OP: The Hungry Actor's Cookbook

The Washington Stage Script Teasers, Washington Township, NJ, c. 1976. Staple bound paperback. Very Good Plus.

In celebration of non-profit theater company The Washington Stage Script-Teasers’ tenth anniversary, the 1976–1977 season, director and producer Paula Aaronson assembled a cookbook with the company’s most consistent bringer-of-sustenance, Joanne Bartow.

The table of contents is cleverly designed to look like a script with each dish being a scene in either Act I: Appetizers, the first Intermission: Hors d'Oeuvres, Act II: Entrees, the second Intermission: Children’s Snacks, or Act III: Desserts. 

Act I, Scene 3, for example, is a minestrone, calling for a “small pile of parsley” and a “smaller pile of basil.” Act I, Scene 5 is the more ambitious raisin bobka, yielding 6 loaves, while the first intermission includes a deviled dip with pimento cheese, deviled ham, mayonnaise, minced parsley and onion, MSG, and Tabasco. 

Act II, Scene 9 is a dish of flounder fillets layered with canned mushroom slices and shrimp, baked in a parmesan and Swiss cheese custard, compliments of our editor and director. The second intermission is a whimsy of children’s contributions, beginning with the “traditional recipe” for Incredibly’s raindrop soup, calling for a fresh rain puddle and finely sifted dirt cooked in sunlight and sprinkled with grass.

Handsomely produced with a metallic silver wrapper and sturdy, semigloss stock, this is a community cookbook built to last. Very Good Plus staple bound paperback. Laid in is a one page, double-sided recipe for cannolis from Ferrara’s Italian bakery, advertising their own cookbook. Perfectly quirky and nicely representative of the source.