How to Seduce Your Wife

More from the Seducer's Cookbook (1964)

Pate of chicken livers and pistachio nuts on Melba toast
Celery stuffed with Camembert

Caviar omelette with sour cream and dill
Hot croissants
salad of raw spinach with onion rings

Pears in port

How to Seduce Your Husband

Butterfly crayfish with lemon

Oven-barbecued duckling, Chinese style
sauteed string beans and water chestnuts
Rice with mushrooms and chieves

Sliced oranges in white creme de menthe and coconut

Seduction Do's and Don'ts

Stay away from casseroles

Career girls and hot-plate cooks had better stay away from a few of the cliche meals that men detest. The classic in this department is sherry-sauteed chicken livers (frozen) on buttered Minute Rice with a salad of French-cut string beans (frozen) in a bottled French dressing. Frozen strawberries on vanilla ice cream with ladyfingers are the standard dessert, and in cases like this the wine is always rose... Beware of all casserole concoctions containing some kind of chopped meat, a canned cream soup and a mashed-potato-cheese topping. (I think lady fingers are what the Brits call "petit fours".)

It is better, simpler and cheaper to give him a big bowl of fettucine, stirred up with butter, freshly grated Parmesan cheese and cracked black pepper; or a plateful of scrambled eggs, four slices of crisp bacon and toast; or a large pan-grilled hamburger on a hot roll spread with herb-garlic butter.

Intensive (5 minutes) research on Flickr reveals that what Americans call a casserole is what Brits call a "bake" or even a "loaf" – they look quite thick and hearty, something you cut in slices rather than spoon into a soup bowl. Nothing wrong with that!

Seducer's Pineapple Snow

This is a recipe for making up after a quarrel.

1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 envelope unflavoured gelatin, softened in a little cold water
1 cup grated fresh pineapple
1 egg white, stiffly beaten
Candied violets

Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes and add softened gelatin. Stir until dissolved and let mixture cool. Add pineapple with its juice, mix well and fold in the stiffly beaten egg white. Pour into ice-cube tray and freeze for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until mixture is frozen but not hard. Spoon into parfait glasses and decorate with a few candied violets.

You could use tinned pineapple and instant jelly.

Stuffed Olives from The Seducer's Cookbook

The Seducer's Cookbook came out in 1964 and has some witty line drawings, hints on picking people up in museums, conducting brief affairs, cheating on your husband, making stuffed olives... pretty much everything a girl or chap needs to know. 1964! A golden age before the era of the "self-help" book with its reams of waffle. I mean, what self-help book sorts out your life AND tells you how to stuff olives?

Green Olives Stuffed with Almonds And Anchovies
Buy large pitted green olives, stuff some with whole blanched almonds (one to an olive) and others with anchovy fillets rolled around capers.

Sounds delicious, if fiddly.

Pommes Allumettes
Cut two medium potatoes into thin strips so that they are about the size of wooden matchsticks. Fry in deep hot oil (375 degrees F) until golden and dry looking (5-8 mins). Drain on paper towel. Sprinkle with salt and serve.

Also sounds yummy. Both are recommended for seducing Someone Else's Wife. 1964 was also BF - before feminism. That happened around 1968, remember?

Useful Kitchen Measurements

1 level tablespoon Salt Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

3 level tablespoons Flour Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

2 level tablespoons Rice Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

5 level tablespoons Grated Cheese Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

4 level tablespoons Cocoa Powder Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

1 level tablespoon Honey/Syrup/Jam Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

2 level tablespoons Granulated sugar Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

3 level tablespoons Sifted Icing Sugar Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

6 level tablespoons Fresh breadcrumbs Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

4 level tablespoons Porridge oats Approx. 25 g or 1 oz

Oatmeal and Wholemeal Bread

They were short of flour in World War II, but they had quite a lot of oatmeal which they government tried to persuade people to eat. But now we like oatmeal - it has a low glycaemic index (it stops you feeling hungry), contains lots of fibre, and it isn't wheat! But oatmeal recipes haven't quite caught up. This is from Good Eating, Suggestions for Wartime Dishes, a New Selection of Daily Telegraph Readers' Tested Recipes.

1/2 lb wholemeal flour
6 oz oatmeal
2 tsp cream of tartar (not required if sour milk is used)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
milk and water to mix

Mix dry ingredients. Add enough milk and water to make stiff dough. Work together as quickly as possible with hands and put in floured tin or form into round loaf. Bake in fairly hot oven for about 40 minutes. (Lady Janet Gore, Fyning Combe, Rogate, Petersfield, Hampshire, England)

Instead of sour milk, you can use yoghurt or sour cream. It's probably best eaten hot.