Atsugi’s Time-Traveling Tomato Soup Cake
By: Mwr Atsugi
Tags: Military Spouse, Military Family, Japan, Baking, Cooking

Atsugi’s Time-Traveling Tomato Soup Cake

How Three Spouses, a Popular Youtuber, and a Vintage Cookbook Came Together During Quarantine MWR Atsugi Apr 16·8 min read

Writer: Reece Churilla

Pictured from left to right: Ashlee Gaines, Lindsey Clements and Kristina Miller — with The Cake.

For many of us, the memory of 2020 is like a chaotic blur with lingering effects. Together, we shared a kind of collective anxiety from witnessing a global pandemic spread in real-time — a period wrought with uncertainty and the constant shifting between hope and despair. We social distanced and donned our masks. Remote work became the norm.

NAF Atsugi, like most overseas bases, experienced heavy restrictions that confined military service-members and their families to their quarters for months. Little did anyone know, three spouses were busily trading among themselves a vintage cookbook that had just arrived in the mail, sent by a popular cooking Youtuber, and containing recipes like “Tomato Soup Cake,” “Miracle Pudding,” and “Grandma Bump’s Whole Wheat Bread.”

These recipes from the past had been compiled by the Atsugi All-Wives in a quaint tome titled, Cook’s Tour, printed in 1955.

“Cook’s Tour” among the ingredients needed to prepare the Tomato Soup Cake. School Liaison Officer (SLO) Hannah McCarthy graciously provided the tools and ingredients for preparing the cake, as well as her home kitchen.

This is the story of the quest for “Atsugi’s Cookbook” and how three foodies were able to bring it back home in a year of uncertainty and separation. Even more, it’s the story of how technology, food and cooking kindled a communal spirit through a window looking back to the naval air facility’s culinary past.

And it all began with a Facebook post.

Lindsey and Kristina browse the recipes contained within “Cook’s Tour” that span over 60 years and across many cultures.

“Emmy’s video came to my attention last November when it was shared to the Atsugi Community Resource Facebook page,” said Lindsey Clements — one of the three ladies responsible for acquiring the book. “Kristina said she was going to reach out to Emmy. So, between Ashlee, Kristina, and I, we knew we needed to get a copy of it and bring the book back home, so to speak.”

“My first thought was where can I find this cookbook!” said Ashlee Gaines who has lived on NAF Atsugi for nearly three years. “Kristina tagged me in the Facebook post with Emmy’s tomato soup cake video. Both the concept and the fact that it was made by spouses here on NAFA was fantastic! It’s a look at our history from the 1950s made by wives on base. I thought here we are in 2020, in a global pandemic, where we have seen our own food shortages and have had to improvise.”

“When I saw the video on the Facebook page, I thought it was so cool,” Kristina Miller said. “Who would’ve thought this existed for our little base here in Japan? I commented on Emmy’s post, sent her a message and email, not expecting her to see any of it. A week later she responded to me — it was so neat! I wanted to know where she’d gotten it.”

The “Emmy” they are talking about is more widely known as emmymade on Youtube (formerly emmymadeinjapan) whose quirky cooking videos have attracted nearly 2.5 million followers. In her Tomato Soup Cake video, Emmy holds up the recipe book Cook’s Tour and explains how a fan named Kani sent it to her. Kani’s mother, Mera, was the editor of the book, and it was all because Kani’s father had been stationed at NAF Atsugi.

(A handwritten letter from Kani to Emmy was included with the cookbook. It includes a few more details on the book’s production. We have not published the letter out of privacy concerns; however, it will remain with the physical copy of the cookbook.)

Emmy then points out how, in classic “retro style,” the recipe contains no eggs, butter, or milk — perfect for rationing — nor does it feature any instructions apart from the dish’s ingredients.

emmymade’s Tomato Soup Cake video, which was first discovered in a post to the Atsugi Community Resource Facebook page.

“You have to remember that this was published in 1955 and that these Atsugi spouses were children during and shortly after The Great Depression. So, when you talk about something like the Tomato Soup Cake, you’re talking about recipes that were created in a time of shortages for things like butter and sugar. Some of these seemingly ‘off-the-wall’ recipes came from when preservatives had just became a thing. It allowed people to kind of play with their food, and you can really see that willingness to experiment in the kitchen within the “Cook’s Tour”— Lindsey

The Tomato Soup Cake contains simple ingredients with no instructions in “classic retro style,” according to emmymade.

Lindsey, an MWR employee at Atsugi Library, used her research skills to track down a copy of the cookbook with little success.

“I have my own collection of vintage and antique books, so I was helping with the hunt by searching vintage booksellers across the web. I was all over eBay, Amazon, and sites I’d never heard of. I eventually came across a copy of “Stars & Stripes” from 1955 that somebody had scanned onto an internet archive featuring an article about how they were printing it. I reached out to them and said, ‘Hey, do you guys have this book?’”

Lindsey learned that the newspaper had lost many of its archives prior to 1962 when its headquarters moved from the old Hardy Barracks office in Tokyo into a new building on the same grounds.

“The folks at Stars & Stripes graciously dug around for us, which was really cool,” Lindsey said. “And then Ashlee messaged me out of the blue and said, ‘You’re never going to believe what showed up in the mail today… IT’S HERE!”

Ultimately, it was Kristina who discovered Emmy had not only responded to her message, but that she was willing to send her own copy of Cook’s Tour directly to Kristina.

“I told Emmy she didn’t have to send it, but she insisted,” said Kristina. “She was happy to. ‘It’s going home,’ she wrote to me.”

“Emmy sent us the book so we could return it to the Atsugi Library,” said Lindsey. “That the Library could reunite with this piece of Atsugi’s history, and we all can watch over it.”

Kristina, having mixed the tomato soup cake batter, observes Lindsey pouring the mixture into a Bundt pan.

So how did Cook’s Tour come about? What was the intent of compiling these strange, quirky recipes on an overseas Navy base?

Lindsey explained that recipe books and cookbooks were huge in the 1950s, and the Atsugi All-Wives were publishing it as a fundraiser.

“It was just like what the Atsugi Officers’ Spouses’ Association (AOSA) does today, where they do fundraising and ensure that all the money goes back into the Atsugi community. That’s what the All-Wives were doing, too.”

Flipping through the pages of the cookbook is like catching a glimpse of a bygone era with simple instructions for familiar staples like beef stroganoff and meatloaf, and international fusions such as Latin American dishes with Tabasco sauce, and Norwegian desserts made with soda. Cook’s Tour also includes tips on canning fruits and vegetables, making your own sauces and salad dressings, and how to use herbs and spices.

The batter enters the oven. How will it turn out?

“There’s such a variety of recipes, and the book is organized in some places based on where spouses were stationed previously,” said Lindsey. “Spouses brought recipes from Spain, Korea, Italy, and from their own homes. There is so much cultural diversity that’s reflected in these pages.”

“I found it interesting how the wives broke it down by cuisine or by different regions of the world,” said Kristina. “There are many ingredients we don’t really use today — some of it I’ve never heard of or wonder how they even got them out here.”

“We’ve only made the brownies,” she added with a laugh. “They were the best brownies we’ve ever had, probably because they’re loaded with sugar!”

Did she say, “sugar?” Powder it on!

For Lindsey, Ashlee, and Kristina, browsing the cookbook offered a catharsis from the stresses of isolation. They realized that by looking backwards in time, they had in fact set the stage for future entries in the Atsugi cookbook — that their quest did not end when they received the book, but instead would continue to evolve with the ever-changing population of the Atsugi community.

“The idea behind the cookbook allows a connection to the history, to the base, and the people who come here,” said Lindsey. “I think when you’re moving around with the military, you sometimes feel a little rootless, blown about in the wind, and through cookbooks like this, and history books, the more you know about the place where you’re stationed the more attached you become. For me, food is a pathway to connection.”

“I would like to see our community members have an interest in our history through the cookbook,” said Ashlee. “It’s been so much fun to be a part of the book coming full circle. But even more, I want this to show people that their actions matter — that something we do now could have an impact 50 years or more from now.”

“I hope the book brings people together,” said Kristina. “I encourage everyone to get a chance to read it and make something in the book. Most of all, I want to know how people are making do with what they can get their hands on here in Japan. What recipe can you add to the story?”

Kristina reveals the finished Tomato Soup Cake freshly adorned with powdered sugar. The group gives each other a round of applause before cutting in to the dish which tastes surprisingly … NOT tomatoey!

At last, Cook’s Tour has returned home to the Atsugi Library where it will remain as a non-circulating item. Patrons may view it there and even take photos of recipes to make in their own kitchen. And if you prepare any yourself, let us know how they turned out! We’d love to know! In fact, stay tuned to this blog and to our Facebook page for details on a new and improved Atsugi Cookbook in 2021 — and how you can be a part of it.