So, this is a Spam pie. A Wham Spam Pie. Which might be the best name for a recipe pretty much ever.
Yeah, let’s just…you know…look at it for a while.
Wham!
It’s a pie. Made of Spam.
And it doesn’t just have Spam in it. The pie itself is actually LIQUID Spam baked back to solidness.
- 1 1/2 cups finely crushed onion crackers
- 6 T butter
- 1 can Spam, chop half and puree the other half
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup evaporated milk
- 1/4 to 1/2 tsp marjoram
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 2 T toasted slivered almonds
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Use a deep 9 inch pie plate. Melt butter in pie pan.(Ruth’s Note: I melted the butter in the microwave.) Add cracker crumbs and mix thoroughly. Press crumbs in to bottom and sides of pie pan evenly and firmly. Bake for 5 minutes at 375 degrees.
- Prepare filling by mixing eggs, milk and marjoram together thoroughly. Use the blender for this if it had been used in Spam preparation. Add pureed Spam. (Ruth’s Note: I just threw these ingredients in with the Spam and blended it all at once.)
- Add cheese evenly to baked crust, then chopped Spam, then filling. Sprinkle almonds over the top.
- Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce temperature to 325 degrees and bake another 15 minutes or until lightly browned and firm. (Ruth’s Note: This took way longer than 15 minutes for me. It took more like 45 additional minutes.)
With almonds. Can’t forget about the almonds! The almonds make it classy!
In a side note, this recipe called for onion crackers, and good luck finding those. I thought there was still an onion cracker made by Keebler (Toasteds? Is that right?) but I checked three stores and no one carried them anymore! Or any other kind of onion cracker, for that matter. Sociables was about as close as I got. I think there is onion in there somewhere, among many other flavors. On the other hand, there were about a hundred different kinds of garlic flavored crackers to choose from. Just an interesting glimpse into the way that food trends change!
But I digress.
Wham!
This is an interesting glimpse at processed Spam, which is…some sort of Spam milkshake.
Wham! Pieces of Spam!
I love the way the filling turned out a pretty pastel pink from the liquid Spam. That’s totally not weird at all, right?
But it all came out right in the end. I mean, as right as is can when you are making a Spam pie that is filled with more Spam.
Wham!
“Quit picking it apart and take a bite!”
“I’m trying! It’s all…slithery or something.”
“Ugh.”
“Why are you shivering? I’m the one who has to eat this.”
“I guess it’s okay. The Spam part is good, but it is a little wet and slimy.”
“Nice.”
“Is this supposed to taste like something?”
“How about Spam? There is a lot of Spam in it.”
“Well, yeah. But it also tastes like it’s supposed to be something else.”
“Food?”
“Yeah, and…”
“A quiche?”
“That’s it. A quiche. It almost tastes like a quiche, but not quite.”
The Verdict: It almost tastes like a quiche.
From the Testing Notes:
Not bad, but there are a lot of things not quite right about it and that made eating it was a little unsettling. The cracker crust was a little off. The Spam filling was good (if you like Spam) and a little like some sort of egg bake, but also was wet and a tad slimy. I think adding the pureed meat kept the filling from firming up like it should. Would have been better with just chunks of Spam and cheese in a quiche rather than blending the Spam into the filling. And probably faster, too.
Wham!
I never had Spam, just because it looks gross!!
Just a comment on it’s failure to set properly: this is a problem that often happens with older recipes, and it’s related to differences between our commercially available eggs and the eggs that people were buying 50 years ago. The solution is to add one or two more eggs yolks, which would probably help this firm up in a more aggressively quiche-like fashion.
O my.
Poor Tom has eaten some real losers on this blog, but I think a recipe featuring a Spam smoothie is a new low point.
Wham!
I agree with veg-o-matic.
Poor Tom!
Oh wow, I just noticed the Sociables. They still make those?
When I was about 5 and just learning to read, I looked at the box and said, “SOCK-a-bellies”.
This dish really socked Tom in the belly, huh?
I have a thing for disgusting pie recipes too, although I don’t try making them! I’ve posted a couple of pie recipes (and several other 50s/60s/70s recipes) on my new blog. It’s only a couple weeks old and I haven’t been brave enough to share it with anyone yet, but if you like old recipes and don’t mind looking at a new blogger’s work, stop by.
This recipe literally terrifies me to bits!!!!!!!
Eeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkksssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chick’n in a Biscuit is still made. My brother loves them. Every Christmas, we get boxes of assorted crackers for cheese dip. No pureed Spam, though.
Yay! SPAM! I love SPAM. I had Spam flavored macadamia nuts in Hawaii. I wish I had brought some back…Anyway, I was thinking about testing some Spam recipes and blogging about them. I had an awesome one in Hawai’i called Loco Moco. Yum!
OH christ on a cracker. This may be the GROSSEST thing I have seen you make. Potted meat product. BLEH. I worked at a summer camp and we had a little game called the TUBE OF DEATH. You fill the tube (think beer bong tube) with some gross liquid and each person takes an end of the tube and blows as HARD AS THEY CAN. The winner is the one who blows the gross food in their opponents face, mouth, nose. This unbaked would be the ULTIMATE tube of DEATH.
It looks like they do still make the onion crackers, but maybe not all the stores carry that flavor. They look kinda good, I’m going to see if my grocery store has them.
http://www.keebler.com/product-keebler-toasteds-savory-onion-crackers-1254.aspx
What is it with Spam in so many of these old recipes? It seems like every other recipe features Spam. Was it The Newest Thing and they wanted to promote it? Were there warehouses of cans of Spam they wanted to get rid of? Was Spam something people just loved and were always looking for new ways to prepare it?
Your post reminds me of a movie – Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House. He was an ad man and had to come up with a caption for ham.
His housekeeper came up with the line ‘…if you’re not eating Wham, you’re not eating ham…!’.
All things tie together in this universe somehow… LOL
I’ve been eating spam for 80 years, and the only way to enjoy it is to eat it straight from the tin, or if you’re a fisherman take it as bait and eat it while feeding the fish, (I like it more than the fish)