Popular American Foods in the Roaring Twenties

Prohibition was an interesting time in American history. Lawlessness was rampant throughout major cities like Chicago and New York, yet culture was undergoing a dramatic change. Women had just gained the right to vote, and the US was a dry nation. Against that backdrop, a new breed of American cuisine was taking shape. 

Immediate Effects

Immediately, bars and the like were shut down. That gave way for the growth of cafés and tea houses. This led to an explosive growth in coffee, but a quick decline in fine dining. Gone were America’s old hotel dining rooms, replaced instead with restaurants serving sweeter dishes and soda pop.

Home Brewing

The wine industry experienced a huge shift. Suddenly, its grapes were worthless as wine makers. Entire fields were quickly switched over to juice producing grapes, but only a small percentage were ever used for grape juice. Most were sold as grapes for home brew wine making.

Italian Food

Wine and prohibition in general may have played a role in American love for Italian food. Today, it seems nearly unthinkable not to have wine with pasta thanks to Italian-American speakeasies. The cooking was far from Sicilian fare, but Americans had a taste for protein and the Italians were all too happy to oblige their rich tastes.

 
The revolution wasn’t happening in politics, it was happening in the restaurants and back alley eateries all across America. It was happening in our farming and our tastes. America’s thirst for liquor became a craving for sweet, and when alcohol returned, we never lost the taste for either.

The History of Pound Cake

If you thought that the pound cake was named after its weight, you’re partially right. It’s a name that food historians think comes from Northern Europe, and it’s directly related to the weight of all ingredients used to make the cake. It would be a difficult connection for most contemporary cooks to understand because we don’t generally use weights to measure out our foods anymore. 

The cake is a very basic recipe to make; you could probably do it by the end of this summary. You will need one pound of each: flour, butter, sugar and a fruit if you desire. Though recipes have variations, one in 1817 called for a glass of brandy for flavor, the general instructions are the same. Beat the butter well in a bowl (many early recipes call for an earthen pan), then beat in the eggs and the flour. Baking time is one hour. 

When pound cake first came to America, cookbooks included two recipes to try and ease the transition. The first recipes surface during the 1800s, and the transition from weights to cups was gradual. It was only in the early 20^th century where we see the shift in recipe.

Pound cake is very easy to make, and the ingredients are commonly found in most kitchens. It’s a good dessert when served with fruit or alongside coffee, and it’s managed to stay relevant because it can adapt to so many flavors. Pound cake harkens back to a time when butter was eaten not in healthy quantities, but because it was delicious.

The Discovery of Butter

It’s likely that nomadic peoples in Asia were the first groups to discover how butter is made. Food historians attribute the creation of butter to these nomadic peoples because of circumstance. Butter requires churning, which would have been a natural action for a jug of milk attached to a horse. As the horse moved, the milk would have received a very light but thorough churning. After a long day in the saddle, it might be surprising to find your milk has turned into butter, but it wouldn’t be scientifically impossible. 

There is a Mongolian technique to churning butter. You add cream to a leather flask, and then suspend the flask from the ground. The flask is positioned horizontally and then the butter is slowly churned through natural movement. At some point, butter making was passed on to the Celts and Vikings, who in turn passed on a love of the substance to descendents. 

Butter has been a symbol of both fertility and purity since ancient times. It is a white substance, especially the clarified butter that is often skimmed off the top. We now know there is a link between the fats in butter and hormone production, with those natural fats being beneficial to women.

Surprisingly, butter was slow to hit Europe. The French didn’t use it often until well after the fifteenth century. Italy was also slow to adopt butter. The ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t have much of a taste for it, and it didn’t catch on as a thickening agent until the Church framed rules for consumption of butter during the fourteenth century.

Who Invented the PB&J?

Peanut butter and jelly is one of the most American combos one can think of. The sandwich has been gradually immortalized over time, but the first written mention of the concoction appears in a 1901 recipe written by Julia Davis Chandler. 

The youth of America, who loved the sweetness, immediately jumped on the sandwich. It became a staple in lunches all across the United States, and a symbol of the brown bag lunch era.  Peanut butter was considered a delicacy at the time, and it was not uncommon to find it in the finest tea houses in New York. At Ye Olde English Coffee House, one could order a “peanut butter and pimento sandwich,” while Vanity Fair sold peanut butter with watercress. At the colonial room, one could order peanut butter spread on triangles of toast and soda crackers. 

As the price of peanut butter fell, the sandwich became a more common occurrence. Sugar was added to appeal to children, another reason why peanut butter never fully recovered its delicacy status. Peanut butter sandwiches officially became cultural commonplace when Gustav Papendick invented and patented a process to slice and wrap bread. 

After that momentous accomplishment, the 1920s saw parents lobbying school boards to bring peanut butter into the school lunch room. Being that the substance was cheap and filling, the sandwich quickly became a centerpiece of school lunches throughout the roaring twenties and Great Depression.