The mere mention of ancient Rome conjures up a multitude of powerful images: the assassination of Julius Caesar, legionaries marching in perfect unison, the alliance of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, gladiators fighting in the Colosseum. It was a time of power and conquest, of low scheming and high culture. It was also a time of feasting — something the Romans were known for, especially during Bacchanalia festivals, in which food and wine would flow with fervor. But what exactly did the Romans eat? Here are some of the most common foodstuffs that fed the hungry denizens of the Roman Empire.
Bread and Porridge
Cereal grains, particularly wheat and oatmeal, were part of almost every meal in ancient Rome. These grains were typically used to make bread, biscuits, or porridge, and were eaten by the common folk, the upper crust, and soldiers in the Roman army. Roman porridge recipes survive to this day, including one in Cato the Elder’s De Agri Cultura, a treatise on agriculture written around 160 BCE, which happens to be the oldest remaining complete work of prose in Latin. The simple recipe, which isn’t dissimilar to modern counterparts, suggests soaking wheat in boiling water before adding milk to create a thick gruel — a staple dish that anyone in Rome could have prepared.
Seasonally available and locally sourced vegetables and beans were often served as accompaniments to Roman meals. Common vegetables included lettuce, cabbage, turnips, and leeks, while wealthier Romans could afford asparagus, mushrooms, and artichokes. Legumes such as broad beans, chickpeas, and lentils also played an important role in the Roman diet, providing substantial amounts of calories, protein, calcium, and iron to a diet that wasn’t nearly as meat-heavy as our diets today. A recent study found that Roman gladiators were mostly vegetarian, eating primarily wheat, barley, and beans.
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Fruits and Nuts
As the empire expanded, the Romans discovered and embraced many varieties of fruits and nuts. The humble apple tree, for example, was introduced to many parts of the world after the Romans found it growing in Syria. They also cultivated pears, plums, apricots, and figs, as well as nuts — which were considered expensive treats — including chestnuts, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts. Then, of course, there were grapes, which were eaten fresh, or — more importantly — turned into wine. The Romans loved to drink wine, which they diluted with a little water. Drinking wine neat was considered uncivilized, but not as uncouth as drinking beer, which was seen as simply barbaric.
The Romans did not typically drink milk, and doing so was largely frowned upon. They saw excessive milk drinking as evidence of barbarism, and even considered butter fit only for treating burns. (The Romans believed their ubiquitous olive oil to be far superior for cooking purposes.) They did, however, use goat and sheep milk to make cheese. Many farms produced cheese, and some wealthier homes had dedicated cheese kitchens. Roman soldiers were also familiar with the cheese-making process, including the use of rennet, and could produce the food while deployed abroad. The Roman author Pliny the Elder was indignant when considering the lack of cheese-making in what he saw as lesser civilizations, writing, “It is a remarkable circumstance, that the barbarous nations which subsist on milk have been for so many ages either ignorant of the merits of cheese, or else have totally disregarded it.”
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Meat and Fish
Meat and fish were both considered luxuries in ancient Rome, and were primarily reserved for wealthier citizens. Pork was the most common meat, either cooked fresh (stewed or roasted) or turned into bacon. Fresh fish and seafood included tuna, eels, sea urchins, and other shellfish. During feasts, wealthy Romans sometimes ramped up their culinary creations to a whole different level. Dishes served at these extravagant events included pickled sow’s udders, stuffed dormice, bull’s testicles, and hares decorated with wings to resemble Pegasus.
Special mention has to go to one standout ingredient of ancient Roman cuisine: a fermented fish sauce called garum. Pliny the Elder described garum as “a choice liquor consisting of the guts of fish and the other parts that would otherwise be considered refuse.” Despite this unappetizing appraisal, he nonetheless called it an “exquisite liquid.” The Romans mass-produced garum in dedicated factories. Three common varieties were manufactured: a dark-colored condiment that was high in protein, a cooking sauce similar to Vietnamese fish sauces, and a milder version called muria. Roman diners sprinkled garum on all manner of savory dishes, providing a pungent umami to even the blandest of meals.
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Roman Desserts
Sweet-toothed Romans, especially those with money to spend, could indulge in a variety of desserts. Baked goods such as honey cakes and fruit tarts were common, as were homemade sweets known as dulcia domestica, which included stuffed dates. One common dessert eaten throughout Roman society was libum, a type of honey cheesecake. Libum wasn’t only a tasty treat; it was traditionally made as an offering to the household gods, after which it could be enjoyed by all the family.
Much like fashion trends, culinary tastes have changed over time, and once-common dishes have given way to new ingredients, easier preparation methods, and more refined recipes. Desserts, in particular, have seen a rise in popularity over the centuries. Originally served alongside savory items on the dinner table, sweet dishes were moved to the final course of the meal in 17th-century Europe, and cookbooks dedicated to dessert recipes started appearing around the same time.
The affordability and availability of sugar during this era was largely responsible for this culinary shift, due to the work of enslaved people on colonial plantations in the Caribbean. As chocolate, coffee, and tea were introduced to Europe, demand for the sweet stuff increased as well. Sugar, which had previously been used sparingly as a preservative or to sweeten savory dishes, became the main ingredient in new recipes, leading to an endless array of possibilities for cakes, pies, and other sweet treats.
Here are seven old-fashioned desserts that were once commonly served, but are rarely seen today. While some of these foods may seem familiar as the recipes have been updated over the years to accommodate modern tastes, others are reminders of different times in history when people made do with what they had.
Mincemeat Pie
Dating back to Europe’s medieval era, mincemeat pie (or mince pie) was a finely chopped mixture of meat — traditionally mutton — along with dried fruit and spices. The spices and natural fruit sugars helped preserve the food as well as overpower the flavor of meat on the verge of spoiling. By the end of the Victorian era, the primary ingredients of mincemeat pies were fruit, spices, and beef suet, a hard animal fat. While they’re not very common in the U.S. today, mincemeat pies are still a popular Christmas dessert in the U.K., and vegetarian pies are readily available.
The earliest recipe for tomato soup cake dates back to 1922, and some accounts say the dessert was popular among Irish immigrants in New England. The can of condensed tomato soup the recipe calls for yields a moist red-orange cake that doesn’t taste like tomatoes at all, thanks to the cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg in the mix. This unusual spice cake was popular through the 1930s and 1940s, when Depression-era and wartime shortages called for culinary creativity. People sought out affordable substitutes that could stand in for pricier ingredients (such as tomatoes) without sacrificing flavor. In the 1940s, the Campbell Soup Company began experimenting with variations on the tomato soup cake recipe and, in 1960, printed a version on its tomato soup label — the first recipe to appear on a soup can.
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Shoofly Pie
Shoofly pie is a molasses-based pie with a crumbly, streusel-like topping. No one knows for sure how the pie got its name, but it might be from the fact that its sweet and sticky surface tends to attract flies, or from an early brand of molasses called Shoofly Molasses. According to some sources, the recipe for shoofly pie dates to 1876, originating with a crust-free molasses cake called centennial cake that was served to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Other sources attribute the recipe to the German immigrants of Pennsylvania Dutch country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who may have used molasses in a variation of an older British recipe known as a treacle tart. This sweet and crumbly pie is still popular among the Amish and Mennonite communities of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Before carrot cake, there was carrot pudding. A recipe in the 1591 English cookbookA Book of Cookrye describes carrot pudding as a savory pudding made of chopped liver, breadcrumbs, spices, dates, and sugar that is then stuffed inside a hollow carrot. By the 18th century, carrot pudding had evolved into a sweet dessert baked in a pastry shell, similar to pumpkin pie. Another variation called steamed carrot pudding was made with shredded carrots and potatoes and steamed in a gelatin mold.
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Fruitcake
Fruitcake dates back to the ancient Romans, who made a mash of barley, dried fruit, honey, and wine to sustain their soldiers in battle. During the early medieval era, it evolved into European yeast breads such as stollen and panettone, which were packed with candied citrus and alcohol-infused dried fruits. The cakelike version that became popular in the U.S. arrived with the British colonists. Preserving fruits for winter fruitcake involved cutting fruit into small pieces, boiling it in sugar syrup, tossing it in granulated sugar, and allowing it to dry. These candied fruits could then be baked in a spiced cake batter. There are dozens of variations on fruitcake, with some recipes calling for the cake to be baked weeks in advance and then brushed weekly with liquor or simple syrup. Though fruitcake is still around, it’s rarely made anymore and ranks as one of the least popular holiday desserts.
Also known as “jumbals” or “jumballs,” jumbles are a type of butter cookie that predates the modern sugar cookie. Historians believe the recipe originated in the Middle East and may have been introduced to Europe by Muslims in Spain and Portugal before it was brought to the New World by 16th-century explorers. Made from butter, sugar, eggs, and flour, jumbles were flavored with rosewater or spices, and then shaped into thick rounds or knots before being baked or boiled. Because they traveled well and could be stored for months, they remained popular for centuries, with dozens of recipe variations. Four jumble recipes, including “lemon jumbals” and “almond jumbals,” are included in Martha Washington’s family cookbook, Booke of Cookery.
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Vinegar Pie
Though it was a popular Depression-era dessert, vinegar pie dates back to the 19th century. Mimicking the tartness of lemons, this sweet and tangy pie could be made all year long by substituting apple cider vinegar for citrus, which was expensive when out of season. As one of several so-called “desperation” or “make-do” pies, vinegar pie could be made from a handful of staples that home cooks usually had on hand. Other desperation pies included buttermilk pie, chess pie, and even water pie.
Thomas Jefferson’s complicated legacy encompasses his roles as an American founding father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third President of the United States. Jefferson was also an enthusiastic foodie, with a willingness to try new cuisine and an interest in kitchen gadgets. He particularly enjoyed ice cream, a dessert he likely encountered during his time in France from 1784 to 1789. And while Jefferson did not introduce the young United States to ice cream — the frozen treat was served in the American colonies as early as 1744 — he certainly helped popularize the dish, and he is the first known American to write down a recipe for it.
Jefferson’s ice cream recipe is one of only 10 surviving recipes in his handwriting. It’s unlikely that the President created the recipe himself; the original source was likely his French butler, Adrien Petit. Still, Jefferson was fond enough of the creamy dessert to write down the recipe and ship pewter ice molds back from France.
While the founding father’s ice cream recipe is simple to make, the tools used in the early 19th century aren’t in common use today. For instance, the “sabottiere” ice cream maker (also spelled “sabotiere”) that Jefferson references was a lidded metal bucket within a larger wooden bucket. Today’s ice cream makers have similar components, but are easier, faster, and less laborious to use. Likewise, the ice cream molds that Jefferson had shipped from France are mostly obsolete today, replaced by silicone popsicle molds and pint- or quart-sized containers.
The website for Jefferson’s Virginia home, Monticello, includes both Jefferson’s original ice cream recipe and an updated version by Jefferson historian Marie Kimball. To make Jefferson’s ice cream, my son and I stuck as close to the original recipe as possible, improvising when necessary. For instance, to bring the ice cream mixture to boiling, we used a large skillet on a gas stovetop rather than an open fire. And instead of straining it “thro’ a towel,” we used a metal sieve.
Though the process took considerably longer than we expected — and longer than Jefferson himself suggested (see the note at the end of the article) — the end result was rich, creamy, and delicious!
2 bottles of good cream. 6 yolks of eggs. 1/2 lb. sugar
mix the yolks & sugar put the cream on a fire in a casserole, first putting in a stick of Vanilla. when near boiling take it off & pour it gently into the mixture of eggs & sugar. stir it well. put it on the fire again stirring it thoroughly with a spoon to prevent it's sticking to the casserole. when near boiling take it off and strain it thro' a towel. put it in the Sabottiere then set it in ice an hour before it is to be served. put into the ice a handful of salt. put salt on the coverlid of the Sabotiere & cover the whole with ice. leave it still half a quarter of an hour. then turn the Sabottiere in the ice 10 minutes open it to loosen with a spatula the ice from the inner sides of the Sabotiere. shut it & replace it in the ice open it from time to time to detach the ice from the sides when well taken (prise) stir it well with the Spatula. put it in moulds, justling it well down on the knee. then put the mould into the same bucket of ice. leave it there to the moment of serving it. to withdraw it, immerse the mould in warm water, turning it well till it will come out & turn it into a plate.
(Modern version here, adapted by historian Marie Kimball)
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Gathering the Ingredients
First we gathered our ingredients and supplies. Jefferson’s recipe calls for just five ingredients: sugar, egg yolks, a pinch of salt, cream, and vanilla. But the ice cream-making process requires a number of kitchen supplies, as well as ice and salt, which lowers the freezing/melting point of water. To duplicate Jefferson’s process, I needed to purchase a metal pail, a larger wooden bucket, a large fine sieve, and ice cream “molds,” which were silicone ice cream containers. I also bought a large container of rock salt, as it reacts better with the ice than table salt.
Blending the Eggs and Sugar
In a large bowl, we whisked six egg yolks, then added 1 cup of sugar and a pinch of salt, creating a thick, bright-yellow mixture.
Jefferson’s recipe calls for a “stick of Vanilla,” referring to a vanilla bean, from which we get the more familiar vanilla extract. I made a slit in the vanilla bean before heating it with the cream in order to release those tiny seeds that give vanilla ice cream its speckled appearance. (It also smells amazing!)
The recipe also calls for “2 bottles of good cream,” but doesn’t specify the quantity in the bottles. For this step, we relied on Marie Kimball’s updated version of the recipe and used 1 quart of heavy whipping cream (which is the same as heavy cream).
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Pouring the Hot Cream and Vanilla Over the Egg and Sugar Mixture
Once the cream and vanilla reached boiling, we took the pan off the stove and slowly poured the cream over the egg and sugar mixture. Then we gently stirred it until the ingredients were well blended before returning the mixture to the pan.
Boiling the Ice Cream Mixture
Kimball’s version of Jefferson’s recipe calls for using a double boiler to heat the ice cream mixture, but we stuck with a single pan, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. After a few minutes, the mixture began to thicken, taking on a custardy texture that smelled like vanilla cake. Once the mixture reached boiling, we took it off the heat.
For the straining step, I intended to use cheesecloth to simulate Jefferson’s towel method, but due to the potential for a literal hot mess, I opted to use Kimball’s recommendation for a fine sieve. Straining the ice cream mixture like this allowed us to catch the small bits of egg and vanilla bean, leaving the ice cream mixture silky smooth.
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Putting the Mixture Into the Ice Cream Maker
In place of Jefferson’s “sabottiere,” we poured the strained ice cream mixture into a lidded metal pail, filled the whiskey barrel with an ice and rock salt mixture (per Kimball’s instructions), and then turned the pail at regular intervals, stirring the ice cream mixture occasionally as it slowly began to cool and freeze.
Molding the Ice Cream
After two hours, the ice cream had cooled and thickened to a milkshake consistency. Jefferson’s recipe calls for the ice cream to be packed into ice molds, which were hinged pewter containers in the shape of flowers, fruit, and other decorative objects, but we used a quart-sized silicone ice cream container instead. In retrospect, I wish we’d used popsicle molds, as the smaller containers would have made the ice cream freeze faster.
Once the ice cream was in the container, it took another two hours to thicken to soft-serve consistency. We could have eaten it then (and we did taste test it!), but we wanted the ice cream to hold its shape when scooped. Since most of the ice in the whiskey barrel had melted at this point, we decided to put the container in our modern freezer overnight.
After freezing overnight, the ice cream was hard-packed and scoopable! Creamy, pale-yellow, and speckled with vanilla bean, it was the richest ice cream we’d ever tasted.
Note: One line of Jefferson’s recipe reads, “Then set it in ice an hour before it is to be served.” The actual time to freeze using his method took several hours just to get to soft-serve consistency. This could be due to the size and shape of the containers we used, but it still seems unlikely that it could be done in an hour, even using Jefferson-era ice molds.
Grocery deliveries may be a modern convenience, but the service hearkens back to a bygone era when clinking glass bottles signaled the arrival of the milkman. The milkman (or milkwoman, though the job was usually held by men) is a cherished fixture of American history, as a prominent part of much of the 19th and 20th centuries. While milk remains a staple of the American diet, changes in consumerism and technology have made the once-ubiquitous milkman a relic of the past.
Cattle farming was a common means of sustenance in the early United States, beginning with the colonial era in the 16th century and continuing for the next few centuries. Many farming families produced milk, butter, and cheese for themselves and their local community. By the 19th century, the U.S. saw a rapid transformation due to industrialization and urbanization; people moved from rural areas to urban centers where better employment opportunities awaited. Owning a cow and making milk was much more impractical for these new city folk, but the demand for dairy remained.
The concept of the milkman emerged around the late 18th century. The earliest providers filled large metal barrels with fresh milk right from the cow, carrying them by horse-drawn cart to customers’ homes. Milk was ladled into whatever containers were available, including pitchers, jugs, or pails. This often meant that the milk was contaminated by debris — anything from hair to dirt to insects. The advent of the now-iconic glass milk bottles in the late 19th century was a major advancement for both the convenience and the hygiene of milk delivery. Early bottles often had glass lids held on with metal clamps and were embossed with the name of the dairy that used them. Glass bottles were replaced by single-use, wax-coated containers in the 20th century, but to this day, glass milk bottles remain a niche, nostalgic emblem of another time.
In the early 20th century, when milkmen were delivering milk in clean and secure glass containers, houses and apartments began installing insulated boxes or built-in milk doors for drop-offs. Empty bottles, along with the milkman’s payment, would also be left for pickup in the boxes. On average, a milk bottle made about 22 round trips before getting broken or lost. By the mid-1900s, deliveries were being done in trucks as opposed to horse-drawn wagons, but despite being more hygienic and efficient, the milk delivery industry began to dwindle.
Several factors contributed to the decline of the milkman. Following World War II, the U.S. saw a mass migration of people into sprawling suburban areas. This meant longer delivery routes and new logistics for milkmen, increasing their costs. The widespread availability of cars by this time also allowed more Americans to shop independently — and they could do so at an increasing number of one-stop-shop supermarkets, where prices were lower than the milkman’s rising rates. But perhaps the single biggest detriment to the milkman was the proliferation of refrigeration in households. Refrigerators were first introduced in the 1910s, and just 30 years later, more than half of American homes had one. By the 1960s, just about every home had a fridge, and families were able to store perishable items, including milk, easily and reliably — all but eliminating the need for daily deliveries.
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Milk delivery saw a sharp decline in the latter half of the 20th century. In the 1920s, if there was milk in the household, you could bet on it having been delivered. By the early 1960s, 30% of milk consumed was still delivered to homes. But by the mid-1970s, that number dropped sharply to only about 7%. Throughout the 1990s and mid-2000s, milk deliveries accounted for less than 1% of milk consumed in the U.S.
Over the years, there have been signs that milk delivery is still desirable in the U.S. While the 2020 coronavirus pandemic led to a surge in home deliveries of all kinds — including from the milkman — deliveries were trending upward even before then. In Maryland, South Mountain Creamery saw its deliveries increase to 8,500 homes across five states in 2014 — a massive leap from its 13 local customers in 2001. The return to milk delivery is driven not only by nostalgia, but according to customers who have made the switch, by the superior quality of the product. Although the efforts have yet to culminate in a widespread resurgence, they do underline the ongoing allure of an institution that once played a central role in everyday American life.
Determining the oldest recipe in history seems like it would be tricky right from the outset — anyone who’s ever asked an older relative for a recipe knows that often, the ingredients and instructions for a favorite meal have never even been written down. Yet historians do have a fairly clear answer for what the oldest known written culinary recipes are, and they date back more than 3,700 years.
In 1911, Yale University purchased four clay tablets that had been unearthed from Mesopotamia, the ancient valley between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (around modern-day Iraq). The tablets were inscribed in the cuneiform Akkadian language, and scholars estimate that three of them date back to around 1730 BCE. Since Akkadian is an extinct language, the actual content of the cuneiform was a mystery at the time the university acquired the tablets. It wasn’t until 1933 that any conclusions were made as to the contents of the script — and even then, the curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection misinterpreted the texts as recipes for medicinal remedies.
After studying the tablets in the 1940s, Assyriologist Mary Inda Hussey suggested that the scrolls contained culinary recipes, but her theory was mostly met with skepticism. Though Albrecht Goetze (one of Hussey’s contemporaries at Yale) tried deciphering the cuneiform as an introduction to one of Hussey’s works, it was never published, and translation languished until the 1980s. It was then that French Assyriologist (and haute cuisine chef) Jean Bottéro delved into the translation and confirmed what Hussey suspected: The tablets were inscribed with instructions for preparing food.
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The cuneiform tablets didn’t contain just one recipe; one of the texts dated to around 1730 BCE had approximately 24 recipes for stews and broths. The other two featured fewer recipes, but written in more specific detail. Though the stones are damaged and truncated in parts, some of the stew recipes are intact in their entirety.
Bottéro determined that the stews were made from pigeon, mutton (or lamb), offal, turnips, and beets. There was also a poultry dish reminiscent of a chicken hand pie. Other dishes included meats such as stag, gazelle, young goat, squab, and tarru (another fowl of an unknown type). Bottéro wrote in the March 1985 issue of Biblical Archaeologist Magazine that the dishes “have revealed a cuisine of striking richness, refinement, sophistication and artistry, which is surprising from such an early period.” Still, he did not particularly enjoy the results when he tried cooking the recipes — though it’s unclear if cultural differences in tastes or a misinterpretation of technique played a role in his perception.
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Cooks all over the world have since been working on adaptations of the historic recipes for the modern kitchen. In 2018, Harvard University scholar Gojko Barjamovic assembled an international team of culinary historians, food chemists, and cuneiform experts to refine Bottéro’s interpretations and further adapt the material based on an improved knowledge of the ingredients listed in the cuneiform script.
In 2019, the team published their updated interpretations of four of the tablet recipes in Lapham’s Quarterly: pašrūtum (translated to “unwinding”), a vegetarian stew; mû elamūtum (Elamite broth), a broth thickened with blood; mê puhādi (stew of lamb); and tuh’u (untranslatable), a leg of lamb and beet stew. They included translations from the original script and modern cookbook-style instructions written in more specific detail than the vaguer guidelines on the tablets. For anyone eager to try cooking some of the oldest recorded recipes in history, the full English translations can be found in the online archive of the Yale Babylonian Collection.
Vintage soft drinks are some of the most nostalgic pieces of cultural ephemera. These mundane everyday items seem to take on a certain mystique once they become unfamiliar relics of the past — there are even organizations dedicated to identifying and recording information about forgotten and discarded bottles. Here are five beverages that are in various stages of acquiring antique appeal, as their onetime popularity has significantly waned, or disappeared entirely.
Moxie
Moxie was developed by physician Augustin Thompson in 1876 as a medicinal syrup. It was made from gentian root extract, an ingredient with a polarizing flavor that is commonly used in aperitifs such as Suze, Salers, and Avèze. Originally called “Moxie Nerve Food,” the strange-even-for-the-19th-century latter part of the name came from Thompson’s belief that the tonic “cured anything caused by nervous exhaustion. It restored nervous people who were tired out mentally or physically.” Between 1884 and 1885, Thompson trademarked the name “Moxie Nerve Food,” mixed the syrup with carbonated water, and bottled it as a soft drink.
The drink was an immediate success, but just how much of a success is lost to history: Though Moxie is frequently referenced as having sold 5 million bottles in its first year, Thompson’s tendency to exaggerate numbers and make spurious claims (such as Moxie having “cured 200,000 drunks” in Lowell, Massachusetts) casts some doubt on the truth of that company data. But in the years after the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 required the company to shorten the name (as unfounded health claims in advertising were outlawed), Moxie became an indelible part of early-20th-century pop culture: Calvin Coolidge publicly called it his favorite drink, and observed his 1923 inauguration in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, with a bottle purchased from a nearby general store. The author E.B. White once wrote, “There is a certain serenity here that heals my spirit, and I can still buy Moxie in a tiny supermarket six miles away. Moxie contains gentian root, which is the path to the good life.” Legendary baseball player Ted Williams also endorsed the drink, and the word “moxie” itself became a slang word for vigor, boldness, and determination that has entered the dictionary.
Today, Moxie is obscure except in the New England region: As the birthplace of Thompson, the state of Maine has hosted a Moxie Day festival since 1984. The soda was also named Maine’s official state soft drink in 2005.
Nehi sodas were a line of fruit-flavored soft drinks introduced in 1924 by the Chero-Cola company, which was founded by pharmacist Claud Hatcher and named after the cherry cola drink he developed. The Nehi line included flavors such as grape, peach, orange, and root beer, and was successful enough that the company changed its name to the Nehi Corporation four years later. (This came after a period of waning Chero-Cola sales due to a lawsuit from Coca-Cola; the lawsuit prevented use of the word “cola,” and mandated the drink be renamed “Chero,” causing a loss of brand recognition.)
Nehi soda’s success was short-lived, however. Sales declined in 1930 with the onset of the Great Depression, and Hatcher died in 1933. The following year, company president H.R. Mott reintroduced a cola called Royal Crown, and it was so successful that it overshadowed Nehi in both sales and branding: Royal Crown sales were 10 times higher than Nehi sales, and by 1959, the company changed its name to Royal Crown Cola Company (also known as RC Cola).
Nehi, meanwhile, can still be found in limited distribution, and it endures as a nostalgic pop culture emblem. Grape Nehi was depicted as the favorite drink of the character Radar in the 1970s TV series M*A*S*H, and the leg lamp in the 1980 film A Christmas Story was based on vintage Nehi advertisements.
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TaB
TaB wasn’t the first diet cola, but it was the first developed by Coca-Cola. Before its introduction in 1963, other diet drinks, such as No-Cal and Diet Rite, were stocked on the over-the-counter medicine shelves at stores or pharmacies, and had a reputation for poor flavor. Coca-Cola sought to take advantage of the emerging diet drink market by creating a product with improved flavor, which would be stocked in beverage sections along with conventional drinks.
Like No-Cal and Diet Rite, TaB was formulated with the artificial sweeteners cyclamate and saccharin. But after the FDA banned cyclamate in 1970 due to concerns that it was a carcinogen, TaB was reformulated using only saccharine. Its flavor was described by devotees as clean, with hints of lemon and bubble gum, and its (very dated) advertising was aimed at women. Though it took some time to catch on, by the 1970s, TaB was the most popular diet drink in the U.S. But when saccharine was implicated in the National Toxicology Program’s 1981 Report on Carcinogens, and Coca-Cola introduced the aspartame-sweetened Diet Coke the following year, TaB began a long and steady decline that saw it reduced to 1% market share by 2001. Even still, TaB had a persistent cult following up until it was finally discontinued in 2020.
Odwalla was founded in 1980 by entrepreneur Greg Steltenpohl, along with members of his jazz band, as a way to help financially support the band. The company started out as a homespun operation, selling fresh-squeezed orange juice around the San Francisco Bay Area out of the band’s Volkswagen van, until eventually it caught the attention of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
Jobs commissioned the company to juice apples for him on a one-off basis, which led to an agreement to stock the Apple cafeterias with Odwalla apple juice. It was the start of a massive period of growth that led to Odwalla juices being the trendy health-conscious beverage of the late 1980s and early 1990s: In 1991, annual sales reached $6 million and saw a growth rate of approximately 30% each year. In 1992, Odwalla introduced juice blends with nutrition-pun names such as C-Monster, Mo’ Beta, and Femme Vitale. High-profile cultural leaders were seen with Odwalla drinks, and the company went public in 1993, projecting $90 million in sales over the next few years.
Then, in 1996, lowered safety standards led to an E.coli outbreak in Odwalla apple juice that sickened dozens of people. The company nearly went bankrupt in the fallout, but rebounded in the late ’90s and eventually sold to Coca-Cola in 2001. Ultimately, changing consumer tastes, particularly around sugar content, led to a more gradual decline for the brand. By 2020, Coca-Cola discontinued production of Odwalla juices.
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Original New York Seltzer
As a line of flavored carbonated water drinks, Original New York Seltzer was a predecessor to the present-day sparkling water trend. The company was formed in 1982 by Alan Miller as a sort of revival of the family business — his grandfather sold bottles of flavored seltzer on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1900s. Miller’s business was also intended as a way to give his 18-year-old son Randy some direction, as he was made president of the nascent company.
Original New York Seltzer was positioned as a preservative-free and “naturally flavored” soft drink that occupied a new category: more flavorful than sparkling mineral water, but not as sweet as soda, though unlike much of today’s flavored sparkling water, Original New York Seltzer was sweetened with sugar. It was available in 10 flavors: vanilla cream, blueberry, raspberry, cola & berry, black cherry, orange, peach, root beer, lemon-lime, and Concord grape. The company did not use any coloring in its formula, making each flavor as clear as sparkling water.
The product was a resounding success, reaching $100 million in sales in just three years, and becoming a quintessential touchstone of flamboyant 1980s pop culture. As a publicity (and actual) stunt, Randy Miller jumped off a 10-story hotel and onto a cushioned pad bearing the company logo. He was profiled on an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, with footage of the stunt, and clips of the bengal tiger he liked to bring to the office. Beverage giant Anheuser-Busch came calling with an offer to buy the company, but was turned down.
After the novelty wore off (and perhaps as consumers realized that Original New York Seltzer still contained a not-insignificant 25 grams of sugar per 10-ounce bottle), the company entered a decline, and the Millers quietly discontinued production in the early ’90s. But the brand was revived under different ownership in 2015, and the drinks are once again available in limited distribution.
Family dinner has been a mainstay of U.S. households since the mid-19th century, when men increasingly began to work and eat lunch — once considered the main meal of the day — outside the home. By the 1920s, the food rationing of World War I was a thing of the past, and the “Roaring ’20s” brought economic prosperity for many Americans.
When families sat down for dinner in this era, they could expect a menu typically consisting of a meat, a starch, and a side dish. The 1920s also saw an increase in the availability and variety of foods, including canned fruits, as well as innovations such as iceboxes and, later, refrigerators, which began to make their way into family homes over the course of the decade.
All of these factors played a part in what was served for dinner. From hearty mains to unique salads and decadent desserts, here’s a peek into dining rooms across America in the 1920s.
Baked Ham
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby focused on the wealthy elite of New York’s Gilded Age, describing buffet tables overflowing with hors d’oeuvres and spiced baked hams. But meats weren’t just for the rich, and in the 1920s, a baked ham or other large cut of meat was a common sight at family meal time, especially during holidays or as the centerpiece of a Sunday dinner.
A popular glazed ham recipe involved studding the outside with cloves, canned pineapple rings, and maraschino cherries. With the invention of Wonderbread and the proliferation of sliced bread in the same decade, leftover ham sandwiches were also a lunchbox fixture.
The origins of this recipe, like those of many classic food and drink concoctions, are unclear, but its regular appearance on dinner tables in the early 20th century is an undisputed fact. At its most basic, the dish consists of cubed chicken and mushrooms in a creamy white sauce, garnished with pimentos and served over toast, pasta, or flaky puff pastry pieces.
The rich sauce, made with cream, butter, and flour, was also often seasoned with sherry or other spirits for added flavor. Over time, ingredients such as green peppers or peas also began appearing in recipes. The beloved comfort food grew even more popular in later years, reaching its peak during the 1950s. While it fell out of favor in subsequent decades, it can often still be found as a canned or frozen entrée in grocery stores.
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Stuffed Celery
Hors d'oeuvres enjoyed immense popularity in the 1920s. The Prohibition era fostered more informal social gatherings and cocktail parties at home, where finger foods were often served. Stuffed celery was a regular choice not only for entertaining, but also as a side at the dinner table.
The recipe began appearing in cookbooks and women’s magazines in the early 1900s and gained popularity throughout the ’20s and ’30s. The basic premise remained simple: chilled celery stalks filled with cream cheese, which was mixed with toppings such as tuna, lobster, crab, or, more commonly, olives and pimentos. Olives and pimentos were also used in cheese and olive salad, which was served on leaves of lettuce.
Originally created in 1893 at New York’s prestigious Waldorf Hotel by the executive chef Edouard Beauchamp and maître d’hôtel Oscar Tschirky, this timeless salad was a staple of family dinner menus in the early 20th century, when sweet salads became a favorite.
The first recipe was published in 1986 in Tschirky’s own The Cook Book, by “Oscar” of the Waldorf. This original incarnation called only for diced apples and celery to be “dressed with a good mayonnaise.” Over time, the salad evolved; throughout the 1920s, recipes also began calling for walnuts and seedless red grapes. As recently as 2017, the Waldorf — short for the Waldorf-Astoria — still featured an elevated version of the salad on the menu, made with Granny Smith and Fuji apples, halved grapes, and candied walnuts.
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Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
Thanks to advancements in canning and a boom in the Hawaiian pineapple industry, canned pineapple enjoyed newfound popularity in the U.S. in the 1920s. The sweet golden rings were used not just as a garnish for baked hams, but in baked goods, too — most notably, in the pineapple upside-down cake.
The all-American dessert was an adaptation of already-popular skillet cakes, previously made with fruits such as apples or cherries. It gained a new audience after Dole — then known as the Hawaiian Pineapple Company — held a pineapple recipe contest in 1925.
Dole received 2,500 recipes for pineapple upside-down cake alone, and the published recipe, which appeared in a Dole cookbook as well as in magazines, helped it find a whole new audience. The syrupy-sweet tropical dessert has remained a family dinner favorite for decades, through the 1960s and beyond.
This no-bake dessert was named for the then-ubiquitous icebox, a precursor to the electric refrigerator that held a large ice block and was often made of wood and lined with tin. Iceboxes helped preserve fresh food in a way that canning or drying could not, and in the case of the icebox cake, it helped soften it to decadent perfection.
To start, crisp wafers or cookies were layered in a dish with whipped cream. After being left to sit in the icebox for a few hours or even overnight, the cookies softened and melded with the creamy filling. While the simplicity of the dessert was part of its appeal, other ingredients such as custard, fruit, gelatin, or chocolate were sometimes used as well.
In American culture, food is a lot like slang and pop music, in that it’s changed drastically over the years. Several American foods from the past come from a time of such different cultural, technological, and generational sensibilities that it can be hard to imagine encountering them today, let alone understanding their appeal. The following foods were once popular staples in the U.S. — but they might be difficult items to convince modern diners to try.
Poke Salad
Not to be confused with the differently pronounced Hawaiian dish of marinated raw fish, poke salad (sometimes spelled “salet” or “salud”) was made of pokeweed, a wild leafy green that has grown in Appalachia for centuries. It was a simple dish containing the boiled leaves and stalks of pokeweed, along with bacon grease, and its preparation was crucial: Pokeweed is poisonous, so boiling the plant at least twice (with new water each time) was necessary to render the greens safe to eat.
Because of the abundance of wild pokeweed and its association with toxicity, poke salad was primarily eaten in impoverished communities, and it endured as a staple well into the 20th century. In 1969, Tony Joe White’s hit song “Polk Salad Annie” positioned the dish as an emblem of rural toughness and resourcefulness in the face of poverty. Nowadays, the easier-to-prepare and similarly seasoned collard greens have endured in place of poke salad, though there are some who predict that the local foraging movement may lead to a resurgence of cooking with pokeweed.
Turtle soup remains a delicacy around the world, particularly in China and Singapore, and it was a mainstay of fine dining in the U.S. from the colonial era through the mid-20th century. Sometimes described as a clear consommé with large diced turtle meat, other times a tomato-based broth thickened with a medium-dark roux, it was nearly always served with a glass of sherry to add to the dish. Turtle soup was once so prestigious that it was served at Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, and it was a favorite of President William Howard Taft. It also reliably appeared on menus throughout the country, including New York’s storied Delmonico’s.
Though the dish’s popularity was long and its pedigree high, its decline was quick, caused by a confluence of factors. Prohibition meant the sherry that provided a key seasoning flourish was no longer available. The rise of factory farming consolidated America’s meat production to beef, chicken, and pork, due to the easier processing methods involved with those meats. Anthropomorphic turtle characters appeared in the media and created an unintended perception shift against the idea of eating turtles. And finally, the green sea turtles the dish was originally made from were classified as endangered in 1973. Turtle enthusiasts switched to the more abundant snapping turtle, but turtle soup was all but nonexistent as a fine dining item by the 1980s.
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Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast
Creamed chipped beef on toast was a breakfast food, also known as S.O.S. — an acronym for a profane (and even less appetizing!) name for the dish. This meal was made from sliced dried beef (a sort of bovine-based textural equivalent of pepperoni or salami) simmered in white gravy until softened, and then ladled over a piece of toast. The ease of preparation and long shelf life of its protein made it an ideal military ration — it appears in U.S. Army cooking manuals from as early as 1910 — as well as an easy meal for households seeking frugality. This made S.O.S. particularly popular in the 1930s and ’40s during the Great Depression and World War II, when conservation was front of mind. In the middle of the 20th century, S.O.S. was a standard menu item at most diners, but it began fading with the rise of nutrition consciousness around the 1970s — perhaps because it’s neither a health food nor as indulgent as the comparable biscuits and gravy.
Another 20th-century diner staple, the Limburger sandwich was a classic deli sandwich (read: a cold sandwich) of Limburger cheese and raw onion on rye bread. Limburger cheese was one of the five main cheeses produced in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (in addition to Swiss, brick, cheddar, and American cheese), and it was known to a point of infamy for its foul aroma. It was the subject of gags by Charlie Chaplin and the Three Stooges, and earlier, Mark Twain compared its odor to that of a corpse in his short story “The Invalid’s Story.”
Considering the already off-putting smell of Limburger cheese, the question may not be why a sandwich of raw onion and Limburger cheese is no longer popular, but rather, why was it ever popular? Perhaps its sharp taste was enough for the appeal, odor be damned. Or maybe eating it represented a sort of machismo similar to the spicy wings of today (with pungency instead of heat). In any case, changing tastes and the odorless convenience of sliced American cheese relegated the Limburger sandwich to a strictly regional rarity in parts of Wisconsin.
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Vinegar Pie
Vinegar pie is commonly placed in the category of “desperation pie” (or “make-do pie”), a Depression-era dessert made with basic pantry ingredients substituting for traditional ingredients that may have been unavailable or too expensive. Other examples of “desperation pie” include eggless sugar cream pie, green tomato pie, and oatmeal pie, which mimicked custard pie, apple pie, and pecan pie, respectively. In that context, the acid from the vinegar pie’s namesake ingredient would be a resourceful replacement for lemon.
The origin of vinegar pie wasn’t the Depression, though. A recipe for it appeared in Colorado’s The Herald Democrat as early as 1905, in cookbooks such as Maud C. Cooke’s Three Meals a Day starting in 1892, and in the 1874 compendium The Home Cook Book of Chicago. The dessert was around enough that perhaps there was more to it than sheer utility. In recent years, James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd revived vinegar pie at his Houston, Texas restaurant Underbelly, and it became the restaurant’s signature dish, with an appealingly contemporary presentation. But Underbelly closed in 2018, and with it, the vinegar pie reverted back to obscurity.
From a leisurely meal of eggs and bacon to the convenience of a granola bar or yogurt parfait, breakfast foods come in an array of options to suit every taste and lifestyle. While the word “breakfast,” meaning “to break one’s fast in the morning,” dates back to the 15th century, some of our favorite morning dishes date back thousands of years. In fact, researchers believe the earliest variations of pancakes and porridges were first eaten as far back as the Stone Age. But while some popular breakfast foods have evolved and endured, others that were once considered staples of the typical American kitchen have faded into nostalgic obscurity. Here are five foods that were once considered popular breakfast dishes.
Granula Cereal
The first cold breakfast cereal, Granula was developed in 1863 in Dansville, New York, by James Caleb Jackson, a nutritionist who ran a health spa. Jackson believed that illnesses originated in the digestive system and that committing to a healthy diet could help cure sickness. He formulated Granula by baking graham flour into hard cakes and then crumbling the cakes and baking them a second time. The crumbled bits were then so hard that they had to be soaked overnight in milk to make the cereal edible. Dr. Jackson’s crunchy breakfast cereal was soon copied by inventor John Harvey Kellogg, who later invented corn flakes, who used a combination of cornmeal, oatmeal, and wheat flour to make his own version of Granula, which he called Granola — but only after Jackson sued him for using the Granula name.
A popular New England breakfast dish in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, milk toast may date as far back as the Middle Ages when bread soaked in liquid was known as “sop.” The contemporary version was made by pouring warm milk over bread that had been toasted, buttered, then cubed. The dish could be served sweet or savory, with the addition of sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon, or salt, pepper, and paprika. The word “milquetoast,” meaning a timid or ineffectual person, was derived from a 1924 cartoon character named Caspar Milquetoast, who was named for this mild, quintessential comfort food.
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Pork and Beans
Canned versions of this classic American side dish can still be found on grocery store shelves, but it was once popular on the breakfast table, served alongside johnnycakes, a type of fried cornmeal pancake. In the 1886 cookbook Practical Housekeeping: A Careful Compilation of Tried and Approved Recipes, author Estelle Woods Wilcox recommends adding a few tablespoons of molasses and salt pork to a pot of beans and baking it for six hours or longer. Noting, “This is the Yankee dish for Sunday breakfast,” the author recommends the pork and beans be baked the day before, left in the oven all night, and browned in the morning, though they could also be eaten cold.
Whether breaded and fried as cakes or balls or served with cream on toast, codfish was once considered a popular breakfast food in American homes and luxury hotels alike. On its 1914 breakfast menu, New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel offered codfish in cream for 50 cents, while Fannie Farmer’s 1916Boston Cooking-School Cook Book included recipes for creamed salt codfish, fish balls, and salted codfish hash. While those recipes called for picking codfish “in very small pieces, or cut, using scissors,” salted and cured shredded codfish was also packaged and advertised as a “dainty” and “sweet-flavored fish” whose price was “naturally high” because of the limited quantity of high-quality cod.
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Meat Hash
Breakfast hash has been around for centuries and is still enjoyed today, but it was particularly popular during World War II, when meat rationing required home cooks to get creative. Traditional home-cooked hash was made of “chopped cooked meat” and cooked vegetables (usually potatoes and onions) mixed with broth and fried on the stove. While it was served at lunch and dinner as well, hash for breakfast was an economical way to use up dinner leftovers and stretch those precious quantities of rationed meat by adding flavorful fillers. In wartime ads, Armour and Company, the first company to produce canned meat, reminded Americans that “our war needs make it vital now to save every bit of food left over,” and offered a free booklet called “69 Meat Ration Recipes” that included breakfast hash recipes using a variety of fresh and canned meats.
Egg cream sodas were once the effervescent star of New York’s soda fountain scene. Today, the drink is little more than a nostalgic novelty, served up occasionally at old school spots and retro-themed bars intent on keeping the classic alive. So what happened to this once-beloved treat?
At the beginning of the 20th century, soda fountains were a common sight and popular meeting place in New York City. The name described both the equipment — a tap that dispensed carbonated soda water — and the business, which often meant a place that served food along with the bubbly drinks. When they first gained popularity in the mid-1800s, soda fountain machines were primarily used in drug stores. Pharmacists mixed seltzer, seen then as a medicinal drink, with potent or bitter-tasting drugs to make them more palatable.
In the early 1900s, the fountains and the “soda jerks” who worked them moved on from serving just prescription drinks to a more tempting variety of sweets. As fountains proliferated in candy stores, ice cream parlors, luncheonettes, and department stores, carbonated water was mixed with fruit syrup, used to make ice cream floats, and featured as one of just three ingredients in an iconic New York City drink from the era: the egg cream soda.
Contrary to its name, an egg cream contained neither eggs nor cream. (No one is exactly sure where the name came from, though there are certainly lots of theories.) The soda was a mixture of chilled whole milk, seltzer water, and chocolate syrup (preferably Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate Syrup), whipped together to create a creamy, frothy, fizzy drink. It was one of the best-known drinks in the city at the time, but exactly how and when it made its way to New York soda fountains is the subject of competing theories. One of the most popular stories suggests that Louis Auster first whipped it up at his Lower East Side candy store around 1890. Auster made his own chocolate syrup and never revealed his recipe. Another theory involves the Ukrainian-born Yiddish theater star Boris Tomashevsky. It’s said that, while in New York in the 1880s, he may have asked a soda jerk to make a drink he had enjoyed in Paris — a “chocolat et creme.” Yet another story, detailed in New York Magazine in 1971, claims the egg cream wasn’t actually invented until the 1920s, and was the property of the uncle of sociologist Daniel Bell — Uncle Hymie’s recipe, however, did involve an egg.
By the 1920s, it’s estimated there were about 125,000 soda fountains serving up fizzy concoctions across the U.S. Egg creams were a defining staple of this era, especially in New York City — Louis Aster’s alone was so popular that he’s said to have sold up to 3,000 of them a day. But the egg cream’s popularity waned with the decline of soda fountain culture. By the 1950s, mass-marketed bottled and canned sodas had become the norm. Increasing car ownership and postwar suburbanization prioritized roadside eateries, and as independent drug stores were overshadowed by big chain stores, soda fountains became too costly to install and maintain. By the 1970s, soda fountain culture was all but obsolete, and so was the egg cream.
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The egg cream remained a symbol of nostalgia for many New Yorkers and classic Americana aficionados for years after its demise. In 1991, the drink appeared in an episode of Seinfeld. Sesame Street boasted about Mr. Hooper’s egg cream recipe in episodes in 1978 and 1984. In 1996, New York music legend Lou Reed even titled a song “Egg Cream” on his album Set the Twilight Reeling. Traditional soda fountains have become a rarity, but in New York City, older establishments such as Ray’s Candy Store in Manhattan and the famed Jewish deli Russ & Daughters still serve classic egg creams. Modern interpretations have also popped up, as nostalgic eateries such as the Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain, built in an original 1920s apothecary, have put the quintessential New York beverage front and center.