Bobby Hicks read roughly 800 mid-century cookbooks to write one, and what he found was not a list of bad recipes. It was the exact point where American home cooking lost its thread.
The Great Depression ran into World War II with almost no recovery in between. Two generations of mothers cooked without butter, without sugar, without the ingredients their own mothers’ recipes assumed. What did not get cooked did not get taught. By the time the post-war boom arrived with canned soup and boxed everything, and women moved from house labor into factories and still had to put dinner on the table, the chain was already broken. The dishes we laugh at now were what filled the gap.
- Why a pineapple was a status symbol, and why people rented them by the party
- Why aspic was proof you owned a refrigerator, not something anyone wanted to eat
- What actually broke the transmission of technique, and who put it back
Bobby Hicks is a food historian, a Next Level Chef season four alum, and the author of Retro Recipes: Vintage Dishes with a Modern Twist from Countryman Press. He shows up with a vintage basting spoon from an estate sale and opens with the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him in a kitchen. He was telling an extern that onion skin works as a bandage. Mid-sentence, he cut off the tip of his finger.
André Natera and Bobby Hicks cover the three books he studied before going on television, why sleep and food were what actually wrecked him on set, the market exercise he still gives private chefs, why he believes you can teach technique but not adaptability, what happens once a publisher wants 100 recipes in six months, twelve years of content advice from before it was a career, and how to order a drink without embarrassing yourself.
It ends where every episode ends, with the Mount Rushmore.
Guest
Retro Recipes Kitchen on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/retrorecipeskitchen/
This Fellow on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/thisfellow/
retrorecipeskitchen.comRetro Recipes: Vintage Dishes with a Modern Twist → https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324117257
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