https://getpocket.com/explore/item/friday-food-post-the-economics-behind-grandma-s-tuna-casserolesby Megan McArdle
October 5, 2015
I was born to be a food snob.
I grew up on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1970s and 1980s, in the afterglow of the food revolution that moved the city, and then American food, away from bland mid-century concoctions toward something spicier and more diverse. And I was born to a woman who took all that very seriously.
the great blessing of my life is that my mother did not let me become a food snob. She was from a small town in middle America, and she did not view this as any great handicap. Nor did she look down on the culinary tradition she inherited from her mother, a “good plain cook” of the miracle-whip-and-white-bread Midwestern persuasion whose pie crust was infallible. We did not mess around with limp chicken breasts and cans of Campbell’s Soup, but I have eaten plenty of Jell-O salad, and liked it. (On summer days, I still occasionally crave shredded carrots and crushed pineapple embedded in orange jello made with ginger ale. Don’t sneer; it is delightful and refreshing.) Apples, bananas and raisins, dripping with Miracle Whip, were served as a salad in my house, and one of my favorite dishes from my grandmother was ground meat and pasta shells in Ragu. I still bake out of the Betty Crocker 1950 cookbook, and have never found a better guide to the classic American layer cake.
So I’m always a bit bemused when I read articles pondering why our grandparents cooked such dreadful food. True, reading about your grandmother’s idea of what constituted a nice Asian meal is a bit lip-puckering. But why are people forced into flights of fancy to explain why our near ancestors ate like this?
1. Most people like what's familiar
2. A lot of the ingredients we take for granted were expensive and hard to get
3. People were poorer.
4. The foods of today’s lower middle class are the foods of yesterday’s tycoons. (somewhat related to 2.)
5. More bad cooks actually cooked back then out of necessity. Today, they just order out.
6. Most immigrants that came here prior to the modern era came from cold climates with limited palates and variety.
7. Entertainment was a greater part of the meal back then because we didn't have instant gratification at our fingertips.
(Full story at link.)