Peanut butter stuffed onions were popular during the Great Depression

[underpants]

During the Great Depression, onions were a commonly grown and easily stored vegetable, making them both abundant and, notably, cost-free. Simultaneously, peanut butter was an economical ingredient. Hence, the Bureau of Home Economics formulated a recipe for peanut butter-filled onions as a convenient solution for American homemakers to provide nourishment to their families.

This peculiar dish's recipe was widely featured in newspapers and magazines throughout the 1930s and eventually made its way onto American dining tables as an affordable, palatable, straightforward, and nutritious meal suitable for any time of day.

This hodgepodge comprised baked onions stuffed with a mixture of peanut butter and stale bread crumbs. Unfortunately, these components combined to create an unappetizing dish that was consumed solely out of necessity to alleviate hunger.

Link to tweet

?s=46&t=3VBm1LJ8j8qLp6JTs_8J2A


https://www.thedailymeal.com/1238149/why-peanut-butter-stuffed-onions-were-heavily-promoted-during-the-great-depression/

[Celerity]

1. hard pass

[Xavier Breath]

2. Put raisins on it and you have "ants on a sad." n/t

.

[underpants]

6. 😆😆😆 🏆

[doc03]

3. Nope

[jmbar2]

4. Sounds disgusting!

[Ocelot II]

5. Ugh.

I've heard of and even eaten food that was common during the Depression (cornbread, chipped beef on toast), but this? YUK!

[Xavier Breath]

24. Well, here's where I break from the herd when I say

that I love chipped beef. My Mom always made it when I was a kid, but rather than serving it on toast, she switched things up a bit and served it on mashed potatoes. Damn, that was good

[spooky3]

27. Agree. We loved it too. Nt

[debm55]

37. I still eat it.

[Ocelot II]

38. We had it too. I wasn't crazy about it, and later I found out

that it was also called "shit on a shingle."

[Marthe48]

71. I still make it once in awhile

It is a real treat on toast

My Mom made it for us when we were kids. She'd cut the toast into bite-sized pieces for us. I realized I was in a new stage of life when she served me a bowl of chipped beef on toast that wasn't cut. She said I was old enough to cut it by myself. A shocking moment

When I make it for myself, I cut the toast and put the chipped beef on it.

[cally]

86. We called it favorite meat. I loved it!

Haven't had it in decades and I wonder if I would like it now but it was my favorite meal as a kid.

[Sky Jewels]

7. That actually doesn't sound too bad. They're both savory ingredients.

I like to put scallions in my peanut satay sauce and I also love African peanut soup, which has onions in it.

I would prepare it differently, so that the onions were chopped up and cooked until they were almost transparent, and the peanut butter was thinned and mixed in to coat the sautéed onions.

[Blue Owl]

8. Back then you'd tie an onion to your belt...

[Xavier Breath]

30. Give me five bees for a quarter, we'd say.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

89. We didn't have any white onions because of the war.

The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.

[Hugin]

9. True Depression Story...

My Gramps met my darling Grandmother when he had been jailed for taking a bite out of an onion off of a produce cart because he was starving.

My delicate flower of a woman Grandmother was there visiting her brother... Who had allegedly been picked up for moonshining.

[Sky Jewels]

12. Wow, great story.

Your Gramps might have been better off in prison, because at least they had to feed him regularly.

Hard times indeed.

[Hugin]

14. ...

Not to get too far from the thread with family lore. That was the turning point for him, because he was released from the jail into the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). I guess the local LEOs were behind this to prevent recidivism.

[misanthrope]

21. My paternal grandfather was in CCC

His father was a tenant farmer in lower Alabama. When WWII broke out, he joined the service. The training he got from Uncle Sam allowed him to go into a civilian career in telecommunications and lift his parents from tending farmland that belonged to others.

Regretfully, he became more right-wing and reactionary with age. By the time he was an old man, he told me the best form of government was a "benevolent dictatorship."

[Hugin]

45. Gramps never took that right turn...

He was always willing to share anything he had. I guess he remembered where he came from.

He never lost his misanthropic side though, you would have liked him.

[misanthrope]

70. LOL! Likely so!

A little grumbling makes for fine humor.

[underpants]

20. Great story. ❤️

[Chellee]

10. B Dylan Hollis did that one.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZHl46zxAxs4

He's hysterical. You will be glad you clicked.

[Judi Lynn]

53. Wonderful, every second. Answers any questions one would have, too!

"Unsettling!"

Thanks for adding the illuminating tutorial! Yaaaaay!

[Jedi Guy]

63. "Stuffing vegetables is unnatural for me, I usually stuff fruit."

That line had me dead.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. I'll believe it when I see it.

This peculiar dish's recipe was widely featured in newspapers and magazines throughout the 1930s

Be nice to see a clipping, then.

[underpants]

17. Could find any visual examples but did find this. NY Times

Strange mash-ups were tried as caloric and nutritional fulfillment took precedent over taste or even common kitchen sense. In researching the book, which includes recipes, Ms. Ziegelman prepared a period dish of baked onion stuffed with peanut butter. “It was not a popular addition to the dinner table,” Mr. Coe said.

Ms. Ziegelman amplified: “It was surreal. Peanut butter has nothing to say to a baked onion. It was characteristic of a lot of the home-ec recipes.”
As never before or since, home economists — among them Louise Stanley, chief of the federal Bureau of Home Economics from 1923 to 1943 — drove the country’s eating habits. Publishing recipes and articles in newspapers and magazines, they encouraged women to become “budgeteers” and rise to the challenge of transforming glop like creamed spaghetti with carrots into tasty dishes.

https://archive.ph/2023.03.16-144137/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/dining/great-depression-food-square-meal-book.html?_r=0

[Judi Lynn]

58. So glad you added this shocking info. to the day's fare for we who didn't live during that time.

Had no idea they were inventing combinations back then to use what was more available.

That's really interesting! "Necessity is the mother of invention" seems to pass by some important details.

Love the quote you've shared from Ms. Ziegelman: "Peanut butter has nothing to say to a baked onion."

This entire subject really gets the wheels spinning wondering how many combinations of unlikely ingredients were stuffed down the throats of helpless hungry people.

[underpants]

75. Judi, I'm throwing a light one out here everyday

God knows we need it. ❤️

[blogslug]

52. I blocked that account on the twitter

Peanut butter stuffed onions may have been a thing but that account isn't much of a fact-checker. I follow this account instead:

https://twitter.com/fakehistoryhunt

https://fakehistoryhunter.net/

[bucolic_frolic]

13. Should have a thread for odd Great Depression hand-me-down recipes.

Mine are peanut butter and banana sandwiches, ketchup sandwiches, rice pudding. Can't recall others.

[Hugin]

15. Funeral pie was a big go to...

Made with raisins, it could survive an unrefrigerated six-hour train ride.

[underpants]

19. I'd never heard of that.

But the large group almost certainly contained several “funeral runners,” a type of mourner that often popped up at Pennsylvania German memorials in the 1800s. These attendees weren’t there to pay their respects. They were there for the food.

“Because the Pennsylvania Dutch spent so much money and time on their big funeral dinners, there were fake mourners who showed up just to get free food,” says William Woys Weaver, a culinary historian and the author of As American As Shoofly Pie: The Foodlore and Fakelore of Pennsylvania Dutch Cuisine. “It was so common that you didn’t even raise an eyebrow.”

Of all the parties to crash, a funeral in the traditionally parsimonious Mennonite community doesn’t seem like an obvious choice. But the funerary feast was a rare opportunity for extravagance among Pennsylvania Germans. Instead of the usual cabbage and dumplings, there was beef, ham, or chicken. Instead of the usual coarse rye bread, there was white or wheat. The fixation on funeral food even made its way into slang: In 1907, a grandmother recounted how “thoughtless youngsters” called funerals weissbrot-frolics, or “white bread frolics.”

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-funeral-pie

[Sky Jewels]

29. Mock Apple Pie, too.

Made with Ritz crackers or similar.

https://12tomatoes.com/mock-apple-pie/

[Ocelot II]

39. I remember that. It was weird.

[Chellee]

69. I made a mock apple pie this week.

To try and deal with the 92 (Ninety-two!! ) green tomatoes I had to pull before our first frost. We now have green tomato pickles, green tomato chutney, roasted green tomato salsa, and we've had fried green tomatoes with every meal, including breakfast, for the last four days.

Don't think that the ripe tomatoes got left out. We've had chili, cream of tomato soup, tomato sandwiches, and tomorrow I'm making a curry. I still have 21 tomatoes, 9G, 5R, and 7 transitioning. I'm getting really tired of tomatoes at this point. We ate and canned ripe tomatoes all summer. Two tomato plants. That's all I planted, but they truly went to town this season.

[underpants]

18. Bread and butter sandwiches

I don’t know if that’s tied to the Great Depression. My mom used to make these. Looking back we were broker then I realized. Her grandmother made them and they were really broke. She grew up in West Virginia.

[ForgedCrank]

26. I used

to make "mayonnaise sandwiches" when I was a kid, which horrified my mom. I loved it. If times were good, I'd toss on a piece of cheese if there was any in the fridge, but usually not. Lunch meat was pretty scarce around our place too.
And it should be noted, we called Miracle Whip "mayonnaise", and regular mayo was called "Hellmans". I don't know why, it must be a hillbilly thing.

[LastDemocratInSC]

56. My favorite sandwich when I was a child in the 50s was mayonnaise and raisins.

It was palatible then, and I considered it my own creation. I haven't had one in decades and doubt that I ever will again.

[Jedi Guy]

65. Miracle Whip, ugh.

When I was a kid, my parents always kept mayonnaise in the house, never Miracle Whip. My grandparents were the other way round, though. I remember making myself a sandwich when I was visiting them and immediately thinking the mayo had spoiled. Miracle Whip is absolutely vile, as far as I'm concerned.

[Ocelot II]

91. Miracle Whip is the semen of Satan. Nasty stuff.

[Buns_of_Fire]

43. I still eat them. I even developed a taste for salt sandwiches.

Nowadays, when it's still a few days before the Social Security deposit is made, I'll sometimes whip up a hearty mustard sandwich on wheat. You can take the boy out of Appalachia, but you can't take the Appalachia out of the boy.

[underpants]

49. 😋

[chowder66]

25. I am far removed from the GD but I remember eating PB and Mayo sandwiches

growing up. I actually liked them. Tried one a few years ago and it didn't quite taste the way I remembered.

Maybe my mom had them growing up or my brothers who spent part of their childhood with my grandparents.

[AntivaxHunters]

16. Imagine the gas from that?

You'd have to open every damn window in the house the next morning or risk a gas explosion 😅

[ForgedCrank]

22. That sounds

so incredibly nasty.

[oldfart73]

23. My father remembered lard sandwiches... bread, lard, bread.

[diva77]

74. Thanks for the recipe!

(not meant to be laughing at people surviving the Depression )

[XanaDUer2]

28. Theres a youtube channel

Of an old lady cooking Depression-era recipes. Interesting

[Sky Jewels]

31. Here's the Youtube channel (mentioned above) on Depression-era cooking

It features videos made by Clara Cannucciari, who lived through the Depression and died in 2013 at age 98.

https://www.youtube.com/@Claras_Kitchen

[XanaDUer2]

40. That's it nt

[llmart]

60. Is Clara related to Jared?

[intrepidity]

32. That presentation sure isn't hiding anything

But neither does it highlight how those two might indeed have something to talk about. I'm thinking like satay or related Asian dishes which frequently include peanuts.

Just don't pack those in your kid's lunchbox for school! (because, allergies, lol)

[mucifer]

33. Well it is vegan. But uh still don't want it.

[sanatanadharma]

34. I grew up with Peanut butter and sliced onion sandwiches.

My parents were Depression era kids. It might explain Dad's odd work-lunch pail sandwich choices; mashed potato, cold spaghetti ...

Breakfast: torn white bread in milk with sugar.

[DemocraticPatriot]

36. I enjoy peanut butter and sliced onion sandwiches myself,

usually on toasted whole wheat bread, but not until well on in adulthood...

Actually I first heard of them reading some novel by Ernest Hemingway, and decided to try it...

The peanut butter mellows the onion, while the onion moisturizes the peanut butter---
surprised at how well they work together, but it still sounds weird, lol

[sanatanadharma]

44. Only the knowing ... wisdom of the elders, home diy, and the grandmothers always say ...

... my brother, however can not stand onions in any way shape, form, or recipe.
This rooted in his experience of our being treated as kids with a cold-remedy made of a syrup of cooked onions. Back then the wound balm included turpentine.

[underpants]

51. My wife says she's had that breakfast

✅
✅
✅

[Maru Kitteh]

78. My dad ate mashed potato sandwiches too, and was a child of the depression.

But then, mom's mashed potatoes were INSANE. So good.

[Crunchy Frog]

35. I can't eat onions without violently retching,

unless they've been cooked to the point of disintegration in a stew or something.

I guess I would have starved to death in the Great Depression.

[Ocelot II]

42. Same here. I loathe onions, especially the raw red ones.

[Bayard]

41. Bletch....

We were poor, but that was definitely never on the menu.

[Solly Mack]

46. Yeah, well, you never know where hard times will lead you until they do.

[Sympthsical]

47. A friend eats peanut butter and onion sandwiches

I asked how that came to be, and he cited watching Little Monsters with Fred Savage a lot as a kid, where the main character is known for it. He tried it out and loved it. He's up there with my friend who eats toast with miracle whip instead of butter. Like, just miracle whip.

I admit, I'm kind of curious? I like peanut butter. I like onions. I've just never made the attempt.

I feel like it could almost work. If you really like onions.

[underpants]

50. Like, just miracle whip.

Giggling. 😎

[Just_Vote_Dem]

54. I sometimes eat a slice of keto bread with Vegenaise

And tell myself I didn't cheat on my diet because hardly any carbs

[Sympthsical]

59. Keto bread's the best

I get the stuff from costco. It's soft and tastes like regular bread to me. 35 calories, one carb, all of the fiber.

Wait, no. I don't think I'm emphasizing this correctly.

35 calories, one carb, ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL of the fiber.

There was one day I was crazy busy and didn't have time to make anything. So I'd just eat a PB sammich with it every four hours or so.

The next few days were a roller coaster.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

62. LOL

My encounter with excess fiber was with peanuts.

Years ago my neighbor gave me a nearly full, huge can of shelled peanuts-don't remember why, think he liked the spicy ones better-and one night, snacked on them absentmindedly while watching a tv show. Finally I looked down in the can-and saw that it was now a little less than half full, and knew I was gonna be in big trouble.

The cramps lasted for DAYS, along with the other expected outcome...and there certainly was an outcome...

[Sympthsical]

67. So what you're telling me is

You weren't doubled over in pain screaming, "But I'm being healthyyyyyyy!" to anyone nearby at regular intervals because they couldn't believe what you had done?

[Just_Vote_Dem]

68. Being a responsible adult

I think I blamed it on the ballgame I was most likely watching at the time

[Hugin]

87. Keto bread with marmalade is my current guilty pleasure...

My S.O. is on a no carb and of course I am on a sympathy diet. I can always use an excuse to trim a few pounds.

There’s also some keto tortillas if you look around. Neither ever goes bad.

My SO misses pastas the most and we’d found some plant root substitute that we tried. As I was preparing it I noticed a warning on the package and I wondered what that was about. OH.MY.GOD! I soon found out. It was fiber city! When they say only eat so many grams a day, they meant it.

[Sympthsical]

88. Absolutely

It's tough with the noodles, because the consistency isn't quite there. Shirataki noodles felt like chewing styrofoam. Like, you can hear them while chewing. The best substitution I found was something called Healthy Noodles from Costco. But it's around $15 for six servings, and I could never justify it. But they honestly do work pretty well consistency-wise.

I don't eat strictly low carb anymore. Did for about two years to undo some pandemic sedentary damage, but now I'm in a slight bulk phase of things. However, I still eat keto bread just because I love bread and it's the best way to limit damage (and easy fiber).

The Carb Smart Mission tortillas are also something I've kept. They taste like regular tortillas to me. Costco has a pack of 16 for about $6. I use them for everything. Breakfast burritos are a go to. I also keep a cooked and ground up chicken/vegetable mixture in the fridge most days. Spoon some on a tortilla with half a slice of pepperjack, roll it up and toss it on a panini press. Crazy easy quick lunch with protein and veggies.

[Kaleva]

73. I like peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches

[we can do it]

81. Me too

[drmeow]

48. I think "popular" is a poor choice of words

common but disliked, perhaps!

[Owl]

55. Love both of those. Maybe have to try this. 😋

[dembotoz]

57. classic hard times cookbook How to cook a wolf by M F K Fisher

changed how i look at food....

[SYFROYH]

61. First failed version of Reese's Peanut Butter Cup

[Sky Jewels]

64. Rejected commercial:

"Hey, you got your onion in my peanut butter!"
"Well you your got peanut butter in my onion!"

[Kaleva]

76. You got onion on my peanut butter!

[tblue37]

66. One paragraph calls it "palatable," but the very next paragraph says "unappetizing."

Way to have your peanut butter stuffed onion and eat it, too.

[Marthe48]

72. I saw a recipe for Depression era water pie

I would try that. The links I tried were so bogged down with ads, I gave up.

[niyad]

77. I organized a food strike when our high school cafeteria served peanut butter-

stuffed meatballs (the peanut buttrr was cold) one memorable day. The "food" (and I use the term most advisedly) had been getting steadily worse for quite some time, but the students considered that the absolute low point. I had, mercifully, been off-campus during that lunch break, was greeted by shocked classmates upon my return. It took well over a week of determined strike before the situation resolved.


It took several years before I could eat peanut butter again.

[betsuni]

79. From "A Square Meal, A Culinary History of the Great Depression":

"Under Nesbitt's supervision, the White House put out not only some of the dreariest food in Washington but also some of the most dismally prepared. Though Nesbitt was not personally behind the stove, 'she stood over the cooks, making sure that each dish was overcooked or undercooked or ruined one way or another.' Dinner guests, appalled by the consistently miserable cooking they encountered at the White House table, recorded their gastronomic misadventures. ... When Ernest Hemingway was invited to dine at the White House in 1937, he was warned to expect the worst. Still, he was taken aback by the 'rainwater soup' and 'rubber squab.' ... Experienced invitees came prepared and made sure to eat before leaving the house.

"FDR suffered Nesbitt's kitchen tyranny for twelve years, but to be fair, she had been given an impossible assignment. By committing the White House to home economies, Eleanor had volunteered her husband to a culinary experiment that was guaranteed to make him unhappy. FDR recoiled from the plebeian food foisted on him as president; perhaps no dish was more off-putting to him than what home economists referred to as 'salads,' assemblages made from canned fruit, cream cheese, gelatin, and mayonnaise. ... He was a connoisseur of wild fowl, which he insisted must be eaten rare. He liked his roast beef bloody, too, the juices 'pink and running.' He enjoyed filet mignon, lobster, oysters, crab, Lake Superior whitefish, and king salmon, boned and planked. He had a special affection for caviar, and pate de foie gras baked en croute. Eleanor, by contrast, was content with a supper of milk and crackers."

[MerryBlooms]

80. We never ate that, but we ate many a night of pea gravy and potatoes. Lol

I still make it once in a while for my siblings on request. 🥰

[Kaleva]

83. I'm going to make that

Googled for a recipe as I've never heard of creamed peas and potatoes. Looks good!

[MerryBlooms]

90. Comfort food for us now days, and good on wintery nights. 🙂

[Ocelot II]

92. Creamed peas and potatoes - had that sometimes as a kid,

forgot all about it. My parents were kids during the Depression, and I'm sure my some of my mother's recipes came from that time.

[Bucky]

82. This recipe is exactly why we need to maintain the social welfare state

No one... no one ever... should be so poor they'd have to eat that

[Emile]

85. I'll stick with the "Hobo Skillet".