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Posts Tagged ‘the 50′s’

We’ve come a long way, baby

Food in America is a LOT better than it was 50 years ago, asserts Jerry Weinberger:

In a 1769 letter to the naturalist John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin observed that while lots of people like accounts of old buildings and monuments, “I confess that if I could find in any Italian travels a receipt for making Parmesan cheese, it would give me more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone whatsoever.”

Had Old Ben written this letter 50 years ago, in 1959, it’s doubtful that many Americans would have agreed. Back then, a gourmet American dinner might have included tomato aspic (gelatin with canned tomato juice), crab casserole (canned crab with canned cream-of-mushroom soup and canned fried onions), and cherries jubilee (canned cherries heated in a chafing dish with brandy and sugar, “flambéed,” and poured over vanilla ice cream)…

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