11 Budget-Friendly Depression-Era Recipes That Are Still Delicious (2024)

FAQs

What were Great Depression meals? ›

Many cheap foods still common among the poor today made their debut during the Depression: Wonder Bread (1930), Bisquick (1931), Miracle Whip (1933), and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup (1934). Ragu spaghetti sauce, Kraft mac-n-cheese, and Hormel Spam all appeared during the Roosevelt Recession in 1937.

Soup kitchens and bread lines were methods of feeding the neediest people in the country during the Great Depression. Run by charities, private companies, and the government, many soup kitchens and bread lines served thousands of people a day.

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.

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.

Who helped the poor and homeless during The Great Depression? - Quora. Religious organizations operated a lot of soup kitchens, handing out free food. Eleanor Roosevelt opened her own kitchens to feed people. This approach didn't work so well in rural areas.

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.

How did people afford food during the Great Depression? ›

Not only was access to food limited by rationing, many people had to turn to soup kitchens, which are places where people can go and get a free meal, or food stamps, which are booklets of stamps that could be used to buy food, cleaning supplies, and other necessities, to get enough food to feed their families.

Depression Cooking is a zine of easy recipes designed to make mealtime a little easier, in the no-nonsense sense of the word, for depressed humans like me. It demonstrates one of the many lessons that I've learned during COVID: that we can care for one another without being physically present.

The main components of Hoover stew are macaroni, hot dogs, tomatoes, and corn. However, swapping out macaroni for noodles, corn for canned beans, or creamed chipped beef instead of hot dogs isn't a big deal, especially since finding every specific ingredient wasn't guaranteed at the time.

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. For some families, soup was the evening meal every night.

A 1930s dinner party menu would probably also have included dishes that mirrored what Hollywood considered sophisticated European taste with items like scones, crumpets, cucumber or watercress sandwiches, salmon croquettes, trifles, tortes and meringues.

Maybe the most favorite item coming from the 1930s was the new Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies developed in 1938. Photos: Bologna Casserole; Vinegar Pie; Fried Egg Sandwich, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and Lay's Potato Chips.

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.