Ho Ho Heinz
The journey from our agrarian food past to our sanitized, engineered and manufactured present is an endless source of fascination to me. Food habits are a bellwether of larger cultural changes, and it is during times of war, migration and massive lifestyle shifts that people are the most apt to change what they put into their bellies. Inevitably, there are hiccups along the way as habits are adapted.
The stalwart to all of this change is typically the holiday traditions; if a dish has been passed down for generations, then its proponents will feel obligated to continue to honor it. When this respect for traditions is coupled with the rapid pace of food technology and marketing, the results can be hilarious. Broccoli cheese and mushroom soup casserole, and mounded molds of bright green vegetable-suspension gelatin are among the few hybrid mutants that have emerged from the most recent transition in the mid 20th century.
Today's example comes from a 1938 advertisement for Heinz. Santa has apparently decided to moonlight from his gig with the Coca-Cola company to hawk canned and pickled holiday delights. Enjoy this snippet from the era when tradition was colliding with technology:
Santa's an epicure - don't ever doubt it. Just take a look at the festive fixin's (sic) in his basket! There are Heinz Home-style Soups - Cream of Tomato, Cream of Mushroom, Green Pea - for impressive first courses. There are Heinz Jellies, six varieties of Pickles to grace the fowl - and Heinz Puddings and Mincemeat for a scrumptious finale. Somebody's going to have a real old-fashioned Christmas dinner - homemade by Heinz!
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