The 70s and 80s Were a Lawless Wasteland of Crimes Against the Culinary Arts

cheezburger.com The 70s and 80s Were a Lawless Wasteland of Crimes Against the Culinary Arts

My mom was a really good cook, she would make us mouth watering meals on a daily basis and I was always excited when she would call us to come and eat. But since I was growing up during the 80s, every now and then she would see a strange new recipe in the paper or in some weird cookbook and she woul...

49 comments

"Tuna and olive pasta"? A weird meal? I need to see the recipe.

1
I think a lot of these are more 50s and 60s war crimes than 80s.

50s invented Jello Salad war crimes.

37
- Yeah, most of these sorts of abominations are pushed by big food conglomerates trying to manufacture demand for their shelf-stable hyperprocessed shit by publishing recipes that feature their "convenience foods" as ingredients. (Just look at how many of the recipe images in the list are literally advertisements for Miracle Whip and whatnot!) That sort of thing really resonated with the whole '50s atomic-age modernist thinking crowd.
  
  (Don't get me wrong: I think the modernist aesthetic/furniture design/aesthetic is great. Lots of other stuff about it, like the food and the [anti-]urbanism, was an absolute disaster, though.)
  
  14
My mother did that shit all the time. I distinctly remember one time she tried to make spaghetti with calamari. She had never cooked squid before so we ended up eating what tasted like tomato sauce covered erasers.

28
- That's too bad, I would commit crimes to eat my grandfather's calamari with red sauce again
  
  13
- Hi! Spaghetti con calamari is a very legit italian recipe and very good too.
  
  It's only a matter of following the right recipe but in south of Italy pasta&seafood or fish is very common.
  
  6
  
  I had some fantastic clam pasta dishes in Naples.
  
  I also had gastronomic consequences that were major health events.
  
  3
TIL you can just eat any goddamn thing

19
- technically, yes
  
  i still don't reccomend cyanide tho, it has a really bitter taste
  
  2
  
  The almond smell is to die for.
  
  3
Every rage bait tik Tok and YouTube "cooking" short: am I a joke to you

18
I actually tried bacon wrapped banana once a while back, tastes amazing.

13
- But did you have it with hollandaise sauce
  
  11
  
  As tradition demands
  
  15
  
  No, that's insanity
  
  4
#4 "Frankfurter Pie" isn't so bad. It's just sausage and sauerkraut with some bread under it.

12
- That was one of the more edible looking ones I saw
  
  4
- The egg curry is quite tasty. I don't think their recipe is going to be as good as an Indian version though.
  
  2
I found a book of 70s Italian recipes and half the dishes were stuff like vegetables encased in a ring of aspic jelly.

11
- Better veggies than larks tongue I guess
  
  5
  
  Better then crunchy frogs?
  
  3
Most of these are from the 50s-60s. There is a really great article about why/how we got there with canned soup & jello everything...super interesting.

That being said...fuck all that shit....barf.

10
- I don’t have the article to share but it said that during ww2 the food industry has to overcome a lot of challenges to feed the troop. It cost a lot of money in research and as the war stop, most of it was useless. So they try to sell those recipes to civilians has a convenient way too cook quicker. They succeed because a large proportion of women worked for the war effort and kinda like the financial freedom.between the lack of time to cook and the modernist hype those war recipe thrive. Kinda like to get the link tho.
  
  5
  
  Also Gelatin was a really laborious process (aka, luxury) until jello came along, and yeah the total convenience thing. The whole era of convenience foods producing some amazing barf is something else.
  
  5
“Depression but with a weirdly high amount of energy meals”

6
Tuna and waffles doesn’t sound too bad

5
TIL SpongeBob's house is an 80s food crime.

5
#21 Gives me 'Eye of Sauron' vibes.

5
- The rest was on his plate
  
  1
White people are wild, man.

4
- And they say we have no culture.
  
  3
What's even going on in #19? I see lemon wedges, what looks like okra, maybe, and then…raw ground beef? Surely that can't be right.

4
- It doesn't look raw, it looks like sloppy joe
  
  2
- raw ground meat isn't that out there, steak tartare and mett exist, and at least my family here in sweden have always just had a nibble of the ground pork before cooking with it, it tastes quite nice.
  
  1
A lot of these were designed just so wife’s could get back at their husbands. As a child of the 50/60s I frequently suffered collateral damage.

4
I'd try curried eggs bengal

3
- Yeah that one looked nice, actually
  
  1
Aspic would like a word.

2
This is what white culture looks like. You wonder why we are culture thieves lmao I would be too if this was what o grew up on

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- We kind of had to start from scratch again after a generation of Great Depression cooking was followed by a generation of "It's in a can and claims to be edible"
  
  18
- Not Polish culture! We've got... cabbage!... and um... nah that's about it
  
  6
  
  Kolaches! Which look like beige lumps with goo on top.
  
  Pierogi! Which look like beige lumps with goo inside.
  
  Bagels! Beige. BYO goo.
  
  4
- Italy, France, Spain, Greece...
  
  2
  
  and germany has the fucking schnitzel, which so good that it has become a staple in japan.
  
  1
That hollandaise sounds interesting. Actually a few of those are close to something I've eaten or stuff that might actually be good

1
Neighbours had the "flying jacob", mnm's pushed into peeled bananas, rolled in bacon and cooked in the owen.

That stuff was not delicious.

1
Mexico would like a "word", Marcy.

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