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It can't be overstated how many of those recipes were some con to sell canned shit that Grandma cut out of a magazine. There's very little "in the old county we cooked like this..." that made it through the Boomer food filter. Best case scenario is it's Betty fucking Crocker.

Some family recipes are heirlooms. Others are evidence.

My grandma hand-wrote down all her recipes for her daughters before she died. A few years ago I decided a nice gift for all of them would be to transcribe the recipes into a printed book. While trancribing the recipes I realized that 80% of her dishes were just variations of ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, oleo, and shredded cheese.

Case in point:

That's the one really positive thing about the internet. One doesn't need a grandma who could cook to have access to good recipes any more.

My grandparents ate boiled potatoes with boiled vegetables and watery meat. When I lived at my parents we often at the same. Thank god that we've adapted the cuisine from countries that actually discovered that food can have taste

Grandma’s cookbook had two categories: comfort food and culinary crimes.

My grandma lived through the depression, her cooking was god awful, I had to teach my mom how to cook and season food. She didn’t know why people used paprika.

My Irish American grandma on my dad's side had two recipes. 'Roast Butt ', some pale greasy meat that was boiled until it was falling apart, yet still resisted cutting and chewing once it cursed your plate: the left overs of this were tossed into a pot with a can of La Choy 'Oriental Style Vegetables' and a bottle of some sweet sauce and dubbed 'Chop Suey', which was probably from a recipe she got out of an ad in the back of a TV guide in the 60s.

The woman could boil a mean potato, though.

My Oklahoma dust bowl era meemaw never really cooked anything that didn't come from a can, but she baked bread and 'English Muffins' from scratch that held up well when frozen.

The bread was really dry and tasteless unless you really slathered on condiments. The 'muffins' were flattened little lumps of dough that were as dense as a dying star, not a single nook or cranny in sight, with a chewy raw consistency not unlike chewing gum.

I actually liked those a lot, and was disappointed later in life when I had store bought English Muffins, which were more like a mutant crumpet than anything else.

My mom and sister have the recipes, but neither have attempted making them. I'm afraid to read them because they'll probably just say:

One box Jiffy baking mix, water, salt. Bake until done.

The Jello thing must be American.

In the UK we made everything with potatoes and Spam.

yeah, depression / ration era cooking for anyone not of reasonable wealth was pretty bad, and they stuff they dreamed up on the far side where they were no longer rationed.

My grandmother took a pack of 15 bean soup, added butter beans and lima beans, the broth was basically butter with a touch of milk/cream and a touch of salt. Then a dish of Mrs Weiss kluski noodles also served in butter occasionally with a little chicken. My father always raved about it.

Funny part, she always complained about how long it took her to make the noodles, told us all they were hand made. After going up there for over a decade, one day she left the bag in the sink. That dinner was a HOOT

The people who say that about younger women probably had Grandmas who were still in households that could be sustained on a single income.

Not saying it was ideal that their only choice was homemaking, but it stands to reason that a more significant amount of them got good at cooking and baking.

Both my grandmothers were great cooks. I guess I had a lucky childhood in that regards.

I grew up in the 70s with casseroles that would make your god cry.

If I’m diagnosed with cancer, I’m blaming old-timey cooking. Some things should be left in the past.

Utah, is it?

And here I am in Spain, laughing, and crying, and barfing a little in my mouth.

In her defense, we're quickly approaching the point where the only food we'll be able to afford is depression era food. Welcome back to splitting one streak between 7 people and water pie.

did you know you can buy those jelly soaked weenies? and dont let them convince you they were made in vienna

Yeah, even just having more different ingredients and spices available makes those recipes of old somewhat obsolete. But then you also have the internet to tell you all kinds of new recipes, so if the local cuisine isn't great to begin with, it is easier than ever to not bother with it.

When I was in high school my older brother brought a cookbook with recipes from around the world. I tried to make couple that were fairly easy to make and was amazed by the taste. I couldn't believe food can have that much flavor. I later realized it's not that the recipes was so special. My mother's food was simply very bland. Not bad, but it was just variations of salt and sour. I don't make or miss any of her recipes. She makes very good deserts tough.