7 Cheap Recipes Straight From The Great Depression (2024)

FAQs

What foods were cheap during the Great Depression? ›

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, homemakers stretched their food budgets with soups, rice and pasta–but beans were the commodity no household went without: cheap, high protein, and no refrigeration required until cooked.

Potatoes were also inexpensive and used extensively. Some meals even used both. One of these meals was called the Poor Man's Meal. It combined potatoes, onions, and hot dogs into one hearty, inexpensive dish, which was perfect for the hard times people had fallen on.

Ultimately, condensed milk served an essential role in the economy of the Great Depression, providing families with a healthy food source that could be stored and used when needed, while at the same time adding a tasty element to several recipes.

A typical Depression-era breakfast consisted of a piece of seasonal fruit, milk and cereal, and eggs or toast with butter. The noon meal was usually a sandwich with salad or some soup. Dinner was meat and veggies, followed by dessert.

Almost all farm families raised large gardens with vegetables and canned fruit from their orchards. They had milk and cream from their dairy cattle. Chickens supplied meat and eggs. They bought flour and sugar in 50-pound sacks and baked their own bread.

: If you judged the 1930s by its snacks alone, you would have no idea that the economy was tanking. Twinkies, Snickers, Tootsie Pops, Fritos, 3 Musketeers, Ritz Crackers, Frito corn chips, 5th Avenues, and Lay's Potato Chips were all produced during the lean years of the Great Depression.

The history of soup kitchens in America can be traced back to the year 1929 with the effects of a growing depression. When soup kitchens first appeared, they were run by churches or private charities and served mostly soup and bread. Soup was economical because water could be added to serve more people.

Learn with Us! At his establishment, every item cost a penny: A meal of half a pound of bread, soup, potatoes, pork and beans, and coffee only cost hungry customers five cents. Breadlines, where miserable hundreds waited hours for free food, were an all-too-common sight during the Depression.

Between 1933 and 1935, the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, later renamed the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), sent millions of tons of government food to every state in the nation.

What foods were hard to get in the Great Depression? ›

The Imperial Valley of California, for example, lost 2.8 million watermelons, 1.4 million crates of cantaloupes, and 22.4 million pounds of tomatoes in 1932 simply because it could not be sold, despite widespread poverty and hunger [1].

A common depression cake is also known as "Boiled Raisin Cake", "Milkless, Eggless, Butterless Cake", or "Poor Man's Cake".

Kibble + canned dog foods were introduced made out of dehydrated meat and grain mill scraps. Great Depression (30's - 40's): Canned pet food became 90% of the pet food market.

We had serious deflation in the Great Depression. The consumer price level fell by 25%; wholesale prices fell by 33%.

Meat was more of a scarcity and was not served at every Depression meal. When used, it was often combined with potatoes, onions, rice, macaroni, biscuits, and other extenders.

Soup kitchens and bread lines were methods of feeding the neediest people in the country during the Great Depression. Run by charities, private companies, and the government, many soup kitchens and bread lines served thousands of people a day.

In the early 1930s prices dropped so low that many farmers went bankrupt and lost their farms. In some cases, the price of a bushel of corn fell to just eight or ten cents. Some farm families began burning corn rather than coal in their stoves because corn was cheaper.