5 Bizarre Vintage Dishes You Don’t See On Dinner Tables Today

When you look at any dish and really analyze it, you can almost always understand why certain ingredients were paired together to craft a final product that blends together seamlessly on your palate. Chefs have a special ability to look at a pantry or fridge stuffed with a variety of flavors and textures and meticulously pick out a handful of them that join forces in an epic way. All you have to do is look at any restaurant menu for proof that just because two ingredients don’t seem like they pair well together, with a little bit of effort and some kitchen knowledge, a world of tasty wonders awaits.

Videos by Sporked

But let’s take a step back several decades. Have you ever glanced at some of the cookbooks from the ’50s or the ’60s? Sure, there are some bizarre dishes that exist on menus today, but they don’t hold a candle to the outrageous concoctions people actually used to serve their guests. We should all feel thankful that most of these died off with time―because if you showed up at a dinner party tomorrow and saw some of the blasphemous meals from yonder on a table in front of you, you’d immediately run for the hills. Get your gag reflex in check before learning about these five bizarre vintage dishes that we hope never attempt to make a comeback.

Ham And Banana Hollandaise

Just reading those four words probably left your head scrambled and your gut churning. Whatever you’re picturing, this is likely worse. Bananas were wrapped in pieces of ham and then slathered in creamy Hollandaise sauce before taking a plunge into the oven. The bananas were even brushed with lemon juice to prevent them from browning in the oven, adding yet another flavor profile to a dish that should have never existed in the first place.

Liver Sausage Pineapple

People have enough problems trying to tackle the idea of eating sliced liver, but someone had the bright idea to shape the pureed pâté into the shape of a pineapple for a dinner table centerpiece absolutely no one asked for. Thankfully, no pineapples were actually harmed in the making of these, but just the dish’s shape alone could potentially turn you off from the fruit for weeks afterward.

Tuna And Jello Pie

Sweet and savory meals are always popular, and when you balance the two ingredients with those flavor profiles the right way, you get one heck of a winning bite. However, tuna and Jello are not the sweet and savory things we ever want combined into one helluva nightmarish pie. History can have this bizarre dessert and keep it forever.

Tuna ’N Waffles

Here we have tuna again poking its head where no one wanted it to. Now, chicken and waffles we can totally get behind. The salty crunch of fried chicken paired with a buttery, syrupy waffle is Heaven on Earth. Sure, tuna might call itself “chicken of the sea,” but that flavor certainly isn’t hitting the same way. No one wants to start their day with a big, sweet-and-fishy bite of StarKist. Trust us.

Southern Pear Salad

As you go down the list of ingredients in this dish they just get stranger and stranger. So, it all starts with pears, which is totally acceptable. Then maraschino cherries make their entrance, which is still more than okay. But, suddenly lettuce, mayonnaise, and cheese shoulder their way in, and we are freaking out big time. Each halved pear is served over a bed of lettuce and stuffed with a mayo-cheese mixture. If you ever wanted to know what the word “yuck” tasted like, this is it.