes: Dishes So Awful We Had to Make Them - St. Louis Restaurants and Dining - Gut Check

Check out the links under the pictures, truly gag-worthy.

**McJag** · February 18th, 2010, 10:25 AM

Where did I put the Pepto Bismol??

**KandyKorn** · February 18th, 2010, 10:29 AM

My dog left this on the carpet last week...I didn't realize he had been cooking.

**Aella** · February 18th, 2010, 10:33 AM

These recipes remind me of shit old Bulgarian ladies tried to feed me as a kid. Mayo, pickles and flavourless square Mystery Vegetables on EVERYTHING.

**burnt_toast** · February 18th, 2010, 10:35 AM

those pictures are foul

**twitchy2.0** · February 18th, 2010, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by McJag

Where did I put the Pepto Bismol??

It was probably one of the ingredients.

**sputnik** · February 18th, 2010, 10:40 AM

if you read the blog entries, they are hilarious. and scary. for example, the hot dog nutty fritter is a hot dog stuffed with peanut butter and wrapped in bacon.

also, aspic is pretty much the worst culinary creation mankind has come up with, tied only with spam and any kind of recipe that calls for canned soups. a friend of my grandmother's is permanently stuck in the 50s and still makes this shit. she'll come to my grandma's carrying some gelatinous, jiggly creation in pastel pink, vomit green, pukey orange or some other ungodly hue.

**Aella** · February 18th, 2010, 10:40 AM

The detailed blog posts about cooking those recipes are cracking me out. Check out this quote:

Have you ever taken a skanky old kitchen sponge, wiped it on a counter covered with chicken juice and veggies and then chewed on it? Don't. You can get the same experience by eating Jellied Chicken Loaf, which is slightly safer. Any remaining members of the Gelatin Generation can still enjoy Jellied Chicken Loaf, because it doesn't require things like chewing. Or digesting.

**Dorito_dirtbag** · February 18th, 2010, 10:53 AM

Holy shit, those are amazing.

**shedevilang** · February 18th, 2010, 11:06 AM

well the good news is I am no longer hungry

**sputnik** · February 18th, 2010, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by Aella

The detailed blog posts about cooking those recipes are cracking me out. Check out this quote:

i know. i just went through all of them and laughed my ass off, but now i feel a bit queasy. i also e-mailed the list to my mother because she's going to get a nostalgia kick out of them. i also reminded her of the time she made her own throwback recipe of a dish she used to love when she was growing up in the 50s: sliced banana with mayonnaise and chopped celery.

**McJag** · February 18th, 2010, 11:21 AM

Originally Posted by sputnik

i know. i just went through all of them and laughed my ass off, but now i feel a bit queasy. i also e-mailed the list to my mother because she's going to get a nostalgia kick out of them. i also reminded her of the time she made her own throwback recipe of a dish she used to love when she was growing up in the 50s: sliced banana with mayonnaise and chopped celery.

No! No! No! Tell me that is a joke!!

**sputnik** · February 18th, 2010, 11:24 AM

no it's not. and it really does taste as bad as it sounds. when my mother tasted it she couldn't believe she used to love that shit when she was little. if i remember correctly i think there were chopped walnuts in that as well but i could be mistaken.