I’m part of a Facebook group that shares recipe cards from the '50s and '60s - a strange, dark time in American history, when “spicy” meant using salt and pepper, mayonnaise was considered one of the basic food groups, and the culinary gatekeepers of the modern housewife were home economists at Kraft trying to figure out how to shoehorn as many branded products as possible into a recipe and see if people would actually eat it.
It’s in this context that I came upon this recipe for cream cheese dip;
Compared to some of the other recipes that pop up (just the other day there was one for hot dog chowder), this one sounds bland but inoffensive. I can’t wrap my head around what they mean by “meat sauce” in this recipe, though. It’s certainly not anything (gasp!) Italian, and since there’s only a tablespoon of it to an entire brick of cream cheese it’s clearly meant to be a flavoring, but it must be common enough that the writer didn’t feel any need to elaborate or say to use Kraft™ Meat Sauce™, instead just referring to it generically.
Was there some condiment that was commonly referred to “meat sauce” back in the day?
Just a wild guess, but maybe steak sauce? It would have the same vibe as the Worcester sauce in the recipe, so maybe they work together for the flavor profile?
Could it have been A.1. sauce? It looks like it might work.
A1 Steak Sauce
If steak sauce is a staple in your household, grab a bottle to use as a 1-to-1 sub for Worcestershire sauce. Made from tomato paste, vinegar, and raisin paste, A1 has the same consistency as Worcestershire. It’s a bit sweeter but works well as an easy swap.
I think it must be this. The tiny amount precludes it being something like a gravy or au jus, and those don’t make sense in a back-of-the-box recipe that’s meant to be super fast to throw together.
Right. If someone were to say “meat sauce” to me without any further explanation, I would think Italian meat sauce, I.e. ragu bolognese. This obviously isn’t what this recipe is looking for, since if the average American housewife at this time ever served spaghetti at home it was probably Chef Boyardee.
I got curious after I posted that, and Googled the history of A1 Sauce. Up until the 1960s, it was marketed as a sauce for meat, fish, and poultry. It didn’t get the name “steak sauce” until later.
I don’t think it would be a bad addition to this recipe, even if that’s not what they meant.
The color of the pictured sauce would seem to rule out steak sauce. Unless the colors are off, there’s nothing in the ingredients to turn it that blue-green-y color. No idea.
My assumption is that the dip is white and the off-coloration is due to the lighting, the quality of the cameras they would have been using at the time, and degradation over time of whatever medium (probably paper or cardstock) this recipe was originally printed on.
This recipe is actually pretty close to a clam dip my parents used to make. Instead of the cream they used a can of condensed clam chowder. I don’t think they used steak sauce but they definitely used Worchestershire. A hit of A1 would have been pretty good in it, I think.
This report from 1947 refers extensively to “Worcestershire and similar meat sauces.” One example it gives is Maggi, which is an umami bomb type of sauce. A1 would definitely be in the same category.
Then there’s something wrong with either your A1 or your Worcestershire!
Worcestershire has the consistency of water.
A1 has the consistency of ketchup.
