Weekend Cook and Tell: Vintage Recipe Redux
Welcome to the Weekend Cook and Tell. Every Wednesday we painstakingly search through the food sections of various national newspapers to create a weekend cooking project. We hope you will cook along with us and share your experiences, recipes, and photos here.
This week's inspiration comes from Grant Butler of The Oregonian who has put together a collection of 1960s-inspired recipes to coincide with Sunday's Mad Men season finale. The 1960s might not be known as the most gastronomically forward decade in history but there were plenty of housewives cooking up tasty dishes for their family and friends. It was a time filled with canapés, canned goods and lots of kitschy recipes.
This week is all about Vintage Recipes—we want you to delve into those dusty old cookbooks and 3x5 cards and come up with a dish that is worth dusting off. Chicken Kiev, prawn cocktail, steak Diane, Swedish meatballs, or anything that involves hot dogs or canned pineapple.
If your recipe involves more than two cans, it's a winner. And if it comes from the yellowed pages of a spiral bound cookbook from a women's church group, even better! For some ideas take a look at Retro Food. We want to hear all about your favorite recipes that harken back to another era.
Show us your photos on Photograzing (make sure to include "Cook and Tell" in your submission title) and tell us about your recipes here! If you'd like to blog the experience, please leave a link in the comments below. We'll post a round-up of your photos and recipes next Wednesday.
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
Start Talking!
Need a question answered? Have advice to share? Start a Talk topic now!
Sign up to get your questions answered and share advice.
18 Comments:
Every Christmas, my mother would make Swedish meatballs with potato sausage. Half beef, half pork meatballs and sliced bits of sausage, browned first then baked in Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup mixed with sour cream and covered with lots of dill. Durkee fried onions were added on top once (over) cooked. Serve over buttered egg noodles. I still love them.
NotAmerican at 9:39AM on 11/05/09
Shameless plug, I do a Twitter feed with daily retro recipes:
www.twitter.com/retrorecipes
I'll be posting the Mad makeover, thanks!
Mandyhello at 12:18PM on 11/05/09
My father made a sausage rice casserole. Jimmy Dean sausage, celery, little onion, mushrooms, cream of mushroom soup (of course), rice, cheddar cheese. For a man who was on a low cholesterol diet starting in the '50's, this was an incredible indulgence but it is SO good.
Bunnee at 12:19PM on 11/05/09
Other than the few you mentioned and pot roast, I don't think I want to revisit the cream of something casseroles and jello "salads" of the past.
The cocktails, yes. The foods, not so much.
CJ McD at 1:30PM on 11/05/09
I am remembering a roast my mother used to do that was considered the height of elegance. Some sort of round roast, a can of mushroom soup, a few glops of HP sauce and one whole envelope of Lipton's onion soup mix. All wrapped up in tin foil and cooked within an inch of it's life.
It was delicious.
Jilly at 3:22PM on 11/05/09
Does Tuna casserole qualify as a retrofood???
nhfoodie at 3:30PM on 11/05/09
Can it be vintage if it's older than the 60's? Or does that make it officially antique?
dbcurrie at 5:51PM on 11/05/09
I freakin' LOVE cheese balls and I think I will make a few this weekend but don't let Minnesota hear that they are considered "retro."
Let's not forget the fabulous serving dishes of the 60s: I have these awesome mustard yellow tupperware deviled egg holders that must date to the 60s or maybe 70s based on the color- got them from an ex's great-aunt, who spent winter holidays throwing back Tom and Jerrys and cursing.
thatgrrl at 6:43PM on 11/05/09
Cocktail wieners simmered in a sauce that's half heinz chili sauce and a half grape jelly. Sounds gross but it brings back the memories.
I really don't understand why Wylie Dufrense or someone hasn't yet began messing with Molecular Gastronomy Jello Salads.
The awesome retro colors with some nods to french aspics, imagine the possibilities.....
Hawk Krall at 9:07AM on 11/06/09
In descending order - good stuff first
French Onion Soup - I love this stuff and I do make a few batches every winter. I'm going to make it for Sunday night.
NYers will remember this - Ebinger's blackout cake - I've made the recipes and they're not quite the same, though great on their own
Sish Kebab
Sukiyaki - remember the song?
Tuna Surprise
Surf & Turf - on the menu of every self-respecting restaurant
Lobster thermador (see above)
Coquilles St. Jacques (see above)
Paella (see above - a must for seafood restaurants)
Green bean casserole from the French's fried onion can.
Tuna noodle casserole
Nesslerode pie (for the holidays) - usually from bakeries.
Cornucopias of salami stuffed with cream cheese or Velveta for an appetizer
Aspics
And nightmare inducing memories:
Waldorf Salad (with marshmallows)
Duck a la orange (my aunt's specialty)
The thought of Jello fruit casserole has my stomach turning... My mother once made this for dessert and served sangria with it.....
MMinNYC at 6:20PM on 11/06/09
JAMON con PIÑA... Baked Ham wth Pineapple - I am sure I can make an awesome vegetarian version with the right products. let's see how the weekend results fare...
MadelynRodriguez at 10:43AM on 11/07/09
I have a real weakness for vintage cookbooks, the good, the bad, and the ugly. the 2 scariest things I have found are a lemon jello salad with sauerkraut and black olives in it and a "mock pineapple" made out of liverwurst then covered in cheez whiz. Luckily, both have photographs.
KTempesta at 9:07PM on 11/07/09
I just made this lentil soup: http://thebarefootkitchenwitch.typepad.com/the_barefoot_kitchen_witc/2008/03/a-mess-of-potta.html. (btw, that is not my blog.)
It's from a 1975 cookbook and calls for 3/4 of a cup of milk powder, which I had on hand because of a pancake recipe I love. My husband and I loved the soup. There's just something about a cocktail of corn syrup solids, sodium saseinate, dipotassium phosphate, and propylene glycol monosterate that just hits the spot. Sometimes.
sorahatch at 11:23PM on 11/07/09
I love vintage cookbooks also. I made a salad from a 1967 church cookbook. I thought it was one of the more "normal" among the congealed salads and aspics, but I really disliked the addition of the Durkee Sauce, which I had never used before. Maybe I should have tried the one with lime jello, pickle relish, canned peach slices, and celery!
I blogged about my salad at http://sagetrifle.blogspot.com/2009/11/cook-and-tell-vintage-recipe-redux.html
Rocquie at 11:20AM on 11/08/09
We're making a ton of sushi tonight (which is decidedly not retro), but we are using hearts of palm in one of the rolls, which is in a salad that Don orders in one of the season 2 episodes.
@MMinNYC: Sadly, my mother still sometimes makes the Jello molds with lemon and carrot in them for showers--I've never dared to taste one because they gross me out.
ElizabethS at 7:13PM on 11/08/09
I blogged about a retro cookbook and recipe at http://thekitchwitch.blogspot.com/2009/08/white-trash-motherlode-shipwreck.html
TheKitchenWitch at 2:24PM on 11/09/09
I've just started a series on my blog for 50s/60s recipe makeovers! It's a brand new blog and my recipe is in honor of the blog name. Please let me know what you think!
Here's my Peas and Carrots
Peas Love Carrots at 4:20PM on 11/09/09
My mom believed( a head of her time) that pleasing us kids was fun. Some of the dishes she would make for us were clever, cute, and tasty for a kid. I quess my father was okay with them, she babied him ,too, most of the time. She used to make tug boats(mashed potato's with weiners cut in half and stuck in the potatoes. She made us chipped beef, with white sauce on cute little toast triangles, every form of jello known to mankind, and we always had a desert. She was actually a fabulous cook and had great stories, from her farmgirl days. Since, she passed on, I have enjoyed reminiscing with all her old recipes and I love cooking them still to this day. I love retro food and even ordered my everyday cooking book from e-bay so I could get one like she had in the 60's. My favorite dishes are Country Captain Chicken(not the modern version but the one with roasted slivered almonds and currants, and Hamburger Cheesebake, fabulous dishes. Old but the "BEST". coco
cocoloco at 4:21PM on 11/09/09