Trying Awful Vintage Recipes So You Don’t Have To
By: Marie Catterson
Ah, the ‘60s. An era filled with The Beatles, hippie music, moon landings, and the effort to put as much gelatin as possible into the American diet. We may scoff at the bizarre creations housewives with too much free time managed to cook up, but all of us would be lying if we said we haven’t been curious what chicken salad trapped in jello would taste like. Fortunately for you, I was curious enough to actually try these recipes. Unfortunately for me, I was curious enough to actually try these recipes.
Cooking has always been an important tradition for my family. As a kid, I would always help my mom bake cookies and make side dishes, and when I got older, all I wanted for Christmas was cookbooks. It just makes sense that I now make dinner for my family twice a week and constantly bake sweet treats for my friends. Having never been a picky eater, cooking odd recipes with the holidays right around the corner would be a simple and fun task. At least I thought it would be.
I scavenged vintage cookbooks for four of the weirdest recipes I could find. I’ll be ranking them on taste, texture, smell, looks, and difficulty to try and find the worst recipe from the 60’s. Buckle up, because it’s going to be a wild (and disgusting) ride.
4. Creamed Tuna on Toast:
Starting off strong with the best of the worst: Creamed Tuna on toast. Butter, flour, and milk mixed with warm tuna on toast, heated over the stove for a short time, only five minutes. Just staring at it, it looks like gray slop slapped on toast. I know you might be thinking, “That cannot be good,” and you would be correct. The strong tuna flavor overwhelmed the simple salt and pepper seasoning, overwhelming all my senses with fish. The butter-flour-milk mixture was indecisive on which texture it wanted to be, somehow becoming slightly thick and runny at the same time. Combining that with chunks of tuna made for an interesting texture I had never had before. But this recipe surprised me by not being absolutely terrible, and dare I say slightly tasty. Overall, the flavor was fishy but decent, the big problem being the slop-like texture, only redeemed by the crunch of the toast it was served on.
Taste: 6/10
Look: 3/10
Texture: 2/10
Smell: 5/10
Difficulty: 8/10
Overall Score: 24/50
3. Bologna Cake:
Somewhere, down in the deep south of Alabama, a housewife mixed ranch, softened cream cheese, layered it between some bologna, and decided it would be a delicacy for dinner parties. Honestly, though, the most shocking part of this recipe was the olives and pickles as a garnish. Cutting into the layers of bologna, I could already feel the solidity of the meat. My slice quickly fell apart, the ‘frosting’ making a horrible glue for the cake. The initial bite was slimy and wet, full of ranch and only slight hints of bologna. This made me think Hey, this won’t be too bad!, to which I was quickly proved wrong by the cream cheese flavor slamming into me like a truck. A foul combo, second only to wearing orange and purple together. I tried to like it, I really did, but having chunks of cream cheese with ranch could make me hate anything.
Taste: 3/10
Look: 5/10
Texture: 3/10
Smell: 5/10
Difficulty: 7/10
Final rating: 23/50
2. Ham and Banana Hollandaise
Tangy, saucy, and fresh out of the oven. These words usually make a good dish, but in the case of bananas wrapped in mustard-smeared ham, these are the words you would least want together. Lemon juice was mixed in with the hollandaise sauce, bringing a sharp punch of citrus when you bite into a mushy banana. The meat was still slightly cold from being in the fridge, and the mustard was about as good as you would imagine mustard on a banana would be. I believe it would’ve been at least halfway decent without the banana. Maybe then I wouldn’t have gagged as soon as I took a bite. I couldn’t swallow a single mouthful of the nasty acidic/banana/meat combo, but it’s still not the worst of the recipes.
Taste: 0/10
Look: 2/10
Texture: 1/10
Smell: 4/10
Difficulty: 3/10
Final score: 10/50
1. Jellied Chicken Salad:
Truly, there has never been a more bizarre combination of flavors, textures, or smells than in jellied chicken salad. It’s like onion and chicken broth had a baby, and then that baby threw up in my mouth. The look of it alone was enough to almost send me running: a chunky, cold, slightly wet mess of ingredients thrown together. Chicken should never, ever be eaten cold, yet it was freezing, stuck in a gelatinous state. The squishiness of the jello clashed ridiculously badly with the crunchiness of the celery and olives. Whiffs of gelatin and lemon juice stunk up my kitchen (it still lingers to this day). I gagged before the fork even entered my mouth, and nearly threw up when it actually did. Even after I spit it out, the taste lingered: nasty, cold, and sticky for some reason. Hands down the worst thing I've ever had, and that’s coming from someone who’s had ox tongue.
Taste: -5/10
Look: 0/10
Texture: 0/10
Smell: 1/10
Difficulty: 3/10
Overall Score: -1/50
It’s safe to say that my initial goal at the beginning of my research has been achieved. Through a journey of strange combinations and an alarming amount of lemon juice, I was able to find the worst recipe from the olden times (and probably ever). It was fun while it lasted, but I’m overjoyed that I never have to eat chicken salad in gelatin in my life. At least I hope so.
