Old-Fashioned Recipes Grandma Used to Make

ByBackyard Texas Grill

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Take a delicious trip back in time with these old-fashioned recipes, from comforting family dinners to nostalgic sides, cakes, pies, and desserts.

Old-Fashioned Recipes Grandma Used to Make

Close your eyes for a minute and come back in time with me. Let's go back to a kitchen in the 1940s, 50s, or 60s, when something was probably simmering on the stove, a casserole might be bubbling away in the oven, and there was a good chance a homemade cake was cooling on the counter.

Nobody was taking pictures of the food. Nobody was counting likes or worrying about whether dinner was photogenic. They were simply cooking supper—and oh, how I love those foods.

I was born in the late 1950s, so when I use the word vintage, my mind naturally goes to the foods of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Some of these dishes were already old favorites when I came along, while others became part of my childhood and followed me into adulthood. These are the meatloaves, gravies, casseroles, salads, biscuits, cakes, pies, and puddings that filled our kitchens and church fellowship halls.

Some of these recipes can take me back more than half a century with a single bite.

Come Back in Time With Me

vintage TV dinners and TV shows

If you grew up in the 1950s or 60s, you probably understand exactly what I'm talking about. Dinner wasn't necessarily fancy. It might have been Salisbury steak covered in gravy with mashed potatoes alongside, or meatloaf, green beans, and something homemade for dessert.

And afterward? We watched television.

I can practically picture myself eating Salisbury steak while watching Lost in Space, or laughing at the Three Stooges, whose old comedy shorts seemed to live forever on television. Then came Scooby-Doo and another whole era of Saturday-morning television.

And let's not forget the movies! I loved the Elvis movies, and I certainly remember Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon in those wonderfully silly beach movies. Give me a piece of homemade cake and Beach Blanket Bingo and I could happily go right back in time.

Isn't it funny how food and entertainment get tangled together in our memories? You hear an old television theme song and suddenly you're sitting in a living room you haven't seen in decades. You taste a familiar cake and you're back at Grandma's table. Food has a way of remembering things for us.

What Do I Mean by "Vintage Recipes"?

When I think of vintage food, my mind naturally goes to the 1940s through the 1960s—the era of church suppers, family recipes, community cookbooks, casseroles, meat-and-potatoes dinners, and cakes made for company.

I'm not putting a strict historical cutoff on this collection, though. I was still making plenty of food memories in the 1970s, and my oldest daughter Randi and her husband Zach (griller extraordinaire) were born in the early 1980s. They have nostalgic foods of their own.

That's one of the things I find so interesting about food memories: vintage depends a little bit on who's doing the remembering. For me, a dish might take me back to the 50s or 60s. For Randi and Zach, another might bring back the 80s or 90s.

Sometimes those generations overlap, too.

One Bite and You're a Kid Again

Old-Fashioned Recipes Grandma Used to Make

I saw that happen recently when I made my homemade version of Shake-and-Bake chicken. Talk about a blast from the past! Randi loved it, and part of the reason was that it took her straight back to childhood.

I knew exactly what she meant because it did the same thing to me.

That's the wonderful thing about nostalgic food. It doesn't necessarily have to be a recipe passed down on a handwritten card from your great-grandmother. Sometimes it's simply a flavor, a smell, or a particular meal that reminds you of being eight years old.

Suddenly you're not standing in your grown-up kitchen anymore. You're home.

Church Potlucks Were a Big Part of My Food Story

Old-Fashioned Recipes Grandma Used to Make

If I'm going to talk about vintage recipes, I have to talk about church potlucks. So many of the foods in this collection are the same kinds of dishes I remember seeing on church tables when I was growing up.

People simply didn't eat out as often back then. Today, if friends or family want to get together, it's easy to say, "Let's meet at a restaurant." That wasn't nearly as common when I was a child. We gathered in homes. We gathered at church. And we cooked.

Everybody brought something. There might be casseroles lined up next to one another, bowls of potato salad and coleslaw, platters of deviled eggs, homemade breads, meat dishes, vegetables, cakes, cookies, pies, and puddings.

And if three different women brought potato salad? Well, we ate three potato salads. Nobody complained!

Church Potlucks Were Our Recipe Exchange

church potluck
Church Potluck

Those gatherings did more than feed us. They taught us how to cook.

We learned to make cakes because somebody brought a delicious cake to church. We learned to make cookies because somebody's cookies disappeared from the platter before everything else. We discovered casseroles we'd never eaten at home and immediately wanted to know how they were made.

"Who made this?" "What's in that?" "Can I get your recipe?"

Those questions were our version of clicking the Save button on Pinterest.

There were no food blogs or social media feeds filled with gorgeous food photographs. You often tried a recipe because you had already tasted it. Somebody brought a wonderful dish to church, you asked for the recipe, and eventually you made it for your own family.

Then maybe you took it to another gathering, where somebody asked you for the recipe. That's how food traveled.

From One Kitchen to Another

church cookbooks

This is one reason I have such a soft spot for old church cookbooks. Those little community cookbooks captured the way ordinary people actually cooked. The recipes weren't created for photographs or search engines. Someone simply made something good enough that everybody wanted to know how to make it.

Those recipes traveled from kitchen to kitchen, often written on index cards or scraps of paper, until they became part of another family's story. I've written more about that tradition in my Vintage Church Cookbooks post, and you'll also find many of these same kinds of dishes in my collection of Southern Church Potluck Recipes.

There's quite a bit of overlap between old-fashioned food and potluck food, and there's a reason for that. These were recipes made to be shared.

Old-Fashioned Main Dishes

Let's start where families have always started: with supper.

When I think about the meals of my childhood, I don't think about complicated ingredients or fancy presentation. I think about food that filled us up: meatloaf, Salisbury steak, chicken fried steak, round steak smothered in gravy, goulash, chicken, beef stew, and hamburger gravy spooned over rice or potatoes.

These were the kinds of meals that could feed a family without requiring a trip to a specialty grocery store. They relied on familiar ingredients, simple cooking techniques, and a little ingenuity.

And gravy? Goodness, we loved our gravy. A plate of meat, potatoes, vegetables, and gravy might not look glamorous by today's standards, but put it in front of me and I'm a happy girl.

Vintage Main Dishes

Old-Fashioned Side Dishes

potato sala

Now we come to some of the foods that really take me back. It's funny, because sometimes the simplest dishes trigger the strongest memories.

Potato salad, coleslaw, and deviled eggs weren't particularly exotic, but they were part of the backdrop of my childhood. They showed up at family gatherings, church suppers, picnics, cookouts, and holiday meals. If people were gathering and food was involved, there was a pretty good chance somebody was carrying in a big bowl covered with plastic wrap or foil.

Potatoes and onions cooked in a skillet belong here, too, along with mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread dressing, and those casseroles that seemed to multiply whenever a crowd gathered.

None of it was particularly fancy. That's precisely why I love it.

Old-Fashioned Side Dishes

Biscuits, Breads, and Old-Fashioned Breakfasts

grandma's 2-ingredient biscuits

There's something about a pan of homemade biscuits that instantly makes a kitchen feel old-fashioned. Add sausage gravy and you've got the kind of stick-to-your-ribs breakfast that has survived generation after generation for a very good reason.

I also think of homemade rolls on the dinner table and banana bread made because nobody was about to throw away three perfectly usable overripe bananas. That's another thing I appreciate about old-fashioned cooking: people used what they had.

Stale bread became something else. Leftovers became tomorrow's supper. Overripe fruit went into cakes and breads. A few inexpensive ingredients could become enough food to feed a whole table.

There's a lot we can learn from that kind of cooking.

Biscuits, Breads, and Old-Fashioned Breakfasts

And Then There Was Dessert

banana pudding

Now we're talking!

If we're really going back in time, I want to see a cake sitting on the counter. I want pie and banana pudding. I want something baked in cast iron. I want the kind of dessert that makes me picture women carrying covered cake pans into the church fellowship hall.

Some of my favorite vintage desserts are incredibly simple, and that's part of their charm. Pineapple upside-down cake is a perfect example. Just looking at one takes you back—the pineapple rings, the cherries, that beautiful caramelized topping.

Then there's pecan pie, banana pudding, lemon icebox pie, applesauce cake, strawberry pie, cowboy cookies, and Pig Pickin' Cake. These are desserts made for sharing.

And once again, so many of them remind me of church. Someone would bring a wonderful cake or pie, we'd taste it, and before you knew it somebody was asking for the recipe.

I suppose that's how many of us built our recipe collections: one delicious church supper at a time.

Vintage Desserts

Some Things Change. Some Things Don't.

Of course, family gatherings look different today. We can pick up our phones and have dinner delivered. We can meet at a restaurant. We can buy almost anything already prepared, and I'm certainly not complaining about modern conveniences!

But I don't want us to lose the other kind of gathering—the kind where somebody says, "We're eating at six," and everybody starts figuring out what they're bringing.

These days, many of our family gatherings happen at Randi and Zach's house. Zach might have something going on the grill or smoker. Someone else will bring a side. I'll probably show up with something I've been cooking (usually my famous Southwest Beans) or baking for my blog. Actually, there's a pretty good chance I'll show up with several things.

Then everybody gathers around the food.

That's the part I hope never changes.

We're Still Making Food Memories

Sometimes I wonder which foods the younger members of our family will remember decades from now. Will they remember Zach's barbecue? Will they remember one of my cakes? Will they remember a particular dish Randi served?

Maybe. But it might be something much simpler.

Maybe someday one of them will taste creamy coleslaw and suddenly remember a summer afternoon at Randi and Zach's house. Maybe skillet potatoes will remind them of family gatherings. Maybe they'll make meatloaf and think of us.

That's the funny thing about food memories. You don't always know you're making a food memory while you're making it.

The meals that seem completely ordinary today can become the ones we spend the rest of our lives trying to recreate.

From My Childhood Table to Yours

I've lived through a lot of changing food trends. I've watched the way we cook change, the way we gather change, and I've certainly watched television change!

But give me an old-fashioned supper, a homemade dessert, and an old movie or television show, and I'm perfectly content. I'll take Salisbury steak and Lost in Space. I'll take cake and an Elvis movie. I'll take Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello dancing across the screen in Beach Blanket Bingo.

I'll take a church fellowship hall filled with casseroles and people swapping recipes. I'll take potato salad, coleslaw, deviled eggs, meatloaf, biscuits, gravy, pie, and pudding.

Most of all, I'll take a house filled with people I love and a table filled with food somebody took the time to make.

Because when I look back, that's what these vintage recipes really represent to me. Not a decade or a trend, and not even a particular way of cooking.

They remind me of home.

More Old-Fashioned Recipes and Stories

If you enjoyed this trip down memory lane, be sure to visit some of these other collections here at Backyard Texas Grill.

Southern Church Potluck Recipes: More of the casseroles, sides, desserts, and crowd-pleasing dishes that belong on a church supper table.

Vintage Church Cookbooks: A celebration of the old community cookbooks that preserved recipes and passed them from one generation of home cooks to the next.

Texas Comfort Food Recipes for Family Gatherings: Hearty, familiar foods made for bringing people together.

Southern Comfort Food: More Than Just Recipes: A closer look at why the foods we grew up eating can mean so much more than what's on the plate.

What Food Takes You Back?

turkey pot pie

Now I want to know about your food memories. What dish can take you back fifty years with a single bite? Was it something your mother made for supper? Your grandmother's cake? A casserole you first tasted at church? Something you ate from a TV tray while watching your favorite show?

Maybe your memories are from the 1940s. Maybe they're from the 50s or 60s. Maybe the 70s or 80s are your "good old days." It doesn't really matter.

If a recipe can make you close your eyes and remember the people, places, sounds, and moments that surrounded it, then it's more than just food.

It's part of your story.

And those are exactly the recipes I want to keep making.

Thanks for Stopping By!

If you ever make any of our vintage recipes and enjoy them please leave a comment or review. And why not pin some photos before you go?

More Vintage Recipes

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