If you’re like me you might wonder what they ate back in the day? Was it similar to our diet or vastly different; sugary cereals or bland porridge? Luckily for us I found a book titled “Modern Meal Maker”, it was originally published in 1939 but I believe my exact book was printed in 1941. Oh and before any of us panic, I checked the copyright and it is no longer protected, however I do still recommend picking up a copy of your own!
Each page has a couple of recipes and a recommended daily menu. The book has a menu for every day of the year and includes 744 recipes as well as budget meals! From this we can deduce what foods may have been common and or popular!
One thing that I’ve noticed about this book is that there is a lot of product placement. The book was written by “Martha Meade” but published by Sperry Flour Company; we later learn that “Martha Meade” is a trade name of General Mills.
A trend we can notice already is the usual breakfast of Dry Wheat Cereal and Cream and its close relative Wheat Hearts and Cream, which is another type of breakfast “cereal”. *”Cereal” as apposed to cereal because it was more like an oatmeal type food from my research. We can also notice the suggestion for at least one serving of fruit each breakfast.
We see Wheat Hearts a lot as we go through the book but I’m sure some of us have never heard of it. Why? Because it was removed from the market a long while back. People who have had it say there’s nothing that compares but that the closest contender is Cream Of The West Roasted Wheat. Seeing as I couldn’t find much about what Wheat Hearts actually are, beside’s their name, I looked to Cream Of The West. From what I can tell Wheat Hearts were likely just one ingredient, wheat germs, so simple an answer I spent 30 minutes trying to find it!
Every page has breakfast and dinner but some lack luncheon by this we might assume that some days lunch was skipped or that it wasn’t a noteworthy affair. When lunch is present the meal is usually quite heavy as I’ve noticed all the meals are. The food seems to be hardy and dense, very carb focused. Lunches also usually recommend a sweet of sorts as do dinners. While I imagine that most didn’t have two desserts a day I can only be envious of those who did!
The last couples notes I would like to make are that though you might not get the full scale of it form the pages I showed, the most reoccurring meats were veal, lamb, and canned meats like canned crab and tuna. I hope through these couple of fallen out pages you were able to get an idea of what their average days meals might of consisted of. Wheat hearts, wheat cereal, and lots of coffee!
Grandmas Inspiration 