Making, and eating, the 1950s-60s most nauseating recipes
Jul 28, 2016 17:39:13 GMT -5
Post by PurplePuppy on Jul 28, 2016 17:39:13 GMT -5
I changed the title of this article a little for the headline, because I thought it might be fun to share any "old fashioned" recipes you might have from the past - maybe a favorite food from when you grew up, or a gross recipe you've come across and can't believe anyone would eat. Tastes have really changed over the years, and it seems food trends come and go, but let's take a look at what the favorites from the middle of the last century were. 
Even if you don't have a recipe to share, tell us what your old favorites were.
Making, and Eating, the 1950s' Most Nauseating Jell-O Soaked Recipes
By Hunter Oatman-Stanford
Poring over vintage cookbooks and food advertisements is equal parts intriguing and repulsive: People willingly ate things like “Shrimp Aspic Mold” and “Chicken Mousse”? Unlike the menus on contemporary food blogs and in best-selling recipe books, mid-century cooking seems guaranteed to make you gag, thanks to its mismatched flavors, industrial ingredients, and gelatin overload.
Top: Shrimpy, gelatinous, mid-century bliss. Above: Decked out in mid-century modern garb, Clark poses with a sour cream recipe book.
Often the strangeness of this era’s food stemmed from innovations being tested on our nation’s taste buds. World War II spurred an industrial food boom, introducing many technologies to keep foods fresh longer, from freezing to dehydrating. As Laura Shapiro explains in her book Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, at the war’s end, packaged food companies realized they had to convince domestic consumers to purchase their wartime products or risk shuttering their businesses.
As a result, during the late 1940s and early ’50s, a new crop of ideas about eating were thrust upon the public as the industry tried to “persuade millions of Americans to develop a lasting taste for meals that were a lot like field rations,” writes Shapiro. Hence the debut of frozen airline foods and canned meat products like Spam.
Today, foodies typically look back on this era with an upturned nose, preferring to mock its foods rather than eat them. So when Ruth Clark took the obvious, and daring, step of actually making these retro recipes for her fascinating website The Mid-Century Menu, it’s not surprising she received a bit of hate mail. Clark typically cooks one vintage meal per week, which she documents through scans of the original recipe, photos of her re-creation, and detailed tasting notes (often featuring amusing photos of her husband, Tom, attempting his first few bites). Her blog is an everyday cook’s version of the Julie & Julia project, featuring the food that real people made in mid-century America.
Clark recently gave us her experienced take on the marvels of mid-century eating, and the lessons contemporary cooks can learn from it.
A shelf full of mid-century cookbooks from Clark's personal collection.
Collectors Weekly: How did you start the Mid-Century Menu project?
Clark: My first blog, No Pattern Required, started in February of 2009, and I was looking for something to flesh it out a little, and also to be a bit different than the other mid-century blogs out there. I was talking to my husband and I said, “I have all these cookbooks, but I don’t just want to scan pictures and show people the recipes. I want to make these.” And he thought it was an excellent idea, so Tom’s been on board the whole time.
Collectors Weekly: How would you categorize mid-century food?
Ann MacGregor displays the diversity of edible freezer options in a 1957 image from her “Cookbook For Frozen Foods.”
Clark: Experimental. They were trying to get housewives to try these new products and use all these new techniques to make your life easier. Make a cake faster, make a soup faster, or use frozen foods for shortcut cooking. The mid-20th century saw an explosion of changes in all of American culture. People were testing out these new things discovered in World War II, like foods from different cultures, and also changes in technology, like frozen foods, that made more food available to more people.
People were experimenting with all these things they had never seen or used before, and they didn’t quite know what to do with them. If you watch that show “Chopped” on Food Network, I kind of think that’s what the mid-century cook felt like: We have all these weird ingredients, and what are we going to make with them? Well, let’s try this.
The other side is that many of the crazier recipes came from brand-specific cookbooks produced by companies trying to put their products into every single part of your meal. That’s easy to do with some stuff, like salt, but when you’re talking about things like cans of condensed tomato soup or ketchup, it’s a little more difficult to put those into a dessert.
Collectors Weekly: I always assumed food from this period was boring and bland.
Clark: Well, it was blander, because people used spices a lot less than they do now. Surprisingly, back in the ’40s, people used a lot of curry powder, but they would only use an eighth of a teaspoon of curry powder. Or a recipe for chili might only have a quarter teaspoon of chili powder in it. People considered ketchup spicy. There was definitely a change in palate in terms of spices, which I think is why people consider it to be a bland type of cooking.
“When you’re talking about cans of condensed tomato soup or ketchup, it’s a little more difficult to put those into a dessert.”
People think the proliferation of food blogs has made our tastes more diverse, but I actually think it’s the reverse. I think they’re becoming more of the same. People won’t accept food unless it’s a certain kind of food, and I think that going back to the mid-century cookbooks is opening up—well, especially mine and Tom’s world—in terms of what we can eat and what’s really out there. There are so many more options for everybody. It might not turn out perfectly, but there’s so much out there that we have to work with.
Long article - continued at the link
Even if you don't have a recipe to share, tell us what your old favorites were. Making, and Eating, the 1950s' Most Nauseating Jell-O Soaked Recipes
By Hunter Oatman-Stanford
Poring over vintage cookbooks and food advertisements is equal parts intriguing and repulsive: People willingly ate things like “Shrimp Aspic Mold” and “Chicken Mousse”? Unlike the menus on contemporary food blogs and in best-selling recipe books, mid-century cooking seems guaranteed to make you gag, thanks to its mismatched flavors, industrial ingredients, and gelatin overload.
Top: Shrimpy, gelatinous, mid-century bliss. Above: Decked out in mid-century modern garb, Clark poses with a sour cream recipe book.
Often the strangeness of this era’s food stemmed from innovations being tested on our nation’s taste buds. World War II spurred an industrial food boom, introducing many technologies to keep foods fresh longer, from freezing to dehydrating. As Laura Shapiro explains in her book Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, at the war’s end, packaged food companies realized they had to convince domestic consumers to purchase their wartime products or risk shuttering their businesses.
As a result, during the late 1940s and early ’50s, a new crop of ideas about eating were thrust upon the public as the industry tried to “persuade millions of Americans to develop a lasting taste for meals that were a lot like field rations,” writes Shapiro. Hence the debut of frozen airline foods and canned meat products like Spam.
Today, foodies typically look back on this era with an upturned nose, preferring to mock its foods rather than eat them. So when Ruth Clark took the obvious, and daring, step of actually making these retro recipes for her fascinating website The Mid-Century Menu, it’s not surprising she received a bit of hate mail. Clark typically cooks one vintage meal per week, which she documents through scans of the original recipe, photos of her re-creation, and detailed tasting notes (often featuring amusing photos of her husband, Tom, attempting his first few bites). Her blog is an everyday cook’s version of the Julie & Julia project, featuring the food that real people made in mid-century America.
Clark recently gave us her experienced take on the marvels of mid-century eating, and the lessons contemporary cooks can learn from it.
A shelf full of mid-century cookbooks from Clark's personal collection.
Collectors Weekly: How did you start the Mid-Century Menu project?
Clark: My first blog, No Pattern Required, started in February of 2009, and I was looking for something to flesh it out a little, and also to be a bit different than the other mid-century blogs out there. I was talking to my husband and I said, “I have all these cookbooks, but I don’t just want to scan pictures and show people the recipes. I want to make these.” And he thought it was an excellent idea, so Tom’s been on board the whole time.
Collectors Weekly: How would you categorize mid-century food?
Ann MacGregor displays the diversity of edible freezer options in a 1957 image from her “Cookbook For Frozen Foods.”
Clark: Experimental. They were trying to get housewives to try these new products and use all these new techniques to make your life easier. Make a cake faster, make a soup faster, or use frozen foods for shortcut cooking. The mid-20th century saw an explosion of changes in all of American culture. People were testing out these new things discovered in World War II, like foods from different cultures, and also changes in technology, like frozen foods, that made more food available to more people.
People were experimenting with all these things they had never seen or used before, and they didn’t quite know what to do with them. If you watch that show “Chopped” on Food Network, I kind of think that’s what the mid-century cook felt like: We have all these weird ingredients, and what are we going to make with them? Well, let’s try this.
The other side is that many of the crazier recipes came from brand-specific cookbooks produced by companies trying to put their products into every single part of your meal. That’s easy to do with some stuff, like salt, but when you’re talking about things like cans of condensed tomato soup or ketchup, it’s a little more difficult to put those into a dessert.
Collectors Weekly: I always assumed food from this period was boring and bland.
Clark: Well, it was blander, because people used spices a lot less than they do now. Surprisingly, back in the ’40s, people used a lot of curry powder, but they would only use an eighth of a teaspoon of curry powder. Or a recipe for chili might only have a quarter teaspoon of chili powder in it. People considered ketchup spicy. There was definitely a change in palate in terms of spices, which I think is why people consider it to be a bland type of cooking.
“When you’re talking about cans of condensed tomato soup or ketchup, it’s a little more difficult to put those into a dessert.”
People think the proliferation of food blogs has made our tastes more diverse, but I actually think it’s the reverse. I think they’re becoming more of the same. People won’t accept food unless it’s a certain kind of food, and I think that going back to the mid-century cookbooks is opening up—well, especially mine and Tom’s world—in terms of what we can eat and what’s really out there. There are so many more options for everybody. It might not turn out perfectly, but there’s so much out there that we have to work with.
Long article - continued at the link
My mother used to make some pretty nauseating things, like jellied pickled pigs feet - you couldn't pay me to eat t hat stuff! 
