Betty Crocker's Bisquick Cook Book - 1956

Whenever I find something special on my travels, I like to share it here on the Internet, with you, my imaginary Internet friends. Some of you will get a special thrill from today's look backwards—to 1956 to be exact—when housewives and their husbands couldn't wait to try out everything Bisquick had to offer, be it baked meat sandwiches, pizza boats, sugar buns, or butter sticks.

Along with the standard pancakes, waffles, and coffee cake, General Mills touted Bisquick as "A Whole World of Baking...in a box!" And I think you'll agree. I found this booklet in the free box at the Mystic Landfill in Connecticut, where I often discover items that time forgot.

I used to collect these give-away cookbooks from the 30s through 50s but they're getting harder to find as they disintegrate and molder away. This is a nice full-color cover of an impressively carb-heavy array of foods. Note the corn dogs—a staple of the American diet that's not going away any time soon.

The end paper features a tantalizing selection of foodstuffs. I think the Baked Meat Pie is most intriguing. The pizza boat—the most uh...suggestive.

Close-up views.

Unfortunately, butter sticks are not what you think: fried and battered sticks of butter, but rather some kind of biscuit variation back when butter was considered a fine ingredient for all. The baked meat sandwich looks like something out of a David Lynch film, doesn't it? All that...topping. Pizza boats would make a fine contemporary art installation, but are not sexual at all, just because they consist of wieners nestled in an envelope of fruit-shortcake dough, then smothered in ketchup. A novel interpretation of what constitutes pizza.

Here's some recipes to try.  Don't forget to wear your apron!