Has anyone ever heard of some of these dishes? Check out the photos in the link. Seems aspic and jello foods were popular back then.
Ah, the vegetable terrine. I have a 1980s recipe (which I think I cooked once) for such a beast, although it was layered vegetable purees, rather than the individual veg.
Aspic was certainly popular in the 19th and early 20th century. I cannot recall seeing it in the UK although I was served a “tomato aspic” in 2016 at a restaurant in Vicksburg, MS.
Oh, and as for the steak pudding there’s nothing historical about them. Still very common in the UK - the steak one’s a staple of fish & chip shops (usually made by a compnay called Hollands). And a trendy offering in gastropubs - I had one a few weeks ago, filled with venison, pheasant and rabbit. That entry on the list is an advert for Atora, the manufacturers of the suet - still our major producer. I always have a packet in the cupboard, usually for dumplings for stew. The product was invented literally just up the road from me, in Openshaw, in sast Manchester, 1893. Production continued there until 1974.
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#12 - - Philadelphia cream cheese
Scooping seeds out and filling the cavity with a Jello/fruit cocktail mixture was the easy part. But I’m trying to wrap my head around how to ‘frost’ a slippery peeled honeydew melon with (add a tbsp of milk and whip until fluffy) cream cheese.
Home cooks who felt the need to impress company sure had it tough back then.
Wow! I particularly love the crown roast of hot dogs!!! I did have a friend who loved Pepsi and milk. And I remember fish molds. Leonard’s in Great Neck, NY was/maybe still is, a huge wedding/bar mitzvah venue. A friend went to a bar mitzvah there and they had a chopped liver mold of the bar mitzvah boy’s face.
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Why do so many people hate anything in aspic? What exactly do they hate… the gelée? I don’t mind it at all. It’s normal where I am, mostly sliced and to eat on bread. In the photos I notice there’s a lot of aspic surrounding the vegs or meat. That’s not the case here.
I find the photos accompanying the recipes more “strange” than the actually food. Rather off-putting. This one looks like something in sci-fi movies, doesn’t it?
But the herring in cream is actually quite common in many parts of Europe. You’ll find it in eastern Europe, the Baltic countries and all the way to Russia. Across the Nordic countries, Germany and even Austria. And I eat it every weekend. The recipe uses sour cream but, in Germany specifically, they use something similar to sour cream called Schmand.. We also use other types of dairy products such as quark, yogurt, cream etc.
What to eat this with?
Not me. The jelly is an important aspect of, say, a British pork pie. A pork pie without the jelly can be dry. It’s also there as a binder in sliced meat products such as brawn. In a similar way it’s a binder in the Belgian mixed meat preparation of potje vleesh (if youre in a Dutch speaking part) or pot jevleesh (if youre in French speaking part)
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Whenever I see these kinds of things, I wonder how many people actually prepared and served them.
That’s Leonard’s of EXCLUSIVE Great Neck, thankyouverymuch. Several members of my extended family celebrated simchas there. We used to wander from event to event, seeing if there was better food elsewhere.
Yes, mine too. The Bar Mitzvah we went to did not have the famous chopped liver though, and had this weird passed hor’s deouvres - hunks of turkey with a russian dressing dip! I actually love russian dressing so I was happy. But boy, the booze flowed!
Most of that stuff must have been prepared by moms who didn’t work, because they’re way too complicated to make after getting home from work. Besides, my sister and I made most weekday meals in the pre microwave era after we got home from school.
Hot Dr. Pepper used to be a wintertime thing; I remember the ads clearly. We never indulged though we were a big (cold)Dr. Pepper family.
When we drove back to the Worlds Fair in 1965, my sisters were confounded by the
absence of their favorite pop as we headed East.
At that time it was just a regional drink.
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Garlic shrimp with Sprite is a Filipino thing. I had it at a restaurant in Brooklyn a few years ago.
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A retro recipe that I have never understood is a vegetable gelatin salad with carrots, celery and green onion and I think vinegar. It was served with a dollop of mayo. The recipe is around here somewhere…
Speaking of 7-up…bitd they promoted a two piece plastic ‘cup’ that would hold a scoop ofvanilla ice cream, there were two spouts on either end, whenvthe two halves were snapped together, one spout went into your mouth, the other into the top of thr 7-up bottle and you drank the 7-up through the ice cream. Like a fizzy float in one shot. Does anyone of a certain age recall something like this?
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I used to like a similar salad. My recollection is shredded cabbage, green olives, and pimentos in a lemon/ginger ale/vinegar gelatin. I quite liked it but without the dollop of mayonnaise.
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That sweet and sour fried fish recipe is very interesting. Calls for the fish to be double fried for crispyness. I bet that dish is a version of many that are served in hip Chinese restaurants today where influencers go crazy over it and post pictures or video all over IG and TT.
A lot of canned and processed foods being used which was a hallmark of food preparation in the 50s and 60s.
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I love that chopped liver and mold. “Those were the daaaayyyyyzzz!”
The best use of cream cheese, back then, was the layered bologna and/or salami stacks. I still make 'em when I find decent bologna (which is more and more rare.)
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We do ‘roll ups’ with salami, ham or bolonga. Used to pretend they were cigars when we were kids.
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At another bar mitzvah there one canapé was used turkey breast and Russian dressing dip.
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Use mortadella!
I made a lime jello salad with mascarpone when I was out of cream cheese, and that worked out fine!
These look good
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