Meat and sweet combos, soup sandwiches, and so much Jell-O.
The 1950s was marketed as a time of domestic bliss, but was it?
Was the strange food they churned out a comment on how it wasn't all it was cracked up to be?
It's entirely possible.
When you think of vintage recipes, what comes to mind first?
If you were to say unhinged Jell-O recipes, which were often molded into strange shapes,
we would completely agree with you.
We wouldn't want to… but we would agree with you.
Perhaps one of the oddest is the Monterey souffle salad, once described as perfect "to
tempt lazy summertime appetites."
But leave it out on the counter for more than five minutes, and your guests may gag when
you try to feed it to them.
Lemon-flavored Jell-O is the star of the show, but it gets a helping hand from the unlikely
additions of mayonnaise and tuna.
Don't forget to add some olives and grated onion to the mix!
Granted, the lemon and fish combo does have some perfectly acceptable applications and
even some shining moments... but this isn't it.
If this was the '50s idea of a salad, then we're just going to skip this course entirely.
This recipe was created by Starkist, a tuna company that's still going strong to this day.
We're glad that they've given up on these marketing campaigns and let us eat our canned
fish in peace now.
"I made orange pineapple Jell-O with a hot dog in it!"
"A hot dog?!"
If there's one takeaway we've gotten from the food served in the 1950s, it's the fact
that branded recipes were super common.
It seems like food companies wanted to give people an excuse to buy their products, so
they came up with trendy recipes that would require their purchase.
One of the strangest concoctions has to be Chiquita's ham banana rolls.
While this seems like an odd recipe — and probably not one that we would ever make — we
get the idea behind it.
A combination of sweet and savory foods is usually a good idea, and it's not like pineapple
and ham haven't been put together in a dish before.
But ham and banana?
And that's not the worst part.
Basically, whole bananas are wrapped in boiled ham and covered in mustard, margarine or butter,
and a cheese sauce.
We've got to hand it to Chiquita for coming up with something so simple.
Nonetheless, it doesn't exactly stimulate our appetites to look at pictures of the finished product.
Spam.
Fiesta.
Peach.
Cups.
Words that should never go together?
Absolutely, but here we are.
The recipe calls for ground Spam, rolled oats, milk, ketchup, and mustard.
Yes — the ketchup is the most cursed of additions here.
Basically, you just mix all of the ingredients and stuff them into halved peaches.
But do you use fresh peaches?
Of course not, it's the '50s.
Instead, the recipe calls for canned peaches.
Finally, you broil the concoction for 10 to 12 minutes, letting the ostensibly rancid
smell fill your home until your guests feel forced to leave.
Or at least that's how we imagine it going, anyway.
We might have to live our lives without ever tasting Spam fiesta peach cups.
Oh well!
It seems like in the 1950s, people didn't really know the difference between sweet and
savory foods.
Had taste buds not been invented yet?
Did they only come along with the advent of things like color TV and women in the workplace?
"I didn't squawk about the steak, dear, I merely said I didn't see that old horse that
used to be tethered outside here."
So many of the era's dishes beg the question of whether the cooks forgot what course they
were making along the way.
That might explain the frosted ribbon loaf, which looks like a cake but actually pretty
was far from it.
The frosted ribbon loaf recipe starts out with layers of ham and eggs, which, so far, so good.
Things quickly go sideways when this combination is then covered by a thick layer of cream
cheese icing.
The end result looks just like a cake, but anyone who cuts into it thinking they're about
to get a sweet treat will be sorely mistaken.
Perhaps the funniest part of this recipe is the raw tomato rose placed on top for decoration.
It seems pretty likely that it's there solely for presentation.
The last thing we want when biting into a strangely savory cake is to get a mouthful
of raw, unseasoned tomato designed to look like a flower — although it does seem to
match with the strange flavor profile that's going on here.
We'll have to pass.
"You're as funny as a cry for help."
So, you have a can of soup in your pantry.
What should you do with it?
Make a sandwich, right?
And oh, no, let's clarify: We're not talking about making a sandwich to go alongside your soup.
We're talking about using soup as a main ingredient.
Although that may not be our first line of thought these days, it's apparently what Campbell's
wanted people to do with their products back in the 1950s.
A 1950s Campbell's print ad shows readers exactly how to make this strange combo: Essentially,
just make a normal sandwich and then pour the soup on top.
The pictures make the soup look like gravy, but if it's anything like the Campbell's soups
we have these days, it's probably just going to soak your bread in an instant and leave
you with a big mess to clean up.
We don't know when Campbell's caught on to the fact that you can just sort of, you know,
dip things into the soup and get the same result without the mess.
Look, we're all for convenience.
Sometimes, you don't have time to make a good meal from scratch, and you're probably better
off having some convenience foods in the house so you don't just turn to ice cream for dinner.
But convenience foods can go too far, which is exactly how we feel about canned hamburgers.
Canned meat was especially popular during the 1950s, with the rise of Spam and other
shelf-stable, nuclear-friendly foods.
Some of the canned meats that are still around today aren't half bad.
But we're very glad we've never attended a backyard barbecue where canned burgers were being served.
And we hope we never do.
We have to wonder: Were they sweaty and moist?
More like jerky than burgers?
It's a strange concept.
If we were forced to eat canned meat, we'd probably just stick with Spam instead.
Sure, this is sometimes still made in home kitchens today, but we're here to pass along
an important message: It's not good.
Do you want a fruit salad or a proper dessert?
Make up your mind!
But this recipe can't.
Ingredients like oranges and pineapple are fine, but the real problem comes with two
other traditional components.
Ready?
Marshmallows and sour cream.
No, that is definitely not a mistake, although we wish it was.
You add both marshmallows and sour cream to this dish, and then basically just mix everything
together and serve it to your guests.
There's a good chance that most people would just avoid it if you were to serve ambrosia
salad at a party, but there may be some folks out there who still like it.
Somewhere.
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