7 Vintage Thanksgiving Side Dishes That Most People Don’t Make Anymore

• Today, Thanksgiving tables typically feature side dishes such as mashed potatoes and mac and cheese.

• Once popular options like Jell-O salads and hot Dr Pepper are no longer part of the festivities.

• But some people still like to make dishes like ambrosia salad for nostalgia’s sake.

No festive Thanksgiving gathering would be complete without a table full of steaming dishes. These days, the most popular accessories includes mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing and cranberry sauce.

Thanksgiving spreads haven’t always looked like this. There was a time when Jell-O creations and canned goods reigned supreme.

These vintage food trends were often driven by economic factors involving ingredients that were cheap or readily available in past decades.

Here are seven unique Thanksgiving menu items that have mostly fallen out of fashion.

Turkey scraps were turned into aspic.

Gelatin became a popular basis for many meals during the 1930s after the Great Depression because it was an inexpensive source of protein. According to Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in Americaclose to a third of all cookbook recipes from this period were gelatin-based.

In 2015 YouTuber and vintage recipe enthusiast This Midlife Millennial tried a vintage Thanksgiving leftover Jell-O recipe from a 1975 cookbook called “Worry-Free Cooking with Aluminum Foil.” The recipe called for turkey, frozen vegetables, cream of celery soup and ranch dressing mixed with gelatin.

“I probably wouldn’t eat this again, but it’s not the worst I’ve ever had,” she said.

Tasty Jell-O salads made for festive centerpieces.

Jell-O salads were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

A Jell-O dish with radishes, scallions and a few tablespoons of vinegar wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary at a feast. Some people continue to serve them at Thanksgiving, just because.

“Modern American palates have changed to dislike spicy gelatin, but that wasn’t always the case,” food historian Sarah Wassberg Johnson previously told Business Insider. “Probably up until the 1960s, salty gelatinous dishes were a thing.”

A “spring basket dessert” consisted of fruity Jell-O with chunks of fruit inside.

Gelatin was also popular in sweeter desserts. An example is the “spring basket dessert” advertised in The Ladies Home Journal in 1948.

The molded gelatin dessert usually contained fruit juice and chunks of fruit. The gelatinous dish is no longer the dessert of choice at most holiday gatherings.

Ambrosia lettuce is still popular in the South, but many have left it alone.

Ambrosia recipes began to appear in publications in the late 19th century, Serious eater reported. It remains a holiday classic in some Southern homes, but is rarely seen elsewhere.

Ambrosia usually includes some kind of canned fruit with mini marshmallows, with variations that include Cool Whip, cottage cheese and Jell-O.

Canned foods were once all the rage, including creamed corn.

A 1948 ad in the Ladies Home Journal advertised creamed corn in a can as “something to try—smooth, creamy, with lots of tender kernels to round out the good eating.”

But in the last few decades, canned goods have fallen out of fashion in favor of fresh foods. As a result, creamed corn from a can has also become less popular at the table.

Served on special occasions, Hot Dr Pepper consisted of hot soda over lemon wedges.

In a 1968 ad, Dr. Pepper to serve “steaming hot” soda over lemon wedges. It’s definitely “something different” to offer Thanksgiving guests.

Sore Serious eaterthe drink was invented by Dr. Pepper in the 1960s “to keep profits strong during the holiday season, when sales of cold pop plummet.” It was apparently quite big in the South, but has since declined in popularity.

Hellmann’s Mayonnaise shared a recipe for a Thanksgiving-themed “Cranberry Surprise.”

In 2013, Hellmann’s Mayonnaise released a collection of vintage advertisements and recipes to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

One of the treats in the collection was the “Cranberry Surprise,” a holiday side dish that “blends the tartness of cranberry with the delicate creaminess of Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise” with an extra dollop of mayonnaise on top to provide “the final signature flavor garnish.”

This story was originally published on November 1, 2018 and last updated on November 20, 2024.

Read the original article about Business Insider