Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Cereals of The 1950s



Following WWII, the cereal industry saw a new market: Children. With the continuation of the 40’s/50’s baby-room, breakfast cereal companies began marketing their new products (now with more sugar) on television, in newspapers, billboards, etc.

In the 1922, the hugely successful Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company was renamed the Kellogg Company after its founders Will Keith Kellogg and his brother John Harvey Kellogg. In the 1950s, the Kellogg Company established itself as a dominant economic force with the introduction of several new cereal brands and a line-up of new animate mascots marketed towards children.

Kellogg’s New 1950s Cereals Brands
Sugar Smacks (now called Honey Smacks), whose mascot went from Cliffy the Clown in 1949 to Smaxey, sailor-suit-wearing seal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9WkLVZrrSI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4mRDcOD2g4

Sugar Pops (now called Corn Pops): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ5CPCvf6aA

And most famously: Sugar Frosted Flakes (now just called Frosted Flakes, featuring Tony Tiger who later became a cultural icon. Frosted Flakes is one of few major cereal brands to keep the same mascot since its introduction. Thurl Ravenscroft remained the voice of Tony the Tiger until his death in 2005.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUxnpQFlsS4

General Mills, who already dominated the breakfast cereal industry, introduced Trix in 1954, Cocoa Puffs in 1958, and Total in 1961 (videos at the bottom) And also starting in the 1950s, General Mills used “The Cheerios Kid” as their mascot for the already widely popular product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRm9BPxc94k This was in response to Kellogg’s cereals animated mascots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SWk54W0IJM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8W5v4zxcuY

Jell-O: A History

First off, it's interesting to note that the term 'jello' has become interchangeable with the term 'gelatin'. Many cookbooks use 'jello' as a term, assuming the reader knows what is being referenced.
"It would seem that America has pretty much an insatiable appetite for the salad/dessert that jiggles."
During the 1970's, there were surveys conduced on the American public that said that the reason Jell-O was so popular because of its emotional ties rather than its versatility. But why does Jell-O have such emotional ties to the average Americans?
The 1930s promoted the speediness of Jell-O; during the 1950s, the Jell-O campaign promoted the 'cooking' of Jell-O would make the average housewife more creative and fun. Many people considered it to be the height of sophistication. However, as decades passed, Jell-O shifted from a high-end, sophisticated snack to a simple, plain and almost embarrassing meal. It showed that people were unable to afford anything more expensive than Jell-O.
Artists like Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish made advertisements and the cover of many Jell-O cookbooks.
Studies show that Jell-O reminds people of their childhood: Jell-O is a staple of very young childhood, when children are first learning how to feed themselves. Many interviewees recall how Jell-O feeds into many family traditions. It really resonates more to suburban families than to city ones; wives had to prepare food and it had to be made as quickly as possible.

Here is a commercial for Jell-O from 1955:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fazdN59SNg


Sources
" 'The Jell-O Syndrome': Investigating Popular Culture/Foodways", Sarah E. Newton, (Western Folklore, Vol. 51, No. 3/4 Jul. - Oct., 1992) 249-267

Monday, December 7, 2009

Margay collage 4

These collages try to emphasize the ways in which food (mainly processed) was pictured and viewed in the 1950's. Food was made to look colorful, inviting, and luxurious, and the purchase and consumption of these new, innovative products was meant to reflect one's presumably white, middle class status (for that is who these ad's were made for). These ads reinforced gender roles by always addressing women as the kitchen dwellers, with happy husbands beaming at cakes and accepting plates of fried chicken (see collage 3). Interestingly, almost all alcohol ads I saw were for either whiskey or beer, and clearly targeted at men. They appealed to the "good judgement" of men, and pictured cocktail party type gatherings of men.

Margay collage 3

Margay collage 2

McDonalds in the fifties

After reading through the chapter on McDonald's in The Fifties, David Halberstam's huge book which the T.A.'s have been carrying around with them, I thought some of the original goals of the McDonald brothers and Ray Kroc would be interesting to note in comparison to the ideals championed in the modern era of fast food. One of the first things which caught my eye was the McDonald Brother's close eye for changing social trends- they realized that the world was becoming a faster place, and they knew their customers would appreciate the quickest service possible. This led them to do away with carhops, the waitresses who would bring the food out to the family vehicle. They also sold hamburgers simply because it was the bulk of their business and they were desperate to streamline as much as possible.

This is the point where things get interesting. They were the first food chain to mechanize the assembly process for their food, enlisting a friend of theirs with inventing experience to craft custom machines which measured the perfect amount of meat in each patty and the perfect amount of ketchup, mustard and pickles on each burger. Making the move to paper plates and silverware allowed them to stop washing dishes, another time and money saver. The McDonald brothers also began using infrared lights to keep the food warm, which allowed the less busy times of the day to be used preparing for the rush hours. All these changes can be seen as Henry Ford's mechanized assembly line finding a new home in the burger business.

Another interesting note is McDonald's early focus on being a family restaurant. They did not allow women to be the cashiers because they would flirt too much and attract idle teenage boys who would scare away families. They also removed the condiment station from their restaurant in order to eliminate the messiest part of the operation.


What influenced the policies of McDonald's more than anything else, however, was the institutionalization of methodology brought on by Ray Kroc. He initially learned of their amazing success through his previous job selling milkshake mixing machines to restaurants, but even those were modified to suit McDonald's specific needs. Within a very short while Kroc became the head of franchising for the brothers, who were more concerned with their original store.

Kroc's obsession with cleanliness and standardization marked the beginning of an era- even after hundreds of McDonalds had began operating in the country, he would still walk from his office in McDonald headquarters down to the nearest restaurant, picking up McDonald's garbage on his way to help them close the store properly. Even after becoming a millionaire, he would still patrol the tables for unused salt and ketchup packets which could be re-stocked. It was also Kroc's idea to place them primarily in suburban neighborhoods, which he viewed as safeguarded from the young, roaming deviants he disliked hanging around their stores.

in 1958, Kroc discovered a McDonald's in California was selling their burgers at 19 cents a piece instead of the standard 15, which led him to mistrust "non-conformists" and made this demand to conform: "You cannot give them an inch. The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization or he shouldn't go into this kind of business." This incident lead him to temporarily stop new franchising operations in all of California, believing it to be a home for deviancy.

to close this discussion of early Mcdonald's values, i simply present some facts- thirty-seven years after Kroc took over franchising, 8,600 McDonald's existed in the US and 12,000 more outside the country. Clearly, Kroc's influence on the way we view food is staggering.

Recipe from The Can-Opener Cook Book

Found a blog entry with a recipe (or at least a variation of one) from Poppy Cannon's, 1952 The Can-Opener Cook Book:

A delightful warm weather soup with an unusual garnish.
You Will Need:
bottled clam juice
canned vegetable cocktail (I prefer the glass:)
cucumber
ice
Tabasco Sauce
Combine equal parts icy cold clam juice and very cold canned vegetable cocktail (V8?), season with a little extra salt and pepper, if desired, and a few drops of Tabasco sauce. At serving time, Serve in glass or china cup or bowl, adding to each portion a spoonful of crushed ice and a spoonful of finely cut, unpeeled cucumber. Note: If you have no ice-crushing machine you can crush ice cubes by placing them in a small canvas bag and hitting several times with a hammer or any other heavy object. 1953 remember:)

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Food advertisements

To illustrate some of the points made in the previous post, I'm posting these food advertisements that I found on youtube:

This a series of ten commercials some of which move into the 1960s. What I'm most interested in is the "Anderson Soup" ad (starts 1:21). This definitely exemplifies the idea of "food as science," and the way that advertisements emphasized the "wonders of industry." (My apologies in advance for the offensive Jello ad if you happen to get that far).

An ad for Kool-Aid. My favorite part is when the Mother starts talking, "You can give your youngsters a lot of pleasure with Kool-Aid." Compare it with this more recent ad (looks like the 1990s). Mom is out of the picture. It's the desires of the kids that are catered to here. They can find the product by themselves in the supermarket, and they don't need their mother to make it for them. Their only "adult" companion is an enormous jug of Kool-Aid with a reputation for breaking through walls.

A Cocoa-Puffs ad, "The big G stands for Goodness!"

"Food as Science," an interview.

This is an interview with my Father, Zachary Smith that I conducted over the phone. Zachary was born 1954, and was thus quite young during most of the decade. He nonetheless had recollections and insights into the food culture of the day, as well as the changes in food and ideas about food in subsequent decades. In the 1950s, Zachary was living in Mill Valley, a small city in Marin County, Northern California, just a short drive over the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco, where he currently resides.

Z: What I recall from eating in the 1950s is that our diet was very standardized. There was always a well-defined starch, you know, like rice, and a meat, frozen vegetables. We had milk with dinner every night. There were no "faddist" foods served in our home. I think the most unusual thing that my Mom cooked was succotash, “An American Indian Dish,” corn and beans. Up until the 1960s, everything my Mom cooked, she learned how to cook from her Mom, or someone like that. Because we were 'WASP'ish, our diet didn’t have some of the things that other people were having, no . . .

D: No Jello casserole?

Z: Yeah none of that. The way our kitchen was set up, we had a modest-sized fridge and we had what's known as a California cooler, which was basically a hole in the wall with a screen on the inside where we kept things like root vegetables. So very little of our food was refrigerated. I remember in one of those cabinets we had a big container of Crisco. My Mom did a lot cooking with Crisco at that time, but I also used to just eat the Crisco plain. I thought it was delicious.

D: What were your other favorite foods?

Z: Frozen foods were starting to be a really big deal. Initially I remember there were a lot of canned vegetables, but I didn’t like those as much. Frozen vegetables had a fresher taste. So, I really liked frozen green beans. And I really liked rice with butter, long grain, white rice with butter.

D: And you liked tapioca, right?

Z: I liked tapioca.

D: Would that have been from a package?

Z: We had tapioca balls, actually, and my Mom would boil them. I don't remember when it was, maybe by the late 1950s, but the milk guy would start having "exotic" things like yogurt for us, and I liked that a lot, too. At that time all of our groceries were delivered; we would order them over the phone. We were far away from the store and only had one car at that point, so it was easier that way.

D: How would you say your diet shifted over time? What foods was your mom making in the 1960s, say, as opposed to the 1950s?

Z: What I would say is that between 1954 when I was born, and 1964, over the course of those ten years, things changed really a lot. Mostly in the early 60s, but some in the late 50s, too. My mom was always kind of into healthy food. She didn’t believe in eating . . . well, for example, my neighbor Dennis Lippitt had white bread with pasteurized cheese squares as a snack. Now, I thought those were really, really good, but my mom would never get something like that. Even back in the 50s she was not totally buying the whole “industrial food” thing. There had already been a long tradition stretching back before the 50s of health foods. At the end of the 50s that started accelerating. We started seeing the influence of “hippie food,” and other foreign cuisines, Mexican and Japanese I would say were the biggest influences in that regard.

D: What was the general cultural climate in Mill Valley at that point?

Z: It’s interesting about Marin, it seemed that there were a lot of Germanic bohemians in Mill Valley at that time. Not particularly hippie, and more substantially working class than it is now. Right across the street from our school was a shop that was run by a guy who would fix your blender, and did those sorts of repairs for a living. I don’t think that particular real estate could be filled by someone who did that sort of work anymore.

D: What was it like in terms of restaurants? What was the local flavor, and how did that shift? Was your family going out to each much at that point?

Z: Going out to eat was a treat for us in the 1950s. I think at first what we were eating was mostly fancier versions of the food that we had at home. There was Italian food. There were a few fish restaurants. On the whole, though, it was all very American. There were French places, too, I think, but they were too fancy to take kids. Like I said, that changed over time, and eventually there were Mexican and Japanese restaurants that we would go to.


D: And did you see the influence of those foods in home cooking?

Z: Well, there's a funny story about that. Some time in the late 1950s, my parents were having Dad’s boss over for dinner, and they knew he was a major Japanophile, so my Mom tried to make this obscure Japanese dish for him. As I recall, it was basically fish that you served almost raw on a bed of stones and pine needles. No one even ate the fish. They all just pushed it around on their plates while it stared up at them from the bed of pine needles. So anyway, all the fancy, exotic food we ate, we ate out. That is until the 1960s with the influence of "hippie food" came into our home, which was, of course, brown rice, steamed vegetables, no spices. (Laughing) Brown rice, steamed vegetables, no spices.

[...]

Z: So anyway that’s approximately the story. In terms of people’s attitudes about food, the notion that food was something delightful and kind of a catalyst for a wonderful occasion or an experience in and of itself, that was totally foreign to the culture of the 50s that I knew. You were certainly supposed to consider your food. Food was something you were supposed to take seriously, but it was not fancy. It wasn’t something you were supposed to revel in. That idea was somehow decadent. Food was some combination of fuel, and an occasion for family. Then later it became a kind of political statement. Now there is much more of an emphasis on food as a wonderful experience.

D: I've been thinking a lot about that shift in doing this project. Obviously "foodie" culture is a condition of economic class, but there's such a stark contrast between today when those who can afford to want the organic food, the local food, they want to know where it came from and what's in it, as compared to the 1950s when food from packages, processed foods, frozen foods seemed to have been embraced wholeheartedly by many 1950s families. Part of the way that I explain that phenomenon is a comparison to attitudes of the day toward novelty and technology. The foods were fast, efficient, and new. Do you feel that level of excitement about those kinds of foods could be compared to attitudes about science and technology at the time?

Z: Yes, definitely. We were arch Modernists. The whole frozen food thing was definitely the new modern thing. It was great, right? Food all of a sudden came in the these nifty square packages. It was tasty instead of awful and metallic, which was how it was when it came in cans. The people that sold that stuff exploited its newness and modernness. I didn’t watch a lot of T.V, but in what I did see the commercials for that stuff were all very "modern." It was all talking about how "the process" - the modern industrial process - locked in the flavor and made it better. And locked in the vitamins, too. That was another thing that happened in the 1950s. There was a really simple idea of what constituted a healthy diet, and you wanted to advertise your food in terms of that model of basic food groups, and vitamins. That was a very modern way of thinking about food, sort of like chemistry. That continued to expand into the 60s, and then there was a backlash. A backlash against techno-modernism you could say. One aspect of that "hippie food" was, while it was important to think about food as nutritious, people were uncomfortable with the idea of "food as science." They didn’t want all their food handled by scientists, and injected by vitamins.

D. Would you say there was an anti-corporate thing going on there, as well?

Z: Well, I think in the 1950s people seemed sort of okay with corporate food. In advertisements for cereal you wanted to see that it was made by General Mills, or whoever. Then all of a sudden they weren’t okay with it. I mean, it’s funny, the trajectory of thought on the East coast was different from the West coat. As I recall, on the East coast it was much more political, and specifically Marxist. One of the aspects of their new approach to food during that period was that you were actually supposed to be suspicious of food that had been made by companies like General Mills because they were considered evil on a number of dimensions. They did shadowy things to your food.

[...]

Thank you, Zachary for your words on food and attitudes toward food during this period.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

"Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present" w/ Introduction by Poppy Cannon (1958), a review.


After being introduced to the figure of Poppy Cannon and her poetry by Haley several weeks ago during our discussion section, I found myself intrigued by an ambivalence I felt when reading her poems. On the one hand they were very sweet (to the point of saccharine), and displayed an endearing sense of pride in domestic work, specifically cooking; on the other they felt somehow too close for comfort, the narrator too vulnerable, too dutiful. The line in “Domestic Villanella,” “just by the way, at dusk, I look for you…” gets to me in particular (See Haley’s post from 11/24). The image of the housewife narrator, finished with the pies and loaves of bread awaits her husband’s return at the end of the day, some company at last. This, of course, is my own interpretation, but nevertheless, the images that were called to mind were strong and led me to inquire further into Poppy Cannon’s writing. I took out of the library a cookbook, not of Cannon’s own recipes, but one rather that she collaborated on with another woman famously associated with cooking, Alice B. Toklas.

The book Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present, published in 1958 by Harper & Brothers was a follow-up to Toklas’ first cookbook (containing instructions for the infamous “marijuana fudge”). The recipes within are mostly Toklas’ interpretations of traditional French cooking, and involve a lot of heavy cream, as well as chapters on “Cooking with Champagne” and “Cooking with Cognac.” Each recipe is prefaced with suggestions from Cannon on how to “Americanize” these recipes, how to make them “doable” for the American woman. For example, before the recipe “White Soup of Artichokes,” Cannon says, “A package of frozen artichoke hearts and a can of Swanson’s chicken broth make an admirable version of this soup” (1).

What interested me most about the book was Cannon’s 17-page introduction, which again left me feeling ambivalent. Much of it is devoted to anecdotes surrounding her relationship with Toklas. The ways that she was able to introduce modern American short-cuts into Toklas’ kitchen, specifically cake mixes and a blender, which Toklas quickly converted to using after initial skepticism, vindicating Cannon’s whole philosophy on cooking.

The audience for the book seems to be women of the middle to upper classes who are desirous of a more sophisticated menu for their families and social gatherings. Cannon, however, at least attempts to reach more broadly in the introduction. She discusses the state of American domesticity: “[M]illions of well-educated persons, men and women, are faced . . . with the need to do chores that could be dull and depressing or tremendously stimulating – depending on the point of view” (ix). Alice Toklas’ “intellectual” approach to cooking is presented as the solution for "those women in America who are being forced willy-nilly into what might be the arid isolation of housework and child-raising,” a situation she compares to a desert. She goes on:

For it is not true that our modern mechanical appliances free women from domestic responsibilities. They help to make her more efficient but at the same time they load upon her more responsibilities, rather than fewer. They make it possible for her to do more and more. But more and more is being required of her (ix).

This might seem pseudo-feminist avant la lettre, but the tone quickly cuts off and the reader is reminded of the actual context of the book. Cannon laments the days when a “lively-minded young woman of the upper middle classes” had servants, and “friendly grocers” to help her cook, clean, and take care of her children. In the 1950s, this was no longer the case, and women were suffering not only from a lack of “helping hands,” but also “personalized advice.” The only help they received was from television, magazines, and the directions on the sides of packages. The solution, again, was the exercise of the intellect: “[B]y paying more rather than less attention to domesticity we can make it more interesting and rewarding” (x).

I was reminded in reading this advice of Adlai Stevenson’s 1955 commencement address at Smith College that we read earlier this semester. Advice that was easier said than done. To be fair to Cannon, her voice was one of encouragement from a fellow woman and wife, whereas Stevenson’s was the patronizing (not to mention bizarrely propagandistic) recommendations of a man and a Governor who admits that he has “little experience” in this department. Nonetheless, there was something similar in tone. After describing the dreariness of modern domestic roles, “many women feel frustrated and far apart from the great issues and stirring debates for which their education has given them understanding and relish. Once they read Baudelaire. Now it is the Consumer’s Guide. Once they wrote poetry. Now it’s the laundry list,” he goes on to say that it is really all an issue of attitude. “[T]he fact is that Western marriage and motherhood are yet another instance of the emergence of individual freedom in our Western society.” “Women ‘never had it so good’ as you do.” He councils the young college graduates to make themselves and their husbands happy and productive, to fight totalitarianism, through their roles as housewives. “Surely, what you have learned and can learn will, fit you for the primary task of making homes and whole human beings in whom the rational values of freedom, tolerance, charity and free inquiry can take root.”

What’s wrong with this advice? “Pay more rather than less attention to domesticity.” Be an “intellectual” cook like my friend Alice B. Toklas. Just as with Stevenson’s prescriptions, the issue is that it is all written for the purpose of making a job that is admitted within the same source to be frustrating, “arid isolation,” more tolerable. It offers no alternative to this job for women who are educated and interested in the world outside their homes. I personally love to cook, and I prepare meals for others on a frequent basis. However, I know that part of the pleasure is that it is essentially a leisure activity for me. It is something I choose to do, rather than something that I have to do every day, multiple times a day. Moreover, the idea that Alice B. Toklas’ recipe for “Perfumed Goose” (pg. 60) or “Essence of Mushrooms” (pg. 100) could present a kind of remedy is profoundly absurd (though, perhaps, not really what Cannon is saying).

The potential good I see in it is related to what I mentioned earlier as being present in Cannon’s poetry: a sense of pride in what one does. This is, of course, tremendously important to happiness. I am certainly not trying to say that encouraging a positive and prideful attitude to one's work in one's home is a bad thing, however, blaming a woman's attitude on her potential unhappiness does not seem universally helpful or sustainable. It might be a source of pride to serve your family or other dinner guests a meal that you can boast is straight from Paris, from the kitchen of Alice B. Toklas, no less. At the end of the day, however, the proverbial “Jello casserole” might not have the cache of Toklas’ “Chocolate Mousse” (pg. 122), but what it lacks in cache it makes up for in convenience and thrift. When faced with these choices, it seems clear why Betty Crocker (fictional though she was), was more influential than Poppy Cannon or Alice B. Toklas in the history of 1950s cooking and images of domesticity.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The Family Dinner

Click here!

so this doesn't have much to do with my particular focus, but the bottom of this page has a link to an article defining each decade from 1950-1990 with one specific food. the fifties is of course the jello casserole, and the small piece on it could be interesting for those of you who can't get enough of the best dish ever. Has some good points as to how casseroles were viewed at the time and why they were so popular.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Fashionable Food and Food Fashion



In the Cold War era, amidst nationalism and patriotism, the woman was seen as important because she could lead the family against liberalism, socialism, and communism. In her marriage and motherhood, the housewife kept the family together which would help keep the nation strong. With postwar prosperity offering new opportunities and domesticity being stressed, many women of the Cold War age found themselves whisked off to the suburbs, where they were sold new ideas about the family meals that were their most important undertaking by companies of mass-produced packaged food.


FASHIONABLE FOOD

In the 1950s bologna soup, the ‘Emergency Steak’ type of food found in Betty Crocker recipes, and other kinds of ‘mock dishes’ and recipes that bore fancy names yet consisted solely of canned ingredients were prevalent in cookbooks. In 1957 the French philosopher Roland Barthes described such recipes as ‘ornamental cookery.’ He asserted that in ornamental cookery ‘there is an obvious endeavor to glaze surfaces, round them off, to bury the food under the even sediment of sauces, creams, icing and jellies.’

· -sticking shrimps in a lemon

· -making a chicken look pink

· -serving grapefruit hot

· -Tuna noodle casserole with crushed potato chip topping

· -Jell-O rings

Like the photographs in cookbooks, many 1950s recipes advocated foods that could be served as proud displays of Technicolor splendor (and uniformity). There was an ideal way to present almost any meal. For example, chicken a la king was supposed to be arranged in or upon edible cups, timbales, or decorative rings of pastry that did not require lots of fuss. Neuhaus describes it as, “a visual symphony in purest white, accented by grace notes of scarlet pimento and green pepper. In the classic 1950s presentation, chicken a la king looked like Abstract Expressionist color drips applied to a dinner plate, so completely were its properties as food overwhelmed by its pictorial charm.”

FOOD FASHION

In the 1950s cooking was viewed by women as an outlet for creativity that was nonetheless encouraged in very structured and controlled ways by advertisers and cookbook authors. Suggestions for creativity with food were often specific, direct, and delivered in such a way as to imply women’s overall ineptitude at executing independent thought.

For example, theme parties were incredibly popular, and cookbooks described to the last detail how a woman could hold the perfect cocktail party, buffet supper, backyard barbecue, Hawaiian, Mardi Gras, fondue party... These them party menus came complete with directions on how to elaborately decorate the food and display it properly.

Women’s effectiveness and personal satisfaction in the kitchen, and thus, for many, in life, was not judged solely by their efficiency or cooking abilities. Cookbooks also suggested appropriate attire, as a connection was seen between women’s clothes and their family’s appetite and happiness. For example, Betty Crocker recommended that women should wear nice clothes and makeup in the kitchen because it would enhance their family’s enjoyment of their food:

“Every morning before breakfast, comb hair, apply makeup and a dash of cologne. Does wonders for your morale and your family’s too!”


SOURCES


Inness, Sherrie A., Kitchen culture in America. (University of Pennsylvania Press,
2001).

Marling, Karal Ann, As seen on TV. (Harvard University Press, 1996).

Neuhaus, Jessamyn, “The Way to a Man's Heart: Gender Roles, Domestic Ideology, and
Cookbooks in the 1950s.” Journal of Social History 32, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 529-555.

Ogden, Annegret S., The great American housewife. (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1986).





Poppy Cannon and Walter White

Previously I posted the poem Domestic Villanella by the canned food, cooking guru, Poppy Cannon. The poem was written to her long time lover and prominent figure of the NAACP, Walter White. As a black man with light skin White was able to gather information on lynchings taking place in small southern towns. He publicized the atrocities he had investigated and went on to lead the NAACP for over twenty years.


Cannon and White’s relationship began while they were both married and the exposure of their affair would mean White’s removal from the organization. Poppy went on to write several books, her most famous being The Can-Opener Cookbook. Though she was well educated in the culinary world Her work was not always taken very seriously in the world of gastronomy, because her commitment was to the everyday woman in the kitchen. She was dedicated to creating shortcuts in order to save time, but was also a proponent of the marketplace and worked for Heinz and General Foods. It was when Cannon and White were finally married that she began producing poetry as an addendum to her recipes in her book The Bride’s Cookbook…

(Will add more tomorrow. Going to get some recipes from this cookbook)

The Development of Food in the 1950's: SPAM



A key aspect of the rise of consumer culture in the 1950's was the transformation of the food industry. In my last post I covered the rise of supermarkets within suburban and urban areas. As supermarkets allowed for a drastic change in the way consumers purchased food, the food products sold in supermarkets transformed the way in which people ate. A significant market that gained popularity in the 1950's was canned and processed foods. One of the most popular processed food products was the first meat to be successfully canned and marketed: Spam.
Spam was developed and marketed by the Hormel Foods Corporation of Austin, Minnesota and debuted in 1937. It was marketed to domestic consumer markets throughout World War II, though was primarily used as rations for overseas troops during the war. Over 100 million pounds of Spam were shipped to allied forces over the course of the war.
As the war ended and processed food became increasingly popular in the United States, Spam quickly gained popularity as a household staple. It was praised for its efficiency and ease of use in simplifying the cooking process. As a New York Times article from July 6, 1950 states, "Besides economy and household acceptance, there is another virtue of appeal to all kitcheners at this season - ease of preparation. When all the cooking's been done for you, then there's no need to stand over a hot stove - than which there is no worse abomination in a small city apartment" (Nickerson 1950, 32). Spam is made up of several types of pork, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrate. What was lost in the quality of meat was made up for by convenience and efficiency. Though by today's standards that might seem an unfortunate trade-off, the novelty of Spam proved integral in its marketability and success in the 1950's. Above is a recipe calling for canned meat product in the New York Times from 1950.

Marshmallows & Peeps



In the mid 19th century, marshmallow candy was made using the sap of the Marsh-Mallow plant, a medicinal plant of African origin found in marshes. Gelatin replaced the sap in the modern recipes, which are a mixture of corn syrup or sugar, gum Arabic, gelatin and various flavorings.


In 1948 Alex Doumak, a marshmallow manufacturer developed a new way of producing marshmallows as an “extrusion process” and by fitting the fluffy mixtures through tubes and cutting them into cylindrical shapes as we see them today.


The Rodda Candy Company, a small company based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, invented the first marshmallow chicks we know today as Peeps. In 1953, Bob Born of the Just Born Company bought Rodda Candy and within a year had produced a machine that could mass-produce the marshmallows chicks, which he trademarked as Peeps.


Here’s a short video by ABC on the production of Peeps: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3016585


Peeps have a terrifyingly influential status in American culture—as described in the documentary “The Power of the Peep.” A teaser is available here: http://www.powerofthepeep.com/teaser.html

The Suburban Standard

Contemporary McDonalds in New York City
From: http://media.nowpublic.net/images//29/9/299cb4e9a39619d2cc1274a33d615d88.jpg

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Since the 1950s, it's clear which of the two trends in fast food dining -- the urban-born Automat cafeteria and the suburban-born drive-in & drive-through burger joint -- has come to dominate. The interesting thing is that this is the case both in suburban and urban environments. In the 1950s, there existed a distinctive model suited to both environments, but today, it seems we've taken a model from one and adapted it to the other.

What is implicitly suggested by this is that the suburban lifestyle or values of visible but isolated consumption inaugurated in the '50s has, to some degree, become the norm outside of its physical boundaries. Today, in cities all over America, we see McDonalds and other fast food restaurants (originally seen as stand-alone burger establishments in the open spaces of the suburbs, accessible by car) crammed into storefronts.

There is somehow a significant difference, it seems, from Automat culture at work in these establishments. The reliably bright, family-friendly ambiance even seems to set the tone of the place. Automats were a fast food experience that was more "adult:" the fast food we see today carries a child-like aesthetics, and therefore informs the type of interactions had in those restaurants. The counter-service also provides a level of surveillance that contrasts with the Automat's anonymity. It seems the '50s heyday of the shifty Herbert Hunckes and Bill Burroughses of the world loitering all night in metropolitan fast food establishments is gone for good.