I probably should've kept them but we moved a number of times and so I ended up keeping the Betty Crocker cookbook that belonged to my spouse's grandmother but let go of some real gems w/respect to wtf recipes. The regional and/or church cookbooks or the ones the natural gas companies used to hand out are rather enlightening when one considers historical events of the time period, food supply chains, locale, social aspirations, food science and nutrition, and so on.
To continue your theme, here is something BC labels as "Mexican Ambrosia" circa 1956: Heap snowy shredded coconut over slice of fresh or drained canned pineapple on each dessert plate.
I give the Betty (as we call it) some credit where credit is due, however. For the young person starting out on their own, it was a nice supplement to whatever one picked up at home--techniques and tested recipes that were very basic and easy to read. Not intimidating in the slightest. While THE Julia was an entertaining and educational cook, so too was the BC brand (aligned with the products mainly General Mills) as it morphed from a radio program to a television show and the pamplets and cookbooks. Maybe a little bit of hokey capitalism but for cooks in areas where certain kinds of ingredients were nonexistent or barely heard of, at least one could become a capable enough provider of meals.