#depression-era-cooking

#depression-era-cooking

Exploremores are sandwich cookies, similar to another Girl Scout favorite, Do-Si-Dos. Instead of crunchy oatmeal and peanut butter, these offer flavors of chocolate, marshmallow, and toasted almond-flavored crème.

East Village Cookbook began with a loose group of residents who met while walking their dogs during COVID, forming an accidental community that was diverse in age, religion, and profession.

Iceboxes were large lined, insulated wooden cupboards built to store ice, food, and drinks. The ice would usually be placed on the upper shelf, with the food and drinks below, and the cool air from the melting ice would help to keep everything nice and chilled.

The word ketchup was first documented centuries ago, but it was advertised as more of an ingredient than a condiment, and the primary components were anything but tomatoes.

The cake utilizes a technique called reverse creaming to make the crumb exceptionally tender. Usually it's done with a stand mixer, but in this recipe, you use your hands-kind of like you would making pie crust.

According to Ruth Painter Randall, author of "Mary Lincoln: Portrait of a Marriage," per Mr. Lincoln's White House, Mrs. Lincoln specifically asked the cook to prepare "fricasseed chicken and small biscuits with thick cream gravy poured all over it, all on one platter." The cook obliged, and it was such a hit with the president that he had three helpings.

Foodies, have you heard of 'grandma-core dining' or 'nonna-stalgia' yet? Well, according to Yelp's 2026 top 100 U.S. restaurants report, grandma-core is one of the hot new food trends you can expect to see in 2026. This particular trend entails restaurants embracing nostalgia and comfort. That means you, as the diner, would experience old-fashioned and traditional recipes, often made with simpler ingredients. You'll find these homey meals served in a cozy, whimsical setting.

For much of the mid-20th century, cheese-based Jell-O salads were a familiar presence across the United States. The fluorescent salads wobbled proudly in decorative molds and Bundt pans, studded with edible chunks that could be stuck in, leading to creative combinations like pineapple and olives with nuts and maraschino cherries. These extravagant dishes typically utilized cottage cheese or cream cheese, folded into or layered with artificially fruit-flavored gelatin.

In this cursed timeline of one alarming headline after another, I dream-on a daily basis-of shutting my laptop, plugging in some earphones, and diving headfirst into a steaming container of rotisserie chicken. (I have a whole rotisserie routine of arranging various sauce cups around the bird, which usually includes honey mustard, buffalo sauce, and ahem, Jezebel sauce.) But, alas, a new report by the Wall Street Journal has killed my high.

Some dishes have names that are designed to impress. Spaghetti Aquitania is one example, with a reference to a historic French region known for its wine and black truffles. If you saw it on a menu, you'd probably expect something luxurious and sophisticated, prepared with imported ingredients or fancy techniques. But pull out an old recipe card, and you'll realize that the dish is actually an unfussy vintage casserole made from extremely common ingredients. No labor-intensive prep or trip to the specialty grocer required.

Campbell's advertised the fruit soup as an ultra-versatile secret weapon. It could be poured over cottage cheese, ice cream, or even meat as a sauce. It was a perfect addition to the Jell-O salads popular at the time. And it could be incorporated into desserts like chiffon pie. Not to mention its value as a standalone dish; Campbell's claimed a bowl of the stuff, hot or cold, in some fine dishware was about as classy and nutritious as it could get.

When you're cooking with meat, it's hard to go wrong with ground beef. The versatility of ground beef allows it to be used in far more dishes than steak, chicken breast, pork chop, or shrimp. Once it's ground up, the texture and the flavor lend themselves to countless applications. It may not be the perfect ingredient, but it's certainly in the running.

To prepare, I spent a lot of time meal planning, before combing through Aldi's website to compile my shopping list and get a price ballpark for everything. I made swaps to keep costs down - IE buying uncooked beans, or white bread instead of whole wheat - and was able to stay under budget. Still, these meals are pretty limited when based purely on the serving size on the nutrition label.

Slen­der as it is, there's no short­age of meaty mate­r­i­al: Mod­ern chefs may find some of the first Amer­i­can cook­book's meth­ods and mea­sure­ments take some get­ting used to. We like to cook, but we're not sure we pos­sess the where­with­al to tack­le a Crook­neck or Win­ter Squash Pud­ding. We've nev­er been called upon to "per­fume" our "whipt cream" with "musk or amber gum tied in a rag." And we wouldn't know a whortle­ber­ry if it bit us in the whit­pot.

I love Samantha Seneviratne shepherd's pie. I add frozen peas because that's how we made shepherd's pie at my summer camp, in a big Dutch oven over a campfire. (Unreal.) It's so warm, delicious and extremely hearty. I also love how Sam mixes ground lamb with ground beef. I've never heard of that before and it's out of this world. Making this is always a task. We took our time so it was fun, and gave us something to do besides watch movies.

Not unlike pot roast, another Boomer generation classic, beef stroganoff transforms an unglamorous combination of stew meat and mushrooms into an elevated, rich, stick-to-your-ribs, Russian culinary institution. In fact, beef stroganoff's old-school, vintage feel was already centuries old by the time it became a Boomer favorite. The dish is named for the eponymous Stroganov family, nobility tracing back to 15th-century Imperial Russia who served as the viceroys of Siberia as contemporaries of the heralded Romanov family ("Anastasia" Broadway musical fans, rise up).

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. With budget-conscious cooks turning to Depression-era recipes for inspiration and help stretching their grocery dollars further, vintage is what's for dinner tonight. One-pot meals are an excellent way to keep kitchen clutter and dirty dishes to a minimum while yielding a hearty batch of food sure to satisfy even the most picky palates. If you love poultry, cream sauce, and the comfort of a plate of noodles, look no further than the humble turkey tetrazzini.

It was joined by South African fish paste brand Redro, which emerged in the 1930s. Peck's anchovy-based paste originally became famous for its shelf stability and the fact that it would elevate a simple piece of buttered toast with its salty flavor. It has the consistency of a pâté and is packed with umami flavor. Folks still missing this condiment can purchase Peck's Anchovette on Amazon or try their hand at a copycat recipe.

When baking cookies, there is one particular old school kitchen tool that boomers love. This tool is none other a vintage cookie press. If you're not familiar with what it is, a cookie press is handheld gadget, perfect for making spritz and other retro Christmas cookies. It has a hollow tube that holds cookie dough, and a plunger that you use to push the dough through patterned disks. The result are fun-shaped cookies ready for baking.