Our conversations about favorite retro cooking last week prompted me to think about a section of my mom's 1953 cookbook. My mom was a very young bride by today's standards, 19 when she married my father. As a wedding gift from an aunt, she/they received the Better Homes and Garden's New Cook Book. A good deal of what my mother learned about cooking in those early years of marriage were found in the pages of this cookbook.
As a teenager I had a crazy obsession with reading my mother's older cookbooks. When I was 18 and left home for college, my mom gave me this cookbook. Despite having taken Home Ec in middle school, I still had a lot to learn about cooking after I moved away for school.
One of my favorite sections of this cookbook has always been the meal planning one. I may not be wild about meal planning, but I like reading about how it could be done in someone else's household.
I think "ideal" meals of the 1950s were somehow lost by my own childhood years. On Leave it to Beaver (and other TV shows of its era), the star family, the Cleavers, always had dinner in a formal dining room, while the kitchen table was used for breakfast and lunch. I don't know if this is how families of the 50s actually ate their meals, or if this is just how TV families dined. But I always felt that family life had somehow shifted by the time I was in elementary school. Once we had a separate dining room as well as a an eat-in kitchen, my family always ate "regular" dinners in the kitchen, while the dining room was reserved for special occasions.
In addition to a shift in where Americans tended to eat their meals, the actual dinner menus from the 1950s (form my mom's cookbook) seem more formal than how my family today eats. In my mom's cookbook, the "dinner suggestions" section contains 6 different elements for each meal: entree, starchy food, vegetable, salad, dessert, and "nice to serve." Here's an example:
Rolled Rib Beef Roast
Browned Potatoes or Whipped Potatoes
Succotash or Broccoli with Hollandaise Sauce
Gold Coast Salad or Cranberry Salad Squares
Pumpkin Chiffon Pie or Date Pudding with Whipped Cream
Watermelon Pickles or Bouillon
Can you imagine making all of that on a random Tuesday? Okay, so maybe this would be a "special" meal. Here's another dinner suggestion:
Grilled Minute Steaks
Hash-brown Potatoes or French-Fried Potatoes
Buttered Corn or Wax Beans with Bacon Bits
Perfection Salad or Tossed Green Salad
Ambrosia or Walnut Gingerbread
Chili Sauce or Toasted Buns
My guess is these elaborate everyday meals went out of fashion as women's daytime hours were filled with work or other time-consuming activities. Here's another dinner suggestion:
Baked Pork Chops
Whipped Potatoes and Gravy or Corn Stuffing
Parsnips or Green Beans
Prune and Apricot Salad or Spiced Pears
Brownies a la Mode or Baked Apples
Relishes or Grape Juice
There's also a small section on meals that save you money. This section looks a little more like how my mother cooked (but with fewer and simpler desserts). Here are a few of those entries:
Meatballs with Spaghetti
Whole Carrots or Green Beans
Chilled Relishes or Mixed Greens with Garlic Dressing
Winter Ambrosia or Pineapple Sherbet
New England Boiled Dinner
Carrots, Potatoes, Onions, Cabbage (cooked with corned beef) or Turnips and Beets may be added
Apple-Raisin Salad or Molded Cranberry Salad
Lemon Meringue Pie or Maple Cup Custard
Tuna Bake with Cheese Swirls
Glazed Carrots or Buttered Green Beans
Tomato Aspic or Bouquet Salad Bowl
Emerald Isle Fluff or Lemon-Coconut Squares
Pork 'n' Apple Pie
Buttered Shredded Cabbage or Cauliflower
Chef's Salad Bowl or Celery-Apple Salad
Cottage Pudding with Lemon Sauce or Chocolate Bread Pudding
It's interesting, but the section that I think more closely reflects how many of us do dinner, now, is actually titled for lunches -- "Lunches your family will like." Many of the entries in this section would fall under a supper designation, in my mind. Here are several "lunch" suggestions:
Creamed-egg Casserole
Green Beans with Bacon or Spinach with Mushrooms
Circles of Head Lettuce, Russian Dressing, and French Bread or Waldorf Salad and Hard Rolls
Cherry Puff or Broiled Grapefruit
Creamed Dried Beef on Baked Potato
Pickled Beets or Brussel Sprouts
Tossed Green Salad or Citrus Salad
Applesauce Cake or Whole Apricots and Cookies
Spanish-rice Skillet
Buttered Asparagus Tips or Spinach with Mushrooms
Chef's Salad Bowl and Biscuits or Orange and Grapefruit Sections on Watercress and Relishes
Date Pin Wheels or Chinese Chews
Chicken a la King
Potato Chips and Fresh Buttered Peas or Corn Coblets
Pear Halves with Softened Cream Cheese and Cloverleaf Rolls or Tomato Slices on Lettuce with French Dressing and Biscuits
Orange Cake or Red Raspberry Fluff
Cheeseburgers
Potato Chips or French-fried Onions
Kidney-bean Salad, Dill Pickles Slices, Celery and Carrot Sticks or Tossed Green Salad and Cocoa
Banana Split or Fresh Fruit
Fluffy Tomato Omelet
Fresh Peas or Broccoli with Lemon Butter Sauce
Pineapple-Cottage Cheese Salad with French Dressing and Bread Sticks or Sunshine Salad, Celery Curls, Ripe Olives
Crispette Squares or Coconut-Banana Rolls
Those were obviously lunches to be eaten at home. There's another section on lunchbox ideas. Here are a few of those menus:
Deviled Ham and Pickle in Bun
Iced Tea
Potato Chips
Celery and Olives
Brownies or Pear Halves
Egg Salad in Coney Buns
Milk or Coffee
Whole Tomato
Grapes or Sponge Cake Bars
Vegetable Soup
Chocolate Milk
Crackers
Cottage Cheese, Tomato Wedges
Date Pin Wheels or Apple Wedges
Baked Beans
Cream Cheese Sandwiches on Brown Bread
Milk or Coffee
Chopped Vegetable Salad
Canned Peach Halves
Corned Beef Sandwich on Rye Bread
Cocoa
Mustard Pickles, Celery Hearts, Carrot Sticks
Baked Custard
Fried Chicken
Bread and Butter Sandwich
Mixed Vegetable Juice
Tomato Slices, Cucumber Sticks
Chocolate Cupcake
Baked Ham Sandwich on Whole Wheat Bread
Milk or Coffee
Potato Salad
Plums or Pecan Crispies
As a teen, I loved food and thinking about food. I was often dieting, so reading about these varied and full menus seemed to fill something in me. In any case, I thought a little trip down the memory lane of meal planning, via my mother's first cookbook, would be fun. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.
