Cocktail Companions – Snacks for All Occasions by Marion Courtney, published in 1954 by Wilcox & Follett, Co.

Allow me to begin with WOW, What a find this was! Fantastic font and goofy little illustrations, but what is with the color scheme? While it definite stands out from the other cookbooks in my bookshelf, it is rather dark and ominous. Maybe it should be Cocktail Companions of Satan!

Okay, and the other bizarre (yet very funny) thing about this cookbook is the illustration you see on the cover.  Let’s take a better look at this…

Here we have a happy group cocktail companions chumming around. A happy mini-hamburger, a Mexican hot pepper, a cheery slice of Swiss cheese, and OH! Mr. Shrimp has just been speared through the heart by a sadistic Toothpick killer! Oops, Mr. Cheese has also been stabbed in the head with a toothpick… but he seems happy about it. Mr. Toothpick, in his top hat and tails just may be Jack the, um, Cocktail Killer!

Truly a freaky cookbook here, and it is not even meant for Halloween!

Let us now move on from this overt horror and get to the recipes, which are their own sort of horror.

Apparently snacks for all occasions are generally made with cream cheese and mayo. Or at least a good deal of these are, and this cookbook is not put out by a dairy… shocking! This creepy little cookbook contains many interesting (or horrific) recipes for Dips, Hot Snacks, Nibbles and Cold Ones, Spreads, and of course, snacks you can stab with a toothpick.

I love that most of the hot snacks go something like this: spread some mayo or cream cheese on a Ritz cracker, add sardine, paprika, whatever, broil and serve.

Despite the horror overtones, this is a fantastic vintage cookbook. Well, the recipes verge on the “horrific” as opposed to the “fantastic”, but the design and odd little illustrations are very cool. Definitely a must have for any collector of the seriously wacky vintage cookbook genre.