At dinner tonight, my wife and I were discussing foods that seem less common now than in the past. My short list would include the following:
Jello based dishes…like Jello fruit salad
Tapioca pudding
Fried chicken livers
Liver and onions
Vanilla cookies layered with banana slices in banana pudding
Tamale pie
Corn dogs
Butter beans with ham hocks
Desserts made with shredded coconut
Casseroles in general
And then there are all the dishes that seem to appear only on Thanksgiving or Christmas…like candied yams, peas with little pearl onions, string beans with slivered almonds, and homemade crescent rolls…
Do you have (and possibly miss) any foods that were more popular in the past?
Parsnips.
City chicken.
Candied apples.
Liverwurst. (I miss that one.)
Cream of Wheat.
Rhubarb pie.
Whole milk.
An egg in your beer. (You gotta be Polish.)
Chop Suey.
Gelfite fish.
Sardines.
Nilla Wafers. (I just checked and Nabisco still sells them.)
Stewed tomatoes.
An egg in your beer? Eeeeew? Cooked, or raw?
Gefilte fish? I love that stuff, preferably with scary horseradish, It should be doctored up with carrots and onions, though, not straight out of the jar.
Green Goddess dressing. Only Kraft makes it now, as far as I can tell, and it’s not even really Green Goddess, just creamy Italian with FD&C blue and yellow # whatever.
BTW, sunstone, come on over to the heartland and we’ll fix you up with some corn dogs, banana pudding, and any kind of casserole you want.
twickster Onion Dip!!! Oh man, I am on your beam. I’ll bring the Doritos[sorry, don’t know how to do the micro-print letters for the trademark disclaimer]
It’s difficult to find: scrapple[if you’re outside of the Scrapple Belt];
meatloaf at a diner;Dairy Queen’s[where the hey have they all gone] unsugared breakfast cereals; ginger ale that actually tastes like it has ginger in it[most kinds are way too sweet and wishy-washy]
sunstone Like coconut do ya? I make a mean 5-cup salad.
We eat that all the time at my house, I kinda thought everyone did?
We eat that all the time too.
My mom makes bannana pudding li ke once a month and theres always a box of Nilla wafers in my cabinet.
Am i an old fashioned eater or something?
although, there is one thing that I hardly ever eat that i miss, Pomegranites It may be that they’re never in season or something, but I could really go for one about now.
Oddly enough, Flowerchild, my wife returned yesterday from grocery shopping with two big pomegranets! I can’t wait to get all red stained…and I have a two year old pomegranet bush in the back yard. This year there should be fruit.
Mooney…How could I have forgotten your rhubarb pie! The real kind without the strawberries. Boy, I really loved those; Thanks for reminding me. Maybe I’ll try to bake one. But what are City Chickens?
Mmmm…Green Goddess Salad Dressing. Of course if I didn’t remember the taste, I would think it was either a feminine super hero, or maybe a fertility spirit. But I wonder if there were anchovies in it?
Twickster: How about putting some of your Onion Dip along with QuiltGuy’s Doritos on the table…we could have it along with FONDUE!
What a party! We could play Scrapple (sorry, QG), if only I knew what it was.
Maybe the main dish could be goulash. I’ve got a big can of paprika.
So, FairyChatMom…what kind of cookies are you gonna make? Do you remember the ginger snaps that were so hot that they burned your mouth? Wow, they were good.
I have my husband’s grandmother’s cookbook. She compiled recipes from her wedding day in 1918 to her death in 1975 and pasted them into a little three ring binder.
There are at least six different recipes for beef liver, two for beef kidneys, one for brains (with scrambled eggs!) and two for tripe. There are quite a few recipes for lamb, mutton, and veal. Most of these recipes were clipped from various homemakers’ magazines, so I’d assume they were relatively popular items for dinner parties.
Can you even BUY mutton anymore?
Another thing I find kind of surprising about Grandma Ethel’s cookbook is the emphasis on artificial ingredients - lots of MSG, food color, flavor extracts, oleomargarine and such. Very little in the way of fresh vegetables and more natural flavorings like herbs and spices.
LifeOnWry…about a month ago, I was in the Navajo Nation. In a resturant were I ate, there were several mutton dishes, and in two grocery stores I found various cuts of mutton. And you are right in that many other meats (like organ meats) were eaten in the past.
In visiting the local supermarkets that cater to our ethnic minorities, you would find all of the meats that you have listed.
Oleomargerine. Not fake butter, but proudly advertised as a new and tasty treat at the time. When I was very young, we had to add a little packet of coloring and squish it into the white putty-like “oleo”
But a new food pops to mind. Home made ice cream. The kind that you make in a hand cranker with ice and salt. Nothing has ever tasted better, unless it was ice cold buttermilk.
My SIL makes goulash occasionally. Oh, and she makes a yummy Jell-O (hereafter written as “jello”) dish. (Orange jello with canned mandarin oranges mixed in, a layer of whipped topping, and a layer of grated cheddar cheese. It’s yummy.) I think I have an old cookbook that calls for oleomargarine in some recipes. (It’s a darn good cookbook, too, but you won’t catch me using anything but butter.)
LifeOnWry, I think a lot of those recipes that use all of everything came from the Depression. My grandpa liked brains and scrambled eggs for breakfast. You can still get brains (cow brains) at the store. I’m pretty adventurous about food, but that’s where I have to draw the line. And I think the emphasis on artificial ingredients may partially be because of their relative newness at the time, though that’s a WAG.
Can’t think of much this morning but I know in my family we never see pear salad (a pear half with a dollop of mayo in the center and grated cheese on top) or pickled peaches anymore.
Used to always have those around for a “fancy” family dinner (along with the deviled eggs, congealed salad, green onions, pickles, tomatoes, biscuits, cornbread, boiled chicken or pot roast, potato salad and baked beans with bacon slices on the top. yes, we’re rednecks. hee-haw!).
