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Better Homes and Gardens So Good with Fruit
Features recipes accented with fruit for every course of the from intriguing appetizers, entrees, and salads, to colorful desserts.
- GenresCookbooks
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1968
About the author
Better Homes and Gardens
2,134 books296 followersBetter Homes and Gardens is the fourth best selling magazine in the United States. Better Homes and Gardens focuses on interests regarding homes, cooking, gardening, crafts, healthy living, decorating, and entertaining. The magazine is published 12 times per year by the Meredith Corporation. It was founded in 1922 by Edwin Meredith, who had previously been the United States Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson.
Better Homes and Gardens is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.
Better Homes and Gardens is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 30, 2020
This was part of the bag of books I picked up over Thanksgiving travel. I’ve seen it around before, but was never quite sure about it; the recipe types seemed to overlap with other books in the series: salads, meats, cakes, and other desserts.
I checked the recipes I’ve bookmarked against duplication, however, and none of them seem to be. I did notice the apparently very popular with the Better Home editors “Blueberry Buckle”. The recipe is identical to the one from the Dessert Cook Book and the Bread Cook Book except that (a) it calls for ¾ cup sugar instead of ½ cup, and it excludes the cinnamon crumb topping ingredients from the list, providing them only in the text.
The first recipe I tried were the “Spiced Grapes”, which are grapes marinated in vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves for a couple of days. It was supposed to fit in a pint jar, but I may be misunderstanding what a pint jar is because I had a lot of liquid left over; so I made a second batch with that, with slightly different spices (mainly, replacing allspice with star anise).
They’re listed under “meat accompaniments” and are very good with ham and fried chicken. There are a lot of nice relishes and sauces in that section that I intend to try as I start grilling again.
The second recipe I made was “Honey-Banana Syrup” in the “Tasty pancakes, waffles” section. It is what’s in the title, plus some orange juice and lemon juice; it’s a great flavored syrup.
Yesterday I made some “Banana-Pecan Crunch” which, unlike most crunches, does not contain any flour or oatmeal or other grains; it uses brown sugar, molasses, and butter for the topping. Very good for breakfast.
There are also a few of the ubiquitous “Shimmery molded salads”, and today I intend to make some “Applesauce-Peach Salad” for New Year’s, replacing the peach with a mango.
Other recipes I have bookmarked are Fruited Ground Meat, Hawaiian Ham Pie, Peking Glaze, Nut-Crusted Bananas, Cranberry Waldorf, Cranberry-Banana Bread, Date Chiffon Pie, and Banana Cake.
There are also a lot of fruit beverage recipes, and a section on canning and preserving. It’s a well-rounded book of recipes whose only connection is that they involve fruit in some way.
I checked the recipes I’ve bookmarked against duplication, however, and none of them seem to be. I did notice the apparently very popular with the Better Home editors “Blueberry Buckle”. The recipe is identical to the one from the Dessert Cook Book and the Bread Cook Book except that (a) it calls for ¾ cup sugar instead of ½ cup, and it excludes the cinnamon crumb topping ingredients from the list, providing them only in the text.
The first recipe I tried were the “Spiced Grapes”, which are grapes marinated in vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves for a couple of days. It was supposed to fit in a pint jar, but I may be misunderstanding what a pint jar is because I had a lot of liquid left over; so I made a second batch with that, with slightly different spices (mainly, replacing allspice with star anise).
They’re listed under “meat accompaniments” and are very good with ham and fried chicken. There are a lot of nice relishes and sauces in that section that I intend to try as I start grilling again.
The second recipe I made was “Honey-Banana Syrup” in the “Tasty pancakes, waffles” section. It is what’s in the title, plus some orange juice and lemon juice; it’s a great flavored syrup.
Yesterday I made some “Banana-Pecan Crunch” which, unlike most crunches, does not contain any flour or oatmeal or other grains; it uses brown sugar, molasses, and butter for the topping. Very good for breakfast.
There are also a few of the ubiquitous “Shimmery molded salads”, and today I intend to make some “Applesauce-Peach Salad” for New Year’s, replacing the peach with a mango.
Other recipes I have bookmarked are Fruited Ground Meat, Hawaiian Ham Pie, Peking Glaze, Nut-Crusted Bananas, Cranberry Waldorf, Cranberry-Banana Bread, Date Chiffon Pie, and Banana Cake.
There are also a lot of fruit beverage recipes, and a section on canning and preserving. It’s a well-rounded book of recipes whose only connection is that they involve fruit in some way.
September 1, 2023
Ecxellent reference for old school recipes. Wnderful fun in the kitchen.
November 7, 2011
By the time I'd made it a few pages into the second section of this book, which is titled "Entrees and Relishes," I was convinced that Better Homes and Gardens should have instead titled this So Awful with Fruit.
It's not that I have anything particularly against fruit with meat - I see how the two go together in some of these recipes - but the problem really was the number of recipes that combined sweet and savory items indiscriminately. Ham with blue cheese, Worcestershire sauce, onion, mustard, sage, apricot preserves, and vinegar just doesn't appeal.
There's a chapter of salads, which mostly means Jell-O, several of desserts (still more Jell-O), one of beverages and appetizers (surprising amounts of Jell-O!), breads and sandwiches (thankfully free of Jell-O). There's also a canning and freezing chapter with some good advice, and a too-brief but excellent "Fresh Fruit Raisonne" section in the back of the book describing varieties and less-familiar fruits (pomegranates, persimmons, kiwifruit, mangoes, papaya, prickly pear). Having been in the stone fruit business, I was pleased to see good advice on choosing stone fruit (look at the background color, not the red blush) and a basket containing eight or so plum varieties, all listed by name.
Interesting notes: They said that blueberries are "like huckleberries," which surprised me, as the former are so much more common than the latter these days. Apples were said to be available from fall to early spring, though it said that storage techniques were now lengthening that availability. (This is 1967 we're talking about.)
I would have been happier with more pictures, because I got little out of this book in terms of recipes. I marked one marinade, and that was about it. The meats I don't eat, nor the omnipresent Jell-O, nor the everything-with-eggs in the baking sections. Oh well - on to the next one in this series I picked up.
It's not that I have anything particularly against fruit with meat - I see how the two go together in some of these recipes - but the problem really was the number of recipes that combined sweet and savory items indiscriminately. Ham with blue cheese, Worcestershire sauce, onion, mustard, sage, apricot preserves, and vinegar just doesn't appeal.
There's a chapter of salads, which mostly means Jell-O, several of desserts (still more Jell-O), one of beverages and appetizers (surprising amounts of Jell-O!), breads and sandwiches (thankfully free of Jell-O). There's also a canning and freezing chapter with some good advice, and a too-brief but excellent "Fresh Fruit Raisonne" section in the back of the book describing varieties and less-familiar fruits (pomegranates, persimmons, kiwifruit, mangoes, papaya, prickly pear). Having been in the stone fruit business, I was pleased to see good advice on choosing stone fruit (look at the background color, not the red blush) and a basket containing eight or so plum varieties, all listed by name.
Interesting notes: They said that blueberries are "like huckleberries," which surprised me, as the former are so much more common than the latter these days. Apples were said to be available from fall to early spring, though it said that storage techniques were now lengthening that availability. (This is 1967 we're talking about.)
I would have been happier with more pictures, because I got little out of this book in terms of recipes. I marked one marinade, and that was about it. The meats I don't eat, nor the omnipresent Jell-O, nor the everything-with-eggs in the baking sections. Oh well - on to the next one in this series I picked up.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews