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As your grandma will tell you, things were better in the 1950s. Quality entertainment was at its peak with I Love Lucy and The Ed Sullivan Show. You could afford a house on one salary. And there was none of that bip-bop-pop music you kids listen to these days.
But hold up, grandma, you’re forgetting about one thing. What about all that creepy food people ate back in the ’50s? You can’t possibly tell us that our modern day Chipotle can’t hold a candle to Jell-O tuna salad. You just can’t!
Flip through an old cookbook and you’ll be utterly stunned at some of the gross vintage recipes people actually made. Meats mixed with fruits. Canned meats mixed with canned fruits. Anything and everything encapsulated in Jell-O.
It’s all so horrible and we now understand why so many Americans were heavy drinkers in the 1950s — they had to numb themselves to the ghastly flavors lingering on the plate in front of them.
Here are some of the worst of the worst things that were on American families’ dinner tables in the 1950s. It’s not too late to click away — you’ve been warned.
Crosby’s favorite dish includes some sautéed onion and celery mixed with a little bit of Bisquick and canned tuna. Baked in biscuit dough cups, this interesting dish is served with a milk and melted, processed cheese sauce.
Lime Jell-O with mayonnaise, cream cheese, canned fruit, and chopped nuts congealed within it, served with seafood salad.
Drenched in cheese sauce, because everything tastes great with thick, neon yellow cheese sauce. Yes, even bananas wrapped in mustard-covered ham slices.
Again, drenched in cheese sauce. It’s like a deconstructed tuna melt, fried tuna patties and all, and we hate every bit of it.
After having made and tried Lemonegg — basically sparkling lemonade with an egg cracked into it — they described it as:
Is that even safe??
It’s literally sliced hot dogs mixed into hot, cheese soup. How charming.
Who knows, maybe it even classifies as gourmet.
Now imagine it with some not-so-lovely canned salmon and cream of celery soup.
Uh-huh. Sure. What is it? Oh, just a ground-up Spam mixture with oats, ketchup, and mustard, stuffed into a canned peach half.
Jell-O was clearly a big deal in the ’50s. But Jell-O mixed with chicken, lunch meat, peas, and carrots sounds like something straight of a nightmare.
Waffles were actually topped with blended cream of mushroom soup, milk, canned tuna, and stuffed olives.
They came up with some weirdly creative things. Cranberry-flavored gelatin bases that hold pieces of banana coated in mayo and topped with an almond?
And it’s pretty much exactly what you’d imagine it would be – baked, warm cottage cheese with some cream, lemon, and cinnamon.
Even though this is a supposedly fake ad, we wouldn’t be surprised if this condiment actually existed. In fact, we might take potato sauce over some of the other items on this list.
Miracle Whip and pineapple — how festive!
Who said it was okay to pin endives, olives, and shrimp cocktail to a styrofoam cone for holiday parties?
It’s literally just that — hollowed-out pears served with a dollop of Miracle Whip.
Constructed with hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, shredded carrot, olives, cottage cheese, and French dressing.
Stalks of celery surrounding a chopped vegetable and spice filling? Uh, we’ll pass, thanks.
Hard-boiled eggs, cream of mushroom soup, pimientos, mustard, and macaroni. What’s going on here?
This is truly what nightmares are made of.
Don’t forget the radish roses!
At first, this loaf looks like a delicious dessert.
The frosting is cream cheese-based, which sounds good. But then inside, layers of ham and egg filling sit between the cake layers. Hard pass for us.
Where to even start with this abomination?
The recipe includes mixing liverwurst with mayo, Worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice. This is shaped around a jelly mould, covered in pineapple icing, and garnished with stuffed olives.
It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it sounds nasty.
Don’t forget to garnish the dish as well. You know, to make it look even less appetizing. Honestly, who was coming up with all of these gross retro recipes?
This one isn’t a recipe, but it is still a gross culinary decision made in the 1950s.
“Just heat Dr Pepper or Diet Dr Pepper in a saucepan till it steams. Then pour over thin slices of lemon,” the ad continued. We’re not so sure if this is a hot idea.
For some reason we can’t possibly wrap our heads around, candle salads were in during the ’50s.
It is essentially a banana shoved into sliced pineapple rings. We’re not sure how that qualifies as a salad, or why anyone would think to put this dish together in this fashion.
This one is somewhat intriguing–until you read the ingredients.
Wrong. It is a mound of ham, onions, cream cheese, and pickle relish coated with a thick layer of Micacle Whip, which is then topped with almond slices. It was meat as a cracker dip, but feels more like a ham salad nightmare.
We’re honestly surprised you didn’t make Jell-O go extinct.
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