Foods nobody eats anymore?

Aspic?

Mush. (well, they do, but they call it polenta)

Liver and onions.

I still eat soft boiled eggs from an egg cup.

And the bread dipped in egg is still served as French Toast.

Here in the US, people rarely eat offal. They mostly turn up their noses at the idea of brains or tongue or most other organ meats.

Deli tongue thinly sliced is absolutely delicious and so hard to find these days outside of Jewish Delis whose customers still know what good food is all about.

Just try to find one in Michigan, apart from Southfield, which is quite a long haul from where I am :(

Fruit roll ups? I don’t know.

When I was small my mother used to feed chopped horsemeat to out cats! Ugh!

Space Food Sticks

I cook a whole cow’s tongue every summer or two, for sandwiches. Delicious, agreed. Also, children find it interesting to watch the skin get peeled off after you steam it.

Spanish Rice in a can? Cooked rice with tomatoey liquid?

Does anyone eat canned fruit cocktail these days, with those grapes that are dyed pink to look like cherries?

@cprevite I happen to love liver, and know others who do too…it’s delicious, nutritious, and pretty darn cheap, too! Try THIS. Yum!

@AstroChuck Great call on the Space Food Sticks! I used to beg my mom to buy those every time we went to the store. It had to be 100% marketing, because to this day, I realize I never liked them, even as a kid.

How about powdered milk? For some reason a staple in our household when I was a kid…yuck.

Malt’o’meal? Haven’t seen a commercial for that in years.

Spam?

Pigs feet and pickled eggs. My granny must have lost her taste buds in her old age.

@nope: Yeah. Liver is all over menus these days. Especially chicken’s livers and foie.

Meat pies.
HEAD CHEESE, GOOD GOD. I still remember the day my mother tried to describe head cheese to me. I must have been about 5. I still cringe at the thought.

And those giant soft pretzels that would come frozen and you would heat them up at home. People probably still eat them, I dunno. But that was pretty much a staple in my childhood diet.

@susanc My school cafeteria still serves those horrible fruit cocktails.

Koogle!

Most of these foods probably started when times were a lot tougher and people had to use every part of the animal for food. Our tastes haven’t gotten better; we can just afford to throw away those parts of the animal now.

@squidcake Schwan’s still sells large frozen pretzels. At least they did two years ago. They taste like cardboard. uck! They were much better from Orange Julius way back when.

Do Funfruits still exist? I never see them at the supermarket. I used to love those when I was little.
I had all these Super Mario Bros and Sailormoon fun fruit snacks, it was awesome.

@loser

Are you kidding me ? ?

I assume you mean kugel. This is eaten regularly in Jewish households all over, but especially at holidays.

There are tons and tons of different recipes for noodle kugel, both sweet and savory, matzoh kugel, potato kugel, etc etc.

Maybe where you live (or in your family) it’s kinda scarce, but I assure you it’s alive and well all over the place.

Jewish holidays just wouldn’t be the same without it.

Maple flavored Maypo on cold winter mornings.

Deep fried mars bars on a stick?

Is Tang around anymore? That stuff was god awful. Thanks to AstroChuck for reviving space memories.

And what about Manwich? “How do you feed a hungry man? Manwich! Is that still around?

Do the Scots still eat haggis, or is it a joke over there too?

Ditto lutefisk.

I saw a segment about lutefisk on Food Network. Evidently there are still churches in the Midwest who do lutefisk suppers as fundraisers.

I think it’s one of those traditional ethnic foods that really only appeals to members of that group who have fond childhood memories associated with it.

Some ethnic foods have a wide appeal and thus cross cultures, but I doubt this is one of them.

I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. The thought of foods soaked in lye hold no appeal for me whatsoever.

Before any posole fans feel compelled to chime in, yes, I am fully aware that the lye releases nutrients in the corn normally unavailable. This made it a staple for an entire culture.

I’m fully aware of that and it was fine for ancient cultures.

But lye is used as a drain cleaner and the thought of having even small amounts of it in any food I eat just turns me off. Lutefisk and posole will not find a place on my table, thank you very much :)

@TheLoneMonk I had a Manwich two weeks ago. But, it was the first time in about 25 years.

I know there are candies that we can’t get anymore, and there was a thread on here someplce about them.
As for other foods, most people probably don’t eat as much wild food as they used too. Possum, squirrel, bear, rabbit etc. Then there are the wild greens like dandelion, purslian (sp) and chicory.
They don’t sell those things at the supermarket and most folks don’t hunt for their food anymore.

Brontosaurus.

@laureth, I’m pretty sure they still eat lutefisk in Seattle (at least they did in the 90s). It’s a Scandinavian thing.

These are all GAs. Interesting what people remember.

@AstroChuck, someone commented in that video that they sell Space Food Sticks in Oz. It’s weird to think snack bars preceded me.

Fried bologna. My dad used to eat that ALL the time.

@lfino sounds just like my dad. If mom was gone, we knew what we would be having for lunch.

@wilma, it was weirdly kind of good though when it curled around on the edges and turned black.

Does anyone remember Green Goddess salad dressing? lol
Been obsolete forever now.

Also, used to love these two cheeses that have disappeared as well, one was called ‘Club’ cheese…a very soft sort of cheddar, flakey, creamy texture, and…the other a Caraway Jack cheese with Caraway seeds…sooo good, and havn’t found any of these items in years now. :-(

@coloma: Come to Wisconsin. We have both of those cheeses available. I’ll send you a link when I find it.

Here you go: Caraway Jack from Wisconsin!

@TheLoneMonk I love Wisconsin. Cheese, beer, lakes, football….what more could you ask for! :)

@Ifino I really understand about weird dad eating habits. My dad loves braunschweiger and liverwurst. Dads can be weird. Must go with beer good or something.

@escapedone7, Oh my God, I forgot about braunschweiger! That used to be a staple in our fridge. Never liked it. When one roll of it was gone, another always appeared. Both my mom and dad ate that stuff.

If I could find Jello 123, I’d buy that. I loved that. My brother and I would open the fridge door 20 times just to watch the 3 layers forming. I’ve heard there are knockoff recipes of it, but I haven’t ever tried them. I happened to find a box in a Big Lots store sometime back in the late 90’s, maybe early 2000’s, and I figured that box had to have been lost behind a wall somewhere for at least 20 years and re-sold or something. I made it and ate it anyway.

Tang?
Kugel?

There is a website to buy candies from the olden days, I have seen people talk about it on various tv shows. I like Peanut Chews, which are hard to find.

@Buttonstc Lye is also used to make soap, and it’s also used to make hominy, which I’ve always found very edible. Lye is just a base (as opposed to acid), and while a base can be incredibly strong (e.g. drain cleaner), it can also be diluted for cooking purposes. I don’t know why people would have a problem with eating a base, since we eat acid all the time (vinegar, lemon juice….).

@kevbo They definitely eat Lutefisk in Seattle, I’ve had it. In fact, the local IKEA always serves it in their cafeteria around Christmas time with some sort of cream sauce. It’s surprisingly tasty.

pig’s trotters, brains, tripe.

.

I eat soft boiled eggs from an egg-cup. It’s a sort of comfort food for me.
As for anything else, black potatoes are no more!

@cheeseballs

As per my previous post, kugel is widely made and available, especially around Jewish holidays.

Why are so many ready to sign its death warrant prematurely ?

As long as there are Jews in existence, there will be kugel. Same goes for chopped liver.

I can’t think of many foods that aren’t eaten here in the South. All the sandwich meats mentioned are still had on a daily basis, there’s Green Goddess dressing at Kroger’s, Spam sells well, I know people who hunt their own food and eat every last bit of it- even the marrow. Hell, I saw a jello-mold dessert last week with canned peaches in it. (delicious)

I wonder if it has more to do with region, and less with tastebuds?

Probably @gemiwing , most of the things that have been mentioned are still available where I live too. I know hunters and people who raise animals and use the entire animal.
But not like back when I was a kid.

Yeah, you’re both right.

If you go to ethnic areas in most cities they will usually have a much wider selection of certain meats like offal than the majority of supermarkets.

But the reason most supermarkets don’t stock them is because there is so little demand and they spoil so quickly.

But I’ll never forget Alton Brown’s delight upon finding a little southern tavern advertising brain sandwiches. He was ecstatic. Many in the crew were not :)

Its been a while since my grandpa served me stewed possum or boiled squirrels heads. I can understand the rarity of boiled squirrel heads because it takes so many to fill a pot but stewed possum should be plentiful in the local eateries.

Those little wax bottles filled with sugary juice inside. They’re sold in candy stores but I rarely see them anymore.

Tripe. Brawn. Pigs trotters. All of these were common while I was growing up in rural 1960s/70s England. And all of them are vile.