9 holiday foods Boomers grew up on that their grandchildren wouldn’t recognize as food

Lottie and I were out for our usual walk last week when I bumped into my neighbor Ron, who mentioned his grandkids were coming over for Thanksgiving.

“Making anything special?” I asked.

“Well, I thought about doing tomato aspic like Mom used to,” he said with a grin. “But my daughter warned me the kids would stage a mutiny.”

It got me thinking. All those holiday dishes that were staples at our family tables growing up would probably send today’s grandkids running for the door. Things have certainly changed in the food department.

Let me walk you through some of the “delicacies” we considered perfectly normal back in the day.

1) Tomato aspic

Picture this: tomato juice suspended in gelatin, often with celery, onions, or olives mixed in, served cold and wobbling on a bed of lettuce.

According to food historians, tomato aspic was considered the height of sophistication in the 1950s and ’60s. Savory Jell-O graced every holiday table and ladies’ luncheon.

My mother would spend hours getting the mold just right. She’d carefully arrange vegetable slices before pouring in the tomato gelatin mixture, treating it like edible architecture.

When I mentioned it to my grandson last year, he looked at me like I’d suggested we eat actual dirt for dinner.

2) Lime Jello salad with cottage cheese

Speaking of gelatin creations, this one deserves its own spot on the list.

We’re talking lime Jell-O mixed with cottage cheese, crushed pineapple, mayonnaise, and sometimes celery or pecans. The whole concoction would be set in a mold and served as a “salad” alongside the turkey.

The combination sounds bizarre because, well, it is. But there was something about that sweet-tangy flavor that worked in the context of a heavy holiday meal. Your taste buds would get confused, reset themselves, and you’d go back for another bite of stuffing.

My wife still makes this occasionally. Our grandkids stare at it like it’s an alien life form. Fair enough, I suppose.

3) Ambrosia salad

Named after the food of the gods in Greek mythology, ambrosia salad was anything but divine in my opinion. Though I seem to be in the minority on this one.

This “salad” consisted of canned mandarin oranges, pineapple chunks, maraschino cherries, miniature marshmallows, shredded coconut, and either Cool Whip or sour cream. All mixed together into a sweet, sticky mess.

Was it a side dish? Was it dessert? Nobody really knew, but it showed up at every single potluck and holiday gathering throughout my childhood.

The thing is, as food writers note, ambrosia reached its peak in the ’50s and ’60s but has somehow stuck around in certain families. My sister still brings it to Christmas dinner, and I’ll admit I have a small spoonful for nostalgia’s sake.

Today’s kids take one look at those marshmallows swimming in whipped cream and fruit juice and politely decline.

4) Cheese ball with smoked oysters

Cocktail parties were huge when I was younger. No appetizer spread was complete without a cheese ball rolled in nuts.

But here’s where it gets interesting. One particularly popular version from the ’60s mixed cream cheese with canned smoked oysters, chili powder, and Worcestershire sauce before being shaped into a ball and covered with chopped pecans.

My aunt made one every Christmas Eve. She’d present it with crackers like she was offering us a Michelin-star appetizer. And you know what? People loved it.

I tried to explain this delicacy to my fourteen-year-old granddaughter. She literally gagged at the phrase “smoked oysters in cream cheese.”

Different times, I suppose.

5) Rumaki

This one sounds exotic because it is, sort of.

Rumaki was a Trader Vic’s creation that took over home entertaining in the 1950s. Chicken liver and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, marinated in soy sauce, and flavored with brown sugar and ginger.

Research shows that rumaki dominated the appetizer scene throughout the ’50s and ’60s before gradually fading away as Trader Vic’s itself became less fashionable.

My parents served this at their anniversary party in 1967. I remember thinking it was the fanciest thing I’d ever eaten. The combination of sweet, savory, and that slight funk from the liver was something special.

Try telling a modern teenager they’re eating liver, though. Good luck with that.

6) Fruitcake (the real kind)

Okay, fruitcake jokes have been around forever. Modern kids think of it as that thing nobody actually eats that gets passed around like a bad penny.

But the fruitcakes we had growing up were different. These were dense, boozy creations packed with actual dried fruits and nuts, aged for weeks or even months with regular brandy or rum additions.

My grandmother would start making hers in October. By Christmas, those things were so soaked in alcohol they were practically a fire hazard. And they were delicious, if you liked that sort of thing.

The neon-green-and-red-candied-fruit versions you see in stores today are pale imitations. No wonder kids think fruitcake is a joke.

7) Pigs in a blanket (the fancy version)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Pigs in a blanket are still around. Little sausages wrapped in crescent roll dough show up at every kid’s party.

But that’s not what we had.

The original pigs in a blanket from the ’50s involved chicken livers wrapped in bacon, similar to rumaki but without the Asian-inspired seasonings. Or sometimes prunes wrapped in bacon. Or oysters. Basically, if it was small and questionable, someone wrapped it in bacon and called it elegant.

I watched my grandsons wolf down the modern version at a Super Bowl party last year. When I told them what the original version was, they looked betrayed. Like I’d just ruined pigs in a blanket for them forever.

8) SPAM and cream cheese ribbon loaf

This one is truly wild, even by mid-century standards.

Picture slices of SPAM layered with cream cheese, constructed into a loaf, then sliced and served on crackers. Hormel promoted this as a sophisticated way to serve their canned meat product at cocktail parties.

My mother never made this one, thank goodness. But I saw it at neighbors’ houses and even tried it once or twice. It was exactly what you’d expect SPAM and cream cheese to taste like.

The younger generation already struggles with the concept of SPAM as food. Add cream cheese into the mix and you’ve lost them completely.

9) Watergate salad

Despite the name having nothing to do with the political scandal, Watergate salad earned its place on every holiday table in the ’70s.

This was pistachio-flavored instant pudding mixed with crushed pineapple, mini marshmallows, Cool Whip, and chopped pecans. The result? A pale green, fluffy concoction that somehow passed as a legitimate side dish.

My kids grew up with this one and actually enjoyed it. But when I made it for Thanksgiving a few years back, my youngest grandson poked at it with his fork like he was examining evidence at a crime scene.

“What IS it, Grandpa?” he asked.

“Food, supposedly,” I answered. He didn’t try it.

Final thoughts

Look, I’m not saying all these dishes were culinary masterpieces. Some of them were downright bizarre by any standard, past or present.

But they were ours. They represented an era when convenience foods were exciting and new, when anything in a mold was considered fancy, and when nobody questioned mixing cottage cheese with lime Jell-O.

Would I make most of these for my grandkids today? Probably not. They’re growing up in a world of fresh ingredients, international cuisines, and far more sophisticated palates than we had.

Still, there’s something to be said for those weird holiday foods that shaped our memories. Even if they make absolutely no sense to anyone born after 1980.

And who knows? Maybe in fifty years, my grandkids will be telling their own grandchildren about the strange things we ate, like kale smoothies and avocado toast.

Full circle, as they say.