Food
Food was plentiful during the 1920s, and people were happy to enjoy it after the relative deprivation of The Great War (World War I). During World War I, food was rationed in Britain. Once the United States joined the war, American citizens were encouraged to save food for the war effort. Part of the food conservation scheme involved avoiding certain types of food on certain days, like "Meatless Mondays" or "Wheatless Wednesday." In the 1920s, people felt more free to relax and enjoy themselves, with the exception of alcohol, although there were ways around that restriction for the more determined and less legally-minded (What Did People Eat in the 1920s?).
Scientists had learned more about the nature of vitamins, and people were taking vitamins into account when planning their meals, focusing more on fruit, vegetables, and milk. New canning processes and techniques for freezing food developed by Clarence Birdseye in 1922 allowed people to store produce longer and ship them over greater distances. At the same time, many new kinds of processed foods were also becoming popular (1920-1929: The food decade that roared). New developments in kitchen equipment, like electric refrigerators and gas stoves, were also making cooking easier (1920's Food).
Among the favorite types of American foods developed during this decade were:
- Grilled cheese sandwiches - Made with American cheese. Bread and cheese was eaten together in various forms long before this sandwich was created, but what makes this particular kind of grilled cheese sandwich distinctive is that it uses processed cheese, which was developed by Kraft during the previous decade (The History of the Grilled Cheese Sandwich).
- Sliced Bread - Bread used to be sold as whole loaves that needed to be sliced at home. The first bread sold pre-sliced was sold in the United States (probably in Missouri, although some people claim that Michigan was first) in 1928. It was an extremely popular innovation, and it became a common expression to talk about good developments as "the greatest thing since sliced bread" or "the best thing since sliced bread."
- Wonder Bread (1921)
- Popsicles (1924)
- Kool-Aid (1927) - Classic children's flavored drink mix based on an earlier liquid concentrate.
A popular kind of dessert was Icebox Cake, which was a dessert made with chocolate wafers layered with whipped cream. It was developed in the US during World War I, based on earlier desserts, like charlotte and trifle. The recipe was printed on boxes of Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers. It was popular during the 1920s and 1930s.
Some of types of candy that are still popular today were originally created in the 1920s, including:
- Baby Ruth (1920) - In 1923, the Curtiss Candy Company launched an incredible promotion of Baby Ruth bars by dropping thousands of them on the city of Pittsburgh with their own tiny parachutes. In a similar publicity campaign in 1927, a boy named Paul Tibbets helped to drop the candy bars from the plane. As an adult, Paul Tibbets became the pilot of the Enola Gay, dropping the first atomic bomb at the end of World War II.
- Mounds (1920) - Chocolate-covered coconut bars
- Oh Henry! (1920)
- Butterfinger (1923)
- Milky Way (1924)
- Dum Dums (1924) - Lollipops
- Sugar Daddy (1925) - Caramel candy on a stick. It was originally called Papa Sucker, but it was renamed Sugar Daddy in 1932.
- Milk Duds (1926)
- Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (1928)
- Dubble Bubble (1928) - Bubble gum
Resources
Websites
37 Vintage Recipes from the ’20s Worth Trying Today
From Taste of Home.
What Did People Eat in the 1920s?
Has recipes from a 1920s cookbook.