I’m writing a book on the history of barbecue in America, and for research I’m looking through the Better Homes and Gardens Barbecue Book from 1965.  A couple of thoughts about the book:

-In the steak section, they call for maybe three pounds of steak to be cooked, and the pictures show it as a single three pound steak being cooked.  It’s insane—I’ve never seen a single piece of steak that size.  Obviously, this is from back when you went to the butcher and they cut the steak to whatever size you want.

-A number of recipes call for spiced crab apples, which I’ve never heard of.  A Google search shows recipes on canning spiced crab apples, so it’s certainly possible to do, but it’s another example of foods that are vanishing, or have vanished, from American tables.  Of course, sometimes the recipes they’re used in are a little sketchy: the book I’m looking through calls for them to be used along with chunks of canned luncheon meat (I’m assuming that means Spam) and preserved kumquats, on skewers, grilled on the grill, and then glazed with a glaze made from crab-apple syrup (another thing I’ve never heard of) and brown sugar.  I can’t quite wrap my mind around what all that would taste like.