An October 1, 1956 ad for WNBQ in Chicago highlights “Bob Murphy, Kay Westfall and Chef Eddie Doucette” as the station’s top sellers. (Click for full ad.) (JPEG Image, 360.5 KB)

I’ve just published the third printing of Tempt Them with Tastier Foods. With this release my collection of Eddie Doucette recipes exceeds a hundred pages. It is available as a free download in PDF (PDF File, 12.5 MB) and ePub (ePub ebook file, 10.9 MB) formats, as well as in print.

The new recipes come from several sources. I continue to be notified whenever a new reference to Eddie Doucette shows up on newspapers.com. And I continue to look for references on more general searches, which, among other things, netted a couple more matchbook recipes.

I managed to find a copy of his All-American Hog Dog pamphlet. I included recipes from images of it in the second printing, but it turns out there are recipes on both sides. The new, reverse-side recipes are now included in that section of the book. They include a fascinating-looking Hot Dog Pate and a Frank ’n’ Kraut Shepherd Pie that is very similar to the Oktoberfest Sauerkraut in the original printing but with hot dogs added.

I also decided to take a look at which newspaper most of the recipes came from, and then follow their IGA advertisements all the way through the sixties and into 1971. That turned out to be The Idaho State Journal of Pocatello, Idaho. A week in the newspapers.com archives netted several new recipes from the Journal’s regular Thursday IGA ads.

As I noted in the 2023 introductory announcement recipes started to disappear from IGA ads in the late sixties. Eddie’s face still adorned the Turkey Roasting Table for November 24, 1969, and a generic marketing slogan on April 24 of the same year, but otherwise he didn’t appear in the Idaho State Journal after 1967.

A Tempting Sample of Newly Discovered Recipes

These Franks a la Creole are not from his Mike Douglas hot dog appearance. The “a la Creole” is too good for modern dogs: use some good sausage-like dogs instead.

A beautiful saffron rice, with Ac’cent for a more intense flavor. “Classy, oui!”

This beer-and-tomato steak casserole was very tasty with venison as the meat.

Hot dog and sauerkraut shepherd’s pie is very good. I’d use sausage next time, though.

If you already have a copy of the second printing, I’ve made a PDF that contains all of the new recipes—eleven pages of them! (PDF File, 131.3 KB)—that you can print out and put into your book. If you have the first printing, you can get the new second printing recipes from that announcement back in 2024, if you haven’t already.

I also went to the Chicago Public Library and looked up all of the missing TV Guide entries for my Home Cooking episode guide. None of the recipes listed in the Guide for the 1954-55 season matched the ones in the handful of hand-typed recipes that sent me down this rabbit hole. I now suspect they may have come from a 1952 series, not the 1954 series. In the Chicago Tribune for February 4, 1952, there’s an ad for

Today on TV!

EDDIE DOUCETTE

the master chef in…

“HOME COOKING”

A new television program featuring practical recipes for the busy housewife.

It aired at 10 AM Monday thru Friday on WNBQ, channel 5. Martha Overholser, in her rundown of cooking shows in the February 1, 1953, Tribune wrote that:

Eddie Doucette’s deft skill with a wooden spoon on WNBQ leaves little to be desired. He also has a remarkable gift for chatting about one thing or another as he does the routine egg beating tasks. He points out ways for happy living such as “let the kiddies help” when there is something they can do.

Unfortunately, the Chicago Public Library’s TV Guide reels only go back to April of 1953.

The poetry that Chef Eddie’s son talked about in our interview was not a trivial addition to the show. It was enough of a draw that it was used in the show’s advertising, even when the promotion was very short. From the Chicago Daily Tribune of August 22, 1954:

Doucette Returning as TV Chef on WNBQ

Eddie Doucette returns as chief chef on Home Cooking at 1 p. m., Monday, Aug. 30, over WNBQ. In addition to offering original recipes, Doucette will read his original poetry.

A very Kuckoo Beer Cake

The dry ingredients are indented for vanilla, oil, and vinegar. The over a quarter cup of oil needs a large indentation.

With the beer added, the minor fizzing from adding the vinegar goes into overdrive. Time to mix!

This very tender cake, in an ungreased pan and having been mixed in the pan, split itself horizontally in exiting the pan.

This is a wonderful way to make a buoyant frosting!

This is a lot of frosting for a small cake, and the cake is rich enough that it doesn’t need frosting.

I’ll bet those home baked pies were good.

This has been a fascinating search and it continues to be a fascinating search. Eddie Doucette worked almost exclusively in ephemeral media. Local television wasn’t generally saved in the fifties for resale or syndication—it was the 1951 I Love Lucy that started pioneering syndicating, and that was for national broadcasts. Newspaper ad recipes might be expected to be clipped, but they weren’t expected to be archived long-term.

All we have left of him are those ephemera that happen to have been kept. Newspapers whose archives were sold to online storage. An industry video. Matchbook collectors. He never wrote a book, and while he was known among newspaper food writers, those food writers who wrote books don’t seem to mention him.

There are tantalizing references to recipe collections from local IGA stores in some of the grocery store ads. If you have one, I’d love to see some scans from it!

More modern cooking shows were saved for later monetization on DVD, and today on streaming. But so much of that era up through the seventies is lost. Only a handful of episodes of the Galloping Gourmet are available today—you can find that handful on YouTube—and his shows were aired in the sixties and seventies.¹

Doucette’s shows aired in the fifties. Both Home Cooking with Eddie Doucette and Bob and Kay with Eddie Doucette are likely lost. At best, some of his Mike Douglas show appearances might still be saved somewhere. At the moment, however, the only Mike Douglas Show videos I can find are snippets highlighting various famous musicians. Eddie Doucette is no longer on anyone’s radar, so none of those episodes are available.

As I wrote in the book, Eddie’s mother owned her own restaurant, a local New England diner. It’s not surprising, then, that Eddie’s brother was also a chef. By 1949, when Eddie Doucette was manager and consultant for Amino Products and Ac’cent, John Doucette had moved to Chula Vista, California (just south of San Diego) to begin his solo career at the local Rexall. The article in the October 7, 1949, Chula Vista Star-News doesn’t mention it, but a Rexall in that era would have had a food counter with at least a sofa jerk, and probably, given that they’re hiring a chef, sandwiches, snacks, and beverages.

And I’m not sure, but Eddie Doucette doesn’t seem to have been completely forgotten in the nineties, though he was used as an example of obscurity. In the September 8, 1991, Chicago Tribune, there was a trivia feature asking questions about “Chicago’s television past”. I’m nearly certain this was a trick question relying on readers being more familiar with his by then more well-known sportscaster son:

Who does not belong in this group: Beulah Karney, Francois Pope, Eddie Doucette, Paul Fogart, Alida Drake.

As far as I can tell, all five of these people were local Chicago television hosts. But Karney, Pope, Doucette, and Drake were television chefs, whereas Paul Fogart had an exercise show.

I also found a tantalizing reference to Eddie Doucette’s popularity in the war years. In David Haward Bain’s Whose Woods These Are: A History of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Bain wrote that

Fletcher Pratt, with his high connections in the Navy Department, stole the beloved chef of the Inn, Eddie Doucette, playing a hand in getting him shipped off to be a battleship admiral’s chef in the Pacific. “It was,” recalled Ted Morrison, “Fletcher’s one disloyalty to the conference.”

A couple of the new recipes are similar to older recipes. Both of the new Spicy Chicken ala Chinese recipes are very similar to the Poulet du Oriental from “French Cooking Can Be Fun.” More intriguingly, the recipe for Krazy Kake that he showed off for Mary Meade in 1953 is exactly the same as the Kuckoo Beer Cake that he highlighted for Oktoberfest in 1963—except that, of course, the Kuckoo Beer Cake contains a cup of beer instead of a cup of water. They otherwise use the same ingredients in the same amounts. Both use the same Fluffy Pink Peppermint Frosting.

“Eddie Doucette, left, consulting chef for the Independence Grocers’ Alliance, swapped a recipe yesterday with Everett A. Boss after a cooking school at the Seattle Opera House.”—September 27, 1963, Seattle Times Photograph by Vic Condiotty

The Kuckoo Beer Cake is indeed Kuckoo. I made the Fluffy Pink Peppermint Frosting with finely-ground candy canes instead of sugar plus peppermint extract; it was a very good layer-cake frosting, but, in my opinion, very mismatched with this rich chocolate cake. The cake itself is meant to be mixed right in the 8x8 cake pan which is specifically not greased. This would be great if you’re going to serve it from the pan. The instructions have you remove the full cake from the pan by turning it upside down. It was not at all surprising to me that a cake mixed in an ungreased cake pan did not successfully do this. The cake was tender enough, however, to half fall out, leaving the bottom of the cake in the pan.

If I make it again—and it was a very rich, tender, chocolate cake, so I might—I will make it in a mixing bowl and pour it into a greased cake pan. And then leave it unfrosted or just glaze it. There is, as is usually the case with beer in baking recipes, no beer flavor in the cake. But the beer does contribute, I suspect, to both the richness and tenderness of the finished product.

The peppermint frosting was also quite good, a Swiss-style meringue, that is, whipped and cooked over a double boiler to make a light, very creamy and voluminous, pink frosting. I expect it would be great on hot milk cake or any white cake.

The new recipes that I’ve had time to try are all very good. I’m especially impressed by the sauerkraut shepherd’s pie and the steak casserole. The former would be very good with ground beef and even better with sausage, rather than the hot dogs that it called for. And the steak casserole, with mushrooms, onions, and beer, is phenomenal. I used venison that a friend gave me, but I will happily make it again with the beef called for in the recipe.

I’ve fixed one typo from the first printing that persisted into the second printing. The celery listed in the instructions for his Simple Barbecue Burgers should have also been listed in the ingredient list as ½ cup celery, diced. I’ve fixed this in the third printing and have also included it on my errata page and in the new recipes PDF (PDF File, 131.3 KB).

Whether you download the PDF (PDF File, 12.5 MB) or download the ePub (ePub ebook file, 10.9 MB), or buy a print copy have fun cooking!

Chocolate Beer Cake

Servings: 16
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Eddie Doucette
Tempt Them with Tastier Foods: An Eddie Doucette Recipe Collection

Ingredients

• 1-½ cups sifted flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 5 tbsp oil
• 1 cup beer

Steps

1. Sift the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl.
2. Add the vanilla, vinegar, and oil.
3. Add the beer slowly, beating well after each addition.
4. Continue beating until smooth.
5. Pour into a greased or parchment-lined 8x8 cake pan.
6. Bake for 35 minutes at 350° until done in center.
7. Cool for ten minutes before removing or serving.