Tangs for the Memories…

Arts & Letters Daily points to Mark Steyn's recent obit for Bill Mitchell, the inventor of Tang, Cool Whip, Pop Rocks and other milestones in fake food:

If you're at a county fair or a church bazaar and you buy the local fundraising cookbook, you notice how in a relatively short period (Cool Whip, the world's first non-dairy whipped topping, dates back only to 1966) Bill Mitchell's products have become the great staples of "down-home cooking" and traditional "family recipes". In the Tunbridge Volunteer Fire Department Cookbook from Tunbridge, Vermont, for example, Mary Vermette's excellent "Pudding Dessert" requires for the first layer 2 sticks of oleo, 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of chopped nuts (mix and bake); for the second layer, 1 cup of confectioner's sugar, 8 oz of cream cheese, 1 cup of Cool Whip (combine and spread on the first layer); for the third layer, 2 small packages of instant pudding and [2.5] cups of milk (mix and spread on the second layer); and for the fourth layer more Cool Whip sprinkled with chopped nuts. I made it and ate it in the interests of research, and had such a good time I clean forgot what it was I was meant to be researching.

Whole thing here.