Italian Delight

A spaghetti casserole using three cans, one jar and a box. I would imagine it’s something like the love child of a lasagna and a pasta puttanesca, which would make sense, given its early-to-mid 20th century origin (the recipe in general, not necessarily this specific version).

In a time before cooking shows, getting recipes for ethnic foods was the simple part. Knowing the techniques required to assemble them was the insurmountable part. If you’ve never made a lasagna before, you were unlikely to succeed with the things you could find in a typical 1930s grocery. This offered some of the charm with none of the hurdles.

(That said, if you know how to make a lasagna, you can usually assemble ones from ingredients found at a 7-11.)

While recipes under this name using similar ingredients start showing up in the late 1930s, the examples from the mid-1940s tend to look most like this one. For example, compare the version printed in the May 3, 1946 edition of the Oxnard (California) Press-Courier:

Press-Courier Prize Recipes Italian Delight 1/2 lb. pound spaghetti 1/2 pound ground beef 1/2 cup oil 1 large onion chopped fine 1 or 2 cloves garlic chopped fine 1 green pepper chopped fine 1 can tomato paste, equal amount of water, or 1 can tomato soup 1 can whole kernel corn with liquid 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1 small can button mushrooms or sauce and seasoning Method: Cook spaghetti in boiling salted water until tender; drain. Brown meat in oil, add onions, pepper, garlic, cooking 10 minutes more. Add tomato paste or tomato soup, corn, mushrooms and liquid and season well. Mix with cooked spaghetti, put in baking dish, top with grated cheese and bake 1 hour (350 degrees F. ) — Mrs. Ann Martin, 120 Woolley Road, Oxnard. The Press-Courier pays $1 for recipes.

 

From the box of C.C. from Ceres, California.

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