The Most Popular Recipes of the 1950s (2024)

FAQs

What was the most popular dish in the 1950s? ›

As you can see from the decade's top recipes, the 1950s were all about the intersection of comfort food and convenience—casseroles and quick dishes like Chicken a la King and Welsh rarebit reigned supreme.

Items like pancakes, sausages, meatloaf, burgers, and sandwiches were standard on diner menus, and still are today. The meals were priced low, making diners popular even before their rise in the 1950s.

Popular packaged foods included Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Special K cereals, General Mills' Trix and Cocoa Puffs cereals, Star-Kist Tuna, Minute Rice, Eggo Waffles, Pepperidge Farm Cookies, Ruffles potato chips, Rice-A-Roni, Ramen Noodles, and Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream.

School lunches in the 50s were pretty much like the meat and two veg in diners at the time. There was only one lunch, no choice. Typically it would be a ham slice with pineapple, mashed potatoes and gravy amd green beans. Or turkey and dressing or Salisbury steak.

In addition to Coronation Chicken, Chicken Tetrazzini.

Roast turkey, stuffed goose, ham aged in Grandpa's smokehouse, hot rolls, hot biscuits, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, preserves and jellies, and, of course, mince pies, sweet potato pies, white and dark fruitcakes, all kinds of other delectable desserts, nuts, and raisins, and brandy for the gentlemen.

The history of TV dinners traces back to the 1950s, a time when television was becoming a central part of American culture. As families gathered around their TV sets, the need for quick and easy meals arose.

The slang of the period was US teenspeak, much of it inherited from the argot of jazz: far-out (1954), with it (1959), and swinging (1957), a gas (1955) and the most (1953) (all terms of approval), split the scene (leave; 1956) and see you later, alligator (said when parting; 1954), anything ending in -ville (e.g. ...

1950s Dinners

You'd find hearty main dishes like Salisbury steak, beef stroganoff and meat loaf on a '50s dinner menu, plus scrumptious sides. Casseroles were also popular, particularly those featuring seafood or ham.

What was the most popular food in 1957? ›

1957's Three Most Often Requested Recipes Were Casseroles; Paella, Jambalaya, Chicken Marengo Topped List - The New York Times.

1957: Refrigerated cookie dough.

Hot Tamales

This retro candy was the "hot" new candy of the 50's. Hot Tamales were on the lips of every boy and girl and promised an intense taste of spicy cinnamon.

It started in the 1950's. McDonald's and Burger Chef, then Burger King and Wendy's.

Today, fast food is often viewed as being low quality in exchange for speed and convenience. However, in the 1950s, fast food was viewed as pure Americana with chain fast food franchises seen as an extension of the popular American Diner. The fast food explosion of the 1950s began with McDonald's.

It started with White Castle in the 1920's and built upon by McDonald's in the 1940's, and by the 50's the popularity of fast food was growing quickly. Entrepreneurs of the decade learned that people enjoyed quick service, affordability and consistency.

In fact, a pineapple upside down cake won the first Dole recipe contest in 1926. By the 1950s and 1960s, the cake was at the peak of its popularity perhaps because of the ease of using boxed cake mixes, which were increasingly available in the post WWII years, says Bon Appetit.

​Pizza​ Italian pizza is probably the most famous food in the world.