Hoover stew, city chicken, milk toast and the seven-and-a-half-cent lunch Eleanor Roosevelt’s White House served
the President. These are the suppers American families made from almost nothing during the Great Depression,
and the true stories behind them: a radio aunt invented by the Department of Agriculture, a bean soup the
U.S. Senate has served nearly every day since 1903, and a 91-year-old grandmother who became a YouTube star
cooking the meals of her childhood.
Which one did your grandmother make? Tell us in the comments.
Chapters:
0:00 The Seven-and-a-Half-Cent Lunch
0:49 25. Milk Toast
1:29 24. Water Gravy and Biscuits
2:05 23. Dandelion Greens
2:43 22. Fried Cornmeal Mush
3:18 21. Fried Bologna
3:50 20. Mulligan Stew
4:29 19. Eggs Goldenrod
5:08 18. Welsh Rarebit
5:48 17. Red Flannel Hash
6:24 16. Scrapple
7:03 15. Poor Man’s Meal
7:42 14. Pasta and Peas
8:20 13. City Chicken
8:57 12. Salmon Loaf
9:30 11. Liver and Onions
10:09 10. Stuffed Cabbage
10:45 9. Senate Bean Soup
11:22 8. The White House Lunch
11:59 7. Chicken and Dumplings
12:33 6. Poor Man’s Steak
13:08 5. Potato Soup With Rivels
13:46 4. Soup Beans and Cornbread
14:22 3. Hoover Stew
14:58 2. Aunt Sammy’s Meat Loaf
15:46 1. Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast
16:29 What They Knew
Sources:
– Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Home Economics, 1927 (revised through 1931)
– National Archives, The Unwritten Record: Aunt Sammy and Her Radio Recipes (2022)
– U.S. Senate Historical Office: Senate Bean Soup
– Manual for Army Cooks, U.S. War Department, 1910; HistoryNet: Chipped Beef
– HISTORY.com: Why FDR’s White House Served Such Terrible Food; Cornell University home economics menus, 1933
– Clara Cannucciari, Clara’s Kitchen (2009) and Great Depression Cooking with Clara
– H. T. Webster, The Timid Soul (New York World, 1924)
– Wikipedia: City chicken; Scrapple; Welsh rarebit; Red flannel hash
– Minot and Murphy, liver therapy for pernicious anemia (1926), Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1934
– Price conversions: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U (CUUR0000SA0).
Archival photographs (via Wikimedia Commons):
– Corner of kitchen in Bud Fields’ home, Hale County, Alabama, 8c52252 — Walker Evans, Public domain
– Mrs. Tommy Swafford in the kitchen of her four room house. Panther Red Ash Coal… — Russell Lee, Public domain
– Washstand in the dog run and kitchen of Floyd Burroughs’ cabin. Hale County, Alabama — Walker Evans, Public domain
– Hooverville on the Seattle tideflats, 1933 — Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA, CC BY 2.0
– Hooverville on Seattle waterfront, 1933 — Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA, CC BY 2.0
– Robert Hallowell – Untitled Hooverville Camp Scene Circa 1935 Signed lower right — Robert Hallowell, Public domain
– Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al… — photographer unknown, Public domain
– Franklin D. Roosevelt Traveling by Car in Warm Springs, Georgia with Anna Roosevelt… — Series: Photographs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882 – 1945
Collection: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Photographs, 1870 -, Public domain
– Eleanor Roosevelt, right LCCN2016894430 — Harris & Ewing, photographer, Public domain
– U.S. Army cooks, 302D Stevedore Regiment, Camp No.4, Base Section, No.2, Bordeaux, 1918 — National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain
– White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, 1932, by Dorothea Lange — Dorothea Lange, Public domain
– Depression, Breadlines-long line of people waiting to be fed, New York City, in the… — photographer unknown, Public domain
– General store interior Alabama USA — Walker Evans, for the Farm Security Administration, Public domain
– Between Bakersfield and Fresno, California. On the Freights. A typical hobo cargo… — Rondal Partridge, Public domain
– Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Rural scene with artwork on barn, 1938 by Sheldon Dick — Sheldon Dick, Public domain
– Burpee’s farm annual, 1892 (1892) — W. Atlee Burpee Company;
Henry G. Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection, No restrictions
– Astor cab at U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. LCCN2016890237 — Harris & Ewing, photographer, Public domain
The narration in this video uses an AI-generated voice. Scripts are researched, written and fact-checked by a human editor. Sources are listed in this description.
#depressionera #foodhistory #nostalgia
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