8 Celebrity Recipes That Would Kill You Today

Here in the TikTok days of pink sauce and rat snacks, it can be hard to appreciate that this is the most normal that food has ever been. Back in your grandparents’ time, if it wasn’t pureed, soaked in wine, slathered with mayonnaise and suspended in Jell-O, it wasn’t fit to serve company. This was just before heart disease became the leading killer of Americans, so people were living fast and dying bloated.

That goes double for celebrities. Some of them can’t even figure out how to slice a cucumber, let alone assemble a meal that won’t get you arrested in some states. Luckily for us here in the future, that didn’t stop many of them from contributing to cookbooks some of the most bonkers recipes this side of Willy Wonka. Some are clear-cut evidence of eccentricity, some of severe alcoholism and some will straight-up kill you. Take for instance…

8 Elizabeth Taylor’s Steak and Peanut Butter Sandwich

Taylor’s 1987 diet book Elizabeth Takes Off is an encyclopedia of culinary abominations, but its worst offender is a recipe that called for six to eight ounces of hamburger or steak (that’s a Double Quarter Pounder’s worth) on whole wheat toast spread with peanut butter that one reviewer found so vile she couldn’t eat more than three bites. Yes, this is what Taylor apparently ate when she wanted to lose weight.

7 Jacqueline Kennedy’s Caviar Baked Potato

Speaking of unhinged weight-loss strategies, the same reviewer attempted Jackie O’s legendary potat-roe diet, consisting of a single baked potato topped with sour cream and caviar every day. To be fair, it was much tastier than Liz’s peanut butter burger, but there’s a reason they don’t serve caviar on French fries, and one of those reasons is it will kill your wallet almost as fast as you.

6 Dean Martin’s Burgers and Bourbon

Martin’s contribution to 1966’s The Celebrity Cookbook isn’t so much a recipe as a proposition, or possibly a cry for help. It calls for only two ingredients, ground beef and bourbon, and if you were hoping for some kind of fancy flambé, you’re drastically overestimating the average ‘60s man’s cooking skills. The whole recipe is just four hamburger patties, grilled “over medium-high heat about four minutes on each side,” plus a shot of bourbon on the side. It specifically instructs the diner to enjoy them on a TV tray, just in case you were planning on doing anything good for you.

5 Patty Duke’s Wineburger

It could have been worse. A 1978 cookbook features “John Astin’s and Patty Duke’s Favorite Recipe for Hamburger,” which is basically a ground beef patty cooked in half a cup of red wine. It was served in a bowl with the wine on top and some alfalfa sprouts — you know, for fiber. Did we mention this was in a cookbook to benefit a rehab facility?

4 Tippi Hedren’s ‘Seafood Delight’

The same cookbook included a recipe for Hedren’s “Seafood Delight.” Take it from us: If a recipe from last century has the word “delight” in it, it’s a cruel irony. Hedren’s dish has a few normal vegetables and condiments in it, but it’s mostly canned fish. Like, several that don’t even come in cans anymore. Canned crab. Canned shrimp. Canned lobster. Then it’s just mixed up, topped with crushed potato chips, baked and served to your enemies.

3 Carole Lombard’s Chicken Mousse

In a 1933 issue of Picture Play magazine, Lombard shared her recipe for chicken mousse, which involved whipping cream by hand, finely chopping, pounding and sieving a bunch of chicken and almonds, cooking egg yolks with broth and gelatin, and mixing it all together. It might not sound very appetizing, but it’s also a lot of work.

2 Norma Shearer’s Bacon Liver

In the same issue, Shearer divulged that she “regales her friends with chicken livers,” though that’s surely the wrong verb. Her recipe is just alternating layers of chicken livers and bacon. It’s artery- and palate-clogging.

1 Marilyn Monroe’s Warm Egg Smoothie

Most of these recipes are just gross and/or generally unhealthy, but this one might actually kill you. In 1952, Monroe told Pageant magazine that she starts every day by heating a cup of milk, cracking two eggs into it, whipping it with a fork, and drinking it. Enjoy your salmonella, Marilyn emulators.