Just like Mom used to make.

August 17, 2011 8:35 PM

Aspic and other delights showcases the absolute horrors of good, old-fashioned home cooking. Or, at least the advertisements for it. Aspic, in case you were wondering, is food, often meat or seafood encased in gelatin or cooled meat stock.
posted by converge (84 comments total)

Oh god, that mayonnaise salad.

I lived in Hong Kong in my mid 20s and I lived with my boss and a coworker. In the 90s anyhow maids were cheep and you would send them to cooking classes to cook for you. Our maid was a sweetheart and would cook us all a big dinner every night except for Sunday, her half day off. Soup, fish, rice and two to four other dishes.

A few weeks in I start getting nostalgic for salad. The next night the pride of place is some chopped raw vegetables swimming in what must have been a complete jar of mayonnaise, which I think she must have gone down to the USA Store to get just for me.

Eating enough to be polite but making sure it never happened again was tricky.
posted by shothotbot at 8:46 PM on August 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

More precisely, aspic is the highly gelatinous stock itself, which lends its name to the dish, from the French aspic which just means jelly. In culinary usage, the stock is frequently referred to as aspic, while the dish is an aspic.

Gelatin, of course, didn't used to be available commercially, and so aspics were made by boiling calves' feet or pigs ears to break down the collagen, which thickened the stock made by it.

What? Gotta put that fancy culinary school education to use somehow.
posted by MadGastronomer at 8:50 PM on August 17, 2011 [11 favorites]

Now that traditional charcuterie has made a comeback aspic and various savory jellies are well.... Back. The prime example is a Galantine
posted by Ad hominem at 8:52 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh, wow. Mick Jagger just had his escripette write me. I’ve been thinking about the sandwich I’d serve to Mick for years. This is brilliant. This could be the big one. It’s not that the sandwich I serve him will make me; it’s the entire experience Mick has that will make me. The sandwich just needs to be interesting to Mick—he’ll probably nibble on wine gums and field calls the whole time...

What’s Mick’s sandwich, then? Something I like to call “Glucilage Love.” A three-dimensional tableau where two whole foxes playfully court one another around a life-size picnic basket, and the whole thing is in a large cube of aspic.

-Chris Onstad, "The Sandwich Duel"
posted by Iridic at 8:53 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Aspic, in case you were wondering, is…

…delicious.

I got scooped by MadGastronomer on the terminology, though.
posted by Nomyte at 8:53 PM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Was always a fan of larks tongues in aspic.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 8:55 PM on August 17, 2011 [15 favorites]

Topped with whipped cream and other delights
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 8:56 PM on August 17, 2011

I'm trying to decide between which of these two wins:

Vincent Price's un-wealthy Wellington (must be read imagining Vincent Price's voice speaking all of it..."Place seeeam-side down on greased cookie sheet." Etc.)

or,

Whatever the food JATZ has the tang which brings out the full flavour There is no substitute for Quality
posted by dubitable at 8:56 PM on August 17, 2011

James Lileks has been doing this for years, complete with hilarious captions.

Also, previously, one of my favorite AskMe reactions.
posted by schmod at 8:59 PM on August 17, 2011 [8 favorites]

Aspic is awesome. Haters gonna hate, ah well, more for me, etc.

Also, 50 years from now they're going to be horrified at your Big Macs and Easy Mac too.
posted by ifjuly at 9:01 PM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Also, 50 years from now they're going to be horrified at your Big Macs and Easy Mac too.

...50 years from now...?
posted by dubitable at 9:02 PM on August 17, 2011 [6 favorites]

From askme

Searches google for chicken in aspic...
AAAAGH!

Cracks me up, I had a cat that would only eat chicken in aspic canned food, he knew what was good.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:04 PM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Also, 50 years from now they're going to be horrified at your Big Macs and Easy Mac too.

Are you kidding? In 50 years, people will still be loving Big Macs and they will still taste exactly the same as they do today.

I say this, by the way, as someone who has never eaten a Big Mac.
posted by Dasein at 9:07 PM on August 17, 2011

"It was like a Nine Inch Nails video."
posted by brennen at 9:07 PM on August 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

The first time I encountered aspic was at a pot luck dinner the moms in my Cub Scout troop organized. The was this clear wiggly stuff with things suspended in it on the buffet table and I recall much snickering at the fact that it was called aspic.
posted by longsleeves at 9:14 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

HA! Proof that it IS Kraft Dinner, and not Kraft Macaroni and Cheese right here (scroll to the bottom).
posted by BozoBurgerBonanza at 9:15 PM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Is that what that is? I couldn't even figure out what the yellow ring was.
posted by Hypocrite_Lecteur at 9:28 PM on August 17, 2011

I love making terrines but as a vegetarian I don't want to use gelatin. For others so inclined, use agar.
posted by unliteral at 9:28 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Oh god. I have a cookbook from the 50's that actually suggests covering an entire platter of deli cold cuts with a mixture of gelatin and chicken broth and serving it at a summer luncheon. My jaw actually dropped in horror the first time I read it.
posted by katyggls at 9:29 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I like aspic. My mother made aspic dishes sometimes. I used to make it as an emergency food for my cats if they got sick. It at least kept them eating.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:32 PM on August 17, 2011

I'm going to have to get a filament of this and sic it on the Makerbot.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:33 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

My Mom used to make tomato aspic. Oh, ick, tomato Jello. Texture, color, all wrong. She didn't make very many 50s foods - no mini-marshmallows, no unidentifiable stuff in Jello, few meals that required cream of something soup, and lots of vegetables and salads. Thanks, Mom, for never making anything that looked like any of these pictures.
posted by theora55 at 9:37 PM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: Community Weblog in Aspic
posted by Grimgrin at 9:41 PM on August 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

A few weeks in I start getting nostalgic for salad. The next night the pride of place is some chopped raw vegetables swimming in what must have been a complete jar of mayonnaise, which I think she must have gone down to the USA Store to get just for me.

I think mayonnaise is pretty popular in East Asian cuisine. My Korean soon-to-be-in-laws make a fruit salad with tons of mayonnaise. There's also that Kewpie brand of Japanese mayo.

But back on topic: mmm...meat spreads.
posted by jessssse at 9:46 PM on August 17, 2011

Turn to sandwiches.

Brought to you by the Sandwich Council of America.
posted by jessssse at 9:51 PM on August 17, 2011

This is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their chicken wedged into their jello or why...
posted by schmod at 9:57 PM on August 17, 2011 [5 favorites]

Crown Jewel Dessert as a mold, a pie, and a spring-form pan dessert. Or a geometric art installation.
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 10:00 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

BTW my Mom made Real aspic not that JellO swill.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:00 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hah, shothotbot, whenever my grandparents (from China) visited us, they'd take bagged salad mix and boil it. I guess some concepts just don't translate very well.

And I wish I could join you lot at snickering over aspic, but I just learned - thanks to that Ask thread - that it's a major ingredient in xiaolongbao. Trying to decide whether I'll boycott them from now on, but oh, how very delicious they are, and how very weak my self-resolve is!
posted by estlin at 10:00 PM on August 17, 2011

Oh my. This has triggered a memory of a Thanksgiving potluck luncheon we had at my first job out of college. Tiny office, and the IT lady came in all proud with an aspic of Campbell's tomato soup and baby shrimp. In a bundt mold. She was grubbin' on it and so pleased with it, and the rest of us sat in polite, mute horror. I felt bad that I really couldn't take a slice.
posted by smirkette at 10:05 PM on August 17, 2011

The best part of making your own chicken stock is sneaking little bits of the cooled, jellied stock out of the fridge and snacking on them. I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR WHO I AM
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:06 PM on August 17, 2011 [9 favorites]

Oh wow I just yesterday found out there is a French slur for the English that translate to " Eaters of Jelly"
posted by The Whelk at 10:17 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Even today, Kraft et al try to carry on with their nefarious recipes...
posted by Salmonberry at 10:17 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Smirkette, my mother still brings that disgusting gelatinous, shrimpy, mould to potlucks. She swears people love it.
posted by sadtomato at 10:18 PM on August 17, 2011

Even today, Kraft et al try to carry on with their nefarious recipes...

Oh. My. God.
posted by converge at 10:21 PM on August 17, 2011

Mark my words: aspic is coming back. I was right about marrow, I was right about Swedish meatballs, and darnit, I'm right about this.
posted by Gilbert at 10:48 PM on August 17, 2011 [6 favorites]

I love stuff like this.

What is "Camp Pie (in jelly)"? Is it a Spam-type product?
posted by thehmsbeagle at 10:49 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I probably shouldn't admit this, but until now, I had no idea that aspic essentially equaled Studynets/Studenetz. To me it always sounded much more exotic and spice-filled. Language certainly is a funny thing.

Somehow as a kid, this was one dish I just couldn't bring myself to eat. Nobody in the family has made it for years, and now part of me is wondering what I was missing.
posted by sardonyx at 10:50 PM on August 17, 2011

Chicken Cake.
posted by converge at 10:50 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

You like that, you'll love the gallery of regretable food
posted by joelf at 11:10 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Lime jello w/ chopped onions.
Mix in cottage cheese
set in ring mold
seafood salad in the center

Office Xmas party here I come!
posted by Lukenlogs at 11:23 PM on August 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Not quite as scary as anything in aspic, but this Betty Crocker Eggs in Bologna Cups recipe has terrified me since I was small.
posted by esmerelda_jenkins at 11:43 PM on August 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

I (accidentally) made chicken in aspic for my dog, I installed IE for my daughter, I joined Facebook for my son...

I am horrified by what I have become.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 11:51 PM on August 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

It doesn't seem all that bad to me. I used to get these pork pies when I was a kid, and they had this kind of jelly at the edges, and I imagine that it would be like that. The moist porky jelly was the best bit of the pie.
posted by Not Supplied at 12:09 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

I (accidentally) made chicken in aspic for my dog, I installed IE for my daughter, I joined Facebook for my son...

I am horrified by what I have become.

You've become a person on facebook that likes savoury jelly and cooks for their dog. Might as well face it.
posted by Not Supplied at 12:10 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

Blech. Galareta. Meat suspended in meat Jell-O. Or fish suspended in fish Jell-O.

But if you have to eat this stuff, it might be cool to fill a large, clear bowl with what looks like fish swimming in an aquarium.
posted by pracowity at 12:12 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

Larks' Tongues in Aspic
posted by homunculus at 12:38 AM on August 18, 2011

Self-link, but I was curious about tomato aspic, and had to try it...
posted by litlnemo at 12:48 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

> Not quite as scary as anything in aspic, but this Betty Crocker Eggs in Bologna Cups recipe has terrified me since I was small.

Are you insane? That is a baked egg in a cup of meat. It is brilliant! Replace bologna with porscuitto or ham, and you have haute cuisine.

You have to remember, a time when things like bologna, packets of jello, cans of cream of mushroom soup, and so on were NEW and MODERN. So new in fact, that people needed to learn how to cook with them because they hadn't ever seen them before. Add in a rising middle class as a result of the post WWII economic growth in the US, and people were all over these crazy new food trends. The culinary nerd in me is both delighted and aghast that my grandfather was probably behind things such as this Spry cookbook during his time as managing the marketing for the product during the 30s and 40s.
posted by mrzarquon at 1:07 AM on August 18, 2011 [5 favorites]

Blech. Galareta.

And I was coming here to sing its praises - who is the true Pole here, mmm?
posted by Meatbomb at 1:55 AM on August 18, 2011

Kholodets! I'd love to like it, but it's pretty much the only food I get squeamish about. Not even retro around here.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 2:16 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

Funny how many people here were grossed out by salmiakki, but love aspic. ;)
(reverse that for me, will never understand most meat eaters, larks' tongues?? really?)
posted by usagizero at 2:53 AM on August 18, 2011

Apparently there have been significant advancements in food photography in the last 40 years.
posted by nathancaswell at 4:50 AM on August 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

What really strikes my eye is how small a portion of these fifty-year old meals is pasta/grain/bread. They're primarily proteins, fats, fruits and vegetables. Many of these meals are much better for you than most of the crap people eat today. As long as you don't eat the whole freaking tray.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:06 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

that's a good point too--collectinb cookbooks is a big hobby of mine and one thing that fascinates me is the way food photography changes over the years. it makes me sad a bit for some of the super awesome cookbook authors--marcella hazan comes to mind--whose books from 25+ years ago are full of incredible food with pictures that are, to contemporary tastes, less than appetizing simply because of say, lighting alone.
posted by ifjuly at 5:06 AM on August 18, 2011

"If it's in jelly, you know it's good."

Best tag line ever.
posted by lollusc at 5:18 AM on August 18, 2011

Wife went to a relative's house last year for lunch and was served aspic. She said it was delightful.

But I don't want delightful. I want to make one of those mondo lime jello onion marshmallow coconut seafood molded things and show up at a gathering with it. (Actually, a retro-recipe potluck would be a hell of a lotta fun)

This thread makes me happy.
posted by pianoboy at 5:31 AM on August 18, 2011 [2 favorites]

I explained to my brother-in-law last week where jello comes from. I think he hates me and jello now.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:48 AM on August 18, 2011

I had three challenging days getting hospital dieticians to understand Jello was inappropriate for my vegitarian diet, please bring me something else. My nurses were getting concerned my digestive system hadn't re-started post-surgery and were considering enema's til they realized I wasn't eating; the nurses got the dieticians to change my meals to ACTUAL vegetarian foods.

Even as a non-vegitarian, I won't eat Jello. Fruit flavored gellied meat stock? No thank you.
posted by _paegan_ at 6:05 AM on August 18, 2011

You understand that straight gelatin isn't sweet, right? Gelatin (and other dissolved connective tissues) is what makes meat taste good.
posted by gjc at 6:45 AM on August 18, 2011 [2 favorites]

My Mom used to make tomato aspic. Oh, ick, tomato Jello. Texture, color, all wrong.

Theora55 are you my long lost sister? Oh god my childhood nightmare-- my mother's fascination with aspic and gelatin. Tomato aspic was horrifying but the lime jello with mayonnaise, raw onion, and celery was vomitous. I seem to remember some sort of pea in creamy aspic as well. Yet I do love chicken aspic. I often boil my roast chicken carcasses down to gelatinous broth and it really does improve cold chicken salad, making it moist and tender.

Still, after all these years, I have an aversion to finding things implanted in jello. I could never enjoy the walnut, pineapple, green bell pepper, and onion nuggets that ruined a perfectly good dessert. Jello has always been mouthfeel over flavor for me and I loath finding anything chewy among the smooth.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:31 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

that's a good point too--collectinb cookbooks is a big hobby of mine and one thing that fascinates me is the way food photography changes over the years. it makes me sad a bit for some of the super awesome cookbook authors--marcella hazan comes to mind--whose books from 25+ years ago are full of incredible food with pictures that are, to contemporary tastes, less than appetizing simply because of say, lighting alone.

Oh man, do I hear you. I collect Time-Life Foods of the World Books—they're total treasures from the late sixties and early 70s, capturing the very tail end of a time when food and food culture was still intensely regional and some isolated groups were still making their traditional speck, aquavit, kasse, whatever, in literally exactly the same way they had for centuries. They're mostly wonderfully written and edited—M. K. Fischer, Julia Child, and James Beard were some of the writers—and they're full of that lush, oversaturated 70s photography, with luridly intense colors (I always think of a spread from the Scandinavian cooking book—varieties of smorrebrod, variously with electric-blue cheese, tiny eraser-pink shrimps, and a fire engine-red dollop of steak tartare with a bright orange egg yolk plopped on to). I love looking at them and find them an invaluable resource, but a lot of people who see them just cannot get past that crazy-looking photography.

The super-bright narrow depth-of-field photography popular right now will look stupid in a few years, too. I want to see what the food actually *looks* like, not what one sesame seed on top of it looks like!
posted by peachfuzz at 8:24 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

_paegan_: "I had three challenging days getting hospital dieticians to understand Jello was inappropriate for my vegitarian diet, please bring me something else. My nurses were getting concerned my digestive system hadn't re-started post-surgery and were considering enema's til they realized I wasn't eating; the nurses got the dieticians to change my meals to ACTUAL vegetarian foods. "

<sub>I've posted about this in other threads, but, depending on your reasons for being a vegetarian, you probably shouldn't worry about eating products that contain animal gelatin. If your concern is about minimizing harm to animals, I wouldn't worry -- Gelatin is made out of animal bones, which generally have no other viable use once the animal has been stripped of its meat. If the bones aren't being used to produce gelatin, they're generally just disposed of.

This isn't a variation on the "Eating one burger won't kill a cow" argument. The supply of animal bones vastly exceeds the demand for Gelatin; especially in the US, where beef gelatin is not widely used. Unless you manage to double or triple the quantity of gelatin being consumed in the US, no additional animals will be killed as a result of your consumption. Also, it's not exactly a profit center for the meat industry, given that the laws of economics dictates that the vast excess supply of animal bones will drive their prices down to rock-bottom levels.

Wearing leather, or eating unsustainably-harvested crops is a whole lot less animal-friendly than eating Jello.</sub>
posted by schmod at 8:31 AM on August 18, 2011

I want to make one of those mondo lime jello onion marshmallow coconut seafood molded things and show up at a gathering with it.

I guess. But the Juggalos are just gonna end up throwing hunks of it at each other.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 8:49 AM on August 18, 2011

And I was coming here to sing its praises - who is the true Pole here, mmm?

I'm more a true Scotsman, but one generation removed, and definitely not the sort of truish Scotsman who eats meat.
posted by pracowity at 9:03 AM on August 18, 2011

This kind of stuff is why I always get crabby when people talk about "just like mom used to make" and the new version, "don't eat anything your grandma wouldn't recognize as food." My grandmother NEVER cooked anything but beef and mashed potatoes--no seasoning allowed, because spices are weird foreign stuff that's used to cover up the taste of spoiled food. My other grandmother didn't cook--it would cut into her chain-smoking time. My mother made pork chops that were like eating a shoe (I will never eat a pork chop again, I swear) and cherry Jell-O with CELERY in it.
posted by WorkingMyWayHome at 9:13 AM on August 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

Vincent Price's un-wealthy Wellington (must be read imagining Vincent Price's voice speaking all of it..."Place seeeam-side down on greased cookie sheet." Etc.)

I love that the entire recipe is presented as a quotation by Vincent Price. I'm going to start imagining all my recipes being read by Vincent Price now.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:29 AM on August 18, 2011

Oh my... a "savory mustard mold". Ingredients: water, gelatin, mayonnaise, mustard, salt, paprika, heavy cream.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:33 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

This kind of stuff is why I always get crabby when people talk about "just like mom used to make" and the new version, "don't eat anything your grandma wouldn't recognize as food." My grandmother NEVER cooked anything but beef and mashed potatoes--no seasoning allowed, because spices are weird foreign stuff that's used to cover up the taste of spoiled food. My other grandmother didn't cook--it would cut into her chain-smoking time. My mother made pork chops that were like eating a shoe (I will never eat a pork chop again, I swear) and cherry Jell-O with CELERY in it.

That's hilarious. I dated a guy for a long time whose mother grew up in the 40s and 50s and really, truly still believed in the promise of Scientific! and Progressive! and Labor Saving! processed foods. I ate a lot of plates of food at her house that were uniformly beige—cream of X soup over baked chicken, canned or instant potatoes, frozen cauliflower. Velveeta everywhere. His grandmother had a handful of things she made from scratch, stuff from her childhood—biscuits, fried chicken—but mostly she was a true believer, too, in all the wonderful easy-to-make foods that started popping up when she was a young mother.

Industrial processed food is such a strange thing, and even stranger when you think about the fact that it's only really existed for seventy years or so. But that's long enough for there to basically be no one left who did daily shopping and cooking before it existed in any meaningful way.
posted by peachfuzz at 9:34 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

One day, shortly after my boyfriend had moved in with us, my mother came over to witness me...making chicken stock!

She was horrified. Seriously horrified. You can buy that in a can, you know! You don't have to do that!

It took me a little while to get it, but she was a farmgirl, born in 1938. She was also an adventurer type when she was young, a programmer in the 1960s, and then, after she had kids, a housewife. Because that's what you did. When you got married, you quit your job, had kids, and took care of the house for the rest of your life. Cooking was a chore to her, and when she saw me making chicken stock from scratch, shortly after having a man move in with me, she had a genuine fear that it had somehow happened to me, too. It took me a while, but she did eventually understand that I actually like cooking--learned it from my dad--and do it because I want to, not because my boyfriend demanded it. (Hell, his grandmother's special meal for the kids was Spaghettios with SUGAR added to it! I could have probably made him Spaghettios without the sugar and he'd have thought I was a master chef.)

So whenever I see these horrible foods, especially the processed food recipes, from around that time, I think of her and of all the other women who had to cook for their families every single day, even if they hated it, even if they sucked at it, and I am all "YOU WILL EAT YOUR CUP STEAK PUDDING AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!"
posted by ernielundquist at 10:28 AM on August 18, 2011 [5 favorites]

I love aspic, and chopped liver, and beet soup, and smoked herring, and beets, herring, mayonnaise, potatoes, and carrots all put together. One person's yucky food is another person's nirvana.

What? I'm Russian.
posted by litnerd at 10:30 AM on August 18, 2011 [2 favorites]

I collect those old cookbooks. My personal favorites are "Pies Men Like" and "Cakes Men Love" and "She Cooks to Conquer". Not kidding.

One of the favorite recipes was a pineapple wrapped in halved hot dogs. Do you know what happens when you wrap a pineapple in halved hot dogs. I do. I tried it. For giggles. The color of the hot dog bleeds into the pineapple due to the acidity and the pineapple looks bloody. It's really quite fascinating.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:30 AM on August 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

So whenever I see these horrible foods, especially the processed food recipes, from around that time, I think of her and of all the other women who had to cook for their families every single day, even if they hated it, even if they sucked at it, and I am all "YOU WILL EAT YOUR CUP STEAK PUDDING AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!"

Yes, indeedy. That was my grandmother--who worked, thankyouverymuch, outside the home --she hated cooking but raised children during the '50s and '60s and did what was expected of her for a number of years. My mom was dragooned into cooking at the age of ten so that the family wouldn't have to suffer any longer. My mom's a great cook. I take after my grandmother.

As for the aspic blog, I'm sending it on to my mom who will appreciate it more. It's my lunch hour and this stuff is turning my stomach.
posted by librarylis at 10:55 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

After all that aspic, you might need to go on a diet.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:06 AM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

that makes me think of beverages and sandwiches your husband's friends will like authored by "one who knows".
posted by ifjuly at 11:10 AM on August 18, 2011

My favs are 1970s Funky Breakfast and Newest Look.
posted by marsha56 at 12:07 PM on August 18, 2011

Yep, I think to my mother's generation, processed food represented some sort of liberation from spending hours in the kitchen every day; I know my mother always felt cooking was drudgery and she never felt very good at it. Before she got married in the 50s, she learned how to cook 7 entrees--one for each day of the week--and never got much beyond that. I grew up eating "Ladies Home Journal" quick dinner recipes (I thought for a while that every meal started by browning some ground beef and chopped onion and green pepper).

I have the luxury of not having to come up with a dinner every day (no kids, and my honey rarely eats dinner), so cooking is more fun for me, and I'm fascinated by trying to make everything myself. I'm getting into making yogurt now and came this close to buying canning supplies yesterday.
posted by WorkingMyWayHome at 12:15 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

esmerelda_jenkins - if you sub the bologna (blech) for salami, my family made these for us when we were little. It was fun AND delicious!
posted by pinky at 1:02 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

When I was a kid, there was this awesome deli/bakery at the mall that always had great little pastries and at least two kinds of awesome headcheese.

Now, headcheese is getting increasingly difficult to find reliably especially at the chain supermarkets.
posted by porpoise at 3:03 PM on August 18, 2011

lime jello marshmallow cottage cheese surprise
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:25 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

I am now eating a headcheese sandwich. Thanks converge!
posted by porpoise at 4:12 PM on August 18, 2011

Oh my... a "savory mustard mold". Ingredients: water, gelatin, mayonnaise, mustard, salt, paprika, heavy cream.

Call me an utter madman who should be shot before being allowed to enter a kitchen... but, I'm imagining a thin slice of this in a ham sandwich and, well, it sounds kinda workable.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:27 PM on August 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm imagining a thin slice of this in a ham sandwich and, well, it sounds kinda workable.

Sounds fairly close to the ingredients for my great-aunt's mustard ring recipe and and when I still ate meat that was one my favorite ways of consuming ham. It was also particularly delicious on smoked turkey. I've made it a few times with agar to keep it vegetarian and it worked very well on cheese sandwiches with gherkins. YMMV.

As far as aspic goes, I was (and still am) an adventurous eater as a child and my mom would make tomato aspic with chopped celery, in a fish-shaped copper mold, and put sliced stuffed green olives into the scale pattern of the mold. And I would eat that shit up. If my siblings didn't care for it, that was their problem, just meant more for me.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 6:13 AM on August 19, 2011

yum. tomato aspic is one of my favorites--provided it's made with care. we're not talkin' congealed campbell's here. so good. once a year during lent calvary episcopal church here in town does waffle shop, this tradition of making cafeteria classics from as far back as the '20s when it started, providing lunch for those attending the midday sermon series. fish pudding, tomato aspic, chicken and waffles smothered in gravy, bourbon pie...sigh. now i'm hungry.
posted by ifjuly at 8:51 AM on August 19, 2011