I Tried Viral Vintage Recipes

Is the past or the present making better food?

FOLLOW ME:
---------------------------------------------------------------

[Sikizu]

I asked my grandmother (born in late 1930's) about the banana hollandaise dish, and she told me that it doesn't work with modern bananas. Back when that dish was actually eaten, the bananas that were available for purchase were called Gros Michel bananas, which taste different from the bananas available now, the cavendish banana. If you've ever wondered why artificial banana flavor doesn't taste like bananas, it's because it's based off of the Gros Michel banana. Apparently when you cooked those, though, they got more savory in flavor, so the dish actually worked quite well. That being said, she said at the time it was definitely still a fad and most people didn't eat it often. It was just a quirky dish someone made up and people ran with. She's apparently tried recreating the dish with cavendish bananas, and "it just wasn't the same" and didn't even taste good. Because Gros Michel bananas are extinct, in effect, that dish is too.

[generalkenobi]

The good old cabinet opening shot was such a throwback, I didnt know how much I missed it

[theamazingbiff]

Fun fact! A pineapple upside-down cake got me through a major ice storm. Nobody expected the entire city to shut down for two and a half weeks, and I was down to the dregs in my pantry. I found a can of pineapple and some baking supplies. It was weird living off that exclusively for a few days, but it got me through until the roads cleared and I could go shopping.

[elainemarsh]

I appreciate your empathy for the Depression era pie. People forget how very hard that time was for people.

[jycegaming]

Josh slowly but surely un-tiktok-ifying his content, love to see it

[Kat-trig]

Sloppy Joes (from scratch, no manwhich) and pineapple upside down cake were staples of my childhood. Another thing my grandmother would make was basically a cinnamon apple upside down cake, but instead of cake batter, she used pancake batter. It was incredible.

[GCOSBenbow]

The reason you'd use shortening over butter is the lack of water in the shortening which a) gives the dough more structure as it bakes (which you need due to the spam bits being heavy bois) and b) stops aforementioned spam bits from sinking the bottom... or rather the top.

[kathydurow]

The butter with the Depression pie: milk was sold whole back then, no skim or half'n'half usually. People were often pre-refrigeration then & would churn their own butter from the cream. Or simply put the cream in a large jar & have the kids shake it until it turned into butter. Then the buttermilk was used for baking etc (my Mom's old Betty Crocker cookbook from the late 50s has a lot of cookie & other recipes asking for buttermilk).

[prog]

an episode about vintage foods starting with the classic cabinet POV shot? I see you Josh.

[ARabidPie]

As you mentioned, aspic goes waaay back. It actually used to be rich-people food because it took so long to extract the gelatin and a lot of fresh meat bones and bits to get a sufficient quantity. Aspics have cyclically been going in and out of style in fine dining for centuries. The 'modern' jello craze of the post-war era was all about mass production making instant shelf-stable gelatin available to the common folk. Basically, this thing that was once only available with a lot of time and effort and usually only seen in fine dining, was now affordable and every newly-middle-class family wanting to show off at their dinner parties just had to have it, regardless of whether or not they knew how to make a good dish with it, or if that was ever even possible to begin with.

[jalapenojalapeno]

Thank you for being so transparent about the failed recipes that took multiple tries!! It is so refreshing to see channels sharing a bit of background on what they went through to produce content. It's also so encouraging when I know that even the pros got recipes messed up! (so that when I do it wrong I feel less bad) :)

[greendiamond]

my grandma to this day still makes the upside down pineapple cake and not gonna lie it still tastes amazing after all this years

[RoxyLegs]

Pineapple upside-down cake and sloppy joes never left. I have a family recipe for both!!

[Dimapur]

That Jello cake mound was popular during the 60's & 70's because it required a refrigerator to make the recipe and that time owning a refrigerator was considered posh and a symbol of luxury so housewives were going crazy with those jello arts!

[Kuulentag]

With the spam and cream cheese I feel like you could almost make tiny appetizers if you cut them down smaller, breaded it in a panko mixture, fried it, and served it with an acidic/sweet type of sauce along with some fresh green onions for garnish. That’s most likely the direction I’d take if I had to make it and “modernize” it :)

[HRoss]

Mix pineapple juice in with the butter sugar mixture and replace some of the water in the cake batter with more of the pineapple juice. That's S tier, baby

[tomlegars]

To elevate the sloppy joe in Quebec, we use buttered hot dog buns, we add some cooked diced oignons and some poutine cheese curd.

[rashmit]

0:26 Ham and Bananas Hollandaise
1:46 Meatza
3:37 Pineapple Upside Down Cake
5:47 Sloppy Joe
7:30 Water Pie
9:52 Spam Ribbon Loaf
11:11 Aspic
13:53 Spam Upside Down Pie

[livinglife]

My grandmother made water pie but she mixed the flour, sugar, pinch of salt, and in the water she boiled any sweet spice she had on hand, lemon zest with a bit of lemon juice, or anise seed, etc to give flavor to the pie. It was great.

[phjlliw]

In Eastern Europe, we sometimes make “aspic” on holidays (but better😂)
We just boil chicken carcass worth some pork bones, vegetables, and stuff(just a great homemade broth)
Then we strain it and pour it into a nice beautiful dish, add some pieces of “pulled” chicken breast and veggies, place it in the fridge overnight and it gelatinizes by gelatin from the actual bones in the broth
I don't really like it too, but it's pretty common to see it in the Eastern Europe