Sunday vintage recipe roulette: The hilariously menacing 1940s "Irish-Italian Spaghetti"

Never thought a pasta recipe would offend my Irish heritage, but here we are

Friends, I’m completely exhausted after a very busy week, so I this Sunday I am modeling self care by re-sharing one of my very first posts here, which also happens to be one of my very favorites — to laugh at, not to eat. I hope my brush with oblivion brings you joy!

Mid-Century Menu posted this disrespectful recipe the other day, noting it came from a 1940 issue of Better Homes & Gardens:

Holy cream of mushroom, Batman!

I’m of Irish descent, so much so that when 23andMe recently updated their ancestry database to reflect broader diversity in their heritage estimates, my little circle went from about 97% light blue to…98%. Why on earth has this recipe slandered my forebears as being culpable in its inception? I recognize none of my grandmothers’ cooking in this recipe. There is no cabbage, no potatoes, no sausages, no oatmeal. You can’t make scones out of this.

I can’t speak first-hand, but I feel it’s likely people of Italian descent are similarly perplexed and mortified.

On the other hand, it’s understandable that folks would be looking to use new, commercially-canned convenience foods. What a revelation! And yet, this recipe takes 45 MINUTES despite starting with opening 2 cans. You could make something entirely homemade in less than half the time. Does not compute. None of this computes.

Still, I’m a big believer in empathy. It’s a religious thing, actually, as funny as this particular recipe may seem. I want to try to understand that time, and see whether I can taste the enthusiasm.

Friends, I’m going to make this. And then, I’m going to eat it.

Preparation:

Here are the main ingredients.

It’s nice to reproduce recipes using brands as close to the original when possible, but I also don’t want to waste food unnecessarily. I’m going to make just one serving of this recipe to have for lunch, and the rest, I’m going to eat in more palatable form, so I’ve chosen brands I like well enough in their un-vintage-ified iterations.

There are also seasonings, but the spicy stuff is in such hilariously tiny amounts that they’re not worth photographing. I don’t think I’ve ever used less than a tablespoon of chili powder in a recipe in my life. But again, placing myself at the time and location it was written, this may have been scandalously spicy.

The directions are, candidly, insane. You brown onions, meat, and spices, add 2 cans of condensed goup (not a typo) with no additional liquid, and then you simmer it covered for (did I mention?) 45 MINUTES. This is what it looked like before and after 45 MINUTES of simmering on the lowest possible heat, covering tightly and stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

It’s the same, but goopier and mushier. Awesome. The weird orange sheen is at once humiliating and menacing, like that horror movie about the red-headed leprechaun.

Okay, the pasta part. One of the things I wondered, since it doesn’t specify, is how people liked to cook their noodles in the US in 1940. I actually looked up photos of vintage pasta boxes, and the directions mostly say to boil somewhere around 10 minutes, but some go up to 20.

For authenticity and at great risk to my mortal soul, I waited until it was al dente, and let it continue to boil for another couple of minutes, alas. And then, friends, as regrettably bidden in the recipe…I rinsed it.

I have never before perpetrated this absolute crime against all that is gluten and holy. How will the sauce ever stick to the pasta? Well, I’ll tell you, it will stick to the pasta by virtue of it being inherently adhesive, whether you’ve used a gluten-free soup or not. Laden as it is with condensed soup further condensed by 45 MINUTES of gratuitous simmering, this stuff would stick to Tricky Dick Nixon. You could use it as papier-mâché. With all the starch in the cream of mushroom, the end result is essentially like a pasta sauce that started with a roux. (On second thought, maybe you could make scones out of it.)

In principle, maybe that doesn’t sound so bad — it could be something like a simple marinara mixed with Alfredo, right? That’s what I told myself, as I contemplated what I promised myself would be lunch.

The taste test:

Well, if you find yourself often waxing nostalgic about school cafeteria spaghetti, have I got good news for you. It is not, in fact, like marinara mixed with Alfredo. It’s like plain canned tomato sauce mixed with cream gravy, if you let a half teaspoon of chili powder breathe on it and then left it in Death Valley until reduced by half. The texture is…unfortunate. The liquid is gloppy, the solids are mushy, with only a hair’s texture breadth between them. The pasta beneath undulates sullenly in overcooked resignation. I ate it, yes, but I’m not proud of it.

I think what I hate most about this recipe is that I’m concerned its libelous moniker has sprung from the success of colonialist British propaganda to besmirch Irish character: Eating it made me want to pick a fistfight, and you’d have to be drunk to enjoy it.