I was watching the Abbott and Costello Mustard sketch on Youtube (very funny!). I was wondering if there was anyway to know how foods tasted in the past. I’m guessing that food tastes could change so gradually that we would not notice them. I know that when the New Coke came out, people went crazy and Coca Cola reintroduced the old Coke as Coca Cola Classic. I wonder now if they have gradually changed the ingredients back to new Coke without people even noticing.
What about other common foods like mustard, ketchup, butter, milk etc. How have the tastes of these foods changed over time?
Nothing tastes as good as it did when I was younger. Nothing.
And everything I used to like now tastes too sweet, too salty or too spicy. They can’t fool me, I know they’re changing everything.
The bananas we eat now are a different cultivar than the ones that Abbot and Costello ate. They probably taste different, but I’m not old enough to know.
Processed foods attempt to keep a consistent flavor over the years, but there are often changes due to cost of the raw ingredients. Classic Coke is one example: it’s always had the same formulation of flavors, but they replaced cane sugar with corn syrup. Though some people say they can tell the difference, most don’t notice it.
Re New Coke: Those people vehemently opposed and ridiculed the change could not consistently tell the difference between New and Old Coke in blind taste tests. If Coke hadn’t told everyone they changed their formulation, few would have noticed.
I remember when Heinz Ketchup’s ingedients listed tomatoes, vinegar, salt, and spices (and maybe a couple of other items). Now, it includes tomato paste.
In any case, it’s probably true that formulations of foods have changed over the years, but the changes have been gradual, took place to cut costs, and were designed to be as unnoticeable as possible.
Now, for milk, the biggest change was probably pasteurization and homogenization of milk. In addition, laws against adulteration (“milk” in the 19th century was routinely diluted with water, with chalk, plaster of Paris, and molasses added at no extra charge) put a stop to some very ugly practices.
(Although, I guess they sell diluted milk as 1% and 2% these days. It was also common to adulterate bread with chalk; now calcium carbonate* is added as a nutrient.)
*i.e., chalk.
I’m pretty sure they just remove some of the cream from whole milk to get 1% and 2%. IIRC, milk is normally about 5% cream, so you would have to add 4 litres of water to each litre of milk to make 1%. That would be pretty noticeable.
In cookbooks from the '50s they use MUCH more sugar, salt, and fat/butter.
That possibly has less to do with taste, and more to do with health issues.
They definitely left the cocaine out this time.
I recently found some american sodas in the ethnic foods section of my local supermarket.
Seriously you guys need to put the coke managment up agains the wall and shoot them for crimes against Humanity.
High Fructose Corn Syrup tastes like ass.
Sweden may be a small shitty country noones ever heard of… but at least theres real sugar in our coke.
and about the bananas
That’s exactly how they did it in the 19th century and were able to sell the milk without few people noticing (without testing) – and those people were used to drinking whole milk so presumable could tell the difference.
Lots of fat and butter for sure, and quite a bit of salt, but I recall reading somewhere (can’t find a cite) that a food magazine tried baking something from a recipe published shortly after WWII sugar rationing ended, when they expected to see lots of sugar used. Their taste-testers liked the result because it was “not too sweet.”
I haven’t compared recipes myself, but I find that commercial baked goods are usually far too sweet for me, and there’s sugar in all sorts of things that you wouldn’t expect.
Your meatballs are pretty good, too.
I trust the opinions of any Swede on food. A country that produced a world-class chef knows about food.
Bork, bork.
And their massages.
You can find kosher Coke in the USA during during the time around Passover … look for the yellow cap on the bottle. It has sugar, not HFCS.
Heinz Organic Ketchup uses sugar … tastes like the good old days.
Thomas English Muffins have changed recently. They no longer have straight sides … look like they’ve been pooped out onto a conveyor belt. The taste and texture are different too, not for the better I would say.
Just as an aside you can get Coke (and Pepsi for that matter) in other countries that use pure cane sugar…and it’s a LOT better.
I think that the food has changed quite a bit since I was a kid…even granting that my own tastes have changed as well. Especially fast food. There was a time when hamburgers from even McDonald’s were real hamburgers, not mass produced frozen patties processed for 2.37254 minutes in a mechanical oven but slapped down on a grill. I remember when Taco Bell actually used ground beef in their tacos and burrito instead of a meat like mush. Remember when McDonald’s fries actually tasted good? Or any of the fast food places?
I think two factors are price (i.e. trying to make the product cheaper both in labor and in materials while sort of kind of keeping a similar taste) and health (in theory at least everything is healthier now…though if you eat 6 times more of it that kind of defeats the purpose).
-XT
I read something recently that said Hershey was replacing cocoa butter in its chocolate with vegetable oil, to cut costs. I wasn’t a fan of their chocolate before they made this change, and I doubt that the new recipe will be any better.
I used to drink Coca-Cola when I was a kid, but I can’t stand the stuff now.
you can definitely taste the difference in something like the Krackel or MrGoodbar in the bag of Hershey’s Miniatures… they don’t taste anything like they used to-- sweeter, different mouthfeel, tastes like the crummy $.99 fake chocolate that people use to pad out easter baskets
Most can’t tell the difference.
Now, the USA soda companies claim they made the switch becuase HFCS is cheaper. Well, it is, but not by a lot. IMHO they made the change because HFCS has a very low “satiety” rating so you tend to drink more. When I wa sa kid, a large soda was 16-20oz. Now it’s at least 32, even up to 128oz. Yes, I have seen a half-gallon sized soda!:eek:
My parent’s “spice rack” had few items back in the early 60’s. Foods were less flavored. But they were more flavorful. How can that be? Modern fruits and veggies are grown more for looks and shelf-life than flavor. We only had fresh tomatoes or strawberries for a short time, but man they tasted good. The strwaberries were smaller, and could get smushed easily, but they were sweeter and tastier by a large margin.
OTOH, some foods are better- we have more and better varieties of apples, and even potatoes. The Yukon Gold is fantasic, way better than the Idaho of my youth.