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One thing that struck me about a lot of these is that there is an assumption that the reader has more culinary knowledge than a reader today might have. For a jellied tea salad to turn out well, it would help to be familiar with aspic molds, for instance. I am guessing they assumed that the average reader would have learned basic garde manger skills in their home economics courses?

Julia Lee Wright was the director of the "Safeway Homemakers' Bureau", a kind of home economics promotional vehicle sponsored by Safeway grocery stores. Her real name was Julia Perrin Hindley. She also had a segment on the radio show, "Woman's Magazine of the Air" that was on NBC, but I haven't found any recordings. After she retired in 1964, the Julia Lee Wright name was apparently given to someone else, making it more resemble a Betty Crocker mascot situation. They did do a feature on her in her sorority bulletin, though.

Not a Seven Sisters article, but rather one from a 1937 Esquire, a popular men's magazine. I think that the tone with which it talks about tea and tea-drinkers helps frame the context for how tea was viewed in the U.S. and why so much of the tea-culture was concentrated in certain places rather than others.

mbanu wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 10, 2021 1:40 pm

I think that the tone with which it talks about tea and tea-drinkers helps frame the context for how tea was viewed in the U.S. and why so much of the tea-culture was concentrated in certain places rather than others.

Though I thought I would only read a few bits here and there, I ended up reading it top to bottom. That was a very entertaining read in several ways, some of which even had to with tea...

A 1961 "Constant Comment" ad from Better Homes and Gardens. Constant Comment is interesting in that as far as I can tell it was never focused on in these magazines, as they mostly talked about spicing the tea yourself with clove-studded lemons, ginger, etc., but Constant Comment was always in the background. I think that it has drawn more prominence because it is a survivor of the classic American tea era, making it more distinctive today than it was maybe in 1961. (It is still available loose through their website, if anyone is curious.)

A lidless tea-kettle from 1948. I'm not sure if it was intended this way, but in hindsight this seems a bit like a war of attrition; "If this is the only tea-kettle available, you will have to buy!" vs. "No, we can collectively forget that kettles exist and boil water in the microwave or in pans on the stove."

From a May 1947 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, actress Jane Cowl with her secret tea-dream.

Some belated Valentine's Day spiced-teas from the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company in a 1947 Ladies' Home Journal. The first one, using tea in a punch, should have been quite old-fashioned by then, but maybe not? The second has a classic American spiced tea, clove-lemon-and-something (in this case cinnamon) profile. The third uses jelly as a sweetener, which seems to happen a few times (such as in an earlier recipe that used orange marmalade).