There are so many meals that families ate during the Great Depression that stretched the grocery budget as far as it could go. While many of these foods were eaten by small numbers of people in the U.S. before the Depression, they didn’t catch on until folks were looking for ways to more efficiently feed their families. At the same time, farmers were looking to increase their profits where they could.
With the most desirable foods going scarce during the ’30s, new recipes made the best of the food that was available. And, like any good recipe, they got passed down over the years. Here are 8 foods that might not have become commonplace were it not for the Depression.
Grapefruit
Not widely eaten before it was provided as part of public assistance in the ’30s, grapefruit fulfilled the nutrition requirement for vitamin C and was at first only begrudgingly accepted as an edible citrus fruit. Recipes called for searing or boiling the grapefruit. But, as more people came to eat this food, it became a normal part of our diets.
Casseroles
They were an invention of necessity: combining ingredients to make the most of every meal. It meant stretching premium ingredients like protein and veggies. And, cleverly, casseroles could disguise bland canned vegetables or canned meat and turn a ho-hum dish into something that had appeal for the whole family.
Chicken & Dumplings
Just like chicken soup, you can use a tough old chicken for this American staple and it relies heavily on flour which is cheap. While already eaten widely in the South by sharecroppers, the popularity of chicken and dumplings spread far and wide. Now it’s a staple comfort food for many families, North and South.
No-bake Pies
Your mother might have called them refrigerator pies. The preparation of pies using fruit juices and gelatin or pudding meant a reduced cost over fresh fruit. And, it meant less preparation time. Of course, only families with a refrigerator or icebox could partake, but these pies would become a family favorites, especially in summertime.
Many Depression-era foods had to be economical and great taste was not always the main factor in creating new recipes. So, when novel foods came along, many wives and mothers jumped at the chance to make something different. And, even in the midst of food shortages, convenience foods were beginning to pop up as they sometimes saved money over fresh foods.
Government initiatives like Aunt Sammy’s radio program aimed to educate the public on how to create nutritious and inexpensive meals. This meant new recipes were widely disseminated and the tastiest of cheap dishes soon became old favorites.
Fried Egg Sandwiches
Obviously, someone thought up the egg sandwich before the Depression hit. But, they became a popular substitute for meat sandwiches due to their low cost and ease of preparation. Now they a regular at many breakfast tables and restaurants.
Hamburgers
While fast food existed before the crash, fast food chains thrived during the Depression because their burgers were cheap, creating the vast market for fast food we now have.
Broccoli
Searching for ways to increase profits, Japanese farmers in California in 1930 started cultivating a crop imported from Italy which most Americans had never heard of before: broccoli. It’s hard to conceive that less than 100 years ago broccoli wasn’t a commercially grown crop in the U.S. Just imagine if you’d never been told to finish your broccoli before you could leave the table!
Baked Apples
With only four ingredients, this dish is cheap dessert. While even spices were sometimes hard to come by during the Depression, most women usually kept some cinnamon on hand for baking. In the video below we get to see how they’re made from a woman who survived the ’30s and loved her mother’s baked apples.
While it is possible that we would be eating these foods with the same frequency had the Great Depression not happened, the fact that these foods were either cheap or easy to make certainly made them more appetizing in a time of great poverty and food shortages.