blissful shortening
One of the reasons I love working at Wilson Library, the main special collections library here at UNC, is that when you work for the Southern Historical Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, University Archives, Rare Book Collection, and North Carolina Collection, you serendipitously stumble on some of the coolest and wackiest things imaginable.
For example, while looking through a reel of microfilm for an 1883 obituary in the Raleigh News & Observer for a patron last week, I stumbled upon this advertisement for "Cottolene" shortening:
The transcript:
HE LOVED good bread, pie, and pastry, but his stomach was delicate.
SHE LOVED to cook, but was tired and sick of the taste and smell of lard.
She bought Cottolene (the new shortening), and
THEY LOVED more than ever, because she made better food, and he could eat it without any unpleasant after effect.
Now THEY ARE HAPPY in having found the BEST, and most healthful shortening ever made--
COTTOLENE.
They just don't make advertisements like this anymore! Reminds me of something Anne Shirley would write for Rollings Reliable!!
(Image from the News & Observer 12/22/1883, courtesy of the North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Please don't reprint this picture anywhere without crediting where it came from!)