that period in the mid-20th century where the middle class suddenly had access to unprecedented food variety but no idea what to do with it and ended up inventing hundreds of doomed dishes like lime cheese jello salad or ham and banana hollandaise is thematically akin to the cambrian explosion
The end of this post punched me in the face but you’re not wrong
But that’s not really what happened!
Yes, there was sudden, unprecedented access to foodstuffs previously unavailable to all but the richest people. In fact it was a five-fold thing:
1) People had more disposable income than they’d had before. They could afford expensive food.
2) Refrigeration meant that people could keep foods longer - it was no longer “Oh, i will buy a chicken and I must cook it tonight” but rather “I will roast the chicken on Saturday, and that will also be good for dinner on Sunday, and chicken salad sandwiches on Monday and Tuesday.”
3) New kitchen appliances and conveniences meant more elaborate recipes were practical - thirty minutes of whisking by hand became five minutes with a hand mixer.
4) Refrigerated shipping made it practical to ship fruits and meats from farther away - this also marked a divorce from seasonal foods, as it became possible to ship fresh fruits and vegetables from warmer climates.
5) New processing techniques made certain foods cheaper. We tend to mostly think of this in terms of convenience foods: flash-frozen vegetables, mixes, and eventually the “TV dinner”, but gelatin is a pretty big deal. Gelatin used to be made by rendering keratin from animal sources, and making it clear and high quality was a very intensive process only available to the upper class - but it was one of the only ways to preserve certain foods before refrigeration - making many of these meat jelly foods the province of the well-to-do.
And that is what informed the middle class at this time. They weren’t just doing random food pairings. What they were doing was imitating upper-class foods of the prior decades. They were trying to pair meats and fruits, putting them in clear gelatin, and creating the kind of sauces which had previously been too labor-intensive to serve in the average household.
It took people a while to settle down and learn the unique characteristics of the newly available foodways, and create cuisine which was complementary to that, rather than aping foods which existed within different limitations. But it wasn’t random at all.
I think we’re underestimating the effect of food advertising of the period – manufacturers were coming out with all these new canned/frozen products, and because they knew a lot of people didn’t have context for these things, they put out a ton of recipe-based advertising
Now I don’t know what exactly happened in their test kitchens to produce some of the abominations I’ve seen, but undoubtedly food brands invented some of the nastiest examples of mid-century American “cuisine” in order to promote their products
did somebody say goblin sandwiches
this made me feel actual violence.
@copperbadge weird recipe ahoy
I’ve seen that one before but I draw a hard line at deviled ham, man.
I will say that @hasufin absolutely has the right of it, but also that if I were going to add anything it would be what @cumaeansibyl already did – some of the recipes you see, even in communal recipe books (like the “Ladies’ Council of the Episcopalian Whatnot Fundraising Recipe Book”) are often the result of a CEO kicking back in his chair and saying “do something that will sell more canned deviled ham” to a marketing executive.
The marketing executive talks to the test kitchen, the test kitchen weeps into their saucepans but comes up with something, anything, and the recipe goes out. A magazine reader sees the recipe, it comes with a coupon so she (generally she) clips and tries it, and to her shock she and her family like it! She adapts it to her family’s tastes, strips out the marketing aspect, and two years down the line her friend on the Ladies’ Committee asks her to submit her famous Goblin Sandwich recipe.
And if you think this behavior is the province of the 1950s exclusively, let me tell you, the popularity of Food TV and FoodTube means this still happens all the time. I can’t link you guys to the essay because HuffPo took it down and I can’t find it on archive.org, but the infamous Sandra Lee Kwanzaa Cake is the result of a desperate recipe writer trying to sell a Kwanzaa recipe to a woman whose sole purpose in life is to make barely adequate food in order to sell ad space on her cooking show. A YouTube video of a horrifying recipe that goes viral? That sells beaucoup ad space for the creator.
Honestly, a person could make a couple dollars inventing fake terrible 1950s recipes and test-kitchening them on youtube.
Uh.
If you do that guys cut me in, I’ll help you write the recipes.
Also I’ve had the ham and banana hollandaise and it’s not bad. I’d put it on the menu at a hipster brunch cafe.
Honestly, a person could make a couple dollars inventing fake terrible 1950s recipes and test-kitchening them on youtube.
Sam, are you suggesting… that we could make more money with a flop than a hit?
*dramatic, visionary gesture at an unseen imaginary audience*
The Content Producers, coming to Broadway late 2021.
(Featuring the hits “Along Came GoFundMe” and “Springtime for Bezos”)
Image description: a recipe from a cookbook. Recipe reads:
“Goblin Sandwiches
18 tested quality donuts
1 small can deviled ham
1 cup Brazil nuts
1 avocado pear
Worcestershire sauce
Toast the shelled Brazil Nuts in a moderate oven about 15 min., then roll fine with rolling pin. Add the deviled ham and the pulp of the avocado pear. Season highly with the Worcestershire Sauce. Split the donuts through the center, spread lower half with the filling; cover with second half. (SERVES 6 TO 8.)”
