Every time we go grocery shopping we see the same brands each week, and we might not know that some of our favorites actually date back to the Great Depression. Many things were happening during the decade of the 1930s and despite limited food budgets, there were new products hitting the grocery store shelves all the time. This was largely due to advances in food manufacturing and packaging that made it possible to ship delicate crackers or to flash freeze produce and keep it frozen until the customer put it in their cart. These things simply hadn’t been the possible until the 1930s when more people than ever had electricity and many were looking for ways not only save money, but time as well. Here are 9 foods from the 1930s we’re still enjoying today.
Ritz Crackers
Before this style of cracker was released in 1934 there were soda crackers and saltines. But, these buttery crackers had a lighter texture and offered 1930s shoppers a hint of “affordable luxury” during times of hardship thanks to a “sponge dough”. And, we’re still enjoying them to this day.
Nestle Chocolate Chips
In a colonial house near a toll road outside Boston in Whitman, MA, the chocolate chip cookie was born. The Toll House Inn Restaurant is where Ruth Wakefield began making her now-famous cookies for her customers. The rise in car travel meant that business was booming and word spread of her creation, which substituted nuts for chocolate in the colonial-era Butter Drop Do cookies. She first made this around 1930 by cutting up some Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bars. When news traveled about her cookies her recipe appeared on the packages of bars in exchange for free chocolate for her business. By 1939 Nestlé began making chocolate chips (morsels) so their customers wouldn’t have to chop up chocolate bars to make the fabulous cookies. To this day it’s Ruth’s recipe that appears on their packages.
Spam
This would become a staple food of WWII from soldiers’ rations to refugee aid. But, it was a product of the Great Depression. This preserved meat is part of a long tradition of potted meats being used by those without many resources and in the 1930s there were certainly plenty of folks who couldn’t afford much fresh meat. The jury is still out on whether the name comes from a portmanteau of “spiced ham” or whether it’s an acronym for “shoulder of pork and ham”.
Kraft Dinner
Known to many as mac and cheese, this product started out as “Kraft Dinner” – a meal in a box that was perfect for hard times. Add a little butter and milk (or water if you had no milk) and you had a hot dinner in only minutes. Many a belly was filled with this easy food, though inventive cooks found ways to add to the boxed kit to make it feed more people and to include more nutrients. This product could be made into Hoover stew, John Marzetti, or tuna noodle casserole without too many extra ingredients.
Skippy Peanut Butter
The process for creating peanut butter was patented in 1895, but was being made prior by Native Americans and Africans. The early commercial peanut butters were like what we know today as natural peanut butter. The oil frequently rose to the top and spoiled quickly, prompting peanut butter makers to advise grocery store owners to stir their giant tubs of PB regularly. The science behind hydrogenated oils lead to the development of commercial peanut butters that had their peanut oil removed and more stable oils added in. Combined with finer grinding techniques, wide mouth single-family jars, and shrewd marketing, Skippy became the leader of the commercial peanut butter pack in the 1930s. Advertisements for Skippy and other peanut butters were geared towards kids being able to make their own sandwiches, a welcome addition to the roster of snacks.
Fritos
The culinary tinkerer Charles Elmer Doolin discovered fritos being sold by a small time maker at a gas station. Doolin bought the patent for these fried corn snacks in the early 1930s along with some of the accounts for frito customers. In one of his many test kitchens his mother helped him perfect the recipe and in 1932 Fritos as we know them were born. The chips even had a stint as part of a restaurant at Disneyland, called Casa de Frito. His wife later developed the recipes for Frito pie and Frito jets, which were chocolate-dipped Fritos.
Twinkies
In 1930 James Alexander Dewar came up with a plan to use the shortcake machines at the Continental Baking Company where he worked since strawberry shortcake was a seasonal food. He made a banana cream snack cake that later became the vanilla cream version we are familiar with today (popularized during World War II). The marriage of frugality and technology in full force!
Bisquick
This biscuit mix was said to have been inspired by an unnamed train car chef who devised a mix of flour, salt, lard, and leavening to make biscuits at a moment’s notice and with little space. His concoction had to be kept in the icebox lest it spoil. When a General Mills executive tasted the biscuits and pried the secret out, Bisquick was developed soon after. And, it was shelf-stable thanks to advances in preserving fats. It was not long before the mix was used to create other dishes as well, from pancakes to pies and quick breads. This mix meant you didn’t need to have all the baking ingredients (or even a biscuit recipe) on hand to make biscuits!
Birds Eye Frozen Peas
Clarence Birdseye developed a commercial method for flash freezing foods between two metal surfaces after witnessing how Inuit peoples preserved and flash froze their fish. In this way the food tasted much better than when it was frozen slowly. Commercial frozen foods prior to his methods were considered almost inedible. He also revolutionized frozen peas by blanching them just before flash freezing so that when thawed and gently cooked they were an appealing shade of bright green with a vibrant flavor. This was timed perfectly for the new home freezers that were making their way into kitchens during the 1930s.
