In April 1956, the women of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Cleveland Heights, OH published Out of Our Kitchen Into Yours, a 320-page tome featuring "an authentic Swedish smorgasbord" along with hundreds of other recipes -- and all of them hand-written. Women didn't have as much to do in 1956. They also had nicer handwriting.

The smorgasbord recipes come first and are the most intriguing in the book, if not the most authentic. Jellied Eels and Smorgasbord Tongue Arrangement sound like actual Swedish offerings, but Grapefruit Salad Mold and Egg Toadstools (hard boiled eggs served standing on end, with half a tomato on top, apparently resembling toadstools) sound like they were invented in the Kraft Foods Laboratory circa 1952. But what do I know? The closest I've come to eating Swedish food is passing through that scented cloud of Swedish meatball steam near the exit of IKEA. Perhaps Cottage Cheese Salad is a great delicacy there.

Outside of the molded salads, the Smorgasbord section is full of dishes made with ingredients typically avoided by your average American, such as pungent fish (anchovies, pickled herring), weird animal parts (liver, tongue) and unpopular vegetables (mainly beets), so I think it's mostly the real deal. Vaguely unpalatable + oddly translated name = authentic. I'd love to try the Boiled Smoked Tongue or Swedish Liver Pastaj, whatever that is, but I don't want to actually have to boil and/or smoke a tongue myself. I'll probably try making the simple Carrot Souffle, though.

The Smorgasbord occupies only the first 52 pages. There are 268 pages after that! I have to admit my eyes started to glaze over around page 200. Even then there were a few recipes that stood out, such as the faux-ethnic Indian Meat Loaf and African Chow Mein. The Indian Meat Loaf makes some sense -- it's meat loaf with corn in it, get it? In the 1950s, Native Americans were Indians and Africans ate a lot of Chinese food. Except I don't know what makes the African Chow Mein either African or Chinese. It has two cans of cream of chicken soup in it. I think what that makes it is inedible.

There were also two salad dressings of note, the first only because its name is completely unappetizing: Thick Clear Salad Dressing. Um, you might as well tell me you've topped my salad with mucus, Ms. Linea Carlson. Please don't include the texture and appearance of the dressing in the name, especially when said texture and appearance resemble bodily secretions. Thank you.

Onto more delectable things! Bacon Salad Dressing, with the bacon grease serving as the oil in the dressing. Genius, pure bacon genius. This would be good on a spinach salad, as a vegetable dip, or served straight up a small shot glass. Just kidding. Maybe.

And what fundraising cookbook would be complete without a baffling soup? This time it's the Jenny Lind Soup, with its bizarre combination of tapioca and beef broth. However, a little searching has revealed that Jenny Lind soup was not invented by the ladies of Bethlehem Lutheran (although this version likely was); it's an actual soup, named after a famous Swedish singer who took the world by storm in the mid-1800s. She had a clandestine relationship with Chopin! Hans Christian Anderson was in love with her! She inspired the story "The Ugly Duckling"! I don't know what any of this has to do with soup, but Jenny Lind soup is typically made from mashed rutabaga, Gruyere cheese, sage, egg yolks, heavy cream and chicken stock thickened with roux, then topped with beaten eggs whites. Not surprisingly, it has the consistency of wallpaper paste. The soup was immortalized in James Joyce's Ulysses, in a passage where Leopold Bloom dreams of eating it: "Jenny Lind soup: stock, sage, raw eggs, half-pint of cream. For creamy dreamy."

Weirdest. Soup. Ever.

For this week's recipe, I decided to go with something beet-based because beets are one of my favorite vegetables, but I usually just eat them roasted with a little salt and olive oil. From the Smorgasbord section, I chose the Beet Luncheon Salad, contributed by Mrs. Theresa Swanson, because I couldn't resist the idea of beets mixed in Jell-O. It's so offensive somehow.

I bought beets from the Hollywood Farmers Market, boiled and peeled them, diced them up and mixed them into salted, half-congealed Lemon Jell-O. Not being one for molded gelatin salads, I don't have any fancy molds, but I did turn out the resulting fuchsia dome onto a pretty cake plate. Unfortunately, this did little to make it more appealing. The texture is nice, with the firm bite of the beets contrasting the slippery gelatin, but the Jell-O is way too sweet and fake-tasting. Lemon Jell-O in 1956 was probably much less sugary than Lemon Jell-O circa 2008, so I can't entirely fault the recipe. (I initially blamed high fructose corn syrup, but 2008 Jell-O is actually made with real sugar.) Perhaps plain gelatin mixed with lemon juice and seasonings would result in something more palatable, but I can't say I'm motivated to find out. I already have one too many jiggly fuchsia domes in my life.

Beet Luncheon Salad

1/2 an onion
1 bunch (5 small or 3 large) beets
1 6 oz. package Lemon Jell-O
2 cups boiling water
2 cups cold water
3 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt

Grate the onion and collect 1/2 teaspoon of the resulting juice. Set aside.

In a bowl or gelatin mold, pour the boiling water over the Jell-O and stir for two minutes, until completely dissolved. Add the vinegar, salt and onion juice and stir until the salt has dissolved. Add the cold water and stir, then put in the refrigerator. Refrigerate for 1 1/2 hours or until thickened.

Meanwhile, prepare the beets. Wash them and cut off tops, leaving about an inch of the stem attached. Put in a large pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Let simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the skin slips off easily. Drain and let cool, then slip off the skins and dice. Once the Jell-O has thickened, stir in the beets and return to the refrigerator for another 2 1/2 hours, until set completely.