Wednesday, February 18, 2004

American icons

Back-of-the-box cuisine has found favor as step-by-step Americana

By CATHY FRISINGER
Knight Ridder Newspapers

A few months back, something spurred me to make the Quaker Oats “famous oatmeal cookies” I’d baked frequently when I was a girl. I picked up the Quaker Oats tube only to discover that — horrors! — the reliable recipe on the back of the box had disappeared, replaced with a recipe inside the lid teasingly called “vanishing oatmeal raisin cookies.”

The good news was, the famous oatmeal cookies recipe wasn’t truly gone. It was in countless recipe boxes across the country (including mine, now), in compilation cookbooks such as Ceil Dyer’s “Best Recipes” (Galahad Books, $14.95) and on any number of Web sites.

Famous oatmeal cookies, like Nestle’s Tollhouse cookies and Campbell’s green bean bake, started as a promotional recipe on a product package and turned into an American icon.

It happens regularly. Back-of-the-box recipes have a colossal impact on America’s kitchen culture, with the most successful recipes bridging geographic and socioeconomic divides.

It’s not clear when the first promotional recipe on a food package appeared, but the concept goes back at least to 1891, when the first recipe on a cereal container, something called “Quaker bread,” made its debut on the Quaker Oats package.

And, though back-of-the-box recipes have a lengthy history, the idea is far from stale. Wander down the aisles of a grocery store — there are scores of recipes on packages from Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry to Heinz Red Wine Vinegar.

A Web site devoted to back-of-the-box recipes, www.backofthebox.com, features more than 1,500 recipes. They range from the mundane (Ritz Cracker stuffing, corn casserole) to the almost-sophisticated (rosemary lamb chops, Tuscany bread focaccia), and new recipes are added every day.

Dyer’s “Best Recipes” cookbook features more than 2,000 recipes that first appeared on various bottles, cans, jars and boxes.

And Campbell’s Soup Co., which has created more than 10,000 recipes using canned soup since 1916, recently cooked up a new idea — recipes on the inside of the label. In addition to the recipe on the back of the can, the company now features four recipes that are revealed when you cut off the label.

The idea behind all these package recipes is, of course, to increase demand for the product. And it works.

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