Vintage Cooking, What Internet Says About the Good Old Days

[Tropicalsenior]

There seems to be an obsession on the internet now about vintage cooking. It's being fueled by the younger generation that has no idea what they are talking about. They didn't live in these times. I did. 

 

The main focus is on bizarre food concoctions. They don't realize that most of the weird stuff that they are posting were recipes that were dreamed up by advertising companies. Yes, they caught your eye but few serious cooks would have even considered making them. 

 

I won't deny that there was plenty of bad or weird food served in past years but it was probably for the simple reason that the ‘cook’ just didn't know how to cook.

 

Here are a few of the sites that have caught my eye recently.

 

30 Bizarre Vintage Recipes That Will Make You Ask “What Were They Thinking?”

https://www.demilked.com/weird-vintage-recipes/

 

36 Terrible Vintage Recipes That Are a Crime Against the Culinary Arts

https://cheezburger.com/37017349/36-terrible-vintage-recipes-that-are-a-crime-against-the-culinary-arts

 

And do they really believe this?

 

25 Gross Old Fashioned Recipes You Won't Believe People Actually Ate

https://www.liveabout.com/gross-old-fashioned-recipes-4153470

 

There are some sites that present this period in a more truthful fashion.

 

Cooking vintage

https://cookingvintage.kitchen/tag/1950s-recipes/page/2/

 

Vintage Recipes

https://vintage-recipes.com/

 

These present cooking as I remember when I started cooking in the late 50s.

 

There was not an overabundance of cookbooks in this time. Most cooks had a copy of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook or The Fanny Farmer Cookbook. These were all that you needed to put a decent meal on the table.

 

The small advertising cookbooks were just becoming popular at that time. They were situated next to the checkout stand and we usually browsed them as we stood in line, realized that most of the recipes were completely impractical and replaced them before we checked out. At that time they were usually 25 cents apiece and not even worth that.

 

I know we have several senior cooks in our midst and my question to you is, how did you cook in the 60s and '70s? Were you even tempted to make any of the monstrosities that they show on the internet now?

 

For the youngsters in our group, (50 and under) did any of your parents make this type of food?

[rotuts]

My mother cooked every day .

 

Meals were good , but not complicated.

 

She worked , and ran a nursery school.

 

the books I remember , and still have ,  Fannie Farmer , edition circa just before WWII.

 

and my favorite growing up :  Betty Crocker , in a loose leaf binder .

 

the loose leaf binder fascinated me , as my father was a teacher , and had lots of binders

 

for his various lectures.

 

I still have both of them.  Betty had pictures , and a style that was a bit outline-ish.

[ElsieD]

I looked at most of the items and I did make a gazpacho jellied salad back in the day and I still like it.  Pickled herring?  Yes please, though I never made it.  My mother cooked plain food but it was very good.  She would not have dreamt of buying, let alone making, any of these dishes.  They never appealed to me either.  My mother never taught any of us how to cook (5 girls) so when I moved out of home I was a pretty lousy cook.

[Shel_B]

I've not yet looked at the links above, but just a few days ago I came across a PDF file of old McDonald's recipes and food descriptions, so I'll just add them to the mix.

 

https://www.beneboy.com/mcmenu.pdf

 

 

[ElsieD]

I liked this last line under Breakfast Burritos:

 

"Drop on the floor, and serve. (more authentic flavor)"

[weinoo]

3 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

I won't deny that there was plenty of bad or weird food served in past years but it was probably for the simple reason that the ‘cook’ just didn't know how to cook.

 

Sorry, but there is still plenty of bad and weird food being served - in restaurants - mostly because the cook still doesn't know how to cook or season food.

Edited 6 hours ago by weinoo (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

3 minutes ago, weinoo said:

but there is still plenty of bad and weird food being served

I've got to agree to that, probably more now than ever.

[Tropicalsenior]

31 minutes ago, Shel_B said:

so I'll just add them to the mix.

Thank you. That is a very interesting list of recipes. They are obviously copycats but somebody's put a lot of work into this

[Katie Meadow]

Just about any one can write a book about making and eating bad or weird food. Today's NYT Science Times is all about healthy eating, and addresses the misconception that the good old days were healthier. Make America Healthy Again? When exactly was "then?"  Maybe, if you lived on a farm and grew vegetables in a climate with a reasonable growing season. In most areas of the country access to fresh fruits and veggies was not a given.  Also, meat was very expensive for many folks. You were lucky to have clean water. Then came ultra-processed foods. 

 

A friend said that her poor German Jewish ancestors left a record that they ate Caraway Soup. Yes, that was caraway seeds, cooked in water. You did what you could. 

[Shel_B]

13 minutes ago, Katie Meadow said:

A friend said that her poor German Jewish ancestors left a record that they ate Caraway Soup. Yes, that was caraway seeds, cooked in water. You did what you could. 

 

My Dad told me about "Depression Soup." We were sitting in the Horn & Hardart automat near Rockefeller Center one late autumn afternoon in 1955, and we'd just purchased some sandwiches and grabbed a table. The situation got him remembering the depression years, and he told me of buying a sandwich for a nickel, getting a glass of water, and sitting at a small table by a window. On the table were condiments, and he'd add some salt, pepper, ketchup, mustard ... whatever they had ... to the water, stir it up and, voila, Depression Soup. Many people made Depression Soup in those days.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

A “senior cook” responding to @Tropicalsenior:  At my first job and my apartment, I would buy a pound of ground round and 3 zucchini.   Dinner was 1/3 lb burger and a sliced zucchini. Repeat two more times, then rebuy the same.  My roommate moved in and rebelled after a week.    Menu got marginally better.    I married in 6 months, moved out of town and took on an hour + commute.    Dinner was a shared small porterhouse and splat of some vegetable.    I seriously learned to cook, mostly out of Betty Crocker, after husband was drafted, we moved out of state and I had time to think about food.  A champagne appetite pushed me toward restaurant-level concepts.    Cooking like this at home dulls one’s taste for moderately priced restaurants.   Shot myself in the foot.

[liuzhou]

7 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

And do they really believe this?

 

Of course not. These sites are almost all just clickbait. Count the adverts per page. Ridiculous.