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"I've been searching for a chilidog that matched the ones I used to eat when I was a kid," says Just Plain Craig. "After having a dog at Super Duper Weenie in Fairfield, CT I realized that I was chasing a dream. It's like trying to have that first kiss, winning touchdown. So instead of always being disappointed I decided to enjoy what I have today and move forward."
"The problem," says escondido123, "is we're not working with the same taste buds if it was a childhood memory so maybe it can never be duplicated. I was dreaming about the cinnamon rolls from the dairy case that my mom used to bake up as a special Sunday morning treat. Made some last month and they were nothing special. Ah, memories."
"Now that I'm old, an ex-smoker, and have destroyed most of my smelling apparatus thanks to chronic rhinitis (yes, the damage from nose-blowing happens, and it's permanent), there's a whole lot of those taste memories that I shall never experience again," says Will Owen. "Like the astonishingly voluptuous flavor of really good vanilla ice cream, or the musky, woodsy flavor of wild mushrooms persisting through the richness of reduced cream. But although I can no longer experience the intense chickeniness of a full-grown free-running barnyard fowl, I can still tell when I've got one instead of those poor overgrown, fattened-up juveniles from Foster Farms and the like.
"No point crying over spilled sensitivity, kids," says Will Owen. "Just treasure what you have, keep on looking for the best stuff and enjoy it all you can."
Jelly71 recently got lucky with a Proustian flavor-memory moment, though: "I recently went in search of a childhood taste memory and was delighted to find that it tasted exactly as I remembered it. It was Thrifty brand ice cream in the black cherry flavor. My grandfather used to take my brother and me there every Sunday and buy us a cone. I almost always chose black cherry. I was missing him bad a few weeks ago and got to thinking about the ice cream. Went and bought some and was very happy to discover that it still tastes like love."
Discuss: The dream has died
Try an early edition of The Joy of Cooking, or look for a Better Homes and Garden cook book. (I'd do an early Joy of Cooking). Also, you can look in used book stores for Spaghetti Recipes - old Church Cook Books, or Organization Cook Books published in the early 1960's would have 'family' recipes from the 1950's in them. The variation in the 1940's and 1950's was night and day -- War Rationing...+READ
Try an early edition of The Joy of Cooking, or look for a Better Homes and Garden cook book. (I'd do an early Joy of Cooking). Also, you can look in used book stores for Spaghetti Recipes - old Church Cook Books, or Organization Cook Books published in the early 1960's would have 'family' recipes from the 1950's in them. The variation in the 1940's and 1950's was night and day -- War Rationing restricted ingredients, and canned wonders filled the early to mid 1950's. I'm Italian and our family had a series of perhaps 6-8 red sauces, and 3-6 white sauces that we used. By the 1960's fresh produce began to fill up the pan. Some sauces used Tomato paste, rather than hand squished whole tomatoes. Tomato Paste has a VERY strong acid taste - and a secret to keep from simmering it ALL DAY(!) is to add a pinch of baking soda (we weren't allowed to do this though). If your ARE going to simmer it all day, get a Flame Tammer (a brand name I think) -- in chem lab we called them 'flame spreaders') and use a cast iron skillet to cook it in (this will keep it from burning to the bottom). I don't know, but would suspect that your mom added the herbs and flavoring at the beginning of cooking - very common at the time, and no fresh herbs or spices were really around unless you grew them yourself. Now a lot of people like to add the herbs in the last 10-15 minutes and let them flavor up the sauce (cooked too long and you lose the flavor since the volatile oils that carry the flavor will evaporate in sustained cooking). Also, in the 1940's and 50's people used a LOT of salt and many used garlic powder (The Splendid Table, an NPR/APR site, has a list of good and bad garlic powder, only one made it past her taste test), though I suspect that in the 1950's it was all pretty bad.
So, I'd day find and old Joy of Cooking, or Better Homes and Gardens cook book since they pretty much capture the 'mainstream cooking ideas' of the time. Every recipe is so different from those in books if cooked by people who love to cook. I don't know many 'cookbook cooks', most people get the basic idea and the try to improve on it. A lot of the stuff you could get in the 1950's has been 'improved', so it won't taste the same now as it did then.
Good luck in your Epic Quest for your remembered sauce!!!-COLLAPSE
I've been searching for years for an authentic spaghetti and meatballs recipe vintage 1950 or so. My aunt made the sauce from scratch, and I remember the dominant taste like it was yesterday, but no recipes I test today have that same taste...and I don't know what it is! Anybody got grandma's recipe from 1940-1950?