9 Depression Era Recipes You Need to Try - Retro Housewife Goes Green (2024)

FAQs

What was a typical meal during the Great Depression? ›

Celery soup mixed with tuna fish and mashed potatoes. A salad of corned beef, gelatin and canned peas. Baked onion stuffed with peanut butter. Those are just some of the recipes Americans turned to during the Great Depression, when many families struggled to eat enough nutritious food.

Many cheap foods still common among the poor today made their debut during the Depression: Wonder Bread (1930), Bisquick (1931), Miracle Whip (1933), and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup (1934). Ragu spaghetti sauce, Kraft mac-n-cheese, and Hormel Spam all appeared during the Roosevelt Recession in 1937.

Potatoes were also inexpensive and used extensively. Some meals even used both. One of these meals was called the Poor Man's Meal. It combined potatoes, onions, and hot dogs into one hearty, inexpensive dish, which was perfect for the hard times people had fallen on.

A common depression cake is also known as "Boiled Raisin Cake", "Milkless, Eggless, Butterless Cake", or "Poor Man's Cake".

Depression Cooking is a zine of easy recipes designed to make mealtime a little easier, in the no-nonsense sense of the word, for depressed humans like me. It demonstrates one of the many lessons that I've learned during COVID: that we can care for one another without being physically present.

Rat stew was once consumed in West Virginia, the dish having originated during economic hardship due to a collapse in the mining industry. The dish is an example of roadkill cuisine and has appeared in the Marlington Roadkill Cook-off.

Nuts and seeds.

Walnuts offer high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, which support brain health. Other nuts and seeds such as pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts and almonds are also beneficial because they contain magnesium. This nutrient has been shown to boost levels of serotonin, the “feel-good” brain chemical.

Kibble + canned dog foods were introduced made out of dehydrated meat and grain mill scraps. Great Depression (30's - 40's): Canned pet food became 90% of the pet food market.

Can depression cause a lack of appetite? Depression can affect our appetite and change the relationship we have with food. It can cause us to eat unhealthily, eat more than usual and it can also lead to a loss of appetite.

How can I eat if I have no money? ›

Your local food bank can help you find food today, even if you need temporary help. They partner with food pantries, soup kitchens, and meal programs in your local community to give away free food. Enter your zip code to find the food bank partnering with Feeding America.

Water Pie. Water pie — made with just six ingredients: water, flour, sugar, vanilla extract, butter, and a pie crust — may seem like a fun hack today, but during the Great Depression, it was simply a dessert that reflected the circ*mstances for many Americans.

When dealing with psychological or emotional stress, the body tends to crave sweet foods. Craving carbohydrates, or other sugary foods, can be the brain's way to self-soothe depressive feelings. This explains why a person might want something sweet to calm their nerves at the end of a tough day.

Another meal favorite that filled up the family members was chicken and dumplings. There may have only been a few pieces of chicken but plenty of the dumplings were a flour base food item. A few vegetables added the family was happy. For a treat, people developed the 'no-bake pies' such as the 'vinegar pie'.

Bread and soup lines were run by charities like the Red Cross. They provided bread, soup, and hot beverages for those who could not afford to buy their own food. They served hundreds of people a day.

1930s: Lobster, Capon, Potatoes Rissole

Chicken dishes were popular, with roasted capon (a castrated and fattened male chicken) becoming a particularly trendy choice. Potatoes rissole - small, whole potatoes fried crispy brown on the outside - were popular as a side.