Food Quotes of Yesteryear

 Always a fun installment here! We need a diversion from modern troubles sometimes. So here we have some quotations from history to make us laugh, scratch our heads in confusion, or just feel a kinship with those who've gone before.

Before we get to that, though, our image of the day. How amazing do you think it was for the first people who got to eat pineapple outside a tropical climate? Or to have peaches someone else grew and canned available on a grocer's shelf somewhere? We may gravitate more toward fresh things these days because we can do that--at least, we could do that, though things may be changing (and let's not overthink that part of it)--but mass produced canned foods were an amazing innovation.

Del Monte canned food advertisement, 1923

But let us turn again to the quotes.

It would seem almost trite to say that sandwiches should be free of crusts, and the bread cut thin, were it not that one sees so many thick wedges of bread called by that name. --The Advance, February 15, 1900

Food snobs and self-styled gourmets consider iceberg the polyester of lettuce. --Salads for All Seasons, 1982 

To many people electric refrigeration is still such a novelty that they scarcely recognize the range of its possibilities. It is almost like having an Aladdin's lamp and not knowing the right way to rub it. --Electric Refrigerator Menus and Recipes, 1927

 It is amusing to read the claims made by the many different breakfast cereals on the market. There is no longer need of sickness or trouble, if one only eats what Mr. Dooley calls "Almost food: a scientific preparation of burlaps;" or "Sawd Ust, a chemically pure dish made of the exterior of bath towels." --Worcester Daily Spy, May 9, 1903

The eating of nut meal and nut pastry has been the vogue of late years in the attempt to find a substitute for animal products; but the nut eaters are the saddest and most wretched folks we have ever looked upon. --Universal System of the Ralston Health Club, 1909 

 

One good service might be done by the vegetarians if they would drop this nonsense about the "spritualizing" quality of parsnips. --The Living Age, January 1898 

 

 To drink water without harm, it is necessary to take quantities of violent exercise to overcome the ill effects of such overindulgence. --Eating without Fears, 1923

Do not wash macaroni. If dusty, wipe with a clean, dry cloth. --Every-Day Dishes and Every-Day Work, 1896 

A great deal of the starch is in its wet form, as porridge or stew or pudding. Now, such things are well enough for those who can stand them, but for most us they are fatal. --The New Cookery of Unproprietary Foods, 1906

If I had been in quest of cheap notoriety I could have been amply satisfied for I doubt the firing of a gun from the window or peep hole of the cabin could have created anything like the stir the information did that I was a Vegetarian. --Food, Home, and Garden, April 1898 

If you want more quotations, check out part one and two.