Libertiste

The veal is hidden

Don’t ask me how, but last night I stumbled upon a blog dedicated to horrifying 1950s recipes, most of which involve aspic. Those who remember “Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974” will probably be reminded of them.

Postwar American cooking — as represented in the era’s trendier cookbooks and women’s magazines, anyway — was weird. Everything, from tomatoes to tuna to veal, had to be molded into some other shape, a ring or a loaf or little piped scallops. There was no plain old food-shaped food because SCIENCE! was making life better for families and for America. I assume. I mean, why else would you keep trying to reinvent the wheel? What’s wrong with roast chicken? And not only do these recipes look unappetizing, they look damn hard to make, too. Imagine you’re a 23-year-old newlywed housewife in 1958 who’s never cooked — and now Ladies’ Home Journal says cooking means making a (perfectly symmetrical) Boeuf à la Mode en Gelée? (Apparently women’s magazines have been asserting their relevance by making easy things seem difficult for a long time now.) Attending a dinner party in the 1950s must have been one of the most terrifying experiences in American suburbia.

And scanning through the bizarre dishes, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is about when we started to go wrong with food. Prosperity and SCIENCE! started bringing us factory farming, produce shipped hundreds of miles, and food-like products to replace the actual foods that we liked just fine before we became Modern. And we’ve been getting fatter ever since.

Thank goodness that today, rustic food is coming back into fashion, simplicity is in, and we actually know what Thai or Mexican or Indian food is supposed to look and taste like (as opposed to Chicken Indienne or whatever the hell this is). I’m so grateful to live, and cook, in a time when we’re finally starting to find our way back, ever so slowly.