I love the "old fashioned" food of Midcentury 20th. Looking at the remnants of cookbooks that chronicle the food of that time, I feel calm and nostalgic. Even though I wasn't even born in this time. There are many strange-looking foods.
Looking at the recipes and looks of the food, I don't understand how it was run. So I started making this category. Because I understood the weird looking food and I was wondering why they ate this. I want to share the material I found with you. Take a look! Imagine if you can eat it!
[ Easter Lamb Cake ]
An Easter lamb cake is a traditional dessert shaped like a lamb, often made from pound cake or a dense cake batter. It symbolizes purity and renewal, representing Jesus as the Lamb of God in Christian tradition.
** Agnus Dei **
Agnus Dei (Latin for the Lamb of God, or the ancient Greek Ἀ ος τ ῦ Θ ῦ ο ν Am Amǹs Tâ Theoû) is a symbol of Jesus Christ that has been widespread in Christianity since ancient times. As an Easter sheep marked with a triumphant flag, it is the symbol of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a frequent part of Christian art and a Christian symbol of a messenger.
Old Testament
This idea of Agnus Dei refers to lambs as victims in the Old Testament and specifically to Passover lambs, whose blood was painted on a night door frame departing from Egypt (Exodus) by God's command as a sign of protection before the tenth plague (Ex 12 EU). It was about the death of all the eldest (מֵת כָל־בְּכוֹר mēt k̄l-b ə ch̄r) of people and livestock:
"And Moses said: I will pass through the land of Egypt in the middle of the night, from the eldest son of Pharaoh, who is seated on his throne, to the eldest son of a maid squatting behind his mill, to the oldest son among the livestock" (2 Mos 11,4 LUT). Besides baking meatless bread, slaughtering lamb has become a central practice in the Feast of the Month.
Seroa (Hibriar זרוֹע) is a low-meat fried lamb (or fried chicken wing) that is reminiscent of the biblical rule of sacrifice of the jerusalem temple lamb (קרבן פסח korban pesak). Seroa is one of six prescription dishes on a seder plate: Maror, Seroa, Charosset, Chaseret, Karpas, and Beitzah. He is placed on a festive table in the evening when the Feast of the Month begins. Since the temple no longer stands, both legs have not been eaten since.
[ Candle Salad ]
Candle salad is a vintage fruit salad that was popular in America from the 1920s through to the 1960s. The salad is typically composed of lettuce, pineapple, banana, cherry, and either mayonnaise or, according to some recipes, cottage cheese. Whipped cream may also be used. The ingredients are assembled to resemble a lit candle.
The candle salad is assembled by first arranging a few leaves of lettuce on a plate or decorative napkin to form the salad's base. One or more pineapple rings are stacked on top of the lettuce, providing a niche for inserting one whole (or more often half) peeled banana. For garnish, the banana can be topped with choice of cream and a cherry.
The Food Timeline history website states that "The earliest print reference we find for Candle Salad is dated 1916. It was presented in this socialite menu; no description or recipe was included:
"Fruit Cocktail, Chicken a la King, Mashed Potatoes, Buttered Peas, Rolls, Olives, Candle Salad, Cheese Straws, Fancy Cakes, Nut Ice Creams, Candies and Nuts, Coffee."
— Oelwein [Iowa] Daily Register, April 5, 1916, p. 4.
The site lists several other references to the salad in cookbooks and newspapers throughout the 1920s.
Candle salad was known as an easy way to get children to eat fruit because of its unusual appearance. It was also considered a child-friendly introduction to cooking because of its simple construction. The recipe for candle salad was published in the 1950 edition of A Child's First Cook Book by Alma S. Lach, one of the first cookbooks written for children. It is also in the 1957 edition of the Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls with the description, "It's better than a real candle because you can eat it."
The Tested Recipes Institute of New York published it as a recipe card in 1958.
[ Seafood Mousse ]
The rise of shrimp mousse and other bizarre foods in the 1970s was, like many things from that decade, the result of an increased accessibility to ingredients and techniques that used to be reserved for the upper class.
From medieval times and well into the 1800s, dishes like aspic and savory mousses were so labor-intensive to make that they were often limited to the rich — after all, not everyone could afford the exotic ingredients and sizable kitchen crews needed to pull them off. This stayed embedded in people's cultural memories, so that meat encased in gelatin or processed into a light, fluffy paste was effectively a symbol of sophistication.
In the 1900s, however, the barrier to entry for these dishes virtually vanished. Gelatin had become much more affordable, and the invention of electric blenders meant that anyone could pulverize their fish into a fine paste.
The rising middle class suddenly had access to these culinary signs of wealth, and this led to a period of experimentation in the 1960s and 1970s. Your average housewife could now bring the elegance of shrimp mousse to the dinner party, dressed up as creatively as she could muster as a means of impressing her guests.
[ Star-gazy pie ]
The pie originates from the fishing village of Mousehole in Cornwall. As with many parts of Cornish heritage, a legend has appeared about its origins. In this case, the pie is served to celebrate the bravery of Tom Bawcock, a local fisherman in the 16th century. The legend explains that one winter had been particularly stormy, meaning that none of the fishing boats had been able to leave the harbour. As Christmas approached, the villagers, who relied on fish as their primary source of food, were facing starvation.
On 23 December, Tom Bawcock decided to brave the storms and went out in his fishing boat. Despite the stormy weather and the difficult seas, he managed to catch enough fish to feed the entire village. The entire catch (including seven types of fish) was baked into a pie, which had the fish heads poking through to prove that there were fish inside. Ever since then, the Tom Bawcock's Eve festival is held on 23 December in Mousehole. The celebration and memorial to the efforts of Tom Bawcock sees the villagers parading a huge stargazy pie during the evening with a procession of handmade lanterns, before eating the pie itself.
An older feast, held by the fishermen towards the end of December, included a pie cooked with different fish to represent the variety of catches the men hoped to achieve in the coming year. There is a possibility that Tom Bawcock's Eve is an evolution of this festival. Since 1963, the festival has been run against the backdrop of the Mousehole village illuminations, where the entire harbour is lit up, along with many other displays. One set of lights even represents the pie itself, showing fish heads and tails protruding from a pie dish underneath six stars.
There was a rumour that the entire festival was a fabrication by the landlord of The Ship Inn in the 1950s. However, festivities had been recorded by Morton Nance, an author on the Cornish language, in 1927 in the magazine Old Cornwall. His description was regarding the festivities prior to 1900, though he doubted the reality of Tom Bawcock, suggesting it was in fact "Beau Coc". He also went on to confirm that the origins of the festival dated back to pre-Christian times, though it is unclear at what time the stargazy pie became part of the festivities. Morton Nance went on to restore the traditional song sung on Tom Bawcock's Eve, played to the local tune "wedding March".
A legend surrounding stargazy pie, along with the other unusual pies of Cornwall, is that they were the reason that the Devil never came to Cornwall. In his book Popular Romances of the West of England; or, The drolls, traditions, and superstitions of old Cornwall, a collection of Cornish traditions, Robert Hunt explains that the Devil crossed the River Tamar to Torpoint. The chapter, entitled "The Devil's Coits, etc", reasons that the Devil discovered the Cornish would put anything in a pie and decided to leave before they took a fancy to a "devilly" pie, returning to Devon.
