In the 1950s, did folks really make, eat and savor that crap? I’m not talking about staple comfort foods of the era, but the monstrosities found in almost every cookbook from the era; slices of Polish sausage suspended in Jello, bacon teepees topped with cherries, and other such things seen on Lileks and other ephemera sites.
Yep. My mother has plenty of stories of that era’s “cooking for guests.” Although once you get past the more outlandish recipes, there are a number of mighty tasty dishes to be found in those old cookbooks.
Sure. Why would they be in the cookbook if no one wanted to cook them? That’s a recipe for cookbook publishing failure.
The 50s tended to be a time where quick and easy recipes were the rule.
Which brings me to another subject. The history of food an cookery is one of the few areas that a talented amateur can really make a difference in.
One of you youngsters ought to look into it.
There were probably as many “usable” recipes in 1950s cookbooks as there are in modern cookbooks.
Okay, not a '50s cookbook, but I have Betty Crocker’s Cooking for Two Cookbook, copyright 1971. One of the recipes in it is for Jellied Chicken. The ingredients are unflavored gelatin, chicken broth, cut-up pieces of chicken, lemon juice, celery, pimiento stuffed olives, onion, and more pimiento to top it with. It is, for all intents and purposes, chicken jello. Please, please, please tell me that no one ate that. The picture gives me nightmares.
That’s basically Chicken in Aspic. Perfectly normal food (at least it was back in our grandparents day).
Why do you think McDonalds, Drive throughs and similar places gained popularity so quickly?
“Honey, what’s for Dinner?”
“I’m thinking of making Chicken Jello”
“Um…er…SAY, there’s this new place in town called McDonalds. Why don’t we go out for the night and give that a try?”
I often hear that some places in the U.S. still cook partially in that style. The upper-midwest is usually mentioned although I have never been there.
You had me at bacon tepee.
Jello dishes are still a staple, but I don’t think they mix them with meat anymore. Pineapple and marsmallows, yes, but chicken no.
Aspic with meant and veggies is a perfectly normal sort of dish; sweetened Jello is the newcomer.
Yes, they really did eat stuff like that. My mom talks about it sometimes. In her family they just loved chopped-olive-and-cream-cheese sandwiches.
A lot of it was that food had only just become something that didn’t have to take huge chunks of time to prepare. Convenience food was all the rage with people who had never really enjoyed cooking in the first place, and like all new technologies, folks went a little nutty for a while. Remember how when answering machines were new, you could buy tapes with dopey novelty songs to put on your outgoing message? Not to mention the modern version: downloadable ringtones.
Suddenly you could produce a meal in very little time, so people started dressing things up and trying out weird variations.
To be honest, not much for everyday meals, but yes, I have seen and eaten many of those things. Sunday dinners, guests, holidays, and the dreaded church potluck.
We ate a lot of meat and potatoes. Kraft Mac & Cheese was a staple. Adventurous cooking (for the daily meal) was making something with a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup.
I think 50 years from now people will be baffled by some of the things we eat. I’m kind of baffled now, actually; I keep waiting for someone to explain to me why I’m supposed to put cilantro in everything. Be that as it may, I can’t think of anything I could cook right now that would top fluffy mackerel pudding for sheer horridness.
My stepson almost gagged when he saw a recipe that featured both jello and mayonnaise.
We were happy to get anything out of the old Searchlight cookbook. Anything else meant that mother was experimenting with something from a can. That could be spam or pork brains or even canned spaghetti. She actually had a prize winning recipe using canned spaghetti!
Our spice cabinet was a 5"by5" cubbyhole. The only spices that I remember were salt, pepper and cinnamon. My dad hated spices and almost made a moral issue of not using them. I didn’t have my first taste of garlic until I was thirteen or know what a pizza was until I was in college. There was no going back for me. Now I want curry, tarragon, cilantro, hot sauce, or something smokin’ on everything. (The tarragon and cilantro are for chewing tobacco. ;))
I don’t think we ate many casseroles back then. We had nice meals on Sunday, but during the week it was sandwiches, pancakes, cereal, soup, canned foods, and sometimes over-cooked fresh vegetables with no spices. Saturdays and Sundays were the days for the recipe book. Eventually things got better when she tried recipes out of the magazines. She didn’t want me to cook much.
One of Nashville’s favorite small watering holes used to serve that on toasted bread until they closed two or three years ago. They added chopped pecans to the mix. I’ve taken large stacks of them to the church suppers twice and both times I’ve gone home with an empty plate. They go fast.
I’ve seen chicken and more in gelatin salads since I moved up north. After one particularly exciting dinner, I simply started dubbing it all “stealth meat”, since there was no identifying what species (or, hell, class) it came from.
This one glistening, meaty…thing could’ve been beaver for all I know. 
No.
I grew up with this stuff, known in Polish as galareta (used both in senses of “aspic” and “gelatin” in Polish) and later enjoyed it as kocsonya (made from pork) in Hungarian cuisine. I love it. Almost everybody I know is completely disgusted by it. Just give me some galareta with a little vinegar and some rye bread, and I’m a happy boy.
I dunno. Minnesota Lutherans do kinda of still have the reputation for that sort of food.
:dubious: Since I can’t see the actual recipe, I can’t be sure; but they look like some kind of variation on a soufflé to me. Is it the word “pudding” that’s putting you off?