Dishes That Have Gone Out of Style?

We still eat quiche quite often. They sell tons of it at Costco.

Obligatory link to Lilek’s Gallery of Regrettable Food.

I see aspic has been mentioned already. This topic came up in conversation at work a while back, and several of my colleagues named tomato aspic specifically as an example of a 1950s style dish that no one eats anymore.

Lobster Thermidor

I love a good poke cake. I’m smiling right now because jello isn’t as popular as it used to be, but a poke cake made with strawberry jello, yum!

Clams casino? I recall that being popular but I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen it anywhere.

Chicken a la king was the first thing I thought of. Can’t remember the last time I had it or saw it on a menu anywhere (though it’s probably there under some fancy “rebranded” name. :slight_smile: )

I eat aspic regularly, as it’s a pretty traditional Polish and Eastern European food (especially this time of year), but I wasn’t alive during the apparent aspic craze here in the US in the 50s or whenever. I love the stuff (Polish version is usually made with chicken/pork & veggies suspended in aspic) but all of my non-Eastern-European rooted friends think it’s the most disgusting thing ever. It is so difficult for me to imagine it having any sort of popularity here, although I wouldn’t discount it making a comeback now that I’ve seen things like offal make a comeback at mid-to-high end restaurants.

Also, rumaki? My mom used to make those all the time when I was a kid (though a simplified version of just chicken livers and bacon) when a James Bond movie was playing on the networks on a weekend night. (She probably made them other times, but I most associate it with James Bond movie nights when we’d both plow through probably a dozen chicken livers each throughout the movie.)

Mushy peas are a British thing, often served along with bangers and mash (grilled sausages and mashed potatoes). They’re just what the name implies, and it’s like eating very thick pea soup.

They are indeed sold in cans; in Toronto, I buy mine at the Bulk Barn. There are also do-it-yourself kits with dried peas sold in boxes. (I passed on these after reading the ingredients and seeing all the chemicals involved.)

Americans HATE organ meats. I’m amazed that the liver-and-onions eaters are only a generation behind us.

I love pulykamell’s rumaki, though I haven’t made it in years. The Ukulele Lady and I enjoy chicken livers several times a year, but the bacon would turn her off these days.

There used to be Argentinean steak houses all over NYC, where there would be a Mixed Grill of two kinds of steak, two kinds of sausage, plus kidneys and sweetbreads. That was how I learned to love sweetbreads…they can be unpleasantly mushy if braised, but they’re GREAT grilled. Especially with chimichurri on the side.

Jane & Michael Stern’s excellent SQUARE MEALS has a great tuna-noodle casserole recipe in the “Cuisine of Suburbia” section, called, I think, “He Man’s Tuna Casserole.” I’ve made it for young Banjo many times, and he still asks for it at the age of 21. But it’s just as much work as a Chicken or Turkey or Duck Tetrazzini, which is much more delicious.

And yeah, Welsh Rabbit is never seen any more. My theory is that the raging American passion for melted cheese was re-directed toward pizza after WWII.

Pizza is available everywhere, so why melt cheddar cheese into beer and mustard and pour it over toast and eat it with a fork and knife? Aside from the fact that it’s delicious?

I remember a dish called tuna/chicken/turkey chopstick that was identical to the tuna casserole with the potato chip toppng, except that it was topped with chow mein noodles (hence the politically-incorrect ‘chopstick’ moniker).

I haven’t seen that one around for a long time.

I just made one last night. Used Saltines and shredded Parmesan cheese instead of potato chips, though.

I’m another who regularly roasts whole chickens, makes an occasional quiche, has made Beef Wellington for special dinners and have done quite a few other things listed. Not as often as I used to, though.

I made a Watergate salad, ironically of course, for last year’s Christmas potluck at work. Nobody touched it; this high-falutin group raves over couscous and such instead. But I liked it!

Are we counting breakfast items? Oatmeal has had a resurgence, but it seems like Cream of Wheat (farina) and its cousin Cocoa Wheat aren’t advertised much anymore, and no one admits to eating the stuff.

Many years ago the Saint John library had a sale where I bought a bunch of old Life magazines from the 1930s through the 1980s for a dollar or two each. It was nearly a full set so you could cherry pick important historical events. The ads, similar to Lileks were full of meat and vegetable dishes on Jello, space age canned food and TV dinners, and odd looking meat shapes made out of seven brand name canned products.

This is different from unfashionable dishes: Shake n Bake chicken, Salisbury steak, Moxie, pate, crunchy yellow chow mein noodles, chicory coffee, Carob, devilled eggs, vodka with sour Jolly Ranchers, Schneiders Red Hot meat things, chicken tetrazzini, etc.

I had to look that up. I never even heard of Coco Wheat! It looks like it’s still around.

This is one of my favorite cookbooks ever. Not so much to cook from, but to read. It is hilarious, and the “Cuisine of Suburbia” is one of the best chapters. They describe an appetizer for your pseudo-Hawaiian luau, where you cut an opening in the top of a cabbage into which you insert a lighted sterno can. Then you impale cocktail franks all over the cabbage on toothpicks and have dishes of dipping sauce. The name of this masterpiece: “Flaming Cabbage-Head Weenies with Pu-Pu Sauce.”

If you’re the kind of person who likes to read cookbooks, don’t miss this one.

Deviled eggs and chicken Tetrazzini OUT OF STYLE? Bite your tongue, sir!

You know what was weird? My Mom used to make something called “city chicken” in the '60s in Cleveland – it was veal skewered on little wood skewers, and it tasted like crap.

At the time, veal was cheaper than actual chicken? Hard to believe these days, when veal scallopini is fetching $22 a pound at Whole Foods.

Ah,yes! I have a bunch of cookbooks that have “city chicken” in them. That was a little before my time, but, yeah, it’s bizarre to think there was a time when a cheaper version of “chicken” was imitated with veal.

I just looked it up on Wiki. It’s still pretty popular in the Pittsburgh/Cleveland/Toledo area of the Great Lakes (looks like Chicago is safe!), but they make it with pork now.

I remember it as being unpleasantly DRY. Maybe Mom was too lazy to make gravy.