50 Recipes from a 1950s Housewife- A Cultivated Nest (2024)

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What were popular food dishes of the 1950s? ›

1950s Dinners

You'd find hearty main dishes like Salisbury steak, beef stroganoff and meat loaf on a '50s dinner menu, plus scrumptious sides. Casseroles were also popular, particularly those featuring seafood or ham.

Until the 1950s it was common for bored housewives to buy amphetamine-based drugs from the chemists. In 1963, the use of drugs to alleviate housewives' boredom returned with a vengeance with the introduction of the 'wonder drug' Valium.

As you can see from the decade's top recipes, the 1950s were all about the intersection of comfort food and convenience—casseroles and quick dishes like Chicken a la King and Welsh rarebit reigned supreme.

Popular packaged foods included Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Special K cereals, General Mills' Trix and Cocoa Puffs cereals, Star-Kist Tuna, Minute Rice, Eggo Waffles, Pepperidge Farm Cookies, Ruffles potato chips, Rice-A-Roni, Ramen Noodles, and Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream.

The publication also outlines daily tasks that one should complete each and every day, which include: Kitchen: Put away food, clean coffee grounds, wash dishes & sink, sweep, empty wastebasket. Bedrooms: Hang up night clothes, make beds, straighten & dust, dust/vacuum blinds.

Although many think of anti-anxiety medication and anti-depressants as a rather modern way of life, housewives of the 1950s were frequent users of such drugs, the first and most popular being Miltown, named after the New Jersey hamlet in which it was first manufactured in 1955.

The gendered cultural meanings of diazepam (Valium®), a well-known benzodiazepine, was cemented in the 1966 Rolling Stones' song “Mother's little helper”. Benzodiazepines are recommended for the short-term treatment of anxiety and insomnia (Baldwin et al., 2013).

1954: Marshmallow Peeps

The original candies were made by hand, but in 1954 Born invented a machine to mass produce his Peeps. Now the company, Just Born, makes about 4 million Peeps every day!

What did people eat for breakfast in the 1950s? ›

Breakfast was viewed as the meal to set you up for the day so was, at the very least, porridge, followed by bacon, eggs and fried bread, then toast and home-made marmalade, and lots of milky tea.

In 1957, beef stroganoff was a fancy and exciting Russian-French treat. Although the dish was invented in the 1800s, its popularity didn't sweep across America until the late 1950s, according to Bon Appétit.

Wake up at 6:00 am and start preparing breakfast for the family. As a vintage housewife, waking up early is crucial for having enough time to get dressed, fix your hair and makeup, and still have time to prepare breakfast and get the children ready for school.

The 1950s house dress is also sometimes referred to as a shirtwaist dress, as it often, but not always, buttoned down the front, or on the “shirtwaist.” It was met at the waist in a delightful gathering of pin tucking and then extended out in a circle skirt.

' “Popular since the 1950s, this tenacious stereotype conjures mythic images of culture icons -- June Cleaver, Donna Reed, Harriet Nelson -- the quintessential white, middle- class housewives who stayed at home to rear children, clean house and bake cookies.” (Meyerowitz, 1994) The creation of the “ideal woman” gave a ...

As well as being quicker to make, dishes served at diners were cheaper, too. Items like pancakes, sausages, meatloaf, burgers, and sandwiches were standard on diner menus, and still are today.

Often tinned hams, salads, breads and dessert would be served in a field. However, for an easier alternative make sandwiches and wrap them in greaseproof paper. Don't forget the hard boiled eggs as no picnic would be a picnic without one! Tea and lemonade.

School lunches in the 50s were pretty much like the meat and two veg in diners at the time. There was only one lunch, no choice. Typically it would be a ham slice with pineapple, mashed potatoes and gravy amd green beans. Or turkey and dressing or Salisbury steak.