25 Strange Meals People Ate During the Great Depression

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

The Great Depression brought out both the resiliency and ingenuity of literally millions of people. With few options, people had to make do with what was on hand. Clothes were sewn with spare flour sacks and shoes repaired with cardboard.

Food, however, is where things got really interesting. Some foods were still plentiful and reasonably affordable, but others were scarce. How do you make a full meal when half your ingredients are missing?

You improvise and invent a whole host of crazy foods in the process. Here are some strange meals people ate during the Great Depression—meals we might all be eating again someday. (Most of the list items include a link to the recipe in case you want to try it.)

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Cabbage and Dumplings

Cabbage and dumplings together may not sound like the most pleasant meal to eat, but it was dirt simple and cheap to make. All you’ll need to make this meal is fried cabbage and dumplings (as the name suggests), but to add extra flavor, you can add onions and/or egg as well.

Coffee Soup

Even when times are tough, there are two staples for breakfast you can always count on: coffee and toast. Have you ever thought about pouring your coffee with a little bit of cream  into a bowl and then breaking up the toast into smaller pieces in the bowl as well to make a soup? You may wonder ‘why not just have the toast and the coffee separately?’ but the Amish swore by it.

Corned Beef Salad

So corned beef salad doesn’t sound that bad…until you learn that it’s made with mayonnaise and Jello. Well, gelatin anyway. It’s a mixture of corned beef, eggs, mayonnaise, horseradish, and some vegetables, all held together in a loaf with plain gelatin. Yum…beef jello.

Creamed Chipped Beef

This is also known as sh*t on a shingle, which sums up the thoughts of those that had to eat it. In a nutshell, it’s dried beef that’s re-hydrated a bit in a sauce made with flour and butter, and then served on toast. All you need is some milk, butter, flour, dried beef, and some pepper and parsley.

Creamy Beef Fondue

Do you have beef, bread, milk, and cream cheese in the fridge and pantry? If so, you can make a very filling creamy beef fondue appetizer that doesn’t require much work to make either. People struggling through the Great Depression didn’t always skip appetizers, and often reserved this meal in particular for holidays and special events.

Dandelion Salad

These days, the foodie movement has just about everyone open to eating foods foraged from your yard, but back then dandelion salad was just weird. They did it because it was a way to get free food onto the table, and a bit of added vitamins in an otherwise bland depression diet.

Egg Drop Soup

Not anything like the egg drop soup you can order in modern Chinese restaurants, this soup started with fried potatoes and then added water. The mixture was brought to a boil, and then scrambled eggs were stirred in while the water was boiling. The whole thing was served over toast. I’m not sure why they didn’t just have eggs, potatoes, and toast, but perhaps the spirit of creativity took hold.

Frozen Fruit Salad

This particular dish was considered the ultimate treat for the holidays. There are many variations of this salad, but all have the same basic feel. Start with canned fruit and add whipped cream, eggs, flour, and any manner of other things (marshmallows, nuts, or whatever is available). Freeze the whole thing in trays and then serve.

Garbage Mashup

‘Mashups’ were what people ate when they had to put together whatever they had in the pantry. The Garbage Mashup is one such example. All you’ll need is a bit of round beef, some baked beans, home fries, and macaroni salad. Then you can add onions, chili, mustard, ketchup, and/or hot sauce for extra flavor.

Great Depression Casserole

During the Great Depression, many people couldn’t afford meats like beef and chicken. So instead, bologna became a common staple. This casserole takes advantage of that by using bologna as the main ingredient. It might not sound that great, but by the time you add chili, cheddar, peppers, garlic, onions, and pork and beans, it becomes absolutely mouth-watering.

Hoover Stew

Named after the president that took office right before the crash, Hoover Stew was the name for the cheap slop eaten by residents of shanty towns. Recipes varied, but usually involved hot dogs, canned vegetables, and pasta or macaroni.

Ketchup, Mayonnaise or Onion Sandwiches

What do you do when you want a sandwich, but don’t have any meat or cheese to put in it? Put some ketchup between slices of bread and call it good. Mayonnaise sandwiches were also common, and honestly sound a lot better than the last option, plain onion sandwiches.

• Recipe: Put ketchup, mayonnaise, or onion between two slices of bread. Eat.

Kraft Mac and Cheese

This one isn’t very strange, but we included it because it was invented during the Great Depression. Kraft mac and cheese was advertised as an exercise in frugality. These days it’s commonplace, and it’s still a cheap way to put calories on the table, but back then a shelf-stable box with powdered cheese replaced a traditional homemade meal full of expensive ingredients like cheese and cream.

Meatless Meatloaf

These days, meatloaf is a simple and relatively cheap weeknight dinner. But how do you make it without ground beef? That’s how it became just “loaf” and it was made out of just about anything put into a loaf pan. Cheap foods like liver, peanuts, and raisins found their way into this catch-all food.

Milkorno

Invented by scientists at Cornell University in 1933 when they were looking for inexpensive ways to feed the masses, it’s a gruel made from dried powdered milk and cornmeal. Other variations like milkwheato (using wheat instead of corn) were also invented and were just as appetizing.

Mulligan Stew

This stew was invented by the homeless. They would put a big pot over a campfire, and everyone would contribute whatever food they had on hand—-meat, potatoes, bread, onions, rice, tomatoes, and so forth. Sometimes they would even add lint or sawdust to make it more filling.

Mock Apple Pie

How do you make an apple pie without apples? It turns out there are a number of ways. One popular recipe involved stuffing a pie crust with Ritz and then covering them with cinnamon, butter, and sugar syrup. Other recipes substitute fruits or vegetables, like this mock apple pie made with zucchini.

Peanut Butter Stuffed Onions

Actually recommended by home economics teachers, peanut butter stuffed baked onions found its way onto tables during the Great Depression. Basically, you just bake an onion, then scoop part if it out, and replace with a scoop of peanut butter. You won’t be surprised when I tell you it wasn’t very popular.

Poor Man’s Meal

A mixture of hot dogs and potatoes, poor man’s meal was actually quite tasty. Potatoes were fried with onions until browned, and then chopped hot dogs were added. My grandmother made this for me as a child, and my mother had her own version, substituting kielbasa for the hot dogs, which made it much tastier.

Potato Pancakes

Potatoes were one of the most widely available foods, and they found their way into many dishes. Simple potato pancakes are some of the more appetizing ways they were eaten. They were made either by frying mashed potatoes or by binding grated potatoes together with flour and eggs.

Prune Pudding

Actually served at the White House as an act of solidarity with “the people who are suffering” in the streets, prune pudding is a simple mix of boiled prunes, sugar, and cornstarch. Sometimes seasoned, sometimes not, prune pudding had to fill in for dessert. It was generally served in small dishes, to prevent disastrous prune related consequences.

Red Velvet Cake

These days you can find red velvet cake recipes on fancy food blogs, but back then it was a cheap way to make an “almost” chocolate cake. Substituting vegetable oil for real butter, and using almost no cocoa, what the cake lacked in flavor it made up for in color.

Spaghetti with Carrots and White Sauce

Eleanor Roosevelt herself recommended this dish for the frugal cook. It involved a casserole made out of intentionally overcooked mushy spaghetti and boiled carrots, covered in a pasty white sauce made from flour and butter.

Vinegar Pie

Though mock apple pie was one option, other pie recipes tried to get a “fruit pie” feel by substituting the tartness of fruit with vinegar. The dessert was made with a pie crust filled with butter, flour, sugar, and vinegar. Sounds horrible to me, but I guess it can’t be that weird, even Martha Stewart has a recipe.

Know of any other strange meals people ate during the Great Depression? Tell us about it in the comment section below!

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