No festive Thanksgiving gathering would be complete without a table heaped with steaming dishes. These days, the most popular side dishes include mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.
Thanksgiving spreads haven’t always looked this way. There was a time when Jell-O creations and canned products reigned supreme.
These vintage food trends were often driven by economic factors, involving ingredients that were inexpensive or readily available in past decades.
Gelatin, for example, became a popular foundation for meals during the 1930s after the Great Depression because it was an inexpensive source of protein. According to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, close to a third of all cookbook recipes from this time period were gelatin-based.
Here are seven unique Thanksgiving menu items that have mostly fallen out of vogue.
Turkey leftovers were turned into aspic.
One dish that used gelatin was aspic, a savory jelly made from stock that firms up when chilled. It would hold meat, fish, or vegetables.
In 2015, YouTuber and vintage recipe enthusiast ThisMidlifeMillennial tried a vintage Thanksgiving leftover Jell-O recipe from a 1975 cookbook called “Carefree Cooking with Aluminum Foil.” The recipe called for turkey, frozen vegetables, cream of celery soup, and ranch dressing mixed with gelatin.
“I probably would not eat this again, but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had,” she said.
Savory Jell-O salads made for festive centerpieces.
Jell-O salads were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.
A Jell-O dish with radishes, scallions, and a few tablespoons of vinegar wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary at a festive meal. Some people continue to serve them up on Thanksgiving just because.
“Modern American palates have changed to dislike savory gelatin, but that was not always the case,” food historian Sarah Wassberg Johnson previously told Business Insider. “Probably until the 1960s, savory gelatinous dishes were a thing.”
A “spring basket dessert” consisted of fruity Jell-O with chunks of fruit inside.
Gelatin was also popular in sweeter desserts. One example is the “spring basket dessert,” which was advertised in The Ladies Home Journal in 1948.
The molded-gelatin dessert usually contained fruit juice and chunks of fruit. The gelatinous dish is no longer the dessert of choice at most holiday gatherings.
Ambrosia salad is still popular in the South, but many have left it behind.
Ambrosia recipes began appearing in publications towards the end of the 19th century, Serious Eats reported. It remains a holiday classic in some Southern homes, but is rarely seen elsewhere.
Ambrosia usually includes some kind of canned fruit with mini marshmallows, with variations that include Cool Whip, cottage cheese, and Jell-O.
Canned foods were once all the rage, including creamed corn.
A 1948 ad in the Ladies Home Journal advertised creamed corn in a can as “something to try — smooth, creamy, with plenty of tender-skinned kernels to round out the good eating.”
However, in the past few decades, canned products have gone out of style in favor of fresh food. With that, creamed corn from a can has become less popular at the table, too.
Served on special occasions, Hot Dr Pepper consisted of warm soda over lemon slices.
In a 1968 advertisement, Dr Pepper recommended serving “steaming hot” soda over lemon slices. It definitely is “something different” to offer Thanksgiving guests.
Per Serious Eats, the drink was concocted by Dr Pepper in the 1960s “to keep profits strong during the holiday season, when sales of cold pop plummet.” It was apparently pretty huge in the South but has since faded in popularity.
Hellmann’s mayonnaise shared a recipe for a Thanksgiving-themed “Cranberry Surprise.”
In 2013, Hellmann’s mayonnaise released a compilation of vintage advertisements and recipes to celebrate its 100th year.
One of the delicacies in the collection was the “Cranberry Surprise,” a holiday side dish that “blends the tartness of cranberries with the delicate creaminess of Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise” with an extra dollop of mayonnaise on top to provide “the final distinctive flavor garnish.”
This story was originally published in 2018. It was updated in 2025.
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