50 Recipes from a 1950s Housewife- A Cultivated Nest (2024)

FAQs

What did 1950s housewives cook? ›

Dad grew up eating his mother's Russian shtetl cuisine of borscht, pulverized potatoes, and desiccated meat, so he thought his wife's cooking was wildly exotic: an elegant relish tray with celery, carrots, and olives on ice; chicken à la king; green bean casserole made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup; instant ...

1950s Dinners

You'd find hearty main dishes like Salisbury steak, beef stroganoff and meat loaf on a '50s dinner menu, plus scrumptious sides.

Not only did the women of the 1950s have to make exciting meals, ensure their children are well behaved without disciplining them excessively, keep their home smelling lemon fresh and always look appealing for their husbands, they had to make it all look easy. But of course, it wasn't.

After Word War II, women - who had been called upon to work in factories and farms to support the war effort - gradually trickled back to the kitchen sink. Until the 1950s it was common for bored housewives to buy amphetamine-based drugs from the chemists.

Popular packaged foods included Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Special K cereals, General Mills' Trix and Cocoa Puffs cereals, Star-Kist Tuna, Minute Rice, Eggo Waffles, Pepperidge Farm Cookies, Ruffles potato chips, Rice-A-Roni, Ramen Noodles, and Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream.

Items like pancakes, sausages, meatloaf, burgers, and sandwiches were standard on diner menus, and still are today. The meals were priced low, making diners popular even before their rise in the 1950s.

The history of TV dinners traces back to the 1950s, a time when television was becoming a central part of American culture. As families gathered around their TV sets, the need for quick and easy meals arose.

Common dishes included the likes of meat stews, creamed tuna, meat loaf, corned beef and cabbage, mashed potatoes with butter, breaded and fried veal cutlets, deep-fried vegetables, French fries… you get the idea.

The 1950s dress that has become the iconic 1950s housewife dress is the button-down shirtwaist style dress. These simple dresses would have a modest high neckline, fitted bodice, defined waist, and circle skirt. It came in fun and colorful prints like polka dots, stripes, plaids, ginghams, and gorgeous florals.

Back in the '50s, women most commonly held positions as secretaries, bank tellers or clerical workers, sales clerks, private household workers and teachers.

How to be a perfect 1950s housewife? ›

1950s Housewife clothing

The most popular style of dress has to be the button-down shirtwaist dress. This style of dress was initially designed in the 1900s to mimic the utilitarian design of a man's shirt.

This helped normalize amphetamine use—and when the war was over, civilian use skyrocketed. This time, though, it wasn't soldiers who took amphetamines. It was their wives. Researchers had known for decades that amphetamines suppress appetite, but specific formulations for weight loss only took off after World War II.

A typical day for married men in 1950 was for their wives to wait on them and make their lives easy for them. If men held full-time jobs, they were considered amazing husbands. If they even “babysat” their own child, they were revered. Housewives' jobs were to wait on their husbands and children, hand and foot.

Starting in the 1950s, this idea of the “housewife” came to a forefront within society. The perfect housewife was one who was able to cook, clean, bear children, raise the children, and be able to please her husband by having dinner on the table by the time he came home from his corporate job.

"Government cheese," canned tuna, white bread, canned vegetables, mayonnaise, boxed cake and biscuit mixes, and yes, gelatin and Cool Whip were what poor people ate. Wealthier people ate "real" food - a trend that continues today.

Women were considered the weaker sex and often treated as second-class citizens in the 1950s. They were dependant on their fathers or husbands to make most decisions on their behalf.

So much so that highly processed foods effectively “liberated” American housewives in the 1950s, according to the National Women's History Museum. At the time, families were flocking to the suburbs, moving en masse into homes outfitted with electric appliances that helped streamline the food prep and cooking processes.