Why did people used to overcook vegetables?

[Anne_Neville]

@Exapno Mapcase

Did you live through the 1950s? People everywhere in the U.S., including restaurants, used to overcook vegetables.

Didn’t live through the 50s, but my mom learned to cook then, and it showed.

@Mangetout

I was going to leap in with a knee-jerk denial of this, but I think it’s probably substantially true. People really did thoroughly/over cook their food - not just veg - in fairly recent history.

I think some of it does derive from basically ignorant mythology about nutrition and digestion - but going back a little further, there was a distinct class division - you had the richer folks eating a fair bit of meat, and any vegetable accompaniments being subject to lengthy and elaborate preparation - to make them conspicuously fancy.

This makes a lot of sense.