Does reptile meat mixed with fortified wine
sound appetizing to you? If not, then you'll absolutely understand why these old-school
comfort foods aren't very popular anymore. The 1950s were a time of some truly weird
food creations. Some of them never quite made it out of the decade, while others have
managed to hang around in some capacity. Tuna noodle casserole wasn't invented in the
50s, as the recipe first appeared in 1930, in a magazine published in the Pacific
Northwest. It was popular in the region well into World War II, where it gained
popularity as a cheap, quick dish. By the 50s, it had spread to the Midwest, where it became
a mainstay on many dinner tables for decades to come. That is, until the late 90s and
early 2000s spelled its downward trend. It was the primary ingredient that
spelled this casserole's end. After decades of continuous growth, sales of canned
tuna began to see a decline in the 90s, due to growing concerns about its
healthfulness and sustainability. "A tuna casserole." "Yes."
"May I serve?" "Please." Many comfort foods today are pretty
much ubiquitously popular across much of the United States.
But in the pre-Internet era, it wasn't uncommon for comfort foods of decades
past to never spread outside a particular region. That was the case for chicken a la
king. At the turn of the 20th century, it was both a comfort food and an upscale
dish popular at restaurants. It features diced chicken with mushrooms and peppers,
served in a cream sauce and poured over toast. While the name may sound a little French,
it was likely born and bred in the Big Apple. "New Yoooork!" Between 1910 and the 1960s, chicken a la
king appeared on more than 300 menus in restaurants around the city. But by the
late 70s, it had already begun to fade.
Long before a bowl of cereal became a breakfast
table staple, another simple dish held a similar place. Milk toast traces its origins at least
as far back as the 1800s. It starts with a slice of toast, spread with butter, torn into
pieces, and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Then it's topped with milk that's been
heated on the stove and seasoned with salt. It's tough to say exactly where this simple
dish got its start, but it is known that as late as the 1930s, recipes for milk toast were
included in cookbooks. While you may not hear about it much these days, a similar recipe is
a popular childhood lunch item in Hong Kong. It's called condensed milk toast, and it consists
of toast spread with condensed milk and butter. In the 1990s, sloppy joes were a staple of
lunchroom cafeterias and potluck dinners.
But this messy creation was actually invented decades
earlier. Some think it was created in 1930, when a cook named Joe from Sioux City,
Iowa mixed "loose meat" with tomato sauce and served it on bread. Others claim that it
originated at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, Florida. And still others believe that it was
originally a take on a classic Cuban dish, either picadillo or ropa vieja, and that it
was being served in Havana as early as 1917. In any case, sloppy joes saw a rise in their
popularity at the end of the 20th century, but then they all but disappeared
elsewhere by the end of the 90s. While the culprit behind its
demise isn't exactly clear, it likely made its way out of cafeterias due
to campaigns to reform school lunch programs.
"I made 'em extra sloppy for yas!” [laughter] Fondue first appeared in cookbooks
in the 18th century in France and Belgium. But the term has its origins in
Switzerland from around the same time, when it was used to refer to a meal
made from bread that was often stale, dipped in cheese to make it soft and
help stretch rations during the winter. Fondue exploded in popularity in the United
States in 1964 after it was featured in the Alpine-themed restaurant in the Swiss
Pavilion at the World's Fair. Then Switzerland's cheesemakers banded together
to create a union and prevent competition. They launched a marketing campaign in
the 70s that featured actors dressed in skiing outfits dipping bread, meats, and
more into creamy pots of melted cheese. Home fondue pots then grew in popularity, and
soon fondue house parties were also a growing trend. But like most trends, it faded away by
the end of the decade, though it popped back up in the early 2000s. You can still dip all
manner of appetizers in creamy cheese at many fondue restaurants, but DIY kits have once
again disappeared from most store shelves.
"Do you … fondue?" White gravy was already a popular, cheap
military ration by the time of World War I when chipped beef made its way into
the recipe. These thin slices of smoked, salted beef were served on a slice
of toast and then smothered in gravy, to make a hot, simple dish
to fill soldiers' stomachs. While it was gaining new and alternative
ingredients, like parsley for flavor or tomato sauce to thicken the dish, chipped beef
also made its way into the mainstream.
Variations were a cheap meal for families during the Great
Depression, and later as a popular breakfast dish at diners in Pennsylvania. Some national chains
have even offered it on their menus. But while chipped beef lives on primarily as a military
dish, even they've altered the recipe to make it healthier, usually trading the chipped beef
for very lean ground beef or ground turkey. Long before DoorDashers were racing through
the street, TV dinners were a mainstay for American families short on time and looking for
simple solutions. Frozen dinners as a concept were actually created before households had a
microwave to heat them in. In the mid-1920s, Clarence Birdseye developed a machine that could
freeze packaged fish to help it stay safe longer. A couple of decades later, frozen dinners
hit the scene, but only as meals served on airlines.
It would take until 1953 for
260 tons of frozen leftover Thanksgiving turkey to inspire a Swanson salesman to
create partitioned aluminum trays filled with turkey and sides to freeze and sell to
the public. And thus, TV dinners were born. The frozen meal industry saw rapid growth from
the mid-50s until the turn of the 21st century. But 2008 marked the beginning of the end of this
comfort food's reign, as frozen dinners saw their first decline in almost 60 years, a trend that's
continued with only brief pauses since then. While the name might say "egg," you won't find any yokes or whites in an egg cream. Or
any cream, for that matter. Instead, it has just three ingredients: whole
milk, soda water, and chocolate syrup. "What did you say? An egg cream?" This sweet comfort drink is thought by
some to have been invented in the 1880s, when a Yiddish theater star by the name
of Boris Thomashefsky decided to recreate a "chocolat et creme" drink that he'd
had in Paris. But most historians seem to agree that a Jewish candy store owner named
Louis Auster actually invented the drink.
He's also rumored to have regularly sold some
3,000 of his creations in a single day. The creator of the original egg cream
took the recipe for his syrup to the grave. But most Brooklyn natives swear
that the only way to make one today is Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup. While you can
still find egg creams served in Brooklyn, they began to fade in popularity by the 60s
and are largely unheard of outside of New York. Long before Army soldiers dug into
piles of creamed beef on toast, they were eating baked beans. This canned food
staple first emerged around the Civil War. Then sometime around the 1890s, someone had the idea
to add chopped sausages to the mix, and thus a new comfort food was born. By 1980, beans 'n'
franks were widely available pre-made in cans. This combo was at one time such a staple of the
American diet that it even had a holiday dedicated in its honor, as National Beans 'N' Franks Day
comes around every July 13.
But both of the main ingredients have taken a hit in recent years. The
healthiness of hot dogs has especially been called into question many times in the past couple of
decades. For example, in 2021, researchers at the University of Michigan estimated that a single
hot dog can shave 36 minutes off your life. You probably wouldn't consider eating turtles in
any form to be comfort food. But not so long ago, turtle soup was considered a delicacy for
the upper crust. It was so popular, in fact, that it practically wiped out an entire species.
The diamondback terrapin was the turtle of choice for hardscrabble diners, until it shifted
from a subsistence food to an upper-class menu item in the mid-19th century. Sherry was
a key ingredient, and when Prohibition hit, turtle soup went the way of the dodo.
The terrapins eventually recovered, though more than half of all turtle
and tortoise species remain endangered. Turtle soup eventually made a bit of a
recovery, as it was found on menus as recently as the mid-20th century.
But it's
not exactly the easiest dish to prepare, owing in part to the difficulty of removing the
shell and separating usable parts from the less desirable elements. Nowadays, it's seen as a
strange delicacy in much of the western world rather than anything resembling a comfort food. "Am I not turtle-y enough for the turtle club?" Is it steak, is it hamburger, or is it a little
of both? Salisbury steak remains one of the lasting mysteries of 20th century comfort food
trends, though it originated long before that. As reported by Smithsonian Magazine, Dr.
James
Salisbury believed that his chopped steak could cure chronic diarrhea in Civil War soldiers.
By the time processed foods were becoming a staple of the American diet, Salisbury
steak had found its way into TV dinners. But when TV dinners began waning
in popularity in the mid-1980s, so too did the Salisbury steak. Since then, it's
never regained its place in the world of comfort food. With much better fare available,
a pulverized meat substance formed into a patty doesn't exactly scream "comfort."
Here's hoping it never makes a comeback. "Buh-bye."
"Buh-bye. Buh-bye." Jell-O salad, an odd combination of name
brand gelatin and just about anything you can find in the refrigerator, was a
comfort food standard when Jell-O ruled the processed food world.
There were
variations for just about every taste, or lack thereof. Onions, peppers, tuna,
green olives, shrimp, carrots, spinach, and other various vegetables all somehow managed
to get mixed together with this classic gelatin. With all these creative combinations
circulating around domestic dining rooms, it's not too difficult to see what
might have knocked Jell-O salad off the comfort food buffet. As it turns out, fish,
vegetables, and meat suspended in reconstituted connective tissue ultimately aren't all that
appetizing. Once cooler heads prevailed, Jell-O jiggled back to its previous
self-proclaimed status as "America's Most Famous Dessert," and Jell-O salad
became nothing more than a distant memory. Almost as controversial as the infamous
Washington, D.C. hotel it's named for, Watergate salad was a picnic and potluck
staple in the not-so-distant past.
This combination of pistachio pudding
mix, marshmallows, whipped cream, and pineapple topped with chopped nuts and
cherries charmed visitors to the Watergate Hotel before making its way to deli counters
in grocery stores across America. But now, it's disappeared just as much as a certain portion
of former President Nixon's White House tapes. "Well, I'm not a crook." If you think of Watergate salad as ambrosia
salad's hipper, younger sibling, then you can get a sense of why it had its moment. The name
itself may be partly to blame for its downfall. The Watergate scandal made a mess of the American
presidency that still reverberates to this day. But also, the waning popularity of Jell-O pudding
mix and Jell-O salads is what really did this fluffy comfort food in.
As a culinary relic that's
best left in the past, Watergate salad is now a kitschy reference to the days when government
conspiracies were just reserved for the tabloids..
