Finding Sam Breakstone's Favorite Recipes

Among the keepsakes sent by Nancy Vale comes a thin recipe book created by Kraft in 1981.  It is 8 1/2" long by whatever a third of eleven is.  It numbers 16 pages including the front and back cover.  And despite coming out at about the height of Sam Breakstone's popularity, the booklet features sketches and not pictures of Michael Vale.

I looked into the value of this booklet as a collectible.  It is ... not very high.  It's not that there are many Breakstone's recipe booklets out there.  It's just that there are thousands of booklets that were published by just about every  brand, appliance maker, and association.  These include:  Carnation; Ocean Spray; Amana Freezers; Reynolds Wrap; and the Mutual Citrus Products Company.

Some, like the Amana one, came with new appliances.  Some might have been given out in stores as promotions, or obtained as a prize for buying certain items.  The rarest can go for $15.00, but generally you're talking $3.00 to $6.50, even for something from World War II (Motto:  This Time We Think It'll Take).

As a collectible, nobody's getting rich off Sam Breakstone's Favorite Recipes.  As a look into the marketing mind of Kraft, though, it is priceless.

First the cover:

I love the color.  But, then, I love brown.

Food photography is an art.  There's a reason.  Most food is mostly beige.  When taking pictures of beige food, it's important to have lots of light and contrasting colors.  Sam Breakstone doesn't roll that way.  He likes his brown food on a field of brown.  He likes to take non-brown foods like cherries and just wilt them into brownness by sheer force of New York willpower.

The second page gives us most of our information.

The great thing about this page is that almost everything is a lie.  It didn't all start in 1882.  Breakstone Brothers wasn't formed until 1897.  There was no one, proud dairy store on the lover east side.  There were multiple Breakstone's grocery and dairy locations run by different relatives right from the start.  The order in which Breakstone's added products is wrong.

Oh, and the philosophy that they always kept in mind, "be demanding," never existed.  The philosophy, if any, was, "Let's sell value-added milk products from our own factories."

Then they write this, "And as you see on T.V. today, Sam Breakstone's demanding spirit is what makes every Breakstone's product the best, highest quality and most delicious it can be."  Your guess is as good as mine here.  Are they saying Sam Breakstone existed?  Or are they saying that some ephemeral spirit of demandingness has driven them to create quality products?  Are they even saying their products are the highest quality possible?  Or are they saying that this was the best quality they could eke out under the circumstances?

The entire thing is written as an cypher.  It invites the reader to imagine whatever she wants, whatever makes her think well of the product.

The last line of copy is pure ghost-written fun house mirror marketing nonsense:  "Bon appetite, as Sam Breakstone was never heard to say."  What does it mean?  Does it mean Breakstone didn't know french?  Does it mean that he was kind of crabby and wouldn't say such a nice thing?  Or does it mean that Kraft darn well knows Sam Breakstone did not exist?

No, that's Ghost Rider

Nowhere in the pamphlet is credit given for the marketing copy or the recipes themselves.  It's a shame.  I would have liked to meet the ghost writers.  Was there a person in charge of recipes and another in charge of the front copy?  Was it the same person?  Was there a template of Kraft recipes from which to choose?  Were any of these dishes fed to any living people before this thing was published just to, you know, see what happened.


Coming next, the recipes that Sam Breakstone was so proud of.  Hint - they involve dairy.

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To my knowledge, this is the first time this particular booklet has been available to the internet.  Please copy, link and share.  For higher-quality scans, please contact the author.