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30 Vintage Recipes That Are So Questionable, It’s Hard To Imagine What The Dishes Should Taste Like
A lot can change in, say, 50 years. Just look at the car or communication industry. How we eat is no exception. And nothing shows it as vividly as the Facebook group Questionable Vintage Recipes.
As the name suggests, its members share funny and weird foods from back in the day: we're talking lamb chops, cranberry "candles", and crown roasts of frankfurters. You know, the good stuff.
Continue scrolling to check out some of the most ridiculous recipes the group has to offer. Just don't show them to Gordon Ramsay. He'd be fuming!
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That Might Explain Some Things About The 70s...
Questionable Vintage Recipes
Currently, the group has 38,400 members and a 6-people admin and mod team looking after it. Luckily for us, they agreed to answer a few questions, introducing the online community from the inside.
"I started the group as a way to bond with my new mother-in-law," Katiaña, the founder of Questionable Vintage Recipes, told Bored Panda. "We both think wild vintage foods are really funny and I was afraid I wouldn't have anything else in common with her (thankfully I was wrong) so I made what I thought was just going to be the two of us and my roommate Yvonne sharing silly pictures of spamcakes and aspics. It blew up almost overnight."
Who Doesn’t Love A Little Whipped Cream With Their Angel Food?
Questionable Vintage Recipes
One of the admins, Kelly, said that even though a lot of different monstrosities get submitted, aspic and spam are definite favorites among the members.
Indeed, if you look through popular cookbooks of the 1950s and 1960s, you'll encounter a disheartening trend that has since faded into obscurity: dishes that were encased in savory molded gelatin or aspic.
An article in The Daily Meal says this could've been due to the fact that in the early 1950s refrigerators were still quite expensive, and since gelatin needs refrigeration in order to set, preparing a Jell-O mold was something of a status symbol.
Eventually, molds became so popular and ended up in so many cookbooks because home chefs (and publishers) simply accepted that they were a desirable thing to make. They also were relatively fun to prepare—cooks used to show off aesthetic skills by creating inventive aspics. Plus, the ingredient list was quite cheap if you were using canned goods and leftovers.
I’d Eat It
Tonight’s Dinner Sorted!
"I think viral cooking channels like [ours] have people excited about cooking again," another member of the team, Jennifer, added. "Being in this group has definitely had me and my mom reaching for my great-grandmother's hand-written cookbooks more often. I know early in the pandemic when supply chains were disrupted and we weren't sure when we'd get to the grocery store again, people were definitely putting together weird combinations from the pantry like our grandparents did."
And according to her colleague, Yvonne, that's probably the main reason why Questionable Vintage Recipes got so big. "I feel like what unites our group for a lot of its members is the memories we associate with food, even if it's an odd combination from a time mostly forgotten," she said.
"It's the memory of someone's mother making a ham aspic at a family bbq, or another generation making a dandelion salad when money and resources were tight."
A Personal Favorite, Conceptually. From That 70s Ww Recipe Deck
Not Quite Sure What To Make Of This
The gelatin was the avocado of the 80's!!! Huge trend! Edit: yes perhaps it's from earlier years i just remember i have cookbooks from the 80's and it was a huge trend! I'm not saying it was not in the previous years I'm in my 30s and I don't know but for sure it was really popular until the 80's
'80s? Nope, those weird salads go back to WWI. Some of the recipes from the 20s and 30s were worse than this.
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This is still common in Czech Republic, you cab buy it at every supermarket.
Just when I thought the creamed eggs in corned beef crust was bad enough along comes this.....
I was curious about why aspics and gelatins were so popular. I'd heard this before but forgot. Here's some information I found interesting: One, in the early 1950s refrigerators were still quite expensive, and gelatin needs refrigeration in order to set. So in a way, preparing a Jell-O mold was something of a status symbol. Also, it’s worth noting that gelatin molds date back to the 1700s, when elaborate molds and gelatin (which was quite expensive) were seen as a way to showcase wealth, so this notion was nothing new. Two, molds were so popular, and featured in so many cookbooks, that many home cooks simply accepted that they were a desirable thing to make. They also were relatively fun to prepare, and were an inexpensive way to make a main dish by using primarily canned goods and leftovers. Three, postwar domesticity was largely wrapped up in modern technology and the efficiency, order, and cleanliness it offered. Gelatin molds were decidedly neat and tidy and mess-free, economical, and efficient. In being controlled yet elegant in their own way, gelatin molds were completely in tune with the era.
I'm not so sure that this is from the 70s. As a Baby Boomer, I saw a lot of this in the 60s. There may have been cross-overs, but it's mostly the 60s...
Made a few similar to these ...gelatine is good for hair and nails too..:+}
This looks like they put an entire meal in jello. I can't recall seeing this in the 70's....TG.
if they used agar (unheard of in the 70's) it could have been vegetarian head cheese!
Aspic was a thing for many a century. Just get me a calves hoof and we are good to go.
Terrines and savoury meats and/or vegetables in aspic had already existed for a century.
It was actually not that horrible, depending on the amount of gelatin. (Which, btw, is just colorless jello, so why people are ok with jello salad and not with this...)
Orange, green, brown, yellow. If they'd thrown in some purple cabbage this monstrosity would contain the only colours permitted by law in the seventies
It's a terrine; These still exist now. I've never had one personally, but apparently is actually a good blending of varied vegetables, and considered fairly high class cuisine
Actually, I could see a savory cake like this working! Some good-quality slow-cooked beef, peas, carrots, potatoes, properly seasoned and the "frosting" would be an extra-thick brown gravy...
No, this is a monstrosity and blasphemy to Shepherd's Pie. Also, is that a full kipper in the bottom of the aspic pie.
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everything covered in gelatin. A bit like gummy bears but savory I suppose...
The admins and mods also put together a list of recipes to look out for if you choose to join the group. They're not necessarily group favorites, but team favorites:
- Jennifer: "Any dessert with mayonnaise, anything that involves turning food into a candle";
- Yvonne: "Anything with spam. I make spam macaroni and cheese every week";
- Kelly: "Savory banana dishes. I unironically want to try that banana hollandaise dish";
- Katiaña: "I love the gelatinized spaghettios as an idea but I don't know if I could stomach it in real life."
Where A Lot Of 'Salads' Got Their Jell-O From. Special Non Sweet Flavors
This was the sixties ... I worked at an Alpha Beta for two weeks at 16 and they had this.
Some Of These Look Good...
Anyone Have The Recipe For This One?
Kielbasa Legs! Ahh My Polish Grandmother Would Have Blown Her Cigarette Smoke On This In Absolute Delight
May I Present To You.... Shrimptree! Seemed To Be A Trend In 1965
Why Not Slice The Banana?
Questionable Vintage Recipes
I Don’t Think I’ve Ever Had A Stuffed Party Pickle Slice. Surprised They Didn’t Suggest Putting The Party Pickle Innards On A Saltine!!
I’m Going Through My Mom’s Recipe Box Since She Passed Away. I’ve Come Across Some Lovely Recipes (Heh) Including This Gem. I Hope It’s Okay For Me To Share A Few More Later
I actually made something similar last week lol. Mom's recipe. My bg liked it! 186481254_...858827.jpg 
Questionable Vintage Recipes
first thought it was shrimp stuffed tomatos (tomate crevette) which is delicious
Questionable Vintage Recipes
I Teach Culinary Arts. One Of My Fav Classes Is Garde Manger. My #1 Rule: Tread Carefully With Animals (Cucumber Sharks, Ugh) But Never Make Food Look Like Other Food. Below Is The First Slide In My What Not To Do Presentation
Campbell's Cream Of Mushroom Soup. Is There Anything It Can't Make More Delicious?
I Found This Recipe And I Just Had To Try It
It's called Frankaroni loaf. It calls for macaroni, bread crumbs, cheese, hot dogs, tomato sauce (not spaghetti sauce) and stuffed olives. I had all ingredients on hand. Except I chose to make it with Spaghettios because it just made the whole thing campier (more campy?campier? Technically that's not a word but I'm a trailblazer) also the only olives I have are stuffed with blue cheese and are for Martinis (guess what wins here). So I reserved some of the Spaghettio juice (or whatever it's called), mixed all the ingredients and put the hot dogs in the middle. It called for 6 hot dogs in a loaf pan longer than the one I had so I needed to break hot dogs in pieces and arrange them to fit (which drove me nuts that I couldn't get into perfect rows). I had 1 left over that I just couldn't fit in and I was already stressed from the guilt of saving the stuffed olives for Martinis so I just left it out. I baked it then used the reserved Spaghettio juice to make that classy diagonal stripe. But alas, what do I do with the leftover hot dog? Well, since the lack of green olives left a gaping hole of despair in our culinary sensibilities I decided I would use the extra hot dog in the style of nouvelle cuisine. Nouvelle cuisine uses the presentation of the dish artistically. For example, you may have a salad that resembles a sunset over the ocean. And the chick pea, if placed perfectly, represents blissful departures with good fortune. So I placed the leftover hot dog along the diagonal stripe of Spaghettio juice to represent a hand hewn boat floating with tranquility across a placid fjord. And the tooth pick represents a flaming arrow shot by a viking setting his dead friend ablaze. Finally it was cool enough to try. I took my first bite and I must say this pretty much tasted like crap. Not spit it out and wash your out out with Scope bad. It just tasted like Spaghettios with bread crumbs. Maybe it will taste better tomorrow. That's OK. I'll just wash the taste out with this Martini...with olives
Questionable Vintage Recipes
Anyone Fancy A Lamb Chop Tandoori With Mango Chutney- In A Glass?!! Taken From A Book Called Aphrodisiac Cuisine...
Jellied Bouillon With Frankfurters
think we (mostly) really like each other in this group. I don't know why we feel compelled to do this to one another. For the record, I'm REALLY ashamed of myself for posting this. Sigh.
Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters
Directions: "Dissolve unflavored gelatin in hot beef broth. In a pretty gelatin mold, place diced celery, slices of hard-boiled eggs and hot dogs in an eye-pleasing design. Pour beef Jell-O into the mold. Chill until firm."
Uestionable Vintage Recipes
Here...all These Years...steak, Lasagna, Burgers, Pizza...sigh...all I Needed Was A Can Of Beans & A Hollowed Out Onions! “Honey, Dinners Ready!”
So, The Company’s Coming Cookbooks Were A Huge Hit In Canada In The 1980s. You Could Buy Them At Every Drug Store, Grocery Store And Department Store. Probably Even Larger Gas Stations And The Most Canadian Of All Stores - Canadian Tire. Lots Of Canned Soup Involved In The Recipes. Some Are Actually Pretty Good. And Then There Is This Gem:
It was closely followed by a sequel, "Company's Leaving and Not Coming Back"
Church Cookbook. 1991
This is like Ethiopian peanut soup, or Thai peanut satay. It's not that strange.
Questionable Vintage Recipes
Note: this post originally had 69 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I grew up eating stuff similar to this in the 60s. One reason people came up with these bizarre recipes is, there was very limited choice in grocery stores back then and only so many ways to serve what was available. An avocado or an eggplant was expensive and "exotic" back then. Restaurants tended to serve steak and potatoes as the height of sophistication. Chinese food and pizza were exotic and "foreign".
I was raised in the 60’s and my mother NEVER served my family anything even resembling this stuff.
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Anyone doubting these recipes are real should check out the website "The Gallery of Regrettable Food." *shudders*
You beat me to it. https://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/
Load More Replies... All right, that's it. I am determined to make at least a dozen of these dishes for family and friends over the summer. We're spending a couple weeks in Maine with friends where we rotate cooking responsibilities, and they WILL be subjected to some these. HAHAHAH.
Please - for the Love of God - have a camera handy....I have 2 see your families reaction 2 the "Crown Roast of Weiners"....
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And you have to keep in mind: these were ‘styled’ for photography. The results on your average plate will have looked…….. not like that.
I may be crazy but I rather eat any of the foods mentioned than go hungry
I'm using this column as my new weight-loss program. I don't think any of this is "legally edible." See the institutional "Rol-o-Pig" for disclaimer.
I'm sure there are just as bad posts on Pintrest. They just get lost unless you look for them. this jus happens to be in print and easier to find.
A lot of these horrid gelatin meat/vegetable/fruit combinations were from magazine articles by gelatin companies to market their product. I can't believe many of them were even edible. Anybody remember the 'pear salad' a canned pear half on a iceberg lettuce leaf with a dollop of mayo in the middle of the pear. My mother couldn't understand what was so gross about a glob of mayo in the middle of the pear.
#15: Shrimp tree. I wonder how many guests got food poisoning from the shrimp not being kept cold.
My grandma used to make #5 as a 'salad' for supper all the time. Why yes, she did live in the prairies! Once you get past the bizarre texture combo, it tastes pretty good, though really sweet for part of a main course. #17 was very similar to our traditional Christmas dessert, broken glass torte. Ours had pineapple juice in it too though, and it's actually really good once you get past how it looks.
Believe it or not, I actually DO have the recipe for #11! My mum used to make all our birthday cakes from that book in the 80’s (it was an Australian Women’s Weekly series from 1975) and I used to pore over it when choosing what cake I wanted for my parties. And no, neither my sister nor I ever chose the beribboned duck 🤣 but in its defence the crisps and pop corn were only decorative. 😁
An aunt of mine served us green bean casserole. i had never had it before and haven't had it since. Yes, I know some of you love it. Feel free to eat my share.
tbh, all of these look still way more appetizing than those disgusting 'I smear tons of food onto a table' Instagram videos.
These are the kind of things you'd find in magazines like Women's Day and McCall's, and on Jell-O boxes and fruit cocktail cans. Every mother had dozens of them in her recipe box, but mine never actually made any of them.
I have an authentic 1950s cookbook full of these things or similar. I wish it wasn't real. They're real. *shudder*
I often think I'm born too late. I haven't seen the young Rolling Stones, but jsut the old Rolling Stones (ok, they're still cool and all, ...), I have seen Black Sabbath as a bunch of sixty-year-olds lacking Bill Ward, I've seen Iggy Pop not before he was 69, I have never seen an Alfetta that wasn't fug dub of rust and neglective drivers, etc etc etc - but then again, this atrocities never crossed my path in reality. Throwing everything into Jello, covering it with meat and whipped cream, and afterwards drowning it in sugar-saturated butter does even sound worse than backwards vomitting - no wonder the seventies ended, who would want them to continue if that's what is to eat then? This entire collection is just disgusting ... and looks like cooks were pretty lazy then.
As a child of the '60s and '70s, I can assure you that most people, even white anglo North Americans, *never* ate 95% of this stuff. Most of this stuff was conjured up by food companies as new ways to sell their product, or concocted by cooks trying way too hard to seem clever and "sophisticated". Check out Jane & Michael Stern's book American Gourmet, which goes into postwar American cooking and the various stages it went through.
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Gosh you Americans do love your Aspic, suppose something else you invented in the 1500's?
“The 10th-century Kitab al-Tabikh, the earliest known Arabic cookbook, contains a recipe for a fish aspic called qaris.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic
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Sometimes I'm thinking i wish i lived through the whole 80's! And then i see these posts and i change my mind😅😅
These are 50s and 60s, a little 70s. 80s was awesome foodwise, none of this rubbish. I don't see a lot of difference between 80s and now, in fact all the weird fusion stuff going on today is far more questionable and today's weird plating really is ridiculous imo.
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Especially with your post-war rationing. Mmmm, gourmet world travellers invariably go to Britain for the fine cuisine!
Load More Replies... I grew up eating stuff similar to this in the 60s. One reason people came up with these bizarre recipes is, there was very limited choice in grocery stores back then and only so many ways to serve what was available. An avocado or an eggplant was expensive and "exotic" back then. Restaurants tended to serve steak and potatoes as the height of sophistication. Chinese food and pizza were exotic and "foreign".
I was raised in the 60’s and my mother NEVER served my family anything even resembling this stuff.
Load More Replies... Anyone doubting these recipes are real should check out the website "The Gallery of Regrettable Food." *shudders*
You beat me to it. https://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/
Load More Replies... All right, that's it. I am determined to make at least a dozen of these dishes for family and friends over the summer. We're spending a couple weeks in Maine with friends where we rotate cooking responsibilities, and they WILL be subjected to some these. HAHAHAH.
Please - for the Love of God - have a camera handy....I have 2 see your families reaction 2 the "Crown Roast of Weiners"....
Load More Replies... And you have to keep in mind: these were ‘styled’ for photography. The results on your average plate will have looked…….. not like that.
I may be crazy but I rather eat any of the foods mentioned than go hungry
I'm using this column as my new weight-loss program. I don't think any of this is "legally edible." See the institutional "Rol-o-Pig" for disclaimer.
I'm sure there are just as bad posts on Pintrest. They just get lost unless you look for them. this jus happens to be in print and easier to find.
A lot of these horrid gelatin meat/vegetable/fruit combinations were from magazine articles by gelatin companies to market their product. I can't believe many of them were even edible. Anybody remember the 'pear salad' a canned pear half on a iceberg lettuce leaf with a dollop of mayo in the middle of the pear. My mother couldn't understand what was so gross about a glob of mayo in the middle of the pear.
#15: Shrimp tree. I wonder how many guests got food poisoning from the shrimp not being kept cold.
My grandma used to make #5 as a 'salad' for supper all the time. Why yes, she did live in the prairies! Once you get past the bizarre texture combo, it tastes pretty good, though really sweet for part of a main course. #17 was very similar to our traditional Christmas dessert, broken glass torte. Ours had pineapple juice in it too though, and it's actually really good once you get past how it looks.
Believe it or not, I actually DO have the recipe for #11! My mum used to make all our birthday cakes from that book in the 80’s (it was an Australian Women’s Weekly series from 1975) and I used to pore over it when choosing what cake I wanted for my parties. And no, neither my sister nor I ever chose the beribboned duck 🤣 but in its defence the crisps and pop corn were only decorative. 😁
An aunt of mine served us green bean casserole. i had never had it before and haven't had it since. Yes, I know some of you love it. Feel free to eat my share.
tbh, all of these look still way more appetizing than those disgusting 'I smear tons of food onto a table' Instagram videos.
These are the kind of things you'd find in magazines like Women's Day and McCall's, and on Jell-O boxes and fruit cocktail cans. Every mother had dozens of them in her recipe box, but mine never actually made any of them.
I have an authentic 1950s cookbook full of these things or similar. I wish it wasn't real. They're real. *shudder*
I often think I'm born too late. I haven't seen the young Rolling Stones, but jsut the old Rolling Stones (ok, they're still cool and all, ...), I have seen Black Sabbath as a bunch of sixty-year-olds lacking Bill Ward, I've seen Iggy Pop not before he was 69, I have never seen an Alfetta that wasn't fug dub of rust and neglective drivers, etc etc etc - but then again, this atrocities never crossed my path in reality. Throwing everything into Jello, covering it with meat and whipped cream, and afterwards drowning it in sugar-saturated butter does even sound worse than backwards vomitting - no wonder the seventies ended, who would want them to continue if that's what is to eat then? This entire collection is just disgusting ... and looks like cooks were pretty lazy then.
As a child of the '60s and '70s, I can assure you that most people, even white anglo North Americans, *never* ate 95% of this stuff. Most of this stuff was conjured up by food companies as new ways to sell their product, or concocted by cooks trying way too hard to seem clever and "sophisticated". Check out Jane & Michael Stern's book American Gourmet, which goes into postwar American cooking and the various stages it went through.
Load More Replies... Gosh you Americans do love your Aspic, suppose something else you invented in the 1500's?
“The 10th-century Kitab al-Tabikh, the earliest known Arabic cookbook, contains a recipe for a fish aspic called qaris.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic
Load More Replies... Sometimes I'm thinking i wish i lived through the whole 80's! And then i see these posts and i change my mind😅😅
These are 50s and 60s, a little 70s. 80s was awesome foodwise, none of this rubbish. I don't see a lot of difference between 80s and now, in fact all the weird fusion stuff going on today is far more questionable and today's weird plating really is ridiculous imo.
Load More Replies... Especially with your post-war rationing. Mmmm, gourmet world travellers invariably go to Britain for the fine cuisine!
Load More Replies...
