21 Truly Upsetting Vintage Recipes

Speaking of food, I am fortunate that my mother never bought into what I call “the weird casserole” fad of the 1950s. Food companies seemed to outdo themselves plastering the magazines of the time with gastronomically dubious recipes that would make high profile use of their products. There were any number of recipes that combined canned tuna with jello, for example. I never tried it but just the idea makes me gag. I think a lot of this was based on a desire to get away from the alleged stigma of “old fashioned home-cooking,” something from which the average suburbanite was actually not very far removed. In her wisdom, my mom stayed with traditional southern and Tex-Mex, as I do to this day.