Unfortunate food, fortunately forgotten

[Effingham]

In all the discussions on Golden Age clothing, beverages (usually adult ones -- scotch, martinis, etc.) and even Golden Age gadgets (and things that have "disappeared"), I've never seen this one:

Remember some of those really interesting food-like things people used to make and serve at parties?

Y'all really need to check out the "Gallery of Regrettable Food." This thing has been a gold mine of horrified humor for years. I keep fantasizing about actually trying to recreate some of these things for my own dinner parties.

A new trick for very non-kosher burgers:

And doesn't this look lovely:

Words fail me:

Anyone tried these? Anyone still throw those classic fifties and sixties cocktail parties?

 

[Lincsong]

The site is as odd as pickles in gelatin.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I'm actually going to make this for a "1950s Dinner Party" that a friend of mine is having in a couple weeks:

 

[Effingham]

You must report back on the reception of those delicacies.

 

[sheeplady]

I have a whole cookbook on gelatin from the late 1950s. Which mainly amounts to taking your average cookbook arrangement (salads, meats, veggies, fruit, dessert) and just adding gelatin to everything. I swear that during the 1950s and 1960s they were gelatin obsessed. (I have also seen such recipes from the late 40s too). This is obviously unfavored gelatin for the most part.

There is one recipe that calls for molded gelatin with tuna fish. (In fact, there are several that use tuna, but this one is just... I don't know). I am morbidly curious, but I hate to ruin a perfectly good can of tuna.

I've noticed that most of the colored photographs in the old cookbooks absolutely look unappealing today, and if you make the dish it looks 100% better. I asked my mother about it, and she can't remember the photos looking that bad when she was a child, but they look pretty horrible to her now. I actually prefer cookbooks where if I make what is in the picture, my creation looks better than the picture, as opposed to the other way around.

 

[sheeplady]

I'm actually going to make this for a "1950s Dinner Party" that a friend of mine is having in a couple weeks:

Other than the lemon jello part of it, that actually sounds quite good. I think with real lemon juice and plain gelatin, it wouldn't taste too bad, especially with the extra ingredients mentioned.

 

[Miss sofia]

I agree totally, the photos and illustrations in those fifties books were particularly unappealing. I inherited a fifties cookbook and yes, there was gelatine galore, anything animal, vegetable or mineral was encased in gelatine. They also seemed to like to garnish dishes with anything that could be put into an icing piping bag, mayo and potato garnishes piped into swirls on top of everything or round the serving platter seemed to be the height of sophistication.

Amy Jeanne - that is beyond belief, i was actually incapable of any random thought or speech for quite a few seconds when i saw that recipe! Let's hope the pre-dinner cocktails are pretty strong!

 

[Mr. Hallack]

James Lileks has two books about cooking from the 30's-60's Gallery of regrettable food and Gastoanomolies. I have both and it's amazing what people ate back then. Especially during WW2 when food was rationed, you can eat animals like rabbit and possum, or other animal parts like brain and liver.

I love the olden days but I am very grateful to eat the food of today.

 

[Wire9Vintage]

I collect old cookbooks, and gelatin and mayonaise reigned supreme! Of course, I also have several recipes for squirrels (Amy Jeanne, I was just reading your comments about a certain sweater!), and even one for ... gasp ... and I am not kidding ... manatee! My kids scream when I show them some of the pictures! I mean, what's not to be terrified of when you see lima beans and cabbage in lemon jello?

But some things, I must say, might seem weird at first glance... but then turn out quite tasty!

 

[I Adore Film Noir]

I'm actually going to make this for a "1950s Dinner Party" that a friend of mine is having in a couple weeks:

Hold the mayo and I'd taste it

 

[LizzieMaine]

I grew up on Jell-O, but we never molded it with vegetables or any of the rest of that stuff -- whatever they were doing in suburbia never made it to our part of town. My mother would simply mix it up in a big bowl and we'd scoop out what we wanted. We never saw, knew, or heard, of anyone actually putting *stuff* in it.

The best part of the Jell-O, the part my sister and I always fought violently over, was the thickened layer at the very bottom of the bowl -- much denser than the rest, almost like rubber, and intensely flavorful. Don't knock it till you've tried it.

My very favorite thing to eat as a small child was heart meat. That and a bowl of Campbell's Pepper Pot Soup was about the best lunch I ever had. (Plus it was fun to say to other kids at school "I had a calf's heart for lunch today. What'd you have?")

 

[Fletch]

Yeah, in the '30s they were putting @##%in' BELL PEPPERS into Jell-O molds. Kinda made Hoover Soup seem appealing by comparison.

I hate bell peppers. 'Specially the green ones. Notice how nothing's ever advertised as "green pepper flavor"? That's because they taste like vomit. They probably tasted even more like vomit in the '30s - things had more flavor then.

 

[sheeplady]

So I wasn't able to find the cookbook I referenced (our kitchen is torn down to the studs). But I found my "New Joys of Jello" cookbook (1972).

Let's take a gander at some of the sections:
-Nice and Easy Things
-Start with Jello
-Desserts
-Salads (like olive, carrot, and cucumber salad)
-Salads for the Slim Life...

.... and the "Things you never thought of" section. By the time you get to that section, you are so horrified that you can't go on. I don't want to know what things I have never thought of can exist in Jello, so many things I never thought possible have already been covered in previous sections of this book. I really like Jello too, or at least I like normal Jello.

I can still remember the first time I went to my husband's grandmother's house. She told me to get the salad out of the fridge and I couldn't find anything that looked like a salad, vegetable, or piece of fruit. She is from a time when the generic term salad refers to: leaf salad, fruit salad, and jello with things- namely fruit- in it. Each meal is comprised of meat, a "salad", and a potato dish.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Don't knock it till you've tried it.

True! Hence why I'm going through with the "Barbecue Salad" and I'm going to be the guinea pig. I already described it to my party guests and they all crinkled their noses lol. We all might be surpised! Also, it's cheap and easy so if it's gross I didn't really lose much

PS -- I'm going mayonaise-less, but if they want to add it at the party they can (but I doubt they will lol)

 

[scottyrocks]

I used to eat jello as a kid, too, but not the pre-made stuff we have today, but the stuff you had to make with powder, water, a pot on the stove (I think), and then refrigerate. After a few days it got so hard that the side of the spoon would bounce off it instead of cutting it to scoop it out.

 

[Lincsong]

I can understand not wanting to put pickles in Jell-0 but none of you had Jell-O with say; fruit, ice cream or whipped cream mixed in it?

 

[LordBest]

I'm rather fond of jelly when flavoured with the juice of real fruit and whatnot, the flavoured stuff that comes in satchels is not high on my list of delicacies. Jelly is an integral part of one of the great puddings, Trifle, which melds it with cream, custard and cake.

I do love offal, something that is thankfully coming back into fashion, 'nose to tail eating'. Devilled kidneys, liver and bacon, stuffed hearts, crumbled brains, steak and kidney pie. Even tripe, when cooked properly. Delicious, cheap and thrifty.

 

[Harp]

... you can eat animals like rabbit and possum, or other animal parts like brain and liver.

Rats. Plentiful, and the bones are a calcium source. Snakes, lizards. Worms too.
When living off the land, appetite is amenable to circumstance.
...a bad fare dinner party :eeek: is an entirely different matter. out:

 

[BinkieBaumont]

Too Icky!!!!, not to mention wet and sloppy !

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I hate bell peppers. 'Specially the green ones. Notice how nothing's ever advertised as "green pepper flavor"? That's because they taste like vomit. They probably tasted even more like vomit in the '30s - things had more flavor then.

Same here! Bell peppers and PICKLES *VOMIT* If just the tiniest bit a pepper or pickle is in my food I won't eat it. They are too pungent and ruin the taste of anything they touch.