Desperation Pie with Sarah Archer
4/29/20261 hr 14 min
What would you do for a desperation pie? Kitchen correspondent Sarah Archer is here to talk with Sarah about the American food trends that marked the 20th century and how they related to the political and cultural changes of a nation in need of constant culinary inventiveness. They discuss the specialties of the barren Depression Era, the food-related propaganda and rationing of the wartime years, the meteoric rise of post-war disposability, the premade mixes and “exotic” dishes of midcentury housewives, and the special tastes of Soviet Cold War diplomacy. Throughout the episode, they discuss the messages these eras transmitted to the women in charge of the kitchen and draw parallels to our new era of trad wife cooking and carnivore dieting. Digressions include the unique features of Star Trek aliens, why cottage cheese is the Cher of foods, and how ironing sheets can be a potent tool for procrastination.
More Sarah Archer:
https://www.sarah-archer.com/
Design for Dreaming 1956 appliance fantasy film: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/design-for-dreaming-1956/
Midcentury Menu exhibition at the MFAH: https://www.mfah.org/art/exhibitions/midcentury-menu-dining-in-the-atomic-age
Meals with a Foreign Flair: https://archive.org/details/mealswithforeign00desm
Edited + Produced by Miranda Zickler:
http://linktr.ee/mirandatheswampmonster
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSarah Marshall· Host0:00
Cottage cheese is just this glowing monolith, you know? Doesn't matter whether you acknowledge it or not. [upbeat music] Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we ask, "What, what, what do you feel like eating today?" [laughs] Um, and Sarah Archer, I lured you on here, um, as our kitchen correspondent to talk with me about American food trends, and we would each kind of just talk about a handful of things that we personally like and are interested in. Because I think we're kind of awash in food trends at the moment, and we're kind of at peak food trend because I feel like ... Do you feel like every time you're on social media someone's like, "Let's try the viral recipe for thing you've never heard of."
Sarah Archer· Guest0:53
Yep.
Sarah Marshall· Host0:53
And you're like, "Oh yeah, of course- Every time ... the viral recipe I've never heard of."
Sarah Archer· Guest0:56
Yeah. [laughs] Right.
Sarah Marshall· Host0:58
And in the olden days, it took at least a few months for something, specifically a recipe, to work its way through the newspaper, and word of mouth, and so on. And I just, I love, um, trends in food as a way of learning about what people were going through and continue to go through in almost hilariously repeating cycles. And so we're gonna talk about desperation pies.
Sarah Archer· Guest1:22
[gasps] Desperation pies.
Sarah Marshall· Host1:24
And cake and so forth, yeah.
Sarah Archer· Guest1:27
I immediately love this. And is it desperation