My 1945 breakfast menu this morning was a little more exotic than usual:
Pineapple Juice
Poached Free Range Eggs on
Whole-wheat Toast
I've never been a big fan of canned Pineapple Juice - there's something a little off about the flavor and it separates real quickly with a sediment sinking to the bottom of your glass. But, like tomato juice, it's a quintessential 1940s beverage. Canned and bottled juices were just beginning to be inexpensive enough for middle-class pocketbooks, and it was still an open playing field in the '40s as to which juices would reign supreme on the American breakfast table. We know how it turned out. Orange, apple, and grape juice became wildly popular, while grapefruit, pineapple, and tomato grew less so over the years. The only place I usually find pineapple juice today is in blended juices. Sixty years ago, though, it was anyone's guess...
Note to self: Be sure not to try and poach eggs in water that's boiling too hard. Exploding egg whites can be hard to clean up!
4 comments:
Did your 40's book actually say 'free-range' eggs? I agree with the pineapple juice, as it has a metallic taste. I have been squeezing fresh oj, but I did buy some of that weird frozen concentrate, as I realized it would have been a happy novelty for me in 1955. Your last post about washing machines and my subsequent viewing of this 1955 ad for soap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa8D-ExWDNM made me see that perhaps I would still have a ringer on my machine? I have a vintage egg poacher, as it seems the 50's housewife had many gadgets.
Nope - that's my own 21st-century stamp on the menu. That said, the eggs available at a 1940s grocery store would have been free-range eggs. Factory farms were only just an idea at that time.
You're a brave woman to be squeezing your own orange juice every morning! I hadn't really thought about it, but I probably should have made my own OJ last time it was on the menu. The other juices were available in cans/bottles, but was orange juice? Or was the frozen concentrate the first time it was available pre-made like that?
I took me a little while to get used to drinking a lot LESS juice with my breakfast than I would normally. (Their juice glasses were so teeny!) Once I added a glass of ice water to the table, I found that this helped with the thirst issue. I could drink just a few swigs of juice, but not have to leave the table feeling parched and thirsty.
i quite like pineapple juice... and it is awesome when you have a sore throat... if you can't talk, have a sip or two of pineapple juice and it provides much needed lubrication
Sweet. I am coming down with a cold. Maybe I can find a way to use up the rest of that Pineapple Juice after all!
Post a Comment