Who is ready for some great mid-century food and recipes? Hopefully everyone has had a chance to watch the first episode of Astronaut Wives Club by now (we don’t want to give away any food spoilers!), but if you haven’t I think it is still streaming on ABC’s website. If you love vintage clothes, food and décor this is definitely a show that you are going to want to watch. The detail in those areas was fantastic. Halfway through the episode, Louise Shepard was in the kitchen mixing lime gelatin with mayo, and I knew that I was going to enjoy this show.
Speaking of which, I am happy to bring you some close-ups of the very detailed food courtesy of food stylist Emily Marshall. So sit tight and get ready as we blast off into a galaxy of 1960’s food from Astronauts Wives Club!
Frosted Angel Food Cake
A pretty angel food cake with frosting, and a lovely decorating and plating job by Emily! These are just standard recipes (you could use boxed mix and canned frosting, for true mid-century authenticity!), but here is some color inspiration from a vintage Betty Crocker ad!
And while this is a gorgeous cake, did anyone see the cake Rene Carpenter brought to the wives’ picnic? The one that matched her outfit? It was really something!
UPDATE: After reading my post, Emily decided to send over some pictures of that cake and Rene’s outfit!
The best!! Thank you, Emily!
Betty Grissom Family Dinner
Yum! An open-faced turkey sandwich with cheese, and peas with pearl onions!
Need more inspiration? Here is a fun mid-century ad featuring an open faced sandwich on white bread.
Chinese Chicken Salad
The mandarin oranges are a nice touch! I have to admit, this actually looks really good to me.
If you are interested in trying this salad, here is a recipe from Good Housekeeping’s Book of Salads from 1958.
And here are some of the first Launch party goodies! When Emily and I were chatting about starting up this series, she told me that food plays a huge roll in the series, and she was right! Armed with casseroles, the other wives show up spontaneously at Louise Shepard’s door for an impromptu pot luck while they watch the launch. Though they are rebuffed, they still have their potluck party at another house, and later in the show they end up having a get together with Louise anyway!
Peachies
Aren’t these cute?? And easy too! These are little sponge cakes covered with whip cream and peaches with a gelatin cube inside them. Here is where Emily got the recipe:
FYI – Check out Emily’s Pinterest board if you want to see more inspiration for the food on the show!
Bacon Bananas Hollandaise
Oh my goodness, when Jo Shirra held up her “famous Banana Bacon Hollandaise,” I burst out laughing! How many times have you seen pictures of this casserole limping around the internet? Emily made a good choice with this one. And instead of ham and cheese sauce, her version uses bacon and Hollandaise. Is it better? I am not sure. Maybe someone needs to test that out. *Clears throat loudly*
In the meantime, here is the ham and cheese sauce version.
We have had the special joy of making this dish here on the blog, and it was disgusting. If you want to read all about it, you can check out the (ancient) post here!
Beefaroni Casserole
Everyone loves Beefaroni! Emily’s garnishes on this one are the best. Here is the inspirational Beefaroni ad!
According to Emily, this is just a can of Beefaroni opened and dumped into a casserole dish. Superb!
Chicken Cornetti
Another fun dish from Mid-Century Menu archives! Here is the inspirational ad:
And here is the tested dish, in a guest post from Erica of Retro Recipes! It was described as “Tasty!” by her family!
Lipton Onion Soup Dip
A classic, and Emily’s plating is perfect!
Green Bean Casserole
Another classic! Don’t forget the soy sauce!
Ham Loaf
How fun is this? I love the Technicolor ketchup.
If you are aching to make your very own ham loaf, here is a recipe for Ham Loaf from Good Housekeeping’s Who’s Who Cook from 1958.
We’ve tested out a version of ham loaf with mince meat on our blog in the past as well. It received the designation of “edible”. You can check out the post here!
Pimento Cheese Ball
Nothing more classic than a cheese ball! Or delicious, as long as it is done right!
Here is the recipe for my family’s cheese ball, which it turns out is also Kraft’s cheese ball. Who would have thought?
This is a fantastic cheeseball, and we serve it at pretty much every family function. If you want a real treat, try it hot!
Tuna Casserole
Most everyone knows the classic recipe for tuna noodle casserole, so here is a bit different version that uses cheddar cheese soup and rice.
Rainbow Pudding
This dish and the Peachies are tied for my favorite for this episode! How cool is this? And fruit cocktail and pudding with marshmallows? Nothing wrong with that!!!
A big thanks to Emily Marshall, who was so generous in sharing all her awesomely styled food pictures! And if you like this and want to see more, make sure to tune in Thursday at 8 pm on ABC to watch more of Emily’s food in Astronaut Wives Club, and come back next week Wednesday when we showcase food from Episode 2!
I decided long ago that people of that era were more enamored of the whole idea of canned and pre-packaged food items than they were of good tasting food. Or they had no taste buds. Or maybe both. IDK
I grew up in the 70s, but I remember my mom making some of these dishes, particularly the tuna casserole. American cheese was the cheese of choice, and cream of mushroom soup went with ANYTHING and EVERYTHING
.
Now I realize she was eating the food she grew up eating. Although the recipes are fun to look back at with nostalgia, the dishes look as unappetizing now as they actually were to eat then!
I grew up eating my grandmother’s Lipton onion soup dip! Still love it!
The concept of NOT slaving over a hot stove to make the simplest meal was very popular in a generation that remembered how difficult cooking could be.
Plus less chance of food poisoning with modern canned food and you could have exotic foods like spaghetti at the opening of a can.
Just a generation before, fruit and veg could only be eaten in season and it was possible, in the northern states, to go several months without a fresh fruit or vegetable.
Now people could have fruit salad in JANUARY! Huzzah!
What fun! I am really enjoying seeing all this. I think the Peachies and the Chinese Chicken Salad look good.
My mother, born 1943, saw her both her mother and her mother-in-law basically chained to the kitchen for 14 hours a day their entire lives, cooking three meals a day from scratch on limited budgets, from limited ingredients, for very large families.
When my mother reached adulthood and started her own family, in the early 1960s, she was grateful for the new convenience foods and ingredients. Canned and frozen food, pre-assembled mixes, and easy-to-follow, standardized recipes from accessible sources weren’t just convenient; they were life-changing and affordable. My lower-middle-class parents spent a much lower percentage of their income on food than their parents did or than I do now. That was also a game changer.
So, I salute you, fine dishes and recipes from the mid-century! Your role in helping to build a prosperous and secure middle class in the 1950s and 60s, and your role in freeing women to step onto the national stage and begin the quest for equality, have been underestimated for too long. Tuna casserole and a nice salad made of fruit cocktail and marshmallows sound good to me! In fact, I would be happy to have any of these dishes set before me . . . . well, maybe not the bananas.
Anybody else notice that those “easy” recipes weren’t (boil a chicken, cool it, take it off the bone, chop it up). No boneless skinless back in the day.
Um, a couple _tiny_ quibbles: Those cute star-shaped sprinkles had not been invented yet, nor canned frosting. (I KNOW, you’d think that would be a natural, huh?!)
Loving this. I remember all of it, being mid-century modern, my own self (born in 1956).
Yeah, they had boxed frosting mix rather than canned, but you can’t buy boxed frosting anymore except for Jiffy, which is hard to find, (Why? Why?) so canned is as close as we can get. 🙂
It also interests me that relatively few people were fat, even though they ate the mid-century diet of Jello salads, canned-soup casseroles, etc. (Larry Mondello is the exception, of course). Speaking of Larry and his cohorts, I was watching a rerun of “Leave it to Beaver” recently, and June came in and asked Ward if he wanted pears or peaches on his salad. He said peaches, and she said too bad, she had already opened the pears! Until that moment I had absolutely forgotten that a salad often meant a bed of iceberg with canned fruit (in heavy syrup) on top!
You’re right, but “easy” is a relative term. To an older generation that had to raise the chicken, wring its neck, pluck it, and then boil it, the fact that you could buy one already cleaned and ready for the boiling pot must have seemed nothing short of miraculous. To me, today, boiling a whole chicken and boning it seems like an incredible chore.To my grandmother, I would have seemed like one of the laziest, most privileged people who ever drew breath.
Jim, I think part of the fewer fat people was that we only ate AT meal times. There was no eating between meals, and my mother always said, “if you’re hungry you’ll eat it, otherwise you can do without.” I did without a few times because I didn’t like what she had fixed. Like oyster stew or her beef stew.
That’s exactly right. Soda and chips were a once-a-week treat at our house, and that’s if we were lucky (and my parents weren’t particularly strict or health-conscious).
I read somewhere that in the ’50s, there was an obsession with prepackaged foodstuffs and using canned over fresh that was a result of growing up in the Depression when meals often came from the family garden and spices were used heavily on meat that was turning to cover the bad flavor. So, when that generation came of age, canned and packaged food seemed more luxurious, scientifically advanced, and sanitary.
The other thing about canned food is that it requires no refrigeration. Of course when you could afford a refrigerator and get the jello to set, even in the summer, a whole new world of gelatine based delight would open up…
I KNOW. As a young-married, I remember thinking it was the height of silliness to buy an already cut-up chicken, and only a lazy spendthrift would do such a thing.
I have a deep and abiding love for Lipton’s onion soup dip.
Great post Jim!
Well said Jim.