It's not just that recipes were being used for advertising, it's that they were used as advertising for new ultraprocessed convenience foods. Because of that, they were all designed to feature canned and shelf-stable boxed trash as ingredients. Stuff like Jell-O™ and Campbell's™ Cream of Mushroom Soup and whatnot. Real ingredients like fresh produce (which they hadn't figured out how to sell as a brand yet) were absolutely kept to a minimum.

The fact that atomic-age modernist ideals made people think that high-tech convenience was a good thing only made it worse.

Nestlé has completely taken over pretty much every traditional dessert here in Brazil, by flooding the country with alternative recipes adapted to make better use of their products. Most people don't even know how to make those things in their original form anymore.

It's why I highly value the cookbook from my grandma's church. It's made from old ladies that grew up on great depression food

Well, yah? Like, the recipes were full page ads? This isn't a revelation, it's fact.

ANGRY RED MEALS

https://liartownusa.com/angry-red-meals-sunset-magazine-1980/

I tend to believe that after the depression and the rough WWII years, you had a lot more wealth for the first time in a few decades. Also, factorization was still relatively new - let me use mashed potatoes as an example.

In the 1800s, the ultimate mashed potatoes were boiled, put thru a sieve to make them as smooth and homogenous as possible, with lots of butter and cream. No pieces of skin, no lumps, you wanted to show off that you had the time, equipment, and skill to produce silky smooth potatoes.

Now, it's trivial to buy a box of dried potatoes, prepare with hot water, salt, cream, butter, and get a product that is 95% of the deliciousness of 150 years ago. And, in fact, now what we treasure most is home-made with love. And to show your mashed potatoes are home-made with love, you make sure there's bits of the skins, probably some lumps - imperfections showing that YOU made these from actual whole potatoes.

I think in the same way, all this stuff was new and technological and factory food / industrialized food was safe, in the same way that people went to McDonadl's in the 1970s on road trips because you could always depend on it. You knew what you were getting, and the food safety was reassuring.

Now, we treasure those one-off little diners and such that have "character". And while in the 1950s, the idea of an aspic was new and fun and industrialized, now we think "ewwwww" and the ultimate meal starts with whole pieces of meat, veggies, fresh herbs, et cetera.

I still think they went absolutely over the top batty in the 50s and 60s, but I think I can understand it. I'm glad we moved on from that, mind.

Hot dogs in jello.

I have a cocktail book from the 50s. Every ingredient has a brand name next to it, and yeah, most of the cocktails in it aren't good.