The 1929 stock market crash led the country (and the world) into economic catastrophe. For more than a decade, people worldwide struggled to put food on the table and acquire the necessities of life.
Throughout North America, families were forced to survive on next to nothing, and they had to get creative with their meals.
Although we made it out of these dark and depressing times and have learned a lot since the 1930s, knowledge is not always power. As we have seen, history often repeats itself. Will you be prepared?
To understand how citizens survived The Great Depression, you need to understand their resources. During this time, staples like meat, eggs, and milk were hard to acquire, and people often had to make a little go a long way.
Here is a list of 10 depression-era meals we will be eating again if things don’t change.
Vinegar Pie
When fruits like lemons or apples were hard to come by, vinegar provided tartness to create a delicious dessert. Vinegar pie is so easy to make that anyone can do it.
Within an hour, you will have a pie that is both sweet and tart, despite its lack of fruit.
Related: How To Stockpile Lard, The Calorie Rich Survival Food Of The Great Depression
Fans of vinegar pie often add spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg, and others add things like maple, brown sugar, or raisins to their creations.
The point of vinegar pie was to use what you had on hand to create a sweet treat the family would love.
Ingredients: All you need to make vinegar pie is 2 cups of sugar, 3 tbsp. of flour, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 1/2 cup butter, 2/3 cup vinegar, and a quart of hot water, along with a pie crust or the pastry to create one.
Directions: Preheat the oven to 450° and whisk the dry ingredients together. Cut the pie crust into strips and layer them with butter and the sugar mixture.
Add the vinegar to the hot water and pour this over the layered pie interior, leaving space where it can bubble up. Bake for about an hour, or until golden brown.
Meat And Potato Patties
During the war, meat was often rationed, and each family was allotted a certain amount they would purchase using tokens. Meat and potato patties were an excellent solution to make your meat rations last.
Creating a meat and potato patty is much like making a hamburger.
However, potatoes are a starchy glue in this recipe that holds the mix together. This method uses less meat than a traditional hamburger, allowing a little to go a long way.
This is a fantastic recipe for meat and potato patties that may come in handy given our current economic climate.
Ingredients: To make meat and potato patties, you will need a pound lean ground beef, 3/4 cup shredded potatoes, 1/4 cup chopped onion, 2 tbsp. chopped green pepper, 1 egg, 1 cup tomato juice, 1 tbsp. flour, and 1/4 cup water.
Directions: Combine all the ingredients, except for the tomato juice, and shape into patties; pressing lightly to flatten. Heat oil in a skillet and cook each patty over medium heat until brown.
Once they are all browned, add the tomato juice to the pan and let the patties simmer for approximately 25 minutes.
For a shelf-stable alternative, you can learn here how to can hamburger meat at home.
Potato Pancakes
Potatoes were a staple during The Great Depression. The heavy, filling nature of the potato was the perfect answer to hungry bellies, and they could be easily grown in almost every climate.
Potato pancakes were one of the many recipes from this era that is still popular today.
Ingredients: You will need a few whole potatoes, and some salt and pepper. You can also add onions, garlic, cheese, or bacon if you want.
Directions: All you have to do is grate the potatoes mix them with the salt and pepper, as well as any other optional ingredients.
Related: How to Grow Potatoes in Shopping Bags for an Extended Harvest
Form this mixture into patties, and fry them in a non-stick pan, starting on high and reducing the heat when they begin to brown. Since the pancakes can be fragile, refrain from flipping them until the first side if fully cooked.
Cabbage Soup
A good soup could go a long way toward filling hungry bellies during The Great Depression.
For this reason, hearty soups and stews were served to citizens at local soup kitchens, sometimes for every meal. One such soup that would often be served was cabbage soup.
Ingredients: For this recipe you will need 4 cups chopped cabbage, 1 cup diced potatoes, 3 cups water, 1 finely chopped onion, 1 tbsp. butter, 1 cup milk, 2 tbsp. cornstarch, salt and pepper.
Directions: Combine all ingredients except the milk and cornstarch, and cook until tender. Dissolve the cornstarch in the milk and add this to the soup, stirring to combine and cooking until it thickens.
Serve, and enjoy a full belly at a low cost.
Dandelion Salad
The creativity I mentioned at the start of this article can be seen here in this recipe for dandelion salad.
Dandelion salad is exactly what it sounds like, a salad that contains dandelions. Don’t panic. These pesky weeds are thoroughly cleaned and cut while preparing this delicious meal.
The basic idea here is to use the dandelion greens as your lettuce and add any other vegetables you can acquire. This simple recipe requires you to clean the dandelions thoroughly to ensure they are free of pests and chemicals.
Depression-Era Peanut Butter Bread
During the Great Depression, cooking was about being economical and stretching ingredients as much as possible.
Many items were scarce, and things like eggs or yeast may have been challenging or expensive to purchase regularly.
In light of this, folks would come up with some creative recipes that worked well without such ingredients.
Ingredients: For this recipe you will need 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tbsp. salt, 4 tsp. baking powder, 1 1/3 cups milk, 1/2 cup peanut butter.
Directions: Preheat the oven to 160ºC or 325ºF. Mix the dry ingredients. Add the milk, followed by the peanut butter and knead everything together. Pour the mix into a greased loaf tin and bake for 1 hour.
Navy Bean Soup
A typical meal that many families would enjoy, Navy bean soup was easy to make – utilizing whatever you had on hand – and full of flavor.
Packed full of protein in the form of beans and filled with flavorful root vegetables, this soup was hearty and affordable.
Ingredients: To make this soup, you will need 2 cups of beans, 1 chopped onion, 2 carrots, 1 celery stick, 2 cloves of garlic, any other vegetables you have available. You can also add ham.
Related: How to Dry Can Beans and Rice for 20+ Years Shelf Life
Directions: Prepare the beans you want to use according to their instructions. Cook the chopped onion and minced garlic in a pan until golden and fragrant.
Take your vegetables, such as carrots, celery, etc., and add them to a pan with the onion and garlic, cooking on low and adding in your choice of meat. Combine all the ingredients with the cooked beans, adding more water if required. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Granny’s Midwest Goulash
Goulash is a pretty standard meal in most American kitchens, even today. This macaroni dish is filled with ground beef and tomatoes and is a cheap, hearty meal that everyone will love.
It is easy to create goulash, and you can switch up the recipe depending on what’s available.
Ingredients: For this recipes you will need 1 cup of macaroni, 1 pound of ground beef, 1 onion, 4 garlic cloves, 1 tbsp. tomato paste, 1 can diced tomatoes, 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce, and any other available veggies.
Directions: Cook the macaroni, leaving it a little bit undercooked. Brown the ground beef and add onions, garlic, and other veggies if available.
Add Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and anything else you want to use to the cooked mixture and combine with the cooked macaroni.
Season to taste, adjusting as needed. Put the mixture in a baking dish, top with grated cheese, and bake for 15-20 minutes.
Stuffed Peppers
Stuffed peppers are the food of my dreams. I remember my mother making these once in a while when I was young, and the whole family would gobble them up.
This meal is super easy to make and very filling. It is definitely one of those recipes where a little goes a long way.
Ingredients: For this recipe you will need 1 pound of ground beef, a cup or two of cooked white rice, some tomato sauce, and a few bell peppers with the tops cut off and the inside cleared of seeds.
Fill each pepper with a mixture of rice, beef, and sauce. You may want to top it with cheese and extra sauce and add a small amount of water or sauce to the bottom of the dish. Place in a shallow baking dish and bake at 350° – 400° for 15-20 minutes.
This simple and affordable meal will indeed become a family favorite.
Hoover Stew
Alternatively, a recipe labeled Hoover Stew was named after the 31st President of the United States.
His term overlapped the stock market crash of 1929 and who was often blamed for the desperate state of the period.
Related: Canning $5 Amish Stew
While recipes varied, the general idea of Hoover Stew was to combine cooked macaroni with hot dogs, canned tomatoes, and corn to create a cheap yet filling stew that could be served to the masses.
Many different kinds of soups and stews were popular during the time, and many variations of 1930s depression soup recipes can be found across the internet.
Not Just Surviving, But Thriving During The Great Depression.
Life during The Great Depression was challenging for many families, but thanks to their resilience and creativity, most will tell you that they rarely went hungry.
The truth is, with the cost of groceries today constantly rising, these depression-era recipes may be the answer to our modern struggles.
If your grandparents could survive and thrive during The Great Depression, you can also make it through these tough times.
Have you ever tried any of these Depression-Era recipes? Were any of these typical meals in your house?
I love to hear about your experiences with The Great Depression and read about your ideas for frugal meals in the comments.
You may also like:
6 Essential Differences Between the Greatest Generation and The Ones That Followed
The Long-Lasting Food That Amish Pioneers Turned To In Dark Times (Video)
this is a good and informative article. i haven;t thought of potato pancakes in a long time and i love them. my mom was a little girl during the depression and i still have one of her ration books and it still has stamps for sugar and motor oil in it. the meat and potato patties sound right up my alley, i’ll try them. keep the informative articles coming.
Right on! I totally forgot about potato pancakes but it was a staple when I was a young’un!
Let’s not forget to squeeze out the liquid in the potatoes and onions prior to forming them.
I love potato pancakes and still make them today, and my family loves them
My Dad told me stories of growing up during the Depression and the War. My Grandmother made a variation of the Potato/beef patties, but the meat could be any game that was ground up and added to the mix.
BTW; everyone might want to track down a hand -crank grinder for just such a purpose.
Isn’t this the 9th time we seen this article
It’s for slow people such as yourself ?
Yes, these articles cycle around continually! They are meant to inform new preppers to this site (and others) about alternative ways to eat as well to remind those of us that have been around awhile to remain dilligent.
The vinegar pie is a good recipe, however if things are truly in despair, I would think the butter and sugar would be more scarce than fruit ? Pies are made with a variety of different fillings…
As for Hoover being blamed for the Depression, better go back and read the timelines of history.
He was only in charge a few months before the Crash, a crash that was in the making for years.
As for actively fighting hunger and homelessness, take a look at his work in the Belgian relief during WWI and the great flood of the midwest in 1927. A man that is greatly appreciated.
Final note, we may have some better alternatives for “fixin’s” than were available in 1930 ?
Hoover was a brilliant engineer whose inventions and techniques revolutionized the mining industry, making him one of the wealthiest men of his time. No doubt his relief work after WW1 saved tens of thousands of lives. Sadly, during the 1927 flood, in charge of the evacuation, he sided with the wealthy Mississippi planters who didn’t want their labor force evacuated and ordered the National Guard to save all the white people and leave thousands of black laborers and families stranded in knee deep mud atop the levees. It took a week for political pressure to change Hoover’s position and allow blacks to leave the Delta. The guard made them sing ‘Negro Spirituals’ before allowing them on the boats, haha. This one event more than any other began the alienation of blacks from the GOP.
Hoover didn’t cause the Crash or the Depression, but kept the Government from doing anything about it. Something to love about America, all the bread and soup kitchens and homeless shelters were provided by religious and civic organizations.
I think the author was saying Hoover was not necessarily responsible for the economic crash, however he was blamed for it.
I grew up eating almost all these and still do, with many variations, such as pintos and cornbread. Potato candy was a holiday treat. And I’m only 65.
I also grew up eating this stuff and I’m half your age.
Torah Giant Killer, this may, in fact, be the 9th time YOU have seen this article, but believe it or not, this site is not generated just for you. There are new visitors to this site every day and some of them have NEVER seen it. There are also others who might have seen it but could benefit from seeing it again.
If you find the content unsuitable for your needs, it might be wiser for you to quietly remove yourself from the site instead of opening your mouth (fingers on the keyboard) and revealing to the rest of us what a real jerk you can be. If you have nothing positive to say, open your own site where you can give your bountiful wisdom. Then you will be able to read all the wonderful comments made by folks just like you.
Again, it goes back to the old adages that say, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all”.
Hooooray for Suzanne Huddleston!!
Unfortunately the disgusting troll of many names hates everyone
and will continue no matter what.
You too.
Great to see these wonderful old recipes. I have been preparing these hearty meals for years. During the Depression my grandmother fed her family and the needy “boxcar hobo’s” that stopped off in her small Illinois farm town. After dinner she placed leftover portions on a wooden plate on an old table at the end of her property line for the men. She covered the food with a dish towel to keep off any “critters”. She never met any of the men, but they often left her a note written on newspaper scraps, thanking her for the food and her generosity. Guess good old Depression cooking needs to be revisited if times get any worse these days. Hope folks will have the same spirit of generosity as my grandmother.
what was the name of that small IL town??
Oh yeah! I’ll eat that dandelion greens salad all day long! Dandelion greens are very healthy for the body, helps fight cancers too. The cabbage soup and potato pancakes are also on my radar. I’ll have to experiment with that peanut butter bread as that looks good too. Can’t believe I’m all excited about this but go figure. lol
A Midwestern Girl, born and raised, I still make many of these meals as family staple or even family favorites!
POOR MAN’S DINNER
Grandma made this all the time. Just good old fried potatoes and onions with hot dogs cut up in it.
And another recipe taught to me was BEER BREAD
3 C. self-raising flour
¼ C. of sugar or clear corn syrup
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 12oz. Beer
Sift together all dry ingredients. Add beer. Mix well. Bake @ 375° for 45 min.
Nothing poor about a meal of fried spuds, onions, a little garlic, and sausage be they hot dogs in the modern sense or the truly good beef wieners we had in the 70’s.
Nothing here is strange to me, and yes, I still take good old fashioned BOX Mac/Cheese and add tomatoes and tomato sauce to it and call it DELICIOUS.
As a side note Dad was a union man; we went out for supper perhaps twice per year to “nice” places, and got “sugar,” in the form of ice cream, cola, and the like on holidays only.
A fine article. The real message is stretch it until the eagle screams, something I grew up with LONG past the depression. Virtually all of these meals save vinegar pie were staples growing up, and my family was working class through the 70’s.
As a side note, STFU troll. You read Richie Rich comics until you were 45.
Being in the Uk I’ve never heard of Vinegar pie, but I can tell you this – My Viennese mother told us that during the war, when Vienna was bombed by the British, they were short on food. A bomb struck a supply train carrying Polenta. Everyone rushed to the scene, and ate Polenta in various ways for a while after. Good old Brits kept them fed.
Having even the most simplest herb garden available to you can come in handy when one is making any of the recipes given here. In tough times, it is truly a blessing as you can easily turn a basic dish into a tasty delight.
Thank you very much for this article on meal-stretching recipes for hard times! I am very excited to have these recipes, some of which I’ve never heard of. Others, I am familiar with, but that Peanut Butter Bread sure sounds interesting. I am going to add in some 90% dark chocolate chips to see how it comes out…Vinegar pie? Who would’ve thought! Even if this IS the 7th time this page has been sent out, I am grateful for the recipes, cause I’ve never seen them before! THANKS, KATHERINE PATERSON! (Hey there! My maiden name was Patterson, can you believe it? I think we must be long-lost DNA COUSINS!!
Add some green onions, sliced julienne-style, and turn plain potato pancakes into awesome scallion/potato pancakes!
After holiday dinners, my mother would mix together the leftover mashed potatoes and mashed rutabaga, add chopped onion, an egg, salt and pepper and make patties, then fry them up in a skillet with some hot corn oil. I make them now without the rutabaga but sometimes I will add some shredded cabbage. Boy! That is heaven on the plate. Try it with a little Heinz 57 Sauce or some sour cream on top.
When I was growing up, my school used to offer the Goulash for lunch at least once a month. Now days, I use 2 boxes of Mac & Cheese and one pound of ground beef plus garlic, half an onion, chopped, and two small cans of mushrooms to make 3-5 helpings.
I hope you realise that the amount of ingredients your suggesting are way over what was allotted in food parcels during the great depression. Even as a prepper you have to make your food last, over a long period of time right? In a SHTF situation even as a prepper life WON’T be normal. By all means keep up your calories, proteins and vitamin intake but overall food intake needs to be reduced, to make your stocks last longer. Even if you’ve been prepping for years, you have no idea how long unusual circumstances will last.
Interesting and some of it fancier than what I remember. We used to eat potato patties made out of mashed potatoes fried in bacon grease. If we had an egg, it was added to the ‘taters to hold it together better. We also had milk soup with egg drop dumplings. The dumplings were just flour, salt and egg dropping into simmering milk that sometimes had leftover potatoe chunks and onions in it. It’s all great when you are hungry.
Is the peanut butter bread missing some sort of leavening? Like baking soda or baking powder? Yeast? Not sure how it will rise with those ingredients.
Exact Recipe reads:
“Ingredients: For this recipe you will need 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tbsp. salt, 4 TSP. BAKING POWDER, 1 1/3 cups milk, 1/2 cup peanut butter.”
Vinegar pie, 2 cups sugar ,2 tablespoons flour.
The vinegar pie recipe ingredients are in a kind of strange order…putting a quart of water with only vinegar in it into a pie crust sounds like the crust would leak…sugar and seasonings need to be in the pie body as well as the top. Couldn’t the water, vinegar, some of the sugar and nutmeg, cinnamon be boiled, with a slurry of flour and milk added to thicken, and then poured into the crust?
The hamburger patties recipe doesn’t say what to do with the flour…I am guessing it is to thicken the tomato juice for a nice sauce? Beginning cooks could end up with some problems. Other than that, some good ideas for meals where one has sparse ingredients
I remember similar articles posted here but don’t recall them including recipes. I was glad to see the recipes here.
I’ve had everything on this list except for vinegar pie.
As a whole I think we have gotten away from making the most of the food we have. For example, I roasted a chicken for dinner, which provided us with two dinner meals. I removed nearly all the meat off the bones and cooked the bones in water for broth. Used the broth to make a pot of soup. The little pieces of chicken that were left after the second dinner weren’t very much by themselves, but mixed with some salad dressing or mayo, plus walnuts and a few sliced green grapes made yummy chicken salad. I froze most of the soup in single portions so we can enjoy it later. That’s a lot of mileage out of one chicken.
This from … somewhere in Southern Yurrope…
I think this was a great article, and thank you Mrs. Paterson (I am reading here frequently), but OMG, Goulash with macaroni??? Wouldn’t potatoes have been to come by easier?
I shudder at the thought of goulash without potatoes (then again, better with macaroni than no goulash at all).
I’m cooking goulash every week or two weeks. With potatoes. And garlic (hmmmm GARLIC!), and onions, spices, a few secret ingridients, and Angus beef (while we can get it).
Macaroni (broken up Spaghetti, any noodles or rice) had never crossed my mind until now. Might be filling, tho. 🙂
Thank you for the recipes!
*note to self: do NOT misspell the word ingredients*. NOTED.
Depression?! These foods were, are, and always will be delightful! Don’t forget water pie! A sure fix for a sweet tooth!
I thought I would tell everyone bean cakes made the same as potato cakes they are good too
and dandelion bloom make a batter and dip the flowers in it and fry yummy and don’t forget wild greens in early spring
don’t forget cornmeal gravy
Ann, 1 tbsp. salt, 4 tsp. baking powder, was in the peanut butter bread. That will raise the bread just fine. As for the beer bread, I add a lot of different ingredients to my bread, such as cheddar cheese, or raisins, cinnamon and nuts (if I have any). I play around with it and it is really refreshing for a change.
I am thankful for this article. I knew a few of these recipes because my mother made them for us. But I didn’t know quite a few of the recipes. One recipe that my mother made was Mush. It was water, salt and cornmeal. Cook it until it reaches the consistence you want. It is kind of like grits. You could add cheese if you wanted.
love these recipes! have grown up with all of them (am in my 70s) back then nurses and firefighters didnt make much money, so we enjoyed these meals quite often towards end of month when money was short (paid once a month). we also had cereal/milk for dinner; had bread, bit of milk, cinnamon on it or cut up fruit if we had; we had scrambled eggs, oatmeal, and the best was a HiHo apple pie, made with hiho crackers of course! tasted just like apple pie without using apples. mom made fudge for special occasions, from 4 ingredients, 5 if we had some peanut butter. we had very little, but never went hungry, God bless our depression time parents and what they had learned!!! too bad we arent of the same caliber these days……