Dining Through the Decades: Food of the 1930s by David Leite

1930-39

< back Black Tuesday hurled America into the Great Depression for the better part of the 1930s. Families were now faced with the challenge of making due with less. "The Depression taught people how to use every scrap in order to stretch meals," says Jean Anderson, author of The American Century Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 1997). "Nothing was wasted."

Menus were radically pared down, notes Ray. "Protein, which is always the most expensive part of the meal, had to be reduced." He explains that, to compensate, "cooks tried to use other foods such as vegetables and beans as substitutes" — something the revised edition of Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Little, Brown & Company, 1930) advocated.

Popular dishes of the period were inexpensive, one-pot meals such as macaroni and cheese, chili, oxtail soup, casseroles of all sorts and — to maintain the illusion of the abundance of beef — meat loaf, stretched to its limit with filler. Accompaniments were usually inexpensive vegetables such as carrots, peas and potatoes. City dwellers, on the other hand, were surviving on cheap meals of hot dogs and hamburgers at automats such as Horn & Hardart's. Bread and soup lines snaked around the block.

Food producers weren't about to let the scarcity of money take a bite out of profits. The National Biscuit Company created Ritz Crackers in 1933 and shortly afterward offered a recipe that would remain an adored oddity for over 40 years: Mock Apple Pie. Made almost entirely from Ritz Crackers, the ersatz pie stood in for the real thing, which, because of apple prices, was more expense to make.

In 1937, Hormel pitched in by developing arguably the most indestructible of all comestibles: Spam. Because its shelf life clocks in at more than seven years, few American kitchens (and later World War II military troops) were without it. Almost from Spam's inception, cults — er — fan clubs were formed to honor and praise this mighty loaf.

A sign that the Depression was loosening its grip was witnessed in 1936 when Irma Rombauer, a housewife from St. Louis, published The Joy of Cooking (Bobbs-Merrill). Filled with practical information that was written in Rombauer's accessible style, Joy regaled its readers with recipes for nearly everything, including longed-for meat. Though detractors criticized the book's blanding of the American palate with its use of tasteless white sauces, reliance on vegetable shortening and insistence on overcooked vegetables, it sold out generation after generation to become one of the most beloved cookbooks of the century. more >

Recipe
Orange-Glazed Carrots