In recent years, the weird vintage recipe genre really hit its stride on video-based platforms like YouTube and TikTok, where morbid curiosity and a desire to behold the grotesque drives a lot of successful digital media—take Dr. Sandra Lee’s pimple-popping empire as an even less appetizing example.
“Certain ingredients elicit a gut reaction in people, like mayo in particular,” says Emmy Cho, one of the first auteurs of the genre. Cho is known for her nonjudgmental exploration of a wide array of culinary obscura on her long-running YouTube channel, Emmymade. For her audience of 2.89 million subscribers, she’s prepared beef fudge, which is just straight-up fudge plus a cup of ground beef, and a liver paté centerpiece covered in lemon Jell-O, mayonnaise, and green olives and shaped into a pineapple.
While mayo always strikes a nerve, nothing gets viewers going like Jell-O. The instant powdered gelatin is a key ingredient for many of the most unappetizing vintage recipes, and it makes for an alluring, wobbling, translucent spectacle—that’s also perfect for a thumbnail. “When you have crystal clear Jell-O with pieces of fruit and vegetables suspended in it, there’s something about it that makes you think, Wow, you can eat that?” Jones agreed, saying “I haven’t made very many Jell-O recipes, but every time I don’t make one, people comment, ‘Where’s the Jell-O?’” she says. “It’s what the people want.”
Both Cho and Jones accrued large view counts by daring to eat disagreeable retro creations, but both of them see the videos as more than just shock value. Cho is more interested in the process and cooking techniques involved with these recipes, and she’s always respectful and appreciative of a new edible experience, even if the edible experience is ultimately disgusting.
Jones, who described to me a long-standing interest in mid-century culture, is keenly aware of how these recipes came to be. She’ll point out the inherent superficiality of promotional recipes (as with a farming conglomerate’s 1960s recipe for avocado pie) and doesn’t shy away from discussing the fraught domestic expectations of women during that period. Just as often, she features vintage recipes she genuinely loves and grew up eating, like the one for cherry delight or her grandmother’s three ingredient chicken and dumplings. “For me, going back into this book that no one has thought about for 50 years and being able to open it, and experience it for myself, is sort of magical,” Jones explains.
Photo by Travis Rainey, Styling by Joseph De Leo
Where do these “weird” recipes actually come from?
To state the obvious: the United States underwent massive and unprecedented changes through industrialization, advances in science and technology, and the growth of a suburban middle class during the 20th century. Companies began directing their advertising toward this middle class through promotional pamphlets and recipe books; a strategy which, according to Lohman, Jell-O first laid out as early as 1905. Following the post-World War II boom in industrialized food and the supermarket’s rise, this type of recipe-based promotion reached its peak.
If you’re on the lookout for the latest foodie trends in 2023, look no further than the dessert menu. According to trend forecasters, vintage desserts are predicted to make a big comeback on restaurant menus across the U.S. in the coming months, much to the delight of fans of such classics as Baked Alaska, German Chocolate Cake, and banana pudding.
And it won’t be the fancy places with these old-school familiar flavors. Chain restaurants are getting in on the fun too, creating vintage-inspired treats and milkshakes that will remind you of your childhood.
Whether you want to keep up with the trend at home or find something new to order at your local restaurant, here are the vintage desserts you’ll be seeing everywhere in 2023.
RELATED: 16 Old-Fashioned Chocolate Desserts That Everyone (Secretly) Loves
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A true icon of Southern-style cuisine according to Southern Living, banana pudding first hit the scene in the 1920s with its classic recipe including Nabisco Nilla Wafers.
These days, you can find banana pudding in many different forms with or without the signature Nilla Wafers, including a milkshake at the Texas fast-food chain Whataburger, per San Antonio Current.
For a more traditional banana pudding, head to The Peach Cobbler Factory, based out of Nashville, Tennessee. Or search a Southern-inspired restaurant near you.
And for a super-affordable fast food option, Popeyes’ menu occasionally has had some version of banana pudding for years, with the most recent being its Banana Cream Cake, according to The Takeout.
Get our recipe for Banana Pudding.
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Like many food and drink items that have a long history, the exact origins of Baked Alaska are up for debate. According to Thrillist, the dessert first came about in the 1860s at the famous Delmonico’s in New York City to commemorate the purchase of the Alaskan territories from Russia.
Over the years, other restaurants added Baked Alaska to their menus, some adding unique twists to their versions. While the original Baked Alaska contains banana ice cream, walnut spice cake, and a toasted meringue shell, other places include strawberry, cotton candy, and devil’s food cake.
Some restaurants, like Sveta’s in New York, take it a step further and literally light the dessert on fire at your table.
Get Sally’s Baking Addiction’s recipe for a brownie-based Baked Alaska.
Mitch Mandel and Thomas MacDonald
Not everything that is deemed vintage has to be over a hundred years old. The molten chocolate cake first popped up on menus in the 1980s. The ‘erupting’ chocolate dessert actually came about in France, only then to become a massive success in the U.S. in the 1990s.
Over the years, it’s been found everywhere from high-end restaurants to supermarkets, with some variations including caramel, ice cream (like the one at Applebee’s), and even matcha at New York’s Spot Dessert Bar. Molten chocolate cakes continue to be a popular dessert, so don’t expect them to go anywhere in 2023.
Get our recipe for Molten Chocolate Cake.
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Despite what the name suggests, the German Chocolate Cake is quintessentially American. It was named after Sam German, who developed a baking chocolate in the 1850s called Baker’s German’s Sweet Chocolate. One hundred years later, a recipe for a chocolate cake using the German chocolate bar rose in popularity.6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e
The classic recipe has been a staple at many restaurants across the U.S., including the family-owned Spring Hill Pastry Shop in West Virginia. As the saying goes, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. Some restaurants, like Nutmeg Restaurant in East Windsor, Connecticut, play up their German Chocolate Cake by trying different layering techniques and adding a touch of salted caramel, as one reviewer on TripAdvisor pointed out.
RELATED: Where to Get the Best Cake in Every State
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The classic English dessert has a contested history, according to the BBC. What fans of the Sticky Toffee Pudding can agree on, however, is that the typical ingredients you would find in a traditional pudding are dates and sugar. Most stories seem to trace the dessert’s origins back over the past 100 years or so, but you will still find the dessert today. Shoppers are even able to find a take-home version of the date cake at Costco.
Similar versions of the premade dessert are also served on airlines worldwide, including British Airways, reports Culture Map. Even Omaha Steaks sells Sticky Toffee Pudding you can have delivered straight to your door. Also, Better Homes & Gardens predicts that dates will be a big hit next year, so perhaps sticky toffee pudding will experience its own bump in popularity as well.
Get our recipe for Sticky Toffee Date Cake.
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Ice cream floats, also known as root beer floats, first came about by accident in 1874. According to the Chicago Tribune, Robert Green substituted ice cream in his popular carbonated beverage when he ran out of regular cream at his Philadelphia soda shop. Since then, floats have come in all varieties and flavors, using a number of combinations of both ice cream and beverage options.
The surge in popularity for floats has been tracked for a couple of decades now, so expect them to remain a popular drink of choice in 2023. Classic floats are available in ice cream shops around the U.S.; however, this is one dessert that can easily be customized to follow new trends.
Various recipes have popped up around the internet of Kombucha floats, as the drink itself has grown in popularity in recent years, so expect that to be one of the latest evolution of the classic float. Customers are also learning to hack a Coke float at McDonald’s.
While it’s not an ice cream float, get our recipe for an old-fashioned milkshake.
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Citrus-infused desserts are on the rise, and key lime pie is not just exclusive to Southern Florida these days. It is rumored that the dessert first appeared in the late 1800s, according to Southern Living, with the dessert becoming popular throughout the 1900s.
Some have pondered on Quora why the dessert seems to be so popular these days, and many might fear the dessert’s decline in relevance, since it’s no longer considered the official sweet treat of the state of Florida, per Wall Street Journal.
But expect this tart dessert to inspire many a menu staple in 2023, including both classic desserts at restaurants, especially those in southern destination spots like Miami, Florida as well as a slice of pie in drink form, like the Coastal Key Lime Margarita at Texas Roadhouse.
Get our recipe for a Key Lime Pie.
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The banana split was a once-popular ice cream treat nationwide after being invented shortly after the turn of the 20th century, but it faded to the background as desserts became more and more elaborate over the years.
With restaurants looking to cut menu costs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we may see the return of the simple yet delicious banana split in 2023. There are currently a few spots where you can find the banana split, including Denny’s and Dairy Queen. But we wouldn’t be surprised if more restaurants pick up on this trend as they look to offer more cost-effective desserts.
Get our recipe for a Grilled Banana Split.
Which of these vintage desserts are you most excited to see on restaurant menus in 2023?
You Have To Try This Vintage Dolly Parton DessertJulie Tremaine
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Dolly Parton is good at everything. She has a music empire, a theme-park empire, a TV and film empire, and quite possibly the most goodwill of any living human on the planet.
On top of all that, she’s a really good cook. Dolly has often discussed how much she loves food. “My weaknesses are food and men,” she has said, “in that order.”
Her delightful cookbook Dolly’s Dixie Fixin’s came out in 2006, but the holy grail of Dolly Parton culinary memorabilia is 1989’s Dollywood Presents Tennessee Mountain Home Cooking. It’s out of print, but thanks to a grandmother who 1) took me to Dollywood and 2) never threw anything away, I have a copy that she purchased in 1990 on a trip to the theme park.
The book is filled with recipes gathered from Dollywood employees. “Good food, friends, and family are three things that folks here in these mountains have in abundance,” Dolly writes in the preface. “We have selected the favorite recipes of members of our Dollywood family that we wanted to share with you, our friends. We hope that as you serve these recipes to your family, they remind you of us and your visit to our area.”
Julie Tremaine
One of those members of the Dollywood family is the theme park’s official “Dreamer-in-Chief,” Dolly Parton herself. She contributed several recipes to the book, including her signature coleslaw, which includes pickles and pickle brine, and her recipe for cowboy beans.
But the recipe I love the most—and the one you’re going to want to make over the holidays—is Dolly Parton’s Apple Stack Pie, her version of a classic Appalachian stack cake.
“There’s no recipe more rooted in Appalachian culture: stack cake is an ingenious expression of traditional mountain foodways,” writes Appalachian food expert Sheri Castle. “The first cook to make one almost certainly baked her cake layers one at a time, patting the dough into her skillet, baking them over a campfire or on the hearth, turning them out onto a plate, stacking and filling as she went.”
The dessert uses a simple, slightly sweet dough made with molasses and spices. You divide the dough into six equal portions and bake them into thin discs, then stack each one on top of another with an apple compote in the middle. The cakes are a little bit closer to quick bread or scones than to moist cake, and they aren’t too sweet. It’s a great breakfast for a special occasion—say, the morning of Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Julie Tremaine
Dolly notes in her recipe that the cake is best after it sits for a few days, ostensibly so that the moisture from the apples softens the cake, and the fruit flavor permeates throughout. I do, though, think Dolly made one mistake. When I recently made the cake, I tripled the quantity of apples from one pound to three pounds, but I think the cake would have been even better with double what I made. (If you’re doing the math, multiply the whole filling by six and you should have a generous amount to layer with the cakes.)
Apples are an important part of Appalachian cooking, and the sweets made from them are an important part of Dollywood. In fact, the Tennessee theme park—widely known for its surprisingly excellent food—serves an enormous apple pie that you can’t get anywhere else.
It weighs 25 pounds.
Made with 35 apples and priced at $189.99, the pie is bigger than you could possibly imagine. If you buy the whole thing, you get the cast-iron skillet that the pie was baked in, which explains a lot of the cost. But you can also grab an $18.99 slice, which still weighs three pounds, and is worth every penny.
Julie Tremaine
When I bought a slice on my last trip to Dollywood, it took me days to eat, and I still couldn’t finish it before it was time to check out of my hotel. But if you’re having a big holiday celebration, you can order one by calling Dollywood and they’ll ship it to your house. If you’d rather make a taste of the Smoky Mountains at home, here’s the recipe for Dolly Parton’s Apple Stack Pie from the 1989 cookbook, reprinted with permission from Dollywood.
P.S. The Dollywood cookbook is out of print, but if you look hard enough, you can find used copies. And thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can read it in its entirety here.
