Throwback of the House: Uncool Vienna-Sausage Shortcake

By Robin Wheeler Tue., Aug. 4 2009 at 12:00 PM

Categories: In the Kitchen, Throwback of the House

Todd Ehlers, Wikimedia Commons

When I was in fourth grade, I loved Vienna Sausages and took them in my lunch to school several times a week. I also liked Laura Branigan and Tic Tac Dough, so what the hell did I know?

I can't remember the last time I had Vienna Sausages, or when I realized that gelatin-packed canned meat isn't the best food choice. Leave it to those jackasses at Good Housekeeping to bring the Vienna Sausages back into my world with their 1967 Keep Cool Cookbook.

There is nothing "cool" about this cookbook. The recipes are so uncool that they get the hell beat out of them on the playground. Nor are they cooling.

Robin Wheeler

The Vienna-Sausage Shortcake involves baking a batch of cornbread, and simmering cream of chicken soup, cheese, green beans, and Vienna Sausages. That'll sit just fine in your belly during the dog days.

Robin Wheeler

The sausages smelled so much like 1982 that the nostalgia portion of my brain activated my salivary glands. I wanted to like it. I wanted eat Vienna Sausages in soup goop, piled on cornbread just as much as I'd like to wear an Olivia Newton-John headband and do the Belinda dance.