Chapter 1: What are desperation pies and their historical significance?
Cottage cheese is just this glowing monolith, you know, doesn't matter whether you acknowledge it or not. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we ask, what do you feel like eating today? And Sarah Archer, I lured you on here as our kitchen correspondent to talk with me about American food trends.
And we would each kind of just talk about a handful of things that we personally like and are interested in. Because I think we're kind of awash in food trends at the moment. And we're kind of at peak food trend because I feel like... Do you feel like every time you're on social media, someone's like... let's try the viral recipe for a thing you've never heard of.
And you're like, oh yeah, of course, the viral recipe I've never heard of. And in the olden days, it took at least a few months for something, specifically a recipe, to work its way through the newspaper and word of mouth and so on. And I just, I love trends in food as a way of learning about what people were going through and continue to go through and almost...
hilariously repeating cycles and so we're going to talk about desperation pies desperation pies and cake and so forth yeah i immediately love this and is it desperation as in like the great depression or is it desperation in like more of an existential way Here's what's great, right, is that I've definitely always heard about like water pie and vinegar pie. Exactly. And Ritz cracker pie.
Ritz cracker. Mock apple pie. Which is which is mock apple pie. Yeah. Which was on the box for Ritz crackers through the 90s, apparently, or until the 90s. Yeah. Which I really like that they were like, yeah, we know you want to make the pie. You're desperate to make the pie.
But yeah, I have always heard of them as depression pies, but they are even more deeply within that desperation pies because I think like the pies I just named were all being made. Well, not Ritz pie because Ritz crackers were invented and rolled out in 1934. I think they're a depression cracker through and through.
But those pies are like desperation pies that people were also making in the late 19th century and also on the frontier, right? which is very interesting. Oh, that is fascinating. And one of the themes here is that I guess we're looking at two trends that I don't think are as in opposition as people sometimes act like they are, which are desperation and convenience.
They go together like peanut butter and chocolate. They do. And they taste good together frequently. Water pie is basically a mock custard pie where you use water instead of milk or cream. And it is apparently quite good. I realized today that I should have made all these pies so I could tell you about it with more accuracy. Yeah, we can revisit that.
Yeah, let's go make the pie and come back and discuss. But tell me about what, well, first of all, tell us who you are and your kind of work in the kitchen arena and what you're going to tell us about today.
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Chapter 2: How did food trends change during the Great Depression?
Yeah.
And a lot of it is about the advertising and kind of mythos around the kitchen. So it's sort of less a literal study of kind of what everybody's kitchen was actually like and more a survey of like the ideal kitchen and kind of how that was marketed to American consumers and what it meant.
And what was the ideal kitchen at that time? And do you have a sense? I guess there's like our culture is a lot less unified maybe today, but at least from like, you know, from an anecdotal perspective or whatever kind of sense you have of this, like, is there an ideal kitchen today? Like, what do those look like to you?
So I have kind of a working theory about this. I would say in terms of the post-war era, so the kitchen historically had been, it was a site of work. And up until about the 1920s, it tended to be either just things in your dwelling that you used to heat up food and water because you maybe lived in one room or two rooms, or you were wealthy and you had people to do that for you.
So that was a room that you didn't go into. Right. So there wasn't really the idea of the kitchen as a place where you hang out. Right. Is a relatively new idea.
Well, or I guess in the sense that maybe in the like, if we're talking about, you know, let's say you and I are settling on a farm in Connecticut. Mm hmm. And I'm imagining a scenario described in one of my favorite books, More Work for Mother. Mm hmm.
And we would like basically live in one room probably as like, you know, small farmers and kind of like cottage industrialists and people like, you know, kind of doing a lot of little different kinds of work here and there. And we would probably have like a hearth with a fire with like a big pot or a cauldron, I guess, on top of it. We would be having some stew, probably.
I mean, is that fair to say? More or less. You might have a cast iron stove.
You might have two or three rooms. Nice. And you might hang out in the room that's most warm, which is also going to be the room where you cook food. So in as much as it's sort of it's a marker of how class in America has changed and what we expect and want for ourselves. And so there's kind of the way that kitchen technology was presented to computer to computers. Right.
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Chapter 3: What role did wartime rationing play in American cooking?
And it coincides with the beginning of the jet age.
Oh, OK.
Tell us about that. So this is kind of a nifty kind of parallel. So the Boeing 707, not to like, you know, complicate the vibes by bringing up Boeing.
No, I love the vibes.
Premieres in 1958. That was kind of the big high profile new jet. And it basically it's jet engines that replaced propeller planes. So if you there was tourism and there absolutely were people going. But if you were to fly, say, from like New York to London or New York to Paris in 1952, that would have taken you somewhere between 12 and 15 hours. Jet engines cut that about in half.
So what we're used to where like going from the East Coast of the U.S. to Europe is roughly like six, seven, eight hours, something like that. That starts to be true in late 50s and early 60s. It is still very expensive.
So if maybe like one percent of the population was traveling to Europe by propeller plane and like reenacting the scene from Funny Face, walking down the steps of the Louvre every once or twice a year. Then a few years later in the jet age, it's still a tiny percentage. It just means that it's more upper middle class people rather than strictly just wealthy people.
Upper middle class people are going to Europe. They are taking vacations in Hawaii, which in 1959 becomes a U.S. state. They are engaging in the fantasy of a nearby paradise like Acapulco. They're visiting the Caribbean. All of this
creates an interest and a buzz in the larger sort of American psyche because you can experience a version of it, like a mediated version of that, by either going to Disney World or going to a World's Fair. And you can do both of those things by going to New York or going to Florida.
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Chapter 4: How did post-war convenience foods shape American kitchens?
And you're like, what about a scotch egg?
What about, you know, there's no limitless Canada baked ham with pickled dressing on cheddar cheese bread. It's like, sure, that's as Canadian as Canada pie. Exactly. Exactly. And then what's... Oh, and the USA sliced turkey with cranberry dressing on whole wheat bread. Something that no American eats on a daily basis, but that makes me think of Thanksgiving. So, yeah, it's fun.
It's all over the place.
And it also does this kind of visually, it sort of standardizes... um, instead of like an idiosyncratic kind of things around the world sort of appear in different shapes and forms and might be one, you know, something might be a stew and the next thing might be a hand pie. Everything is a sandwich.
So it kind of uses the sandwich as like an organizing principle to give, to sort of snap the entire world into a grid where like everything, do you know what I mean? Like you can kind of find, um, yeah.
To put the whole world between two slices of bread, if you will. Exactly. If you will, if you will. And then put an incomprehensible dressing on it. I have a question for you. Yeah. That I feel like I hear this referenced a lot. And it sounds like it could be a myth to me. I might have even asked this before. So if I have, I'm sorry. But the idea is that cake mixes were invented.
American housewives didn't want to buy them because they didn't feel like they were doing enough. And so they didn't need an egg. But the cake mix people were like, OK, add an egg. Then you'll feel like you're baking. So I have heard this too. And I feel like I've heard people repeat that.
Is that true? I have heard that this is a myth, but that the myth itself is instructive because it kind of shows that there's an attachment to the idea that people need to do this, that like the egg kind of like women want to bake eggs. Ultimately, it's like their biological destiny to bake in like a labor intensive way. So I think that's like you're talking about the kind of like Betty Crocker.
Some people were meant to bake. Some people were meant to cook everything in a rice cooker and they throw it all. in there and see what the fuck happens. Exactly. It's usually I mean, it cooks it, you know, one way or the other.
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Chapter 5: What are the cultural implications of mid-century American food?
And they're like and they're amazed. And it's like a trick. And so it's more commonly known as wacky cake. I'm going to try it now. I'm inspired to try it. That's like it's it sounds like a miracle. It's fantastic.
And I think there's an interesting psychological difference between wacky cake and cake mix, because if you make something with a cake mix, which is operating on about the same principle, although it does have an egg. then you're like, oh, whatever, it's just cake mix.
But if you make a wacky cake, you're just throwing together a few dry ingredients and then adding a few liquids, mixing it together and baking it. But you've performed a miracle because you put the dry ingredients together.
It's like you've performed science, like you've done science and it's kind of like this incredible kind of chemical reaction that is just with stuff in your pantry. It's kind of cool to be able to do that.
Right. And so I feel like there's, like, the need to do that if you want to impress people. Because, like, one of the things that it seems like people have kind of always been reluctant to admit about cake mix is that a good cake mix tastes about the same as, like, a good homemade cake. Yeah, a cake mix is fine. It's absolutely fine. Yeah.
I mean, there's, like, different kinds of cake and many that you can't get with a mix. But if you just... I mean, like... Cake is cake. Yeah.
And it's also one of those things that I think in a strange way. I mean, I personally, I am not a fan generally of kind of very fancy, like flourless cakes. Like that kind of doesn't really do it for me. Like I really want like birthday cake. Like that's what that would be. You know what I mean? Yeah, I want like the Duncan Hines slash wacky cake kind of a cake.
Duncan Hines, like frosting from a tub is like which and because I think that's kind of like as an adult, you don't have that a ton. Like there's not a ton of scenarios when that and if you don't have kids, there's not like cupcakes happening all the time. But if I do ever make something like that, it is really good.
I'll take that over like a fancy pants, you know, New York Times recipe section cake. Oh, yeah.
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Chapter 6: How do modern food trends reflect historical patterns?
Oh, good. Based on our adventures in Wacky Cake. Because one of the things about it that you might remember is that it calls for only about five tablespoons of oil. And so something that, you know, people who aren't scholars of World War II because they read the Mali books might not know is that during World War II, people were also instructed to collect oil
fat yes and donate it to wartime needs because it was it was useful i have a short produced by disney um that's going to explain it amazing wait okay first i'm showing you a poster so tell me what you see there okay i am seeing save waste fats for explosives take them to your meat dealer
There's a hand like a manicured hand holding a sort of cast iron skillet pouring what looks like rendered fat into an inferno from which it looks like bombs are exploding. Basically, so from the kitchen to the battlefield, like in two easy steps, take them to your meat dealer. That is that is an interesting command.
Exactly. Exactly. Okay. And then I sent you a link to the short and we're going to watch this together. So out of the frying pan and into the firing line. Wow. A Walt Disney production in Technicolor. Distributed and exhibited under auspices of the war activities. All right. It cut to some really beautiful looking bacon and eggs, which Minnie is making.
And Pluto, who is smelling the beautiful bacon smell. Isn't it weird to realize that Minnie is an immortal being? Yeah. And who has a pet.
Don't throw away that bacon grease. Housewives of America, one of the most important things you can do is to save your waste kitchen fats. Bacon grease, meat drippings, frying fats. We and our allies need millions of pounds of fat to help win the war.
Pluto is not pleased.
For fats make glycerin, and glycerin makes explosives. Every year, two billion pounds of waste kitchen fats are thrown away.
those idiots and what's cool is it kind of looks like a norman belgetti's patriot radio the radio that's in the the cartoon oh yeah oh yeah i see yes i mean the visuals are really good a skillet of bacon grease is a little munitions factory meat dripping sink axes warships
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of international cuisine in American culture?
A photo on the front of this kind of buffet laid out of the foods that you're going to be able to make in here, presumably.
most of which do look pretty bland and like broad interpretations on and also it's like foreign foreign flair what flair oh you know yeah exactly just foreign um 100 recipes from 18 countries main dishes desserts bread salads prize souvenirs from around the world and then you open it you sent me a couple pages it says around the world a la carte italy sweden india
And it's, again, like lovely pictures of these like fairly ambitious spreads that make sense as something that's being sort of written in haste recipe wise. Right. And it feels like you would it makes sense to me that you might have it kind of out as a way of showing the kind of person who you were and that you were, you know, interested in a new type of cooking.
Also, do you remember the Mad Men episode where Betty Draper does like an international buffet? Yeah.
I have not seen Mad Men. Oh, you haven't seen Mad Men? Oh, I know. Isn't that terrible?
So there's a season. OK, so the episode is called A Night to Remember. This is if you want to get into it. It's season two, episode eight. And Betty Draper, for context, is a very glamorous, like Bryn Mawr educated, pretty former model who's married to our protagonist, Don Draper, the ad man. And they have a house in Austin, I think.
And so there's a cocktail party or a dinner party in which she decides to basically cook as though from this cookbook. I think there's sort of Dutch beer, Heineken. There's, you know, different kind of, I think she makes rumaki. So there's a kind of like around the world sort of set of hors d'oeuvres and foods. And
And it turns out that this, she has unknowingly shopped at the local supermarket where Don's ad agency was doing an experiment, sort of putting different kind of like international foods in key areas, like end caps, to see if like educated consumers would do. And so she was the exact kind of like client that they were imagining and it worked.
And so then she gets, she's furious at him because she feels humiliated because everybody at the party is like, oh, you're experimenting on your wife. And in fact, I mean, essentially, they don't mention this cookbook, but this cookbook basically is like this episode, the book.
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Chapter 8: How do food choices reflect societal values and personal identity?
Or you might have one of those things to make up for a lack of fruit or ingredients generally. So you also have the sugar cream pie. Like something tart. Yeah. Or the vinegar pie, which is like using vinegar as a substitute for the kind of tart fruit flavoring and fruit pies are like, for example, maybe a rhubarb pie.
And I think it's like humbling how well these things work and how easy it is to like not fully trick our taste buds. But like a lot of these really like dirt cheap foods often hit the spot in a profoundly great way.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Mac and cheese. My God. I kind of what I often perceive on social media is that there's a kind of like authenticity arms race a little bit and that there is a kind of desire to find like the most obscure, the newest, the most authentic, the most highly specific, you know, restaurant that sort of serves food from a particular region of Cambodia. And it's very accurate.
And they only seat 16 people.
Yeah. Yeah, because food is always going to be a status symbol in as many ways as it can be. Because you know what's interesting about food, too, is that innovation will unceasingly happen because everyone has to keep eating something multiple times per day.
And also, it's going to take on more symbolic freight than it can possibly carry because, again, everyone has to relate to it every day of their lives, whether they have it or not. Yeah. If you have it, you're thinking about it. And if you don't have it, you're thinking about it more. Right. You're thinking about it more. Exactly. Let me read to you a little bit about pie.
I love hearing about pie. Okay. So this is from a book called Midwest Pie. This is from the introduction, which is by Phoebe McGrath. In these early colonial days, pies were practical foods. They created their own gravy and could be a complete meal on their own.
they also gave bakers an easy way to use odds and ends leftovers and dried produce it was the perfect culinary standby for yankees who like to think of themselves as thrifty pragmatic and full of common sense By the mid-19th century, pie had become much more than a practicality. It was a favorite breakfast of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and some people ate it three times a day.
One British journalist visiting the East Coast wrote that, quote, an unholy appetite for pie works untold woes in the American public, thus cementing the new country's love for pie as a nationalist snub of the stuffy Brits.
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