28 Surprisingly Delicious Great Depression Recipes You Should Try - Page 2 of 2 (2024)

FAQs

What food did people eat during Great Depression? ›

Perhaps one hobo acquired a few carrots from a charitable person, while another stole an onion off a box car, while another had a few potatoes from a farm he worked on briefly… From this concoction, a “hobo stew,” also known as “Mulligan/Mulligatawney stew” was born and became the traditional food of the hobo.

They were referred to as 'makeshift sandwiches'. There were butter and sugar sandwiches, onion sandwiches, ketchup sandwiches and raw carrots and salted peanuts sandwiches. Another using nuts were walnuts, mayo and some lettuce on bread.

Potatoes were also inexpensive and used extensively. Some meals even used both. One of these meals was called the Poor Man's Meal. It combined potatoes, onions, and hot dogs into one hearty, inexpensive dish, which was perfect for the hard times people had fallen on.

Rice pudding was considered a cheap but delicious luxury snack or dessert during the Depression. It was the "stick to your ribs" type of food that became popular out of necessity. Luckily, this is one dish that was tasty as well, and there have been many variations over the years.

From Hunger to Hope. From frozen foods to Jell-O molds, the 1930s and 40s saw a huge upsurge in convenience foods. Building on the popularity of brands like Wonder Bread, Kool-Aid, Velveeta Cheese, and Hostess Cakes, American supermarkets stocked up on mass-produced items.

Food was always home cooked, and people usually ate bread, vegetables, meat, etc. The most common meal was made of a composite dish with one portion of proteins (meat, eggs, fish, cheese, pulses), one portion of potatoes, pasta, or bread, and two portions of vegetables, followed by fruit as dessert.

Mulligan stew, also known as hobo stew, is a type of stew said to have been prepared by American hobos in camps in the early 1900s. Another variation of mulligan stew is "community stew", a stew put together by several homeless people by combining whatever food they have or can collect.

Where did homeless people get food during the Great Depression? ›

Great Depression bread lines, food lines, and soup lines worked hard to feed those who could not afford to feed themselves. These lines, run by charities like the Red Cross, saw hundreds of people lined up for bread, soup, or a hot beverage.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Through the hardships of the Great Depression and the lean years that followed, peanut butter and mayonnaise kept many struggling households afloat. They were also the ingredients in a sandwich that was once as popular as peanut butter and jelly in parts of the South.

The cheese dream, an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich, became popular in the U.S. during the Great Depression. U.S. government cookbooks describe Navy cooks broiling "American cheese filling sandwiches" during World War II.

The popularity of the grilled cheese sandwich grew rapidly during the Great Depression, when people were struggling to make ends meet and had limited resources. Grilled cheese sandwich was a cheap and easy meal that could be prepared with basic ingredients, and it soon became a staple food in many households.

By the time of the Great Depression, people of all classes were routinely eating outside the home. Like other retail businesses, restaurants reduced their prices at the depth of the crisis.

Big families could be fed with soups from leftover meats, beans, and home-grown vegetables. Homemakers made many varieties of soup from available foods. The results included split pea, chicken-rice, potato-onion, bean, hamburger, and all vegetable. Dumplings were a filling addition to complement the soup.

Almost all farm families raised large gardens with vegetables and canned fruit from their orchards. They had milk and cream from their dairy cattle. Chickens supplied meat and eggs. They bought flour and sugar in 50-pound sacks and baked their own bread.

1930s: Lobster, Capon, Potatoes Rissole

Chicken dishes were popular, with roasted capon (a castrated and fattened male chicken) becoming a particularly trendy choice. Potatoes rissole - small, whole potatoes fried crispy brown on the outside - were popular as a side.