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- [00:00]
A
Cottage cheese is just this glowing monolith, you know, doesn't matter whether you acknowledge it or not. Welcome to you're wrong about the podcast, where we ask, what. What. What do you feel like eating today? And, Sarah Archer, I lured you on here as our kitchen correspondent to talk with me about American food trends. And we would each kind of just talk about a handful of things that we personally like and are interested in, because I think we're kind of awash in food trends at the moment, and we're kind of at peak food trend because I feel like. Do you feel like every time you're on social media, someone's like, let's try the viral recipe for a thing you've never heard of. And you're like, oh, yeah, of course, the viral recipe I've never heard of.
- [00:57]
B
Yeah, Right.
- [00:58]
A
And in the olden days, it took at least a few months for something, specifically a recipe to work its way through the newspaper and word of mouth and so on. And I just. I love trends in food as a way of learning about what people were going through and continue to go through and almost hilariously repeating cycles. And so we're going to talk about desperation pies. Desperation pies and cake and so forth. Yeah.
- [01:28]
B
I immediately love this. And is it desperation as in, like, the Great Depression, or is it desperation in, like, more of a existential way?
- [01:35]
A
Here's what's great, right. Is that I've definitely always heard about, like, water pie and vinegar pie.
- [01:40]
B
Exactly.
- [01:41]
A
And Ritz cracker pie.
- [01:42]
B
Ritz cracker. Mock apple pie.
- [01:44]
C
Which is.
- [01:44]
A
Which is mock apple pie. Yeah. Which. Which was on the box for Ritz crackers through the 90s, apparently. Or until the 90s. Yeah. Which I really like that they were like, yeah, we know you want to make the pie, you're desperate, you need to make the pie. But, yeah, I have always heard of them as depression pies, but they are even more deeply within that desperation pies. Because I think, like, the pies I just named were all being made. Well, not Ritz pie, because Ritz crackers were invented or rolled out in 1934. I think they're a depression cracker through and through. But those pies are like desperation pies that people were also making in the late 19th century and also on the frontier, which is very interesting.
- [02:27]
B
Oh, that is fascinating.
- [02:29]
A
And one of the themes here is that I guess we're looking at two trends that I don't think are as in opposition as people sometimes act like they are, which are desperation and convenience.
- [02:44]
B
They go together like peanut butter and chocolate.
- [02:46]
A
They do. And they taste good together frequently. Water pie is basically a mock custard pie where you use water instead of milk or cream. And it is apparently quite good. I realized today that I should have made all these pies so I could tell you about it with more accuracy.
- [03:05]
B
Yeah, we can revisit that.
- [03:06]
A
Yeah, let's go make the pie and come back and discuss. But tell me about what. Well, first of all, tell us who you are and your kind of work in the kitchen arena and what you're going to tell us about today.
- [03:18]
B
So my kitchen obsession is mostly kind of the middle decades of the 20th century. And I have a special affection for the world of tomorrow and gadgets and kind of American kitchen designers competing with the Soviet Union and kind of designing things sort of at the Soviet Union. And at this very moment, I'm working on a talk because there is a really cool exhibition opening soon at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston that is all about atomic age food. And it involves this like.
- [03:50]
A
Oh, my God.
- [03:51]
B
I know.
- [03:51]
A
And it's called Ms. Archer.
- [03:54]
B
I know, I know. So it's called Mid Century Menu.
- [03:57]
A
Oh, my God.
- [03:58]
B
That's the name of the exhibition which is curated by the great Misty Flores, who is a decorative arts historian who normally is like a baroque and rococo person. So this is like she's moving far into the future by doing this. And there's a really cool mid century house that is part of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston campus called the Rienzi House. And it's a sort of post war luxurious home that was donated. And the thing that's interesting is that the people who lived there collected like 18th century porcelain. So it's this kind of post war, like 60s house that's full of ro coco decorative arts. And then the exhibition is in there. So there's like a table full of fake food that Ms. Di Flores had made for this exhibition.
- [04:43]
A
I want to go, wait, how long is this for? What are the dates?
- [04:47]
B
Here it is through July 31, 2026.
- [04:52]
A
Oh, thank God. All right, we have lots of time.
- [04:54]
B
Yeah. So there's. So there's bags of time. And the Rienzi House has a historical cookbook collection. So that was kind of the genesis of this. Like, you know, like, let's explore sort of what this would have looked like if you were sort of entertaining in 1960s Houston at that level. I published a book in 2018 called the Mid Century Kitchen, which is sort of more about not so much about food, but more about appliances. Right. Sort of appliances design and the transformation of the kitchen over time.
- [05:22]
A
Well, you can't have a lot of the food without the appliances.
- [05:25]
B
That's very true.
- [05:26]
A
Continues to be true. Yeah.
- [05:28]
B
And a lot of it is about the advertising and kind of mythos around the kitchen. So it's sort of less a literal study of kind of what everybody's kitchen was actually like, and more a survey of, like, the ideal kitchen and kind of how that was marketed to American consumers and what it meant and what
- [05:45]
A
was the ideal kitchen at that time. And do you have a sense, I guess there's like, our culture is a lot less unified maybe today, but at least from like, you know, from an anecdotal perspective or whatever kind of sense you have of this, like, is there an ideal kitchen today? Like, what do those look like to you?
- [06:02]
B
So I have kind of a working theory about this, I would say, in terms of the post war era. So the kitchen historically had been. It was a site of work. And up until about the 1920s, it tended to be either just things in your dwelling that you use to heat up food and water, because you maybe lived in one room or two rooms, or you were. You were wealthy and you had people to do that for you. So that was a room that you didn't go into. So there wasn't really this. The idea of the kitchen as a place where you hang out is a relatively new idea.
- [06:36]
A
Well, or I guess in the sense that maybe in the. Like, if we're talking about, you know, let's say you and I are. Are settling on a farm in Connecticut, and I'm imagining a scenario described in one of my favorite books, More Work for Mother. And we would, like, basically live in one room probably as, like, you know, small farmers and kind of like cottage industrialists and people like, you know, kind of doing a lot of little different kinds of work here. And we would probably have, like, a hearth with a fire, with, like, a big pot or a cauldron, I guess, on top of it, and we would be having some stew, probably. I mean, is that fair to say?
- [07:18]
B
More or less. You might have a cast iron stove. You might have two or three rooms. Nice. And you might hang out in the room that's most warm, which is also gonna be the room where you cook food. So inasmuch as it's sort of. It's a marker of how class in America has changed and what we expect and want for ourselves. And so there's kind of the way that kitchen technology was presented to computer, to computers
- [07:47]
A
the way that these.
- [07:48]
B
See this is. This is the result of AI the way that kitchen technology was presented to consumers starting at about the 1930s and then really taking off in the 1950s, was that you could almost jump a couple of notches on the class ladder. And the way that they illustrated this was to show, let's say, what Julia Child would call the servantless cook, this sort of new thing in the world. Like a person who entertains and is, well, to do enough to entertain and have the kind of leisure time to do so and the money, but isn't wealthy enough to have staff. And this is again, this is kind of a new category of person. And so.
- [08:23]
A
And that you're like throwing a dinner party and having. And like being your own staff in a way. And this is maybe like part of the consolidation of the middle class and post war America.
- [08:33]
B
Exactly. So this is the consolidation of the middle class. And so the idea that you can then a lot of the advertising for kitchen appliances. Like remember that movie that we. We watched in a previous episode? It was a sort of industrial short for. I want to say it was. It was from Motorama, but it was the sort of appliance Fantasia where like a masked man whisks a woman away to show her all the kind of incredible. Yeah, you know, it was like Frigidaire.
- [09:00]
A
Well, it was like they were presented to women as if they were cars. And it's interest because it feels like the consolidation of the middle class apparently involved women pulling off even more stuff.
- [09:10]
B
Yes. Basically that it's like the woman, the protagonist, is shown taking up hobbies. And so the implicit message of that is that you have appliances doing stuff for you that you used to have to do. Like you can time your kitchen, set your dishwasher to wash your dishes, kind of leave things to some extent on autopilot. And that. That will free you up to do things like play tennis or play golf, kind of lounge read, sort of do something else and sort of become a lady of leisure in a way that would have been unthinkable for somebody from your background a generation before. Oh, it's called Design for Dreaming. I found it. It's 1956. It's a promotional short film for General Motors Motorama, and it's all futuristic kitchen, but a masked man whisks her away. Like happens sometimes to all of us.
- [10:01]
D
I dreamt last night the moon was so bright it melted the world away. And it wasn't alarming when I saw Prince Charming come into my bedroom and say,
- [10:20]
E
let me Persuade you to come to the place where tomorrow meets today.
- [10:27]
D
Oh, thank you. It sounds very exciting. May I come just as I am,
- [10:31]
B
and shows her the kitchen of the future. And the idea is that things. The kitchen of the future is so advanced that it's kind of like you're entering, like, a lab at IBM and everything kind of happens automatically for you. And cakes appear, and it's magical.
- [10:47]
D
Just like a man. You give him a break, and you wind up in the kitchen baking a cake. But this was a kitchen like none I'd seen. Put a card in the slot, and onto the screen pops a picture of just how your dish will look, plus all the ingredients you need to cook.
- [11:07]
B
Then, crucially, the woman is freed up to do all this other stuff.
- [11:12]
D
No need for the bride to feel tragic. The rest is push button magic. So whether you bake or broil or stew, the Frigidaire kitchen does it all for. You don't have to be chained to the stove all day. Just set the timer and you're on your way. Tick, tock, tick tock. I'm free to have fun around the clock.
- [11:39]
B
And so that's the part of it that I find most interesting. The idea that it's unthinkable that you would do other stuff. Like, anyway. Like, there's the idea that you would, you know, read books or play tennis or be involved in the PTA or something.
- [11:53]
A
Well, and also, we're seeing her, like, using a cabinet, like a computer, but also a computer that doesn't exist yet because she's inserting a punch card, and then, like, a color image of a cake is coming up, and it's like you guys were bluffing.
- [12:10]
B
But you know what's crazy, though? I feel like we could do that now.
- [12:13]
A
Yeah, we should do that now. And we should do it with index cards. People would like it.
- [12:17]
B
I don't know why we're not doing that.
- [12:18]
A
It's just.
- [12:19]
B
Yeah, like, what are we waiting for?
- [12:20]
A
Yeah. And there she's got, like, a rotating cake display cabinet, like a diner. I mean, this is basically promising to automate cooking for her. Right.
- [12:31]
B
And now she's kind of switching off to the leisure area. So tennis.
- [12:36]
A
She's twirling a golf club like a baton, which seems dangerous, which seems odd, but also it's like she's skipping around really fast, like, aggressively Leisurizing and different forms of leisure. And it's like, whatever happened to.
- [12:51]
B
To actual leisure lying around for three hours?
- [12:54]
A
Yeah, I know.
- [12:55]
B
It's very active as leisure goes. It's Very like Skippy.
- [12:58]
D
And yeah, jeepers, I'm exhausted. The kitchen of tomorrow is calling me. My cake is ready.
- [13:13]
B
I love her.
- [13:13]
A
I love her and her bang.
- [13:18]
B
I think what's fascinating about the food trends is one of the things I touch on in the book is that there is also a form of almost like virtual travel that happens because there's this vogue for, in air quotes, foreign food starting in the late 50s and early 60s and it coincides with the beginning of the jet age.
- [13:36]
A
Oh, okay, tell us about that.
- [13:39]
B
So this is kind of a nifty kind of parallel. So the Boeing 707, not to like, oh boy, you know, complicate the vibes by bringing up Boeing.
- [13:49]
A
No, I love the vibes.
- [13:52]
B
Premieres in 1958. That was kind of the big, high profile, new, new jet. And it basically, it's jet engines that replaced propeller planes. So if you. There was tourism and there absolutely were people going. But if you were to fly, say from like New York to London or New York to Paris in, you know, 1952, that would have taken you somewhere between 12 and 15 hours. Jet engines cut that about in half. So what we're used to where like going from the east coast of the US To Europe is roughly like six, seven, eight hours, something like that. That starts to be true in late 50s and early 60s. It is still very expensive. So if maybe like 1% of the population was traveling to Europe by propeller plane and like reenacting the scene from Funny Face walking down the steps of the Louvre every, you know, once or twice a year, then a few years later in the jet age, it's still a tiny percentage. It just means that it's kind of more upper middle class people rather than strictly just wealthy people. So upper middle class people are going to Europe. They are taking vacations in Hawaii, which in 1959 becomes a US state. They are engaging in the fantasy of a nearby paradise like Acapulco. They're, you know, visiting the Caribbean. They and like, all of this creates an interest and a buzz in the larger sort of American psyche because you can experience a version of it, like a mediated version of that by either going to Disney World or going to a World's Fair. And you can do both of those things by going to New York or going to Florida. And when you do that, you'll encounter, let's say the pavilion from Thailand and maybe get your first taste of a version of Thai food for the first time ever in your entire Life in 1965. Or you can visit Disney World and go to, you know, the Polynesian resort and experience a kind of fantasia of South Pacific culture, which it needs. We don't need to say this, but of course it is extraordinarily mediated and, like, kind of constructed of stereotypes. But I want to draw your attention to. Can I send you some images?
- [15:54]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [15:55]
B
Are you familiar with the International Sandwich Gardens?
- [15:59]
A
No, I assume that they're not gardens full of sandwich bearings bushes, but I sure was hoping that they were for a sec. I was picturing that.
- [16:10]
B
That's what I was hoping too, but. So this was at the 1964. 1965 World's Fair in Queens and the Seven Up Pavilion. And Seven up was not quite as high profile as Pepsi. It was kind of a third banana in terms of soda.
- [16:24]
A
But, I mean, let's be honest, they still are. But what a banana.
- [16:28]
B
Exactly. But it's a great banana. So take a peek at this image and maybe describe what we're seeing.
- [16:33]
A
I would love nothing more. Okay, so first we have a beautiful sign that has a little arrow, says entrance to the 7Up International Sandwich Gardens. The International Sandwich Gardens. And it's a garden where you eat international sandwiches. And they're all on oval bread. And so they're like the space sandwiches in 2001 Space Odyssey, a little bit. They're uniform. And so we have the sandwiches represented. And there's like four for each region, which is for totaling 16 international sandwiches, which I think is pretty good.
- [17:08]
B
Yeah. Which is incredible.
- [17:09]
A
Northern Europe, the Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the Americas. Choose one of these four trays. Four delicious sandwiches on each. All the seven up. You want 150 per tray plus tax. We should compete with the Russians again. It brought out the best in us, at least in terms of, you know, sandwiches.
- [17:30]
B
Yeah, at least in terms of sandwich culture.
- [17:32]
A
Well, what do you think of. Also about the kind of advances. Because just with you talking about the jet age, I'm like, right between, like, 1949 and 1969, we first made these huge leaps in commercial passenger airlines. And then we went to space, and then we went to the moon. And so you can really forgive science fiction writers for being like, the year is 1991. Robots have taken over the planet and only 14 humans remain. This is their story.
- [18:01]
B
Well, actually, it's good that you brought up space because here is. Okay, so I have. This is kind of like. I'm working toward, like a grand theory of sandwich logic. So, you know, how in. Are you a Star Trek person? Have we talked about this?
- [18:16]
A
Yes. I haven't watched a Ton of Star Trek. But like, I like Star Trek ambiently and I like being surrounded by Star Trek people. I feel very safe amidst them.
- [18:25]
B
We're very cozy. And I think one of the things that I have always found really funny and really entertaining about, about like the original series and I guess to some extent like the 90s reboots, less so nowadays because I feel like they're kind of getting more. They're more far out in terms of the science in a way that's really cool. But it's kind of past the golden age that I would consider to be like, basically you go, you know, you're on a spaceship centuries from now, you go to a distant galaxy and the alien life that you meet are basically like people with like a very severe haircut or like shoulder pads. Do you know what I mean?
- [19:01]
A
Like, she comes from the Ren Faire.
- [19:03]
B
Exactly.
- [19:03]
A
They're like, well, you got your Vulcans and then you got your Romulans who basically look like Vulcans, but it's like,
- [19:09]
B
oh, well, they have different eyebrows. So they're, you know, they have like a slightly different nose.
- [19:13]
A
Yeah, but we ran out of latex and so they're a Romulan.
- [19:16]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [19:18]
B
So what I love about this and that, if you think about this, let's like put this together and have it hold hands with the sandwich garden.
- [19:25]
A
Ooh.
- [19:26]
B
You are in New York City, you're American. You can point to sort of any point on the globe and every other place will turn to you and say, yes, we have a version of exactly the kind of sandwich that you're used to that is made with like, you know, Russian ingredients or Vietnamese ingredients or, you know, what, whatever. And I think it is fair to say that most cultures on Earth have a version of like a hand pie of some kind, like a sort of portable.
- [19:54]
A
I too have, have pies to talk about. Yeah, right.
- [19:58]
B
So we're gonna, we're gonna link this to pies. But you know, you get their pasties, tacos. There are versions of this all over the world, but they are almost certainly not versions of this where everybody on planet Earth gets like bread from an American supermarket that's oval shaped and puts the exact same amount of stuff on it. So in the same way that there's this idea that you can kind of go anywhere in the world and every alien you meet will sort of speak East Coast English and kind of be more or less humanoid. This idea that you can almost in air quotes travel sort of.
- [20:32]
C
Right.
- [20:33]
B
An experience of a taste or a version of Someplace exotic. But what you're actually experiencing is basically like a creative director who works for 7Up or Better Homes and Gardens, kind of conjuring an idea of something that's Japanese or, you know, exotic in some other way. And I think that that idea of foreignness, you can sort of, as a commodity, I think that that American access, partially because we've had, thank God, so much, immig immigration in. I'm gonna be on my soapbox just for a second. We have wonderful food from around the world made by people who are from the world. Right. So we're not kind of stuck in, you know, making kind of like esoteric sandwiches that are based on a thought experiment. But so I feel like the travel boom, the sort of version of the travel boom that most Americans could not partake in because it was still expensive. Like, now it's still expensive to travel. This was a sort of. Instead of being on TikTok or Instagram and kind of looking at people posting from their vac vacation on the Adriatic, you had this version of it. You could kind of bring quote, unquote, foreign food into your kitchen if you bought a cookbook, like Meals with Foreign Flair.
- [21:42]
A
Well, and then there's something interesting, too, about the fact that, like, that food, like, is both like a colonizing agent. Right. Where it's, like, very painful and often profitable. How food traditions are, like, destroyed and consumed.
- [21:58]
B
Yes.
- [21:59]
A
And imitated by people who don't understand them. And yet at the same time, I think there's like, this inevitable thing that happens. It happens across all different kinds of cultural lines. But I think it's just a thing that happens with food where it gets adapted by whoever is interested in it based on what they're familiar with and feel comfortable with and what they have at the store and what's available. And so this thing where you can say, oh, this is wiping out culture, and it's oppressive and it's like, yeah, but also, we also just kind of like run home with ideas and don't understand it, but want to try something out. And that's cute that we do that too. I think it depends on. It depends on the motives, I think, really. But, yeah, these sandwiches are all like. I think anyone from any of these cultures would be like, like, what?
- [22:49]
B
What?
- [22:53]
A
Another example, Scotland, is sliced lamb with minted dressing on Scotch barley bread. You're like, well, what about a Scotch egg?
- [23:01]
B
What?
- [23:03]
A
Limitless Canada baked ham with the pickle dressing on cheddar cheese bread. It's like, sure, that's as Canadian as Canada pie.
- [23:11]
B
Exactly, exactly.
- [23:13]
A
And then what's. Oh, in the usa, Sliced turkey with cranberry dressing on whole wheat bread. Something that no American eats on a daily basis. But that makes you think of Thanksgiving. So, yeah, it's fun. It's all over the place.
- [23:25]
B
And it also does. It does this kind of. Visually, it sort of standardizes instead of like an idiosyncratic kind of things around the world sort of appear in different shapes and forms. And might be one, you know, something might be a stew and the next thing might be a hand pie. Everything is a sandwich. So it kind of uses the sandwich as like an organizing principle to give, to sort of snap the entire world into a grid where like everything. Do you know what I mean? Like, you can kind of find. Yeah.
- [23:55]
A
To put the whole world between two slices of bread, if you will.
- [23:58]
B
Exactly. If you will. If you will.
- [24:00]
A
And then put an incomprehensible dressing on it. I have a question for you that I feel like I hear this referenced a lot and it sounds like it could be a myth to me. I might have even asked this before. So if I have, I'm sorry, but the idea is that cake mixes were invented. American housewives didn't want to buy them because they didn't feel like they were doing enough. And so they didn't need an egg. But the cake mix people were like, okay, add an egg, then you'll feel like you're baking.
- [24:29]
B
So I have heard this too, and
- [24:30]
A
I feel like I've heard people repeat that. Is that true?
- [24:33]
B
I have heard that this is a myth.
- [24:35]
A
Okay.
- [24:35]
B
But that the myth itself is instructive because it kind of shows that there's an attachment to the idea that people need to do this, that like the egg kind of like women want to bake, ultimately it's like their biological destiny to bake in like a labor intensive way. So I think that's like you're talking about the kind of like Betty Crocker.
- [24:57]
A
Some people were meant to bake. Some people were meant to cook everything in a rice cooker and they just throw it all in there and see what. What the fuck happens.
- [25:05]
B
Exactly.
- [25:06]
A
It's usually, I mean, it cooks it, you know, one way or the other.
- [25:09]
B
Totally, totally. Yeah. So I think that's a super instructive example and that it's kind of something that's taken on a life of its own in the culture and that there's like this. What is it that we want to be true? And like, why? Why do we want that to be true?
- [25:22]
A
And what do you think we do want to be true?
- [25:24]
B
Well, I have to say, I think the. The whole sort of, like, egg mythos and the idea that people want to.
- [25:30]
A
The egg psych, that people want to
- [25:33]
B
do things from scratch is people have spent many years making. Doing things by hand. Making things by hand. Cleaning, cooking, etc, all that is time that our ancestors would never get back.
- [25:46]
A
Right.
- [25:46]
B
It's all. You know, we had generations of women, particularly before us, who did nothing but that and didn't have a choice. And I think the idea that there's an attachment to it and that people like it, which is not to say that everybody hates it, because I think people actually do.
- [26:00]
A
Right. I mean, as with everything, some people like it.
- [26:03]
B
Some people do. Exactly. The idea that it's kind of a widespread desire is almost a way of making the lives of women of the past seem less sad, because it means that maybe they were. Do you know what I mean? Like, maybe. Maybe they wanted to.
- [26:19]
A
No, I do know what you mean.
- [26:20]
B
Maybe they wanted to forego education and travel.
- [26:23]
A
No, you're right. God, that's really interesting.
- [26:26]
B
Just a theory. This is just a. This is just a hypothesis, if you will.
- [26:29]
A
No, I. I believe it, though. I mean, it makes I. And multiple things can be true or true to different degrees, but that feels accurate to me. Okay, so this connects to. Can I tell you about one of my cakes?
- [26:42]
B
Yes.
- [26:44]
A
Okay. Well, this is really the cake of the hour. And so this begins with Peg Bracken, of course, who we've talked about many times.
- [26:54]
B
Oh, my God, of course, peg.
- [26:57]
A
And with 1960s, the I Hate to Cook book.
- [27:01]
B
Oh, so good.
- [27:02]
A
Which is a book of recipes for women who hate to cook. And it has a very short dessert section which, regrettably, is subtitled because you're fat enough anyway. Oh, God.
- [27:12]
B
Jesus Christ. Yeah. Oh, no. Oh, Peg. Oh, no.
- [27:19]
A
And, you know, I choose to let that one go by. But you don't have to.
- [27:24]
B
I know it's. That's a tough one. But it's a different time.
- [27:32]
A
Yeah. Yeah. But it has a recipe for what Peg Bracken calls cockeyed cake. And so this is this chocolate cake that is deceptively simple. I made it. I was amazed at how it turned out.
- [27:44]
B
Like. So when you made it, you liked
- [27:45]
A
how it tasted and all that stuff? No, I loved it because it doesn't have any dairy or any eggs. And it's this sort of novelty recipe where you mix together dry ingredients and then you poke three holes, you know, in your, like, flour mixture. And then I think into one, you put five tablespoons of oil. Some recipes say six. Into one, you put a little bit of vanilla, and into the third, you put some vinegar, and it has baking soda. And so the vinegar and the soda combine and leaven it while it's cooking. And also you can make it right in the pan that you bake it in.
- [28:22]
B
That's genius. Wow.
- [28:24]
A
And in it is just this very light, fluffy, moist, delicious chocolate cake that apparently many, many people who've talked about it in newspapers starting in 1944, which is when recipes for this started turning up in newspapers around the country and in Canada were like, that sounds wacky. And then they make it and they're like, oh, my God, this is so good. And they're amazed. And it's like a trick. So it's more commonly known as wacky cake cake.
- [28:56]
B
I'm going to try it now. I'm inspired to try. Sounds like a miracle.
- [29:00]
A
It's fantastic. And I think there's an interesting psychological difference between wacky cake and cake mix. Because if you make something with a cake mix, which is operating on about the same principle, although it does have an egg, then you're like, oh, whatever, it's just cake mix. But if you make a wacky cake, you're just throwing together a few dry ingredients and then adding a few liquids, mixing it together and baking it. It. But you've performed a miracle because you put the dry ingredients together.
- [29:28]
B
It's like you've performed science. You've done science. And it's kind of like this incredible kind of chemical reaction that is just with stuff in your pantry. It's kind of cool to be able to do that.
- [29:41]
C
Right.
- [29:42]
A
And so I feel like there's the need to do that if you want to impress people, because one of the things that. That it seems like people have kind of always been reluctant to admit about cake mix is that a good cake mix tastes about the same as, like, a good homemade cake.
- [30:00]
D
Yeah.
- [30:00]
B
A cake mix is fine. It's absolutely fine. Yeah.
- [30:03]
A
I mean, there's, like, different kinds of cake and many that you can't get with a mix. But if you just. I mean, like, cake is cake.
- [30:10]
B
Yeah. And it's also one of those things that I think, in a strange way, I mean, I personally, I am not a fan generally of kind of very fancy, like, flourless cakes. Like, that kind of doesn't really do it for me. Like, I really want, like, birthday cake. Like, that's. That would be. You know what I mean?
- [30:29]
A
Yeah. I want, like, the Duncan Hines slash wacky cake kind of a cake.
- [30:33]
B
Duncan Hines, like, frosting from a tub is like, which. And because I think that's kind of like, as an adult, you don't have that a ton. Like, there's not a ton of scenarios when that. And if you don't have kids, there's not, like, cupcakes happening all the time. But if I do ever make something like that, it is really good.
- [30:48]
A
Good.
- [30:48]
B
I'll take that over, like, a fancy pants, you know, New York Times recipe section cake.
- [30:53]
A
Oh, yeah. I also wanted to mention, I do really enjoy the New York Times cooking sections email subject lines. I've never cooked a single recipe they send me. But it's always like, you open your email, you know, and it's like, nuclear Armageddon urgent. Your identity has been compromised. And then the New York Times is like, turkey cutlet razzmatazz. And you're like, oh, well, that sounds good.
- [31:23]
B
It is very. The. The New York Times food juxtaposed with
- [31:27]
A
cherry stone clams are the clam of the hour.
- [31:30]
B
Exactly. That, like, on the one hand, we're living a life where we have time to contemplate, like, clam typologies and, like, leisure. And on the other hand, like, we might be going to World War iii. Like that. Both of the. But that. I mean, honestly, that's what the 60s were like, too.
- [31:46]
A
Well, that's a good point. And. And then as now, we were fucking obsessed with our food and our houses.
- [31:52]
B
Yep.
- [31:53]
A
And that's kind of nice that we're holding hands across time with.
- [31:56]
B
With people from. Who are, like, in bomb shelters.
- [32:00]
A
I'm gonna get really into design. If all of this is gonna get blown up. I gotta get it looking perfect.
- [32:05]
B
Gotta get it looking absolutely perfect. And then. Or recreating it underground for the. For the.
- [32:10]
A
You know, and to be clear, I'm laughing because I'm doing exactly that. I'm not not doing that. That's not a laugh of duration. That's a laugh of, oh, my God, I'm doing that same thing with my life. And so. Well, okay, so the wacky cake starts showing up in 1944.
- [32:25]
B
Oh, so it's wartime. It's like rationing. Okay.
- [32:29]
A
Exactly. And. Well, tell us a little bit about that.
- [32:32]
B
Well, I mean, my understanding is that wartime food was designed basically. It was a lot of workarounds. It was kind of make do, not unlike the Civil War too. There were sort of, like, innovations and, you know, ways to kind of, like, use a cut of meat that you wouldn't ordinarily, and you could save up your ration coupons to buy, you know, a piece of steak and. But it was sort of not the kind of thing that you could have all the time. My dad was old enough to remember. He was a little kid during World War II. So he actually remembered the food.
- [33:03]
A
What does he remember about that?
- [33:05]
B
So he remembered having something called salmon loaf, which, I mean, it was. He described as being kind of like Spam, but it was made out of salmon. And I don't know whether that's something that you could buy off the shelf or something that my grandmother made. But the idea was that you're kind of using, like, every little bit and kind of gelatinizing it and making it into a sliceable entity.
- [33:24]
A
Well, it does seem that, like, I mean, because you have this kind of, you know, you have depression recipes and then also wartime recipes where meat and sugar and fats were being rationed, and you could have, like, a limited amount, you know, per household. And so there's a lot of meat stretching recipes and a lot of, like, you know, using breadcrumbs or using oatmeal,
- [33:44]
B
using a starch of some kind or
- [33:45]
A
potato, I mean, and also, like, you know, you kind of, like, you need breadcrumbs for meatballs. So it makes sense because kind of like, you know, upping the starch quantity
- [33:55]
B
or the ratio, you're kind of changing the ratio and that basically. And I think. I don't believe they had a victory garden. I could be wrong about this, because I do remember, actually, my grandmother, who grew up on a farm, saying that she didn't really understand why anyone would grow something that you couldn't eat. Like, she didn't really understand flower gardens. Like, she, like, just didn't. It wasn't anti. Just didn't understand it. You know, it was a lot of, like, shelf stable stuff and, you know, macaroni and cheese figured Beefaroni. Like a lot of the sort of stuff that we now associate with, like. Like, young kid food is. My understanding is that it was kind of perfected as a genre during the war.
- [34:35]
A
And also, I imagine in part due to advancements in, you know, food preservation technology due to the needs of the troops in World War II. Yeah. And I think, like, I think I learned in a Carmen San Diego, that canned food was innovated due to wartime needs.
- [34:50]
B
Interesting. Well, that's also. There's a great book, Combat Ready Kitchen, which we can link to in the notes, that is a whole history of, like, food innovations in wartime kind of throughout history.
- [35:02]
A
That sounds great.
- [35:04]
B
Anastasia Marx De Salcedo. I wanted to double check this to make sure I was getting it right. So Combat Ready kitchen is great. It's like, like super fascinating. Kind of a lot of the innovations in preservation packaging, you know, kind of understanding what people needed in terms of nutrition, all of that stuff. And so that eventually filters into. I mean, a lot of the technology that we have even now for keeping things shelf stable originates in that time.
- [35:30]
A
That's fascinating. Well, I have a couple things to show you.
- [35:34]
B
Oh, good.
- [35:35]
A
Based on our adventures in a wacky cave. Because one of the things about it that you might remember is that it calls for only about five tablespoons of oil. And so something that people who aren't scholars of World War II because they read the Mali books might not know is that During World War II, people were also instructed to collect fat and donate it to wartime needs because it was.
- [36:05]
B
It was useful.
- [36:06]
A
I have a short produced by Disney that's going to explain it.
- [36:10]
B
Amazing.
- [36:11]
A
Wait, okay, first I'm showing you a poster. So tell me what you see there. Okay.
- [36:16]
B
I am seeing save waste fats for explosives. Take them to your meat dealer. There's a hand, like a manicured hand holding a sort of cast iron skillet, pouring what looks like rendered fat into an inferno from which it looks like bombs are exploding, basically. So from the kitchen to the battlefield, like in. In two easy steps, take them to your meat dealer. That is. That is an interesting command.
- [36:49]
A
Know what I mean? Exactly. Exactly. Okay. And then I sent you a link to the short and we're gonna watch this together.
- [37:01]
B
So out of the frying pan and into the firing line.
- [37:05]
E
Wow.
- [37:05]
A
A Walt Disney production and technical color distributed and exhibited under auspices of the war activities. All right, it cut to some really beautiful looking bacon and eggs, which Minnie is making.
- [37:17]
B
And Pluto, who is smelling the beautiful bacon smell. Pluto, how would you like some delicious hot b.
- [37:28]
A
Isn't it weird to realize that Minnie is an immortal being?
- [37:32]
B
Yeah, I know. Who has a pet?
- [37:35]
E
Don't throw away that bacon grease. Housewives of America, one of the most important things you can do is to save your waste kitchen fats. Bacon grease, meat drippings, frying fats. We and our allies need millions of pounds of fats to help win the war.
- [37:51]
A
Zeta is not pleased, for fats make
- [37:54]
E
glycerin, and glycerin makes explosives. Every year, £2 billion of waste kitchen fats are thrown away.
- [38:03]
A
Those idiots.
- [38:05]
B
And what's cool is it kind of looks like a Norman Bel Getty's. Patriot radio. The radio that's in the. The cartoon.
- [38:11]
A
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I see. Yes. I mean, the visuals are really good.
- [38:17]
E
A skillet of bacon grease is a little munitions factory meat dripping sink Axis warships.
- [38:29]
B
I love how literal it is.
- [38:30]
A
Dripping off meat and turning into an actual.
- [38:32]
B
And they just exploding a German ship.
- [38:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Whoa.
- [38:49]
E
Your pound of waste fat will give some boy at the front an extra clip of CO cartridges.
- [38:54]
A
And then we see a picture of Mickey Mouse who is at war.
- [38:57]
D
Do you still want the bacon grease, Pluto?
- [39:03]
E
Pour your waste kitchen fats in a clean, wide mouth can. That's right. Not a glass jar or paper bag. Please strain the fats through a kitchen sieve.
- [39:15]
B
So this thing of, like, collecting fat in a coffee can feels very familiar. Like, this is something people did for ages.
- [39:23]
A
Well, yeah. Then it's also just something you would
- [39:25]
B
do to have, you know, have fat around. Yeah.
- [39:27]
A
Fat, except for cooking needs and such.
- [39:30]
B
And also not put it down the drain because it's not good for plumbing.
- [39:33]
A
Not even for household bomb making. Right. Or even gets to throw away just, you know, eventually all in one unit coins.
- [39:40]
E
Okay.
- [39:41]
A
Gotcha.
- [39:43]
B
Can be paid in sausage.
- [39:45]
A
Pluto is now happy about the whole war effort. And he's flying a little American flag off of his tail.
- [39:50]
E
Save waste fats to make explosives. Look for the official insignia in your meat dealer's window.
- [40:02]
B
Oh, this is incredible. Technicolor.
- [40:05]
A
We got to go to the official fat collecting station.
- [40:08]
B
Wow.
- [40:09]
A
The end. So, anyway, these are the. The circumstances under which the wacky cake was born.
- [40:16]
B
So this is fascinating. So that this explains exactly why you. You needed to kind of find, like, let's find some ingredients that they don't need to sink Axis boats.
- [40:26]
A
Right.
- [40:26]
B
Specifically. And I guess vinegar and baking soda work.
- [40:29]
A
Yeah. And in this case, you can use vegetable oil, which is also what you. What you use generally when you're baking with a cake mix. Yeah.
- [40:36]
E
Wow.
- [40:36]
B
What a beautiful thing. It's really. And I love the colors. It's very like, what is Technicolor?
- [40:42]
A
Yeah. I mean, you gotta have your. Your war propaganda and Technicolor, or else what's the point of all the innovation? But, I mean, it's interesting to think about American food trends as something shaped by scarcity, because I think if you look at American history, it does seem like there are these almost unceasing waves of boom and bust.
- [41:03]
B
Yes.
- [41:03]
A
And it seems like maybe some of the most enduring inventions and the ones that we end up liking the most are the ones that people come up with when they don't have access to the things that they're used to, or when we have to innovate or when we have to. To figure out how to make something out of. Out of almost nothing.
- [41:18]
B
Yeah. Because it kind of. It spurs a kind of inventiveness and kind of out of the box thinking. That is unusual.
- [41:25]
A
Would you like to talk about TV dinners?
- [41:27]
B
I can.
- [41:28]
A
And I'm thinking of, like, the international frozen meals thing that you sent me.
- [41:32]
B
Oh, do you mean foreign flair?
- [41:34]
A
Yes, I mean foreign flair.
- [41:36]
B
Okay. Because that's not frozen, actually. Could you want to look at the COVID of that?
- [41:40]
A
Yeah, that would be great.
- [41:41]
B
So here's the COVID And I chose an interior spread. And this is published in 1963, which is the same year that the French Chef premieres on WGBH Boston, interestingly. And Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks are like they're in every secondhand store you've ever been in. There's the kind of red and white Czech covered binder cookbook that's the standard. And then they published a ton of dozens and dozens of these kind of more slim volumes that were, you know, like hors d' oeuvres or desserts or Christmas cookies or Meals for Two. And it was. Interestingly, they're not individually authored, so I did a little digging into this, and the Better Homes and Gardens sort of creative office in Des Moines, Iowa, and part of Meredith Publishing were just cranking these out. And I think there's a case to be made that they're almost more like decorating magazines than they are cookbooks.
- [42:40]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Which certainly happens today as well.
- [42:43]
B
It happens absolutely today, because describe what we're seeing on the COVID with Meals with a Foreign Flair.
- [42:48]
A
Yeah. Okay, so Meals with a Foreign Flair. It has the title in big letters and this big. I would say, not probably technically Technicolor, but Technicolor feeling. Very vivid hues. Yeah. A photo on the front of this kind of buffet laid out of the foods that you're going to be able to make in here, presumably most of which do look pretty bland and broad interpretations. And also it's like foreign flair.
- [43:17]
B
What flair?
- [43:18]
A
Oh, you know.
- [43:19]
B
Yeah, Exactly.
- [43:20]
A
Just foreign. 100 recipes from 18 main dishes, desserts, Bread, Salads, Prized Souvenirs from Around the world. And then you open it, you sent me a couple pages, it says, around the world, a la carte, Italy, Sweden, India. And it's again, like, lovely pictures of these, like, fairly ambitious spreads that make sense as something that's being sort of written in haste Recipe wise.
- [43:45]
B
Right.
- [43:45]
A
And it feels like you would. It makes sense to me that you might have it kind of out as a way of showing the kind of person who you were and that you were, you know, interested in a new type of cooking.
- [43:57]
B
Also, do you remember the Mad Men episode where Betty Draper does, like, an international buffet?
- [44:04]
A
I have not seen Mad Men.
- [44:05]
B
Oh, you haven't seen Mad Men.
- [44:08]
A
Terrible.
- [44:09]
B
So there's a season. Okay. So the episode is called Night to Remember. This is, if you want to get into it. It's season two, episode eight. And Betty Draper, for context, is a very glamorous, like, Bryn Mawr, educated, pretty former model who's married to our protagonist, Don Draper, the ad man. And they have a house in Ossining, I think. And so there's a cocktail party or a dinner party in which she decides to basically cook as though from this cookbook. I think there's sort of Dutch beer, Heineken. There's, you know, different kind of. I think she makes rumaki. So there's a kind of, like, around the world sort of set of hors d' oeuvres and foods. And it turns out that this. She has unknowingly shopped at the local supermarket where Don's ad agency was doing an experiment, sort of putting different kind of, like, international foods in key areas, like end caps, to see if, like, educated consumers would do. And so she was the exact kind of, like, client that they were imagining. And it worked. And so then she gets. She's furious at him because she feels humiliated because everybody at the party is like, oh, ha, ha ha, you're experimenting on your wife. And in fact, I mean, essentially, they don't mention this cookbook, but this cookbook basically is like this episode, the book. Huh. And it's more about signaling to your guests that you have gone, you know, maybe 1962 or 3, you have leapt beyond fancy dishwasher and nice vacuum cleaner to exotic foreign. And she's somebody who graduated from a Seven Sisters college. So there's this kind of aspirational idea that this, you know, it's a housewife who's really more like an educated hostess.
- [45:53]
A
Yeah. And also that you may no longer be in the workforce, but you're, like, still of the world.
- [45:57]
B
Exactly.
- [45:58]
A
You are.
- [45:58]
B
So you are in your house, but you are of the world. And so the cookbook allows you to. And again, the cookbook is very similar in content and kind of graphic design and tone to, like, the sandwich garden. Like, it's. It's a. It's more Sophisticated than the sandwich garden. But it's kind of of is similar to let's say like the world's fair food pavilions where you can sample, you know, tapas and Thai food and, and it's kind of sanitized in some way for an American audience. And also it's as much the around the world as a la carte spread that we looked at. It's using very attractive serving pieces like the one from Sweden. There's this kind of cool mid century ceramic bird on a stick and a, like a plate full of very nice looking apples and then meatballs and beans in black and white striped cassero which are very chic antique trivets and little trays.
- [46:50]
A
Right. They're beautiful place settings and it's like a stage managed kind of a thing.
- [46:55]
B
Exactly. So this is very much like you're in the department store and it's you know, new chic fondue pots from France like being sold on a version of foreignness that's more about kind of stage managing than actual, you know, exposure exploring.
- [47:12]
A
Pardon me, I'm having a Ritz cracker.
- [47:15]
B
That sounds so good. Is there, does the box have recipes on it for like mock apple pie or like Ramaki or anything?
- [47:23]
A
Not anymore, but it should.
- [47:25]
B
It should, yeah. And it's mock apple pie, just basically like solid Ritz crackers and sugar.
- [47:31]
A
No, you make like a mixture here. Let's find a recipe.
- [47:34]
B
But you gotta make it so Depression era mock apple pie uses Ritz crackers, lemon juice, cream of charter to perfectly mimic the taste of apples. Sugary syrup, pork over whole cracker is. Creates a soft fruit like filling so that those. So the Depression version has no fruit. It is purely sugar, lemon juice, cream of charter, cinnamon and Ritz crackers to kind of mimic the look and feel and taste of pieces of apple. So that's. That's rough. Like that's, that sounds like it might be kind of rough. But a Ritz cracker crust, I mean, I mean maybe it's good. I don't know.
- [48:08]
A
It's supposed to be very good. And I mean the thing with these recipes too is I think that they wouldn't have come caught on in the way that they did if they weren't good.
- [48:16]
B
That's a good point because people do still make it.
- [48:18]
A
Maybe not to everyone's standards, but I mean, I want to make it.
- [48:22]
B
It's kind of like when, if you, when you were a kid, did you ever have those like Stouffer's spaghetti and meatballs frozen like the, the Frozen dinners?
- [48:29]
A
No, but like we all have some version of that, you know, and it's.
- [48:33]
B
Those would just, would be just, I would sort of say, like your Stouffer's spaghetti and meatballs. It is not what you would expect or recognize as spaghetti and meatballs in a restaurant or if somebody made it for you, like it's its own strange entity. But it's not bad.
- [48:49]
A
Let me read to you a little bit from MFK Fisher's how to Cook a Wolf, which was published in 1942 originally and is about kind of this question of how do you, how do you feed yourself and others when things are scarce? Basically, yeah. And she writes this is an introduction when it was reissued in the 50s. There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the 20s. They will feel until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution. Butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance, not lightly to be wasted. Meats too, and eggs and all the far brought spices of the world take on a new significance having once been so rare. And that is good. For there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life and itself. And I feel like that also brings up one of the merits of box cake mix, which is that it's shelf stable and it's often extremely cheap. And if it's not cheap, it goes on sale.
- [49:51]
B
Yep.
- [49:51]
A
You know, because you can still buy a box cake mix for a dollar and you don't have to add in the egg. Right?
- [49:56]
B
Exactly. And it won't go bad.
- [49:58]
A
Yeah.
- [49:59]
B
So I think for people who. This is something I remember noticing a lot about, like spending time with my grandmother who was an adult during the Depression, is that this is my dad's mom, that she would do things like rinse and reuse paper towels and she didn't have to like, she was, she was not like paper towel deprived.
- [50:17]
A
But what if all the paper towels go away tomorrow again?
- [50:20]
B
Exactly. What if they all go away and we're collecting fat for bombs and there's, you know, it's just, I think it was so ingrained from like living through two world wars and the Depression. It was just kind of like this is how things are. And she just sort of was, she was mindful of materials in a way that I would say my mom and I are less so only because we grew up in the post war world. And so there's a kind of disposability that, like, if, you know, if you're sort of not including the environmental movement and the idea of kind of like reduce, reuse, recycle, but kind of the era before that, there's a kind of cavalierness about, you know, tinfoil. It's like there's, you know, there's always going to be more tinfoil. You don't have to worry about it. But there's, I think for people in like MFK Fisher work world, if you have been deprived of things like that, it changes you in some way.
- [51:09]
A
Yeah. And also to get back to desperation pies, I think the general definition is that they don't have fruit in them. They're made with shelf staple items, usually without dairy or eggs either. Or you might have one of those things to make up for a lack of fruit or ingredients generally. So you also have the sugar cream
- [51:31]
B
pie, like something tart.
- [51:33]
A
Yeah. Or the vinegar pie, which is like using vinegar as a substitute for the kind of tart fruit flavoring in fruit pies. Or like for example, maybe a rhubarb pie. And I think it's like humbling how well these things work and how easy it is to like, not fully trick our taste buds. But like a lot of these really like dirt cheap foods often hit the spot in a, in a profoundly great way. Way.
- [52:01]
B
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Mac and cheese. My God. I kind of. What I often perceive on social media is that there's a kind of like authenticity arms race a little bit and that there's a kind of desire to find like the most obscure, the newest, the most authentic, the most highly specific, you know, restaurant that sort of serves food from a particular region of Cambodia. And it's very accurate and they only seat 16 people and.
- [52:26]
A
Yeah, because food is always going to be a status symbol and like as always is there as it can be. Because, you know, interesting about food too is that like innovation will unceasingly happen because everyone has to keep eating something multiple times per day. And also it's going to take on more symbolic freight than it can possibly carry because again, everyone has to relate to it every day of their lives whether they have it or not. If you have it, you're thinking about it and if you don't have it, you're thinking about it more.
- [52:55]
B
Right. You're thinking about it more. Exactly.
- [52:58]
A
Let me read to you a little
- [52:59]
B
bit about pieces I love hearing about pie.
- [53:02]
A
Okay, so this is from a book called Midwest Pie. This is from the introduction, which is by Phoebe McGrai. In these early colonial days, Pies were practical foods. They created their own gravy and could be a complete meal on their own. They also gave bakers an easy way to use odds and ends, leftovers and dried produce. It was the perfect culinary standby for Yankees who like to think of themselves as thrifty, pragmatic and full of common sense. Sense. By the mid 19th century, pie had become much more than a practicality. It was a favorite breakfast of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and some people ate it three times a day. One British journalist visiting the east coast wrote that quote, an unholy appetite for pie works untold woes in the American public, thus cementing the new country's love for pie as a nationalist snub of the stuffy Brits. Rudyard Kipling, who lived outside Brattleboro, Vermont between 1892 and 1896, somewhat derisively called New England the Great Pie Belt due to the dish's prominent position in the region. As more Europeans settled in the Midwest, they found that local ingredients like chokecherries, persimmons, and black walnuts could all be incorporated into pie at will to make something delicious. In 1851, a Norwegian immigrant living in Beloit, Wisconsin, penned a letter home that read, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries thrive here. From these, they make a wonderful dish combined with syrup and sugar, which is called pie. I can tell you that is something that glides easily down your throat. They also make the same sort of pie out of apples or finely grown meat with syrup added, and that is really the most superb. By the early 20th century, the dessert suffered some from the emergence of the nutritional science field. It turns out that eating pie three times a day might not be the surest path toward long term health. But Americans weren't able to kick their addiction so easily. Easily. According to food writer Matt Siegel, a writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel weighed in on the debate over the national flower by arguing that Americans shouldn't be wasting time discussing plants when pie could easily serve as a national emblem.
- [55:08]
B
Wow, that is fascinating. And it also kind of underscores the idea that pie as we know it is very much an American dessert, which
- [55:15]
A
I forget, and also very utilitarian food and something that historically you could eat at any time of day, which I think is empowering because I think if your pie window is only after dinner, that really decreases the amount of pie that you can eat and thereby the amount of pies that you can make.
- [55:31]
B
Whereas if it's a three times a day food and a snack.
- [55:34]
A
Yeah. And I think the basic Mechanics of a pie. We're in kind of sandwich territory here. There's something fairly universal about it. But, yeah, the idea of it being, I think, based on this argument, too, or this presentation of history may be a typically American food because it's so versatile, it can be adapted. You can put any ingredient in there, or you can put nothing in there. You have the famous water pie, where you pour in water and then add in your ingredients, which is like flour and some sugar, and mix it together and you bake it and it makes a custard. And yet it seems like you just baked water in a crust. Right. You know, these, like, magic trick desserts that seem to have nothing in them. That seems to define American food more than abundance. And yet, I think, like, as you're Talking about the 60s, it feels like we also have these fake phases of reaction against past desperation when we're like, what? No. No one here has ever been hungry. We're eating food from every country that has ever been.
- [56:31]
B
And part of that also, don't forget, is Cold War propaganda. Like, there were the two. Do you know about the American and Soviet exhibitions that happened in New York and Moscow in 1959, that the one in Moscow was the site of the kitchen debate, and the one in New York had, like, a Soviet fashion show and kind of a typical Soviet kitchen.
- [56:47]
A
I bet you told me a little bit about this before, but tell us. Yeah.
- [56:51]
B
And so, essentially, like, a big piece of. This was like sports. You know, each side trying to position their way of life as a kind of triumph of their system. And both countries were, God knows. The Soviet Union certainly was, you know, very well acquainted with famine. So there's a kind of an emphasis on the American side of sort of what all this technology can do for you as an individual housewife. And the Soviet design, the Soviet exhibition was much more geared toward sort of what our system can do for society. Like, it was kind of. So it was sort of competing visions of abundance that had different political ends.
- [57:29]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's revealing kind of what we see food as being for. And certainly, as American individualists, we will use it as a marker of class identity a lot of the time as well. I mean, what do you think of my conclusions here? I guess that my argument maybe is that American food is fundamentally defined by inventiveness and desperation. And also that we keep sort of, like, going through the same cycles and not really being aware, because, of course, now everyone's trying to stretch meat again, and we're sort of. I Don't know, falling into these historical cycles where nothing is really that new. But that also is what makes it fun and what makes it able to connect us with people throughout history who have also been trying to feed themselves and their families.
- [58:19]
B
Families 100%. And I would add to that that food is politically charged at every turn.
- [58:27]
A
Oh, God. Yeah. Especially lately.
- [58:30]
B
Lately. So we've got all the, like, cuckoo. All this, like, Maha ridiculousness. So we've got the beef tallow people. We've got, you know, that's. That's now. And before that it was, you know, fat is terrible, but carbs are great. And now I guess fat is great, but carbs are terrible. Or I don't know what. What cycle we're in. And, you know, or it's the Civil War or World War I, or it' the invention of breakfast cereal and the idea that, like, exercise and pressed grains are good for you and, you know, all sorts of different theories about what people should be eating and the food pyramid. So there's. It's kind of like the government and society at large will sort of not leave anybody alone when it comes to food. But it's also food, famously and understandably is not something that you can do alone. Like, it's.
- [59:13]
A
It.
- [59:14]
B
To feed this many people. It, you know, 8 billion in the world, and, I don't know, it's like 340 million in the U.S. i think it must be a group effort on some level. And, you know, this kind of. I think it gets all sort of balled up with, like, ideas of gender and strength and sort of beauty and, you know, all that stuff interpreted differently in different eras. And so nowadays, I think there's a. There's a way in which, like, I'm old enough to remember in the 90s when everybody was focused on fat, that something like, you know, pasta primavera, you know, pasta and vegetables would be considered, like, the perfect thing for a woman to eat. And now that would be considered, you know, in kind of, like, trendy food world, would be considered decadent because pasta is carbs. And it's, you know.
- [60:01]
A
Yeah, we just kind of keep going back in these loops.
- [60:03]
B
We keep going into kind of there's different versions of what it means.
- [60:07]
A
And not to get too far into, like, the more extreme ends of what's going on today. But, like, I do find the carnivore diet thing so fascinating and disturbing. And one of the things I always come back to is this idea that, like, while ancient man was eating all this butter and it's like, we wouldn't have butter if we hadn't had agriculture and domesticated and created the cow as we know it. And where was all this butter coming from that ancient man was supposed to be eating? And I realized that that's not really the point. It's just like creating a frame story so people can eat butter because they always wish that they could. I don't know. You can eat butter. You can just eat butter. And it doesn't have to be a philosophy. You can just. You can just eat it.
- [60:52]
B
And that's also kind of like protein creep. Like, there's kind of a scope creep happening with protein is now.
- [60:57]
A
Well, and that really is one of the huge food trends of today. And I haven't researched this, so I'm not gonna opine too much, but it is like, it's something that things become trends for many reasons. But I think partly this seems very convenient for the dairy and meat industry, which are becoming, you know, too expensive. And who can maybe hold hands with some people who are active in conservative politics who can say, right. And meanwhile. Because, you know, you could also try and get enough fiber. And it's interesting how also in this, like, push for protein where we're putting protein in water now, I'm seeing very little advertising for lentils. Where is big lentil? Lentils have, I think, an equal amount of protein and fiber.
- [61:42]
B
Oh, Ton. No, they're like. Like incredible.
- [61:45]
A
Yeah, show me big lentil. They're so. That big lentil would only be medium.
- [61:50]
B
Yeah. I mean, it kind of. There is a strange way in which it reminds me a little bit of. There's a display, I think you can see. You can see images of it, if not actual film footage of Norman Belgetti's design for it was actually the original Futurama that was at the 1939 World's Fair. And this was basically a kind of future occupied by this huge system of highways. And it was sponsored by General Motors. So it's kind of like. It's this idea that kind of like we're imagining they could have imagined a sponsor free, you know, all buses and trains future or all sort of public transportation. But no. And so it's kind of. And I think there's a way in which sometimes if we're like. If we're not looking critically at who's paying for something, it can feel like, oh, this is a cool idea. Like, the future is going to be this particular kind of convenience and everybody going to love it.
- [62:47]
A
Yeah. And we're going to take away These forms of labor.
- [62:51]
B
Nobody needs the bus. Exactly.
- [62:54]
A
And then, of course, now we're in the trad wife era, as you and I have talked about in the past. And something that I think we see throughout the history of homemaking technology is that it then becomes a flex to take on more, raise your standards. Cakes as we know them today, with refined flour and a very kind of smooth and fluffy texture, have only been with us since the 19th century, when flour technology improved enough. And there's always going to be an arms race of the American housewife or of the American woman. And this idea that you need to keep perfecting yourself as the technology gets more advanced, in a way, and I will just say for anyone who needs to hear it, do less, do less.
- [63:36]
B
Always do less.
- [63:37]
A
You know, because, like, if you don't enjoy doing it, then see if you can get out of doing it.
- [63:45]
B
That is a great rule of thumb. Thumb for so many things.
- [63:49]
A
And of course, there are some things that we need to do, but there's, like, a lot else that gets drilled into us as something we need to do. And then you think about it, you're like, I don't need to be doing this, and possibly no one does. It used to be normal to iron your sheets, or at least not unheard of.
- [64:03]
B
And can you imagine? I used to do that. I used to iron my pillowcases. This is something I used to do.
- [64:08]
A
I mean, look, if I were really avoiding a work thing or an email, I might iron pillowcases. But I don't even own an iron, so I would have to go buy. Buy one. Yeah.
- [64:17]
B
Speaking of which, have you seen any episodes of the Testaments yet?
- [64:21]
A
No, I haven't.
- [64:22]
B
You know, about this. So I did not realize this was coming. And then I just. I stumbled upon an ad for it, and it is the TV show adaptation of the Testaments, which is the sequel to the Handmaid's Tale. So it's based on a novel, and it's about, like, the prep school for. For what? For Future Wives. And it captured something. So this is something really interesting. I'm. I kind of, like, lost patience with the Handmaid maid's tal. Eventually, I kind of felt like I just went on for too many seasons. And I was tired of, like, sort
- [64:52]
A
of as most TV does, unless it goes on for only two seasons because it's on Netflix. Yeah, exactly.
- [64:57]
B
But there is something that I. I'm now realizing, Margaret Atwood was very prescient in capturing, which is that the Gilead worldview is, on the one hand, Sort of evangelical authoritarian and kind of, you know, extremely normative in terms of gender hierarchy. And it's also like beef tallow people. Like there's no plastic, like, because Gilead at is green. Right. So because there's this, this obsession with fertility. And I, I remember kind of first encountering that novel at some point, you know, maybe 20 years ago and thinking, oh, that's weird because that those two things never go together. And here we are and in 2026 and they go together, you know, and we made it like she predicted ballerina farm like 40 years before it happened.
- [65:42]
A
I always knew Margaret Atwood had it in her.
- [65:44]
B
She really did. Yeah, no, she's really impressed. Yeah.
- [65:48]
A
And it does feel like this sort of, I don't know, maybe the conclusion that I'm coming to talking about food with you. And this is just, I mean, these are just sort of, you know, some things that we find interesting. It's by no means attempting to be at all comprehensive, but give us enough time, we'll get there. But I think that what I'm seeing in this is that we try to use food to define ourselves and yet it defines us in more ways than we're not aware of at the time, than we can ever write over the things that we're trying to do intentionally. And I think that that's kind of great because it's this form of history that is there waiting to be understood and you also get to eat it. And what do you think about. I mean, of course everything is political, but just in like, I don't know, the smaller food trends of today, are there any that you're like, oh, I'm doing a trend end.
- [66:40]
B
So there are times when I've been kind of leaning more into plant based stuff. Like I've kind of gotten, as I
- [66:48]
A
have matured because of the Depression.
- [66:50]
B
It's because, it's because we're living through the Great Depression. Well, it's because it's partially because I'm sort of reevaluating my relationship with dairy and I am a. I'm like a yogurt freak. Like if I had one food to eat the rest of my life, like I'm like a yogurt like fanatic. And so I've discovered lactose free yogurt. If you are a person of 40 something experience, this may also be for you. And I kind of, I've kind of gotten into like, like yogurt, fruit smoothies and stuff. So I think, I don't like thinking of them as meal substitutes. This is more something that I kind of. When I want like a frozen treat, I have like a frozen fruit and lactose free yogurt smoothie, which sounds like desperation food, but it's actually great.
- [67:32]
A
But that's the thing. A lot of us have desperation foods that are just like amazing.
- [67:36]
B
They're incredibly. And you can put like frozen bananas in. It's like almost tropical. You know, there's endless, infinite variations on it. So if you think of like the blender as an organizing principle, the same way that you do a sandwich, then like, the possibilities are truly endless. So it's fruit. It's, you know, you can do like, like a different substrate. And so I don't know if I would say that's a trend. I'm not really like quite cool enough to be on trend. I wouldn't. I don't know if I would make videos about these, but maybe I should.
- [68:02]
A
I, you know, I find whenever I feel myself on a trend, I feel a little bit embarrassed because I feel like I'm trying to emulate the cool kids. But okay. So speaking of yogurt, I have this figure, this is from an old NPR piece. So the average American in the 70s consumed about five pounds of cottage cheese and about two pounds of yogurt. And then those numbers flipped in the 80s.
- [68:25]
B
So interesting.
- [68:26]
A
And in 2010, the average American was eating like two pounds of cottage cheese. And do you want to guess how many pounds of yogurt per year? Like 10, 14 pounds of yogurt per year. Wow.
- [68:38]
B
I believe it. That's a lot of that is me. A lot of that data is me.
- [68:42]
A
And so. And this article is from 2013. Yeah, I think a lot of that is you. Yeah. And you're canceling out some other people eating cottage cheese. And I don't have figures for the cottage cheese versus yogurt numbers at present, but cottage cheese has made a huge comeback because it has protein in it and.
- [68:59]
B
Oh, it's so good.
- [69:00]
A
It's, you know, and it's very good. And it's also cheaper than meat. But it's also, it's just funny to me too that any, that a food can be a trend in a way because it's like, it's cottage cheese. It's just kind of there. It's waiting for its moment and then the moment comes and passes and it just waits for it to come back, like, Right.
- [69:16]
B
Share like, it's such a kind of basic thing. It's like saying that, like getting up in the morning and doing stuff is a trend. Like it just like reality.
- [69:24]
A
Like it's like.
- [69:25]
B
Have you heard this new thing about like living life?
- [69:28]
A
Yeah. Cottage cheese is just this glowing monolith. You know, just like we were just waiting to discover it doesn't matter whether we acknowledge it or not. Yeah.
- [69:36]
B
And I also kind of think like, you know, when, when you get to a certain age, like you like what
- [69:40]
A
you like it is. And also just we get to, we don't have to justify our taste to anybody. You know, and that's a really nice thing too.
- [69:49]
B
You know who is super into food trends? Who are cats.
- [69:54]
A
Oh.
- [69:54]
B
Or this. I don't think they think of it as trends, but my experience of cats is so we have like three different kinds of dry food and two different kinds of wet food because there are different like health concerns in the household. And every time you think like, oh, they like, the one who needs like kidney diet really likes this particular kind. So we're going to order like a multi pack and save money and time. The minute you're your like, you know, month supply arrives, they don't like it anymore.
- [70:23]
A
Yep.
- [70:23]
B
The minute that it's like, it's excessive. It's like, oh, I had that I had. That's, that's, that's. Nobody's doing that anymore. Which to be fair, you know, it is the same food every day. But that's like you. I think they are more trend aware than I am.
- [70:36]
A
I would argue that's who should be driving our trends is the cats.
- [70:39]
B
The cats.
- [70:40]
A
Yeah.
- [70:40]
B
Yeah. That's fair.
- [70:42]
A
Well, in conclusion, just, you know, keep, keep your body going and find some joy and whatever tastes good is probably gonna work out. That's what I think.
- [70:55]
B
You gotta feel good because like life is hard enough. So you got, you gotta like, like feel good and have, you know, and take care of yourself and rest and eat good things and just do like do what you think somebody who cares about you would want you to do, right?
- [71:10]
A
Yeah. And they would want to you to have cake.
- [71:13]
B
Totally. Yeah. You have to have cake sometimes. Do I? What are you cooking next? Do you have anything on your agenda that you're going to cook?
- [71:19]
A
I got to make that mock apple pie.
- [71:21]
B
You're going to do it. You're going to do it.
- [71:23]
A
Do you want to both make it and compare?
- [71:24]
B
We should both do it.
- [71:25]
A
Yeah. Do you feel enticed?
- [71:26]
B
Yeah.
- [71:26]
A
Okay, let's do it.
- [71:27]
B
Let's do it.
- [71:36]
C
And that is our apple episode. Thank you so much for being here.
- [71:40]
A
Thank you for listening.
- [71:41]
C
We also have a new bonus episode for you with a Wonderful Princess Weeks about the case of Rhinelander v. Rhinelander, a sensational trial of 1925. And you can listen to it right now on Patreon and Apple, plus subscriptions,
- [71:55]
A
plus a lot of other bonuses.
- [71:58]
C
We've also got a nice show about
- [72:00]
A
orcas, if you like that kind of thing. Thank you.
- [72:03]
C
Thank you to the people who make this show. Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor. Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant. Thank you to Sarah Archer for being our guest. You can find her website and links to her books in the show. Notes plus links to the videos we watched while we made this episode. If you want to make the wacky cake, or cockeyed cake as Peg Bracken calls it, here is the recipe from the I hate to cookbook. 1 1/2 cups sifted flour, 3 tablespoons cocoa, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 5 tablespoons cooking oil, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 cup cold water and good old confectioner sugar. Frosting the frosting is 2 cups of confectioner sugar with a dash of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla and enough cream beaten in to make it spreadable. And here's the cake recipe. Put your sifted flour back in the sifter. Add to it cocoa, baking soda, sugar and salt and sift this right into a grease cake pan about 9x9x2 inches. Now you make three grooves or holes in this dry mixture into one groove. Pour the oil into the next, the vinegar into the next, the vanilla. Now pour the cold water over it all. You'll feel like you're making mud pies
- [73:17]
A
now, but beat it with a spoon
- [73:19]
C
until it's nearly smooth and you can't see the flour. Bake it at 350 degrees for half an hour.
- [73:25]
A
If you make it or any of
- [73:27]
C
the treats we mentioned in this episode, let us know how it turns out. You can email us@sloppyandalivemail.com and we are also taking submissions. Still for our listener special for June, we're asking you to tell us in about a three minute voice memo what you love love and why you love it.
- [73:47]
A
We're listening to them through April.
- [73:51]
C
We are having the best time listening to everyone that we get and we can't wait to hear yours.
- [73:57]
A
That's all. Thank you for listening.
- [73:59]
C
Thank you for being here. We'll see you in two weeks.