So, I have been cleaning. I especially like cleaning things that aren’t in urgent need of tidying, so I’ve been sorting through old books and cookbooks. I’m fond of community cookbooks, and I have several that my mother passed along to me. Here’s “Home Cooking Secrets of Palmdale,” put together by the Palmdale Woman’s Club (which I am happy to report still exists: http://www.palmdalewomansclub.com/index.html) in 1973. My mother grew up in Palmdale, a small town in the high desert, near Edwards Air Force Base. When she was young, she lived on a ranch, rode horses, and watched test pilots fly overhead.

At any rate, this cookbook was given to my mother by Aunt Berta (the title is an honorific; she’s not actually related), who annotated a few recipes. Next to, “Pickled Figs,” she writes, “I made this and it is super.” She claims to have made the “Fruited Cheese Mold” for years, and it is the disturbing kind of recipe that combines lemon or lime gelatin, pineapple, and cheddar cheese. This is a little surprising, given Aunt Berta’s contributions to the cookbook: a chocolate pie (it calls for six 10 cent Hershey bars) and “Sweet Potato Royal,” which I am not likely to make, but does not contain any shocking combinations.

It’s the sort of cookbook were everyone contributes under their husband’s names, such as “Mrs. William B. Baker.” Only Mrs. Dorothy F. Lewellen and Mrs. Louise Johnson went all women’s lib on everyone (it is 1973, after all) and used their own first names. Mrs. G.E. Gustafson rides a fine line: her first name appears in parentheses (it is Etta, by the way). The back material — substitutions, hints on roasting time for turkeys, and the like — includes ingredients lists for “Supper Quantity Cooking.” Here, your options include baked beans for 100, hash supper for 100, cabbage salad for 175, ham supper for 225, turkey dinner for 250, and chicken shortcake for 135 (not 125 or 150, just 135 — that’s all the people in Palmdale who will eat chicken shortcake).

The most troubling contribution? A sort of taco salad, which combined ground beef and rice, served over fritos. This isn’t in and of itself too offensive, but it’s the recipe name that troubles me: “Wetbacks.” Nothing like wearing one’s racism on one’s sleeve.

OK, enough amateur sociology.