Horrifying Vintage Recipes

You would have to hold me at gunpoint or physically force me to consume this.

Who knew that christmas lights could be used for urethral sounding?

They were really into gelatine recipes, for some reason. There's still a restaurant in my town that serves a wide variety of 'salads' that are essentially weird forms of Jello. I've only eaten there once.

Actually, while all of the recipes at OP's link are truly horrifying, r1's picture looks like something I would eat -- noodles, cashews, probably some meat slivers in there somewhere -- it looks like pretty much every Asian take-out noodle dish.

I was thinking Chinese Chex Mix, R4.

I'd take it to any of the glop served up in the article. Gawd. You have to love a quote like this one.."Scoop out the center of a 1 1/2lb piece of bologna.." Funny how sainted Hellmann's is responsible for so many of them. Bring out the Best Foods?

When I was 14 and just about to board a flight from SFO to spend the summer with my paternal grandmother in Wyoming, my mom said, "Your grandmother makes something called chili mac..it looks awful, but you'll like it"

I did. Haha.

"Pack that bologna shell" sounds like something from a really bad porno.

The Jellied Tomato Refresher looks like a page out of rotten.com.

Nothing makes you go "ahhhhh" like a nice pile of semi-frozen red chunks that looks like gore from a Singapore moped accident.

Right, this coming from a man who sticks his tongue in another man's ass.

Is that where the SPAM goes up into the other SPAM, R8?

Yikes, most of those look disgusting. Sadly the "perfection salad" looks like something my mom and aunts made for special occasions, in a fancy Tupperware mold with an interchangeable design lid. Thank God that celery-flavored Jell-O is discontinued lol. The igloo meatloaf doesn't look so scary by comparison, maybe as a variation on cottage pie.

I've always wanted to try meat with a fancy-ass old-fashioned chaud-froid-sauce preparation.

Would it be delicious, like cold meat or fish with attached flavoring? Or would it be cold meat covered in lukewarm rubbery weirdness?

Your pantry wasn't stocked unless you had every Campbell's Cream of Something Condensed Soup in the cupboard, and at least six different flavors of Jell-O gelatin.

Isn't this all just copied from the Gallery of Regrettable Food?

[quote]Right, this coming from a man who sticks his tongue in another man's ass.

Don't you have a pile full of your seventh child's spinach coloured shit to wash off of the walls in the local starbucks' bathroom?

I love stuff like this. Not to eat, but to laugh at and be nostalgiac about.

I can sense the new foodie trend: aspic! It's not just for nasty Instagram posts!

These recipes look like they came out of the White Trash Cook Book.

Remember, this processed crap that you could keep stocked for ages was considered the height of modernity at one point.

I didn't even know aspic had ever existed until the Datalounge thread about them.

OP, NOBODY ate any of this shit.

Remember Edward Scissorhands? I remember Peg tempting Edward with a lovely Ambrosia Salad.

R18 is spot on. The invention of processed foods, preservation techniques, and the arrival of efficient freezers in the home were revelations to most Americans (since most of these recipes are distinctly American).

Fun fact: cherry Jell-o is the most popular flavor nationwide, except in Utah where green is the preference, with marshmallows and fruit cocktail on special occasions.

I remember an orange jello salad with shredded carrots, walnuts, and cream cheese frosting.....shudder

My high school cafeteria specialized in those nasty orange, lemon or lime jellos with vegetables. I still shudder at the thought.

I loathed salisbury steak or any other ground beef recipe covered with gravy to pretend it was better than it was. That seemed to be part of the open a can of Campbell's cream of whatever soup trend.

Mom made something with Jell-O, Cool Whip, nuts (walnuts) and cherries every year for Christmas. I think pineapples may have been involved. I actually crave it every so often.

Okay, took me six seconds to find it. Ambrosia! Same thing from Edward Scissorhands that was mentioned above?

They had all these foods in The Astronaut Wives Club a few years back

We never saw anything like that in my house or extended family, nor did I ever see any such thing at friends' houses when i stayed for lunch or dinner. I'm thinking maybe it was a scandinavian midwestern thing. Anyone who would eat lutefisk would find that stuff delicious

My signature meatloaf......

I remember these but I don't think they were made for very long. Vegetable flavored Jello for vegetables.

Not all horrifying recipes were white trash!

Here, wet jiggly ham in aspic, served on a bed of wiggly inedible diced aspic. Tres chic, or some people thought it was.

The average dinner in the US in the 1950s and 60s was roast beef, potatoes, peas. Variations on that theme.

And of course things like: macaroni and cheese, spaghetti&meatballs, fried chicken, roasted chicken, soup, stew.

Meals were very simple.

Look at the Swanson frozen dinners from the era, they were trying to duplicate what the average American ate.

The recipes shown here were for women's magazines. And they had to invent something new every month. How many times could they feature roast beef?

So you have all these outlandish and most of all very colorful dishes. Color printing was finally cheap enough for feature stories, not just the magazine covers. Most meals are variations on the color brown....editors wanted color.

Of course for special occasions and buffets some of this stuff (like the jello molds) might show up, but not for daily fare.

And look at restaurant menus from the era. You won't see that stuff.

I really like this theory that Eleanor Roosevelt's ghastly White House food was revenge on FDR for his infidelities. How does this sound:

[quote] A hot weather specialty, featuring canned pears covered in cream cheese, mayonnaise, chives and candied ginger. Mrs. Nesbitt said she'd sometimes color the mayonnaise green.

Apparently, after FDR's death, Eleanor become a lover of fine foods and international cuisine.

Aspics were invented in the medieval era. I can't imagine what horrors they created and served at that time.

r31 is spot on. The need to create new "colorful" dishes for print magazines drove the creation for most of these recipes. Homemakers may have tried some of these recipes once or twice, but they were not the staple meals of the era.

Fast forward to 2017 and a gazillion 3 minute FB video recipes. I always picture a test kitchen at the Food Network stocked with bacon, avocados, potatoes and cheese and 20 "chefs" each with a 10 recipe per day quota.

American food had been very basic through the 1950s. Meat ant potatoes still ruled the nation's plates, spaghetti was considered exotic and spices a gateway drug, and awful processed foods the height of sophistication and modernity. Then Julia Child hit with her recipes and TV show, and in the early 1960s America discovered French cookery and haute cuisine!

And of course America made a hash of it. Food became pretentious, without being good.

Another vote for r31!

Here's a typical 50s restaurant menu --

R3, Jello became very popular as a dessert substitute during WW II when sugar was rationed. Fruit-flavored Jell-0 gelatin came in a package with sugar already added.

When the war ended and people were able to eat "normal" desserts once again, the Jell-O creators promoted its use as a salad substitute in parts of the US where fresh vegetables weren't readily available nor reasonably priced year 'round. It was also very popular with the elderly who had problems with their teeth and in hospitals for surgery patients.

Only later was the product advertised as "cool, light, and tastes like fruit" revealed to be 80% sugar and thus not low calorie.

Of course, no discussion of mid-20th century pretentious foods would be complete without a chat about the role of food coloring.

Remember Fanny Craddock and her green mashed potatoes? She just did it for the hell of it.

When I was a tiny kid, if you ordered a hamburger or a sandwich at a diner (also called a "grill") you didn't get french fries with them, you got a handful of potato chips. And a pickle chip

The recipes for the Lobster Relish and Stuffed Salmon look appetizing. I'd try them. A lot of the "Ick" factor comes from the presentation.

I think Aspic on a chiffonade is tres chic!

Does Aspic even have flavor or is it just used to hold other foods in place?

We never, ever ate anything like this at all when I was young. I can't to this very day. It took me until I was over 50 to sample Spam. I had to spit it out. I will thank the Lord above my Italian-American family never really assimilated, at least when it came to food and eating habits.

R25, real ambrosia did not contain Jello, nor did it include that nasty frankenfood Cool-Whip which wasn't invented by Kraft's labs until 1966. Ambrosia pre-dates fake food by many years.

We have a cold tomato aspic every year at Christmas. It's surprisingly refreshing. This recipe looks to be about what my grandmother makes.

Why is the center of the Summer Salad Pie, made with tuna, blacki?

"Does Aspic even have flavor or is it just used to hold other foods in place?"

Savory aspic is typically made by adding gelatin to a clear broth or bullion, so it tastes like cold, solidified broth.

Which isn't terrible once you get used to the idea. I've made oeufs en gelee (eggs in aspic) when on high-protein diet kicks, which is basically poached eggs in gelatinized chicken stock with little bits of ham and onion for flavor. It was fairly tasty. But I don't know about this presentation here, is that diced aspic on the side? I thought that shit was just used for decoration, I can't imagine anyone eating it.

They used to tell women that gelatin was good for their nails.

Turkey roll with jello salad for dessert on Thanksgiving! (Hey, not my family. Shocking even back then.)

The special on that '50s menu actually sounds good. Braised short ribs with horseradish,potato,vegetable,and a chef salad for $1.85.

I used to love those desserts in R35's photo.

I haven't had them in ages but I hate to admit it they still look delicious.

[quote]OP, NOBODY ate any of this shit.

You ain't that elder, Eldergay r20. My mom and her friend had a nice little local cottage biz making what's called a "sandwich ribbon" (they called it a sandwich loaf) well into the late 80s. It was a staple for bridal showers, baby showers, ladies luncheons etc.

Actually, theirs looked and tasted a hell of a lot better than that mess at OP's link. Theirs had 4 layer (usually chicken salad, tuna salad, egg salad, and ham salad) and was quite good. You still sometimes see sandwich loaf on menus at high tea places. They're not terrible different than an assortment of tea sandwiches...just in a slice instead of individuals.

Love the vintage menus r36. I'm not that old but elder than YOU r20 :)

Just curious, R52, what was your mother's nationality?

I'm 40 and I feel like food got a lot better in the mid to late 90s.

Yeah but I miss those meals in 1960s restaurants like shrimp cocktail, consomme with noodles, roast beef, mashed potatoes (no garlic!), vegetable, dessert

I do miss my mom's Jello salad (Lemon Jell-O made with pineapple juice, crushed pineapple, shredded carrot).

How did she do this, r56? Pineapple contains an enzyme that breaks up gelatin.

That's why you're only supposed to use canned pineapple r57. I was always curious why canned didn't affect the gelatin, but it doesn't.

She was...wait for it r53...Polish. These aren't ethic foods though. My mom's partner in crime in making the sandwich loaf was Scottish.

I'm sure most of these dishes were never made (hope so anyway) but I do have a few of my mom's vintage cookbooks and they're full of crazy "fancy party" fare like this. And r26 I watched Astronaut Wives Club for the food styling.

BTW, retro food parties are kind of a making among some 30-somethings these days. The granddaughter of my mom's sandwich loaf making partner got engaged a while back and their engagement/shower party was a retro food theme. It was hilarious and great fun. Most everyone involved were theater people so you can imagine the "artistic" results.

Oh definitely, canned pineapple.

Found this online: The enzymes in bromelain are inactivated once they have been heated to about 158° F (70° Celsius), so while fresh pineapple prevents Jell-O from gelling, gelatin made using canned pineapple (which was heated during the canning process) won't ruin the dessert.

Sunshine salad at link...

r59, do people have retro food parties to be ironic or are they seriously interested in eating the food?

Thanks, r56. I don't know if it's the same enzyme that does this but I remember making sushi with raw tuna and pineapple (shoot me) and saw the tuna practically dissolve right before my eyes.

My mom makes this dessert called Strawberry Delight with strawberry Jello and strawberries, it's really good but it's about the only Jello based dessert I've ever really enjoyed.

My mother makes a shrimp in red menace aspic served on a leaf of bibb or iceberg lettuce with a dollop of salad dressing. Totally retro 60s dish.

The texture of really firm gelatin is just not pleasant to me. Anyone here remember when Jello Jigglers were a thing, they were just super concentrated Jello, those were not good.

[quote]They used to tell women that gelatin was good for their nails.

Now, they claim it's good for whatever ails you - as well as whatever might be thinking of ailing you.

Real Aspic is basically a really good consomme that is slightly thickened. When cooled it will naturally form a gelatin due to the collagen in the broth. Adding gelatin to it make it a little more stable.

For centuries before commercialized gelatin (e.g. Jello) it was something that is very difficult and time consuming to create, which is why it was considered a rich person's delicacy. The egg-in-aspic dish from R47 is usually garnished with a little ham, some herbs and truffles embedded inside the aspic for both looks and flavor.

For those who are into gourmet food, most pates are served with a bit of aspic, usually covering the top.

Gelatin and collagen (from cartilages) is very good for your skin, when i was growing up i ate a lot of it usually from braised shark fin (I am Asian).

My Jewish mother makes a green jello mold every holiday and i LOVE it. It is usually the only thing i want to take home (lime jello, cream, chopped fruit). Makes for a light and refreshing thing to snack on after the holidays when you are feel overstuffed.

The biggest innovation was canned pineapple from HI and pimento stuffed olives, or black olives as a 2nd choice. So exotic. LOL.

Could never tolerate Cool Whip. So many recipes for jello with cool whip mixed in, or on top or both. Also pie that was basically flavored cool whip. UGH.

I still love sea foam salad. Lime Jello, cool whip, canned pineapple, walnuts. Marshmallows optional. Can add coconut too. I don't care if it's trashy.

[quote]My mother makes a shrimp in red menace aspic

Is it named Flora?

They sure as hell laughed at and ate all the food R61. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "starving artists" :)

I'll try to stop by later to post my mom's special "Pepsi Cola Jelly Mold" recipe if I can still find it. My mom and the recipe were actually in one of those local paper Hostess With The Mostest" fluff pieces. No lie.

The gist is Pepsi, (no Coke, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi), fresh whipped cream, mashed bananas and lemon Jello. I'm sure my mom got it out of a Jello ad at some point but the problem is while it actually tastes good all the food coloring in the world can't change the naturally gross beige color to anything other than an even less appealing kind of gray pastel color.

Our little smart asses bought one of those plastic "brain" Jello molds at some point and now the recipe and brain mold has become a family joke being passed on to the newest member of the "adult" generation. They keep they keep threatening to use food coloring to draw veins on the brain but are too lazy to create really horrifying food.

What's the matter with kids today?

[quote] They were really into gelatine recipes, for some reason. There's still a restaurant in my town that serves a wide variety of 'salads' that are essentially weird forms of Jello. I've only eaten there once.

It's called a congealed salad.

I wouldn't be horrified or sad by a retro food party. I'd be pretty interested in what food served 40 years ago tastes like compared to today's stuff. It would be fun and probably would lead to a lot of interesting conversations depending on the participants,

I still think of sweet jello as fine mixed with all types of sliced fruit and fresh cream. But the idea of mixing it with any kind of savory food is totally revolting.

Jello mixed with tuna, salmon, ham, beef, chicken, vegetables? Completely disgusting. I was young in the 60s and 70s and I assure you nobody served it anywhere I was that I know of.

I'm glad the cook dropped the fish aspic in Dinner at Eight. I'm sure the guests would have been appalled.

R52 Did they make those sandwiches using bread that was sliced horizontally? I also remember "pinwheel" sandwiches made with that bread, and for extra fancyness they would put a gherkin pickle or pimento stuffed olive in the middle of the pinwheel (usually devilled ham or egg salad).

I made smoked salmon pinwheels for a party last Christmas R74 and everyone laughed at me and them for being so 70s - and then they ate them all.

Basically cream cheese smeared like butter on sheets of puff pastry, topped with smoked salmon, chopped chives and spring onion, black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice, roll it up like a Swiss roll, cut into slices, lay flat on a tray and bake for about 20-30 minutes. They were and are delicious.

Look there was far, far worse food Americans ate regularly. Does anyone recall TV Dinners, Hamburger Helper, Kool-Aid, High-C, Tang, Hawaiian Punch, Shake-n-Bake, Lucky Charms (kids dry cereal) and Count Chocula? Fake food on steroids. At least meatballs in various sauces sometimes made sense.

[quote]spaghetti was considered exotic and spices a gateway drug

Harsh but fair assessment of American food in the early 20th Century.

[quote] I'd be pretty interested in what food served 40 years ago tastes like compared to today's stuff.

I was a little kid but I have photos and mom's old recipe book, and it wasn't all that interesting, the best I can tell. Lots of cake pans in animal shapes (bunnies for Easter with frosting covered in coconut!) and crock pot meals involving ketchup and/or chili sauce. I recall dinners were usually some kind of meat like roast, meatloaf, salmon croquettes, fried fish or pork chops, plus a potato, a can of vegetables, sometimes gravy, and a short stack of Wonder Bread on a saucer and the butter dish sitting out next to it. Sometimes the veggie was raw radishes or green onions and we'd shake a little salt on them before eating.

By the 1980s we were eating spaghetti (without meat) and some frozen pizzas and Tuna Helper.

[quote]spaghetti was considered exotic

In the 1950s it was not at all considered exotic.

Pick up any popular magazine from the time: Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post...and every month there'd be an ad for canned spaghetti... and it was mostly marketed for children.

If Sheridan were presented with ANYTHING listed on this thread he'd be appalled. So would I. Richard, we CANNOT let people think we are a household that serves Cool-whip! How lower-middle class!!!

AHH...but can creme brulee be made with Jello-O brand gelatin? If so, I want it NOWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I showed Martha that Cool Whip was a good thing. So there.

OMG I'm so glad someone started this thread. I was curious as hell about a Jello thing I saw on MSN yesterday.

Can a tasteful friend identify the congealed "salad" in the first slide ?

I can't r83, but it looks delish!

My mom still makes a Cool Whip-cream cheese-strawberry-walnut dessert, served frozen in slabs from a casserole dish. I cringe at how outdated it is but it's tasty and I will miss it when she's gone.

A couple of years ago we had a 1970s style buffet for Christmas dinner. We had plans to travel but the weather put an end to that so we made the best fun dinner we could with what we had to work with. It was really good, lots of scouring the web for old recipes to match our ingredients, we ended up hosting a young couple and an elderly couple of neighbors who also had their plans disrupted. It was a hoot.

[quote]AHH...but can creme brulee be made with Jello-O brand gelatin? If so, I want it NOWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - !

Jell-O is fruit-flavored, so I don't think it would help your crème brûlée. Maybe some Jell-O Instant Vanilla Pudding. Or some pudding cups.

R83, ,that looks like some sort of "rainbow salad or dessert", with layers of varicolored jello and throw in some sour cream to cut the sweetness. It sounds like a pain to make, as I assume you have to wait for each layer to solidify before adding the next, which would take hours and hours and leave you with nothing but jello.

That picture seemed to have some fruit in the final layer, which wouldn't help.

I hate it when people make dishes that are supposed to look good, yet there is no care or concern given to how the damn thing is going to taste. Who wants to just look at food?

[quote] and a short stack of Wonder Bread on a saucer

Ha, r78! My grandmother always set out a plate of bread at dinner Monday-Saturday. For some reason, the plate of bread was never on the table on Sunday. I guess Sunday dinner was too "fancy" since she usually served pot roast on Sunday. But you could be assured, whatever my grandmother was serving for dinner Monday-Saturday, that plate of bread was set in the middle of the table.

R87 maybe the butterscotch flavored version would work better - from my vague recollection it had a nasty artificial "burnt" taste, so half-way there for crème brûlée.

Those look DELICIOUS!!!

Tuna salad jello in a lobster mold.

I think the Perfection salad is from that basic Betty Crocker cookbook, I suspect one would find more of these recipes. I’ve actually had the ribbon loaf at a baby shower about ten years ago and it was surprisingly good.

Huuuuurl

^The tomato wedges look like severed lips.

[quote]The Jellied Tomato Refresher looks like a page out of rotten.com.

Funny you say that, R7. Because I was thinking that the Jellied Tomato Refresher was the only thing that I'd try on list. It reminds me of a frosty Bloody Mary.

The grossest looking one to me was the atora steak puddings; they look like blobfish, or alien egg sacs out of a sci-fI movie of some shit.

The one that strikes me as the most cringe-worthy is the hot dog fondue with the curled, mutilated hot dogs. It's just the thought of taking some cheap, low quality crap food like hot dogs and actually putting in the effort to try to alter them in some way. It's like... taking a bunch of Cheetohs and arranging them into flowers, or some shit.

There were jello and cottage cheese molds I had more than once at potlucks, as well as tomato aspics (which I like, wish they were more common). And there were a lot of lime jello with shredded carrots monstrosities around as well.

marry me, r75

oh, and r81: Rachel Ray has you covered.

That pink shrimp sandwich roll is certainly a familiar sight to me. My mother used to make those in pink, mint green and baby blue for showers.

Each color is a different salad filling, and they truly taste delicious. When sliced, they are small colorful pastel pinwheels, and in the early 60s they were actually pretty chic for "ladies' luncheons."

Tuna 'n' Waffles

R81 Why would you want gelatin in your crème brûlée? That's pretty horrifying and I hope you were joking. All you need is sugar, cream, eggs, and a bit of vanilla it's not that difficult!

I haven't looked at the attached link. But the first slide appears to be cooked salmon, covered with a sauce of some sort. There are bowls of Cole Slaw? And rolls. A salmon sandwich with a bit of sauce, with some Cole Slaw wouldn't be so awful? Compared to some other shit on this thread. At least that is real food somewhat straightforwardly prepared.

The colors have gone off in many of these photos. To our delight, of course.

I was going to make a joke about my mother's tray of ham paste sandwiches with the crust cut of,f but then I remembered she also bought pâté for me, so I'm not going to bitch.

It was in the fancy, tiny supermarket can. I also made her buy me a jar of lumpfish caviar. The "lumpfish" part should have been a warning, but what did I know about fish eggs, really.

Insert Dominique Deveraux joke: Alexis Carrington Colby Whatever blah blah blah. End scene.

What are todays popular recipes will be repudiated with disgust in 5 years?

Originally from the 1930s, behold 3P Salad.

(That's peanuts, pickles, and peas, mixed together with mayonnaise )

Tried it over and over again with every type of pickle imaginable, including the standard hamburger dill. I can't imagine people ever serving it, let alone enjoying it .

Our family doctor lived next door. He was a young widower with two daughters. His housekeeper/ cook, Miss Tessie, came straight from central casting. Miss Tessie was a feisty, no-nonsense, southern black woman, who ruled the household with an iron fist! All the neighborhood kids quickly learned never to incurr the wrath of Miss Tessie; and we all adored her. As round as she was tall, it’s not surprising she used food to control all the kids whose favorite playground wears “her” yard. Unfortunately, Miss Tessie was a devotee of Spam. Spam and eggs, Spam sandwiches and a Spam and potatoes casserole concoction were staples. Spam, if you’ve never had it, is awful, but from Miss Tessie it was ambrosia! Spam is still central to my favorite childhood memories. Miss Tessie’s charm didn’t work only with children. When her charges had grown up, and left for college, Miss Tessie became Mrs Doctor.

I'm sure anything listed in here would be horrifying . . .

[quote]When her charges had grown up, and left for college, Miss Tessie became Mrs Doctor.

If you'd played your cards (and other things) right, that could have been YOU.