Cookbooks have come a long way… They’re shiny, sleek, minimalist and some even tell a whole, captivating story between the recipes and food pics. Talking of modern food pics, those often come with their own glam team in the background, styled and photographed to perfection. Even something as simple as a cheese sandwich might look as if it’s spent over three hours in hair and make-up.
It’s a far cry from the food pics in the cookbooks our parents and grandparents once perused. Grainy, ambitious, structurally unsound, and bizarrely hilarious. Back then, vegetables appeared in neon hues that nature never intended, and Jell-O reigned supreme. Moms would get lost in creativity, attempting eggplant penguins, nappa cabbage angels or bridal meat dolls. Why be basic when you can create chaotic, culinary art?
If today’s recipes bore you, or you’re just looking for a good belly-laugh, head over to and Instagram account called Cursed Cookbooks. It’s a gallery of gastronomical offbeat delights. More than 56,000 people gather in this corner kitchen of the internet to laugh and cry about the absurdities of vintage cookbooks. Bored Panda has put together a compilation of the page’s best posts for you to feast your eyes on while you contemplate what to cook for dinner tonight.
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Nowadays, it’s easy to quickly Google a recipe if you need to know how to make something. But there’s still something magical about paging through a physical cookbook that’s been meticulously planned and designed. They’ve become more artistic, beautiful, creative and informative as the years go by. Sometimes with stories interwoven between the recipes, we can learn about cultures, countries, people, history and so much more.
There was a time that many feared the internet would spell the end of cookbooks but fortunately, the opposite was true. Image magazine reports that cookbook sales in the United States grew 8% year-on-year between 2010 and 2020.
Sales boomed during the pandemic, as people found themselves in lockdown, longing for the days the could visit their favorite restaurants or chat to friends over a three-course meal. Even after we waved goodbye to Covid, cookbooks continued to be popular.
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As we mentioned earlier, cookbooks have evolved to keep up with consumer trends. Gone are the days of a bunch of straightforward recipes and grainy pictures. Now, we can buy cookbooks that center around storytelling, and focus on specialized niches.
“Some support lifestyle choices such as sustainability, health and wellness; while others are all about all out indulgence,” notes the Image site. “Some cookbooks show home cooks how to utilise seasonal ingredients, fridge leftovers, limit food waste, while others support readers in their dietary requirements like veganism, keto, gluten free, etc.”
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Just as cookbooks have evolved, so too has the way we cook and what we make. Food from the 1950s often gets a bad rep for being weird or cursed but one food historian argues that the era’s meals were merely misunderstood.
“Everyone’s food history deserves respect and understanding,” writes Sarah Wassberg Johnson. “So let’s give up the mean girl attitudes about foods we’re not familiar with and let go of the guilt about liking the foods we like, be they 1950s processed foods or 500-year-old family recipes.”
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Wassberg Johnson also notes that people are quick to judge some of the cooks who came before us, for not using fresh fruits and vegetables. “In the context of the 1950s, fresh vegetables were not always widely available as they are today, so canned and frozen vegetables took the drudgery out of canning your own or going without,” she explains.
The expert adds that our modern food system of fresh fruits and vegetables is not necessarily any better. It’s “propped up by agricultural chemicals, cheap oil, watering desert areas, and outsourcing agricultural labor to migrant workers or farms in the global south,” Wassberg Johnson argues. Something, she says, many foodies like to “conveniently overlook.”
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