every food in: Nancy Drew #40, The Moonstone Castle Mystery
Nancy Drew #40: The Moonstone Castle Mystery by Carolyn Keene
Published 1963
I happen to have a first edition copy of this one, in okay-ish condition. This mostly means that unfortunately, I can’t blame any weirdness in this one on bad revising or attempting to modernize food - it’s just not a very good book.
Nancy spends a lot of time in this one showing up at people’s houses (Chapter 15 largely takes place at a date’s graduation party) and jumping to really wild conclusions, and everyone just seems….fine with that, somehow. Also, she seems to mostly survive on hot cocoa, which isn’t typical around this point in the series - Nancy’s 18, and other books published in the 60s and 70s have her making and drinking coffee pretty often. My thought is that the ghostwriter for this one was trying to capture the tropes of older children’s mystery books a la Enid Blyton, but missed the mark a bit.
Not a lot of food specifically mentioned in this one, which is odd because a good third of the book is spent at a restaurant. They never mention what the restaurant serves, or what type of restaurant it is, other than saying it was “good”. Maybe it was good because it was the only option? Chicken salad seems a little depressing at a banquet, but then again, I’m not living in 1963.
There’s a distinctly 1960s “made from a box” vibe to this compared to #9 - you can really see how food trends change over time. Angel food cake, specifically, was having a comeback, After the first box mixes for it were introduced in 1940, cake mixes were briefly less popular, and then had a resurgence when the trend of decorating your own cake and altering box mix started spreading. (I can’t really recommend the texture, though. If you’re bored during quarantine and have a lot of eggs and a good electric mixer, try out Jessup Whitehead’s 1894 recipe instead.)
Chapter 2: Mysterious Threat
Two cups of hot cocoa and an angel food cake
Chapter 7: The Reckless Pilot
A “banquet of tasty dishes” - chicken salad is mentioned specifically
Chapter 8: The Canoeists’ Clue
Hot cocoa and cookies
Chapter 15: An Exciting Photograph
“a long buffet table with tempting salad bowls and platters of snacks. There was a large punch bowl in the center brimming with ice cold punch.”
Steaks
“potato chips, several kinds of salad, vanilla ice cream topped with fresh fruit, and cake”
