Food in the Great Depression with Bonnie Soper

During the Great Depression, unemployment soared as Americans grappled with failing banks, environmental catastrophe, and the challenge of feeding themselves while impoverished. Due to the hardships of poverty faced by millions in the 1930s, the Great Depression remains one of the most notorious periods in American history. Echoes of the Depression can be felt today, in news articles and interviews where people express fears that the COVID-19 pandemic will again force much of the world to face severe economic decline and unemployment (1). Now that we have faced the initial shock of the pandemic and attempt to adapt to the requirements of social distancing and staying at home, articles on Depression-era cooking are surfacing. Whether advice on how to make a ‘Depression Cake’ without milk, butter, or eggs or minimal ingredient recipes such as ‘Depression Bread,’ people are clearly turning to the food of the Great Depression for comfort while coping with limited resources and the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic (2).

The indulgences that many turn to in times of stress were not an option for the majority of those who lived during the Depression, who instead found themselves simply trying to survive. Many of those affected had to cut things such as meat and produce from their diets. Yet, there are many instances where people during the Depression showed ingenious improvisation and collaboration in search of ways to combat limited food availability. In an interview from Minnesota’s Twentieth Century, when ice cream could not be had, Phyllis Brantl recalls her family making ‘snow cream’ out of piles of clean snow, combined with whatever eggs, vanilla, and sugar her family may have had on hand. In the summer her family used hail and called the dish ‘hail cream’(3). Alongside the creation of concoctions such as snow cream, the 1930s was a period where many realized the importance of communal reliance. Throughout the decade, some predominantly black neighborhoods in places such as New York City, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Birmingham, among others, started collectively owned grocery stores and food buying clubs to pool resources and get food to larger amounts of people at better prices (4).

The personal attachment that many have to inherited recipes is evident in the value people still place on cookbooks and recipes from the Depression that survive through today. Scribbled notes on the sides of recipes can offer insight into the daily decision making that was required to cook during times of scarcity. Alongside their sentimental value, historians such as Rebecca Sharpless advocate for the importance of cookbooks in understanding the connections people, women in particular, had to their daily environment (5).

Many people turn to food in times of stress for comfort and even a reminder that there are still things to enjoy. Inspired by the research I did for this post I asked my mom what foods she remembers fondly from her childhood, and she recalled how her grandmother would give her and her siblings sliced tomatoes with sugar on them. I myself recall as a child begging my mom to make her fudge and shortbread cookies when I was required to bring food to my elementary school classes. Although many of us do not have access to food in the same way we had before the pandemic, perhaps this period can also lead to the type of collaboration and expression we have seen come out of the Great Depression.

Click here to find your local chapter of Food Not Bombs or a food bank near you:

http://foodnotbombs.net/info/locations/

https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank

In the comments, share what recipes you have inherited from people in your life or your go-to comfort food!

Image: Balanced Diet for the Expectant Mother Inquire at the Health Bureau. New York. [New york: WPA Federal Art Project, between 1936 and 1939] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/98513398/.

Sources:

1. Examples of articles discussing the Covid-19 pandemic in conjunction with the Great Depression are abundant and include Ezra Klein, “How the Covid-19 Recession Could Become a Depression,” Vox, March 23, 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21188900/coronavirus-stock-market-recession-depression-trump-jobs-unemployment. Klaus Schwab and Guido Vanham, “What We Must Do to Prevent a Global Covid-19 Depression,” Time, April 9, 2020, https://time.com/5817922/science-collaboration-global-covid-depression/. Peter Cohen, “How COVID-19 Crunch Compares To Spanish Flu, Great Depression,” Forbes,April 6, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2020/04/06/how-covid-19-crunch-compares-to-spanish-flu-great-depression/#689c87941798.
2. The Today Show website advertises a recipe for ‘Depression Cake,’ in their article “No eggs, milk or butter? Depression Cake is making a comeback,” by Ronnie Koenig, published April 21^st https://www.today.com/food/depression-cake-or-wacky-cake-making-comeback-t179436.
3. J. Tice, Minnesota’s TwentiethCentury: Stories of Extraordinary Everyday People (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 77.
4. Jennifer Jensen Wallach, Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies and Black Food in Twentieth-Century America(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 142.
5. Rebecca Sharpless, “Cookbooks as Resources for Rural Research,” Agricultural History 90, no 2 (2016): 195-208.