Retro Christmas Countdown – Crazy Vintage Recipes

Every family has their own Christmas traditions, and chances are, they include some much-loved recipes. However, for every delicious pie there is that dreaded fruit cake or failed potato salad that family members choke down once a year so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. Imagine the difficulty in doing that, however, when the popular recipes of the day looked like this!

Ok, I kind of get it…candles, Christmas, those sort of go together. But somehow looking at those I don’t find myself thinking of candles…also, maybe it’s just me, but bananas never exactly screamed “xmas” to me.

In keeping with our candle theme here’s one dish that does something incredible; turns me off from food even more than the previous one. It’s like someone had spent years plopping that cranberry sauce out of the can and thinking, it needs something extra, and then one day, eureka! We can mix it with mayonnaise and light it on fire! I mean, the lighting it on fire part isn’t a bad idea…

Oh goody! More of everyone’s favourite Christmas treat; bananas! But now we’ve perfected them by ADDING MEAT.

Now, on top of generally just being against eating anything that smiles at me, I feel like “seafood” and “mousse” are two words that shouldn’t really go together. Gotta appreciate that great presentation though, the bed of greens and 3 awkwardly places tomatoes really give it that je ne sais quoi.

Despite it’s bizarre appearance, I feel this may be the most normal meal on the list. I think those are cornflakes that have been sort of “candy-fied” and topped with what I assume are mints. Worth the effort? Not really. But much less likely to give you nightmares or gut rot than most of this list.

There were just too many lovely jello creations to choose from, I couldn’t narrow it down to one. Really, all you need to know is that jello used to be SO popular they made vegetable flavour, and that it wasn’t uncommon to serve as part of the main course. Now, admittedly, my Grandmother always serves jello with Christmas dinner, I think it’s a rural Ontarian thing, but THANK GOD it’s cherry flavoured and I’ve never been forced to choke down shrimp and olive jello.

I think the name says it all. “Bacon pudding” is even worse than “vegetable jello” in my books. Fun Fact: this comes up looking the exact same way it does going down.

Last, but certainly not least, this piece de resistance that certainly does take the crown. I think what really makes it for me is that, they seem to have sliced the sausages lengthwise so that they can curve up around the dish, rising up so support that lovely pile of…I guess it’s some sort of sauerkraut…I’d love to see someone try and serve this without the whole thing falling apart, almost as much as I’d love to watch someone eat it without falling apart themselves.

Did you like this post? Check out other blogs like Bad Jelly (where they make and try some of these fabulous creations) and The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Have you ever tried anything this ghastly? Tweet us your pictures or stories to @BygoneTheatre #RetroFood.

-E.

Advertisement