Retro Recipes from the '50s and '60s: 103 Vintage Appetizers, Dinners, and Drinks Everyone Will Love

by Addie Gundry

In Retro Recipes from the ‘50s and ‘60s , Cutthroat Kitchen star Addie Gundry serves up nostalgic recipes from the Mad Men era, like Beef Wellington and Grasshopper Pie. Post-war rationing became a distant memory, and the rise of home entertainment culture made for prettier, more complex food. With French influence from Julia Child, and elegant aspirational figures like Jacqueline Kennedy, suburban dinner parties went glam. Backyard barbecues, fondues gathering everyone around a table, and not to mention cocktail parties were booming. From 1950's casseroles and hors d'oevres to more modern, adventurous dishes, there's plenty to celebrate and embrace! Each recipe is paired with a full-color, full-bleed finished dish photo.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Nonfiction, History

240 pages, Paperback

Published January 9, 2018

About the author

ADDIE GUNDRY received her masters in culinary arts at Auguste Escoffier in Avignon, France. She has worked for chefs including Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, and Martha Stewart on management, restaurant openings, brand development, editorial, marketing, and sales. In 2015, she won Cutthroat Kitchen on The Food Network. As the executive producer for RecipeLion, Addie creates culinary content for multiple web platforms and communities. She excels at making easy recipes elegant. Her books include Everyday Dinner Ideas, Family Favorite Casserole Recipes, and Festive Holiday Recipes.

Reviews

[Karen Witzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never the Watergate Salad, but yes, I'd give the Peas Juliette a try. The food of my childhood presented here without irony in their best versions.

[thefourthvine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the book you’ll get in your work’s holiday gift exchange when the only things the person who got your name knows about you are that you can cook and you like Mad Men. And you’ll thank them politely, glance through it, and leave this on your shelf for a year without ever looking at it again. Then you’ll donate it to the library or Goodwill. It will still be like new.

I picked this up from the library because I was hoping for a funny but sympathetic take on mid-century recipes. I was thinking it’d be like the Mid-Century Menu blog, but in book form. Instead, it starts with a discussion of ‘50s nostalgia (which is not something I for one ever, ever feel), and then goes on to give a handful of recipes that you can either find in the Joy of Cooking (hot cross buns) or that you probably shouldn’t try to find anywhere (Peas Juliette, which even in a cookbook photo is alarmingly grey and gloppy).

Unsurprisingly, a lot of these recipes use canned goods, pimentos, canned pineapple, and liquor. You’ll know to expect that if you’ve ever read a vintage recipe. They’re also very light on spice, and again, that’s not a surprise. The dinners are mostly chicken dishes that look like vomit and ground beef with various sauces (grape jelly, for example), which I didn’t expect.

But most of all, these recipes are just a random collection of vaguely mid-century dishes, put together without humor or insight by someone who doesn’t seem to care very much about her final product. It features such profound commentary as, “In the postwar era, desserts were the flourish at the end of a spectacular dinner.” As opposed to now, when they are the grim period that ends a pained snack of pablum and glue, I guess?

So if you get this in the holiday gift exchange, sure, flip through it before you give it away. Otherwise, don’t bother with it.

[Deke · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fun browse, but you quickly learn: the recipes that died died for a reason. Chocolate mayonnaise cake, anyone?

[Missy Michaels · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am such a fan of recipe books with plenty of pictures of the food. The chapters are set up as Breakfast, Appetizers, Soup Salad & Sandwiches, Sides, Dinner, Dessert and Drinks. My favorite recipes here are Biscuits and Gravy. The recipe is truly a gravy recipe that you serve with your homemade or store bought biscuits. The Super Easy Crab Puffs and the Chicken a la King are my other favorites that I will definitely do the most often. One day, if I'm feeling super ambitious I'm going to do the Baked Alaska. It's so pretty. I have always like Broccoli Casserole but my mom's version is definitely my favorite. The recipe here includes flour and crushed crackers in the casserole and that stopped me in my tracks. For me, none of the drink recipes are really appealing but that's okay.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed looking through this collection. It has a great recipe for hot cross buns that I will keep using in future years—I finally found *my* hot cross bun recipe. The other recipes are quite high in fat and salt. I guess I should have expected no less from the 50s and 60s, but it was kind of shocking to see the amounts of cheese and cream that was used in many of these recipes. They are probably delicious, but I don’t think I really want to try them!!

[Valencia Mikulski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found some pretty good recipes. : )

[Juli Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was somewhat disappointing. I thought the recipes would be a bit more updated or at least curated in a way that favored made-from-scratch cooking. But they just called for a lot of canned soup and cake mix.

[Nicola “Shortbookthyme” · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun looking back on recipes I remember from my childhood. The recipes brought back many memories.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the recipes look super gross, and some look really tasty, but I enjoyed reading it, especially the historical context of each one.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I might want to see if this one makes it to the library book sale. No earth shaking revelations but great versions of some culinary classics. If you're a fan of varieties of Campbell's "cream of" soups and various flavors of Jell-o, this book is for you. I mean when was the last time you thought of Harvey Wallbanger cake.

Lots of pictures to match up with the recipes, always a plus for me. Plus if you really want to turn back time, the author includes a bunch of era appropriate cocktails and mocktails.

[Andi Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn’t give it a five for a couple reasons: I haven’t made anything out of it yet, and it’s not spiral bound (it’s just me, I think cookbooks should open flat). Tons of recipes filled with nostalgia (or what I thought other families were making when mine was having spaghetti and salad again). Lovely photos and the recipes are one page each. Great from the library, though I’m not sure there are enough I’d make to warrant buying it.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Retro Recipes from the '50s and '60s: 103 Vintage Appetizers, Dinners and Drinks Everyone Will Love Addie Gundry strikes a balance of recipes using a crock pot like beef stew to those that require tedious preparation like the Hummingbird Cake. Also included are some childhood memories of classic recipes such as Buttermilk Fried Chicken and 50s Goulash. Another feature of this book that is delightful is a small section on drinks, including the Shirley Temple. With a little substitution the alcoholic drinks can be converted into non-alcoholic versions.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Food from my childhood. Not a fan of "salads" made with Jell-o pistachio pudding or anything with Miracle Whip but some of these recipes (only slightly tweaked for 21st century palates) sound pretty good. I'll definitely try the deviled eggs and the potato salad. But not the Peas Julliette that calls for canned peas. My god, do they still make those?!

[(a)lyss(a) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually a fun library find!

After seeing the beef wellington recipe I figured I'd give it a shot. There are recipes in it I'd never try -gelatinous noodles in a bundt or things that are 90% jello based, but there are also some gems. There's a bit of history about each recipe but it doesn't go super in depth since it is a cook book and there are great pictures.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a lot of fun for the nostalgia. I don't think I'd make too many of these except for some of the slow cooker recipes and the cocktails, but it's worth a trip down memory lane. There were also a few recipes (the meatball appetizer, toad in the hole) that I liked for the proportions - I know how to make these, but it's good to see what's going in.

[Mandy Crumb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and quick library read. Numerous recipes with canned goods and purchased mixes being the star as it should be for the time period. The 1950's goulash recipe is very nearly identical to the one I make. Interesting historical information about each dish was my favorite part.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's another one I'd give a 2.5 to. I did glean a couple of mid-century ideas--well, at least one, but I was disappointed in both the recipes presented and the intros, which were uninformative.

[Miki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting in that I was there, but don't remember a lot of these!

[Anjula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of these are in the past for a reason. But I might try a couple of the desserts.

[marylee sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Old time recipes

Old time recipes that I am looking forward to trying... remember so many from my growing up years. My friends and I have decided to have a 50-60s dinner night

[Lila · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the gelatin creations I wanted it to be.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's just plain fun to look at. Turns the food pyramid upside down.

Cups of sugar, oil, lard, gluten, peanuts, Crisco, food coloring.

How did we survive?

[Paperclippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to make every vegetarian dish in this book, including the drinks. Who am I kidding - especially the drinks.

I say this without having attempted to actually MAKE any of this stuff yet, but as someone who bakes for a living (part-time, but still) I can say for a fact that the recipes are clear, concise, easy to follow, and don’t call for any ingredients that I wouldn’t regret buying or wouldn’t be able to find another use for even if I never made that particular dish ever again. I also have to say that this is the first “retro” or “vintage” cookbook where the pictures of the finished products actually look like something you want to put in your body, and that’s no mean feat when it comes to thinks like... well, things like salad that have never touched a vegetable (I’m looking at you, Waldorf).