Was it common to actually eat the bizarre dishes seen in the cookbooks of the 1970s and earlier?

by stupidrobots

I have seen some truly bizarre recipes in cookbooks from the 1970s and before with salads encased in jello, bananas and hollandaise with ham, and many other recipes that just seem bizarre and unpleasant from their conception. Have tastes really changed that much? Recipes from that era like tuna noodle casserole are still around but these bizarre concoctions, did people actually enjoy eating them or were many of them just attractive ways of using up leftovers?

voyeur324

Yes, they were certainly a thing. Taste is capricious. /u/searocksandtrees has collected answers about jello oddities before, feat. /u/gothwalk, et al.

/u/PeculiarLeah interprets it as part of the recovery from rationing in World War II, specifically mentioning bananas and ham with hollandaise.