The Old-School Rice Cookbook From The '60s That Had Some Questionable Recipes

The '60s were an experimental time in the United States, and recipes were as whimsical and eye-brow raising as cultural phenomena like free love and psychedelic rock. Common '60s recipes featured everything from unusual Jell-O flavors like celery and mixed vegetables for making savory Jell-O salads to dips made with soup packets. Of course, rice has been a staple for centuries, but that didn't stop an old-school work called Miss Fluffy's Rice Cookbook from coming up with some pretty outlandish recipes.

While today you can find dozens of different types of rice, Miss Fluffy's list of "types of rice" consists of white, brown, parboiled, and pre-cooked. But the outdated list is nothing compared to the dubious savory and sweet rice recipes to follow. Since Jell-O was a trendy ingredient, you can find gelatinized recipes like shrimp and rice mousse and frozen strawberry rice pie in the cookbook. The rice mousse tosses cooked rice, mayonnaise, heavy cream, and cold boiled shrimp with a packet of gelatin for a jiggly main course. The strawberry rice pie follows the same general format by mixing cooked rice in with heavy cream, cream cheese, frozen strawberries, sugar, and gelatin before adding it to a store-bought pie shell. Other questionable recipes include a Pink 'N Pretty rice parfait and a rice and cranberry relish.

Though you might want to leave gelatinized rice mouse or a rice parfait dessert in the '60s, other recipes in Miss Fluffy's Rice Cookbook remain classic favorites, while other questionable recipes are worth trying. For example, rice salads (like the Golden Rice salad recipe) toss rice with hard boiled eggs, diced veggies, pickles and olives in a creamy and tangy salad dressing. Considering how delicious pasta, couscous, and potato salads are, a rice salad is destined for success.

Another interesting set of recipes converts potato recipes to rice, like the rice au gratin that layers the grain with cheese, cream, cut bread cubes before baking it into a casserole. Despite the obvious carb explosion, a cheesey, creamy rice casserole sounds pretty good! Yet another potato dupe recipe is hash brown rice, which simply mixes the grain with a bit of flour, milk, butter, and onions to fry in a skillet.

Most of the recipes call for grains that are already cooked, which opens up even more doors for using up leftovers. If you're tired of making different iterations of fried rice, for example, you can incorporate it into a crowd-pleasing casserole or stuff it into beefy cabbage rolls. The sky is the limit!