Kurt Vonnegut’s Recipes in Deadeye Dick: Polka-Dot Brownies, Linzer Torte & Haitian Banana Soup

Author Kurt Von­negut incor­po­rat­ed sev­er­al recipes into his 1982 nov­el Dead­eye Dick, inspired by James Beard’s Amer­i­can Cook­ery, Mar­cel­la Hazan’s The Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook Book, and Bea Sandler’s The African Cook­book.

He writes in the pref­ace that these recipes are intend­ed to pro­vide “musi­cal inter­ludes for the sali­vary glands,” warn­ing read­ers that “no one should use this nov­el for a cook­book. Any seri­ous cook should have the reli­able orig­i­nals in his or her library any­way.”

So with that caveat in mind…

Ear­ly on, the narrator/titular char­ac­ter, née Rudy Waltz, shares a recipe from his family’s for­mer cook, Mary Hoobler, who taught him “every­thing she knew about cook­ing and bak­ing”:

MARY HOOBLER’S CORN BREAD

Mix togeth­er in a bowl half a cup of flour, one and a half cups of yel­low corn-meal, a tea­spoon of salt, a tea­spoon of sug­ar, and three tea­spoons of bak­ing pow­der.

Add three beat­en eggs, a cup of milk, a half cup of cream, and a half cup of melt­ed but­ter.

Pour it into a well-but­tered pan and bake it at four hun­dred degrees for fif­teen min­utes.

Cut it into squares while it is still hot. Bring the squares to the table while they are still hot, and fold­ed in a nap­kin.

Bare­ly two para­graphs lat­er, he’s shar­ing her bar­be­cue sauce. It sounds deli­cious, easy to pre­pare, and its place­ment gives it a strong fla­vor of Slaughterhouse-Five’s “so it goes” and “Poo-tee-weet?” — as iron­ic punc­tu­a­tion to Father Waltz’s full on embrace of Hitler, a seem­ing non sequitur that forces read­ers to think about what comes before:

When we all posed in the street for our pic­ture in the paper, Father was forty-two. Accord­ing to Moth­er, he had under­gone a pro­found spir­i­tu­al change in Ger­many. He had a new sense of pur­pose in life. It was no longer enough to be an artist. He would become a teacher and polit­i­cal activist. He would become a spokesman in Amer­i­ca for the new social order which was being born in Ger­many, but which in time would be the sal­va­tion of the world.

This was quite a mis­take.

MARY HOOBLER’S BARBECUE SAUCE

Sauté a cup of chopped onions and three chopped gar­lic cloves in a quar­ter of a pound of but­ter until ten­der.

Add a half cup of cat­sup, a quar­ter cup of brown sug­ar, a tea­spoon of salt, two tea­spoons of fresh­ly ground pep­per, a dash of Tabas­co, a table­spoon of lemon juice, a tea­spoon of basil, and a table­spoon of chili pow­der.

Bring to a boil and sim­mer for five min­utes.

Rudy’s father is not the only char­ac­ter to fal­ter.

Rudy’s mis­take hap­pens in the blink of an eye, and man­ages to upend a num­ber of lives in Mid­land City, a stand in for Indi­anapo­lis, Vonnegut’s home­town.

His fam­i­ly los­es their mon­ey in an ensu­ing law­suit, and can no longer engage Mary Hoobler and the rest of the staff.

Young Rudy, who’s spent his child­hood hang­ing out with the ser­vants in Mary’s cozy kitchen, finds it “easy and nat­ur­al” to cater to his par­ents in the man­ner to which they were accus­tomed:

As long as they lived, they nev­er had to pre­pare a meal or wash a dish or make a bed or do the laun­dry or dust or vac­u­um or sweep, or shop for food. I did all that, and main­tained a B aver­age in school, as well. 

What a good boy was I!

EGGS À LA RUDY WALTZ (age thir­teen)

Chop, cook, and drain two cups of spinach.

Blend with two table­spoons of but­ter, a tea­spoon of salt, and a pinch of nut­meg.

Heat and put into three oven-proof bowls or cups.

Put a poached egg on top of each one, and sprin­kle with grat­ed cheese.

Bake for five min­utes at 375 degrees. Serves three: the papa bear, the mama bear, and the baby bear who cooked it—and who will clean up after­wards.

By high school, Rudy’s heavy domes­tic bur­den has him falling asleep in class and repro­duc­ing  com­pli­cat­ed desserts from  recipes in the local paper. (“Father roused him­self from liv­ing death suf­fi­cient­ly to say that the dessert took him back forty years.”)

LINZER TORTE (from the Bugle-Observ­er)

Mix half a cup of sug­ar with a cup of but­ter until fluffy.

Beat in two egg yolks and half a tea­spoon of grat­ed lemon rind.

Sift a cup of flour togeth­er with a quar­ter tea­spoon of salt, a tea­spoon of cin­na­mon, and a quar­ter tea­spoon of cloves. Add this to the sug­ar-and-but­ter mix­ture.

Add one cup of unblanched almonds and one cup of toast­ed fil­berts, both chopped fine.

Roll out two-thirds of the dough until a quar­ter of an inch thick.

Line the bot­tom and sides of an eight-inch pan with dough.

Slather in a cup and a half of rasp­ber­ry jam.

Roll out the rest of the dough, make it into eight thin pen­cil shapes about ten inch­es long. Twist them a lit­tle, and lay them across the top in a dec­o­ra­tive man­ner. Crimp the edges.

Bake in a pre­heat­ed 350-degree oven for about an hour, and then cool at room tem­per­a­ture.

A great favorite in Vien­na, Aus­tria, before the First World War!

Rudy even­tu­al­ly relo­cates to the Grand Hotel Oloff­son in Port au Prince, Haiti, which is how he man­ages to sur­vive the — SPOILER — neu­tron bomb that destroys Mid­land City.

Here is a recipe for choco­late seafoams,  cour­tesy of one of Mid­land City’s fic­tion­al res­i­dents:

MRS. GINO MARTIMO’S SPUMA DI CIOCCOLATA 

Break up six ounces of semi­sweet choco­late in a saucepan.

Melt it in a 250-degree oven.

Add two tea­spoons of sug­ar to four egg yolks, and beat the mix­ture until it is pale yel­low.

Then mix in the melt­ed choco­late, a quar­ter cup of strong cof­fee, and two table­spoons of rum.

Whip two-thirds of a cup of cold, heavy whip­ping cream until it is stiff. Fold it into the mix­ture.

Whip four egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then fold them into the mix­ture.

Stir the mix­ture ever so gen­tly, then spoon it into cups, each cup a serv­ing.

Refrig­er­ate for twelve hours.

Serves six.

Oth­er recipes in Rudy’s reper­toire orig­i­nate with the Grand Hotel Oloff­son’s most valu­able employ­ee, head­wait­er and Vodou prac­ti­tion­er Hip­poly­te Paul De Mille, who “claims to be eighty and have fifty-nine descen­dants”:

He said that if there was any ghost we thought should haunt Mid­land City for the next few hun­dred years, he would raise it from its grave and turn it loose, to wan­der where it would. 

We tried very hard not to believe that he could do that. 

But he could, he could.

HAITIAN FRESH FISH IN COCONUT CREAM

Put two cups of grat­ed coconut in cheese­cloth over a bowl.

Pour a cup of hot milk over it, and squeeze it dry.

Repeat this with two more cups of hot milk. The stuff in the bowl is the sauce.

Mix a pound of sliced onions, a tea­spoon of salt, a half tea­spoon of black pep­per, and a tea­spoon of crushed pep­per.

Sauté the mix­ture in but­ter until soft but not brown.

Add four pounds of fresh fish chunks, and cook them for about a minute on each side.

Pour the sauce over the fish, cov­er the pan, and sim­mer for ten min­utes. Uncov­er the pan and baste the fish until it is done—and the sauce has become creamy.

Serves eight vague­ly dis­grun­tled guests at the Grand Hotel Oloff­son.

HAITIAN BANANA SOUP

Stew two pounds of goat or chick­en with a half cup of chopped onions, a tea­spoon of salt, half a tea­spoon of black pep­per, and a pinch of crushed red pep­per. Use two quarts of water.

Stew for an hour.

Add three peeled yams and three peeled bananas, cut into chunks.

Sim­mer until the meat is ten­der. Take out the meat. What is left is eight serv­ings of Hait­ian banana soup.

Bon appétit!

The recipe that clos­es the nov­el is couched in an anec­dote that’s equal parts scat­ol­ogy and epiphany.

As a daugh­ter of Indi­anapo­lis who was a junior in high school the year Dead­eye Dick was pub­lished, I can attest that Pol­ka-Dot Brown­ies would have been a hit at the bake sales of my youth:

POLKA-DOT BROWNIES

Melt half a cup of but­ter and a pound of light-brown sug­ar in a two-quart saucepan. Stir over a low fire until just bub­bly.

Cool to room tem­per­a­ture.

Beat in two eggs and a tea­spoon of vanil­la.

Stir in a cup of sift­ed flour, a half tea­spoon of salt, a cup of chopped fil­berts, and a cup of semi­sweet choco­late in small chunks.

Spread into a well-greased nine-by-eleven bak­ing pan.

Bake at two hun­dred and thir­ty-five degrees for about thir­ty-five min­utes.

Cool to room tem­per­a­ture, and cut into squares with a well-greased knife.

Enjoy, in mod­er­a­tion of course.

I was wear­ing my best suit, which was as tight as the skin of a knack­wurst. I had put on a lot of weight recent­ly. It was the fault of my own good cook­ing. I had been try­ing out a lot of new recipes, with con­sid­er­able suc­cess. — Rudy Waltz

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Watch a Sweet Film Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Sto­ry, “Long Walk to For­ev­er”

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday