There are so many comforting, classic old-fashioned meals we love, like beef stew, pot pie, and meatloaf, that we’ve been eating since childhood. While it’s fun and delicious to recreate and tweak those classics, there are some worst old-fashioned dishes that should absolutely never, ever grace dinner tables ever again.
Whether they’re unappetizing aspics or flavors and textures that just don’t appeal to current tastes, the recipes of the past can be pretty wild. While your grandparents may not have made these dishes for you, they’ve definitely tried some of them. Would you actually try any of these?
The recipe is simple, just wrap bananas in ham, cover with creamy homemade hollandaise sauce and bake “until golden.” But just because you can make something, doesn’t mean you should because the contrast of mushy warm bananas and the sauce isn’t something anyone should eat. Ever.
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This dish, created by the minds at Betty Crocker uses Bisquick mixed with canned tuna to make an unusual ring that is baked and served with a tuna cheese dip. Almost like a tuna melt baked into one dish, but we’d advise just sticking with a tuna melt.
You can’t list unusual retro recipes without touching on gelatin salads, and this one is a perfect example. Shredded carrots, cabbage, celery, pimientos, and green peppers are enrobed in an apple juice flavored gelatin and left to set in a decorative mold.
This 1927 recipe takes aspic (a savory jelly made with meat stock, set in a mold, and used to contain pieces of meat, seafood, or eggs) to a place no one wanted it to go. The molded layers of gelatin, lobster, and shrimp appear to be ready to pop off the plate and chase you out of the house.
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This dish hits the trifecta of tropes for an unusual old recipe: Odd use of gelatin, Weight Watchers and sounds like another dish, but not good. With tomatoes, gelatin, Worcester sauce, and beef broth this is like a jellied perversion of a Bloody Mary sans vodka.
Another Weight Watchers classic, this dish sees hot dogs broiled and wrapped around a pineapple core, with pineapple, apples, carrots, and onions sauteed and served with. While we love the flavor of pineapple and ham, there’s just way too much going on here!
To be clear, we’re not unilaterally anti-aspic, which is making a comeback in fine dining circles, but this version from the 70s that layers what appears to be almost every course from Thanksgiving dinner into a gelee just doesn’t appeal. Maybe it’s the fancy mold, maybe it’s the layering of different textures, but don’t do this with your leftovers.
Is this a salad? Bundles of celery are boiled in beef bouillon, then topped with Italian salad dressing, in a dish that makes us glad we live in an era where roasting vegetables and making our own stock is how we get dinner done.
The recipe describes this cold dish of pureed tomatoes blended with French mustard, lemon, and heavy cream mixed with noodles and cubed ham as “something children enjoy.” Make this for your kids and get back to us with their reactions, please.
This recipe is filed under “light and easy living,” which sees corned beef, peppers, onions, and eggs folded into lemon-flavored gelatin, and molded. Served over mixed greens, this was apparently considered a salad. It’s just very…brown.
Tanya Edwards
Tanya Edwards is a seasoned food and health journalist, who has held roles at Yahoo Health as Managing Editor and at Food Network as Programming Director. Read more about Tanya
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