• Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz
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      19 hours ago

      It is generally true, due to a bunch of factors. Personally, I’ve observed 2 factors:

      1. a lot of culinary tradition was lost by the boomers and their parents due to the advent of mass-produced, packaged food and the Great Depression. A lot of very basic, holistic techniques like making broth, rendering fat, became less common as magazine recipes, refrigeration, and boxed food encouraged discrete “buy x y z for recipe A” instead of having an assortment of preserved veggies/meats, broth, lard from previous days etc, to work with and learn from. I was genuinely confused to find my dad had to teach himself a lot of it in his 20s and my mom never learned.

      2. Economic/cultural history. A lot of families didn’t see making food better as worth sparing any effort or time on. My grandma’s boiled veggies and potatoes, no seasoning, and meat fried in a pan, no sesoning, eaten and cleaned up as quickly as possible come to mind.

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
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        19 hours ago

        It depends on the location, honestly. A lot of country grannies can cook, because they depended on what they could provide for themselves, milk, eggs, butter, cheese, canning, freezing, smoking. A lot of sub/urbans couldn’t do that and lost the art.

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Can confirm 1, dad grew up on TV dinners and canned food; and somehow Grandma thought it was ok to add ketchup to make spaghetti sauce. That second one might be 2, too, actually.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      19 hours ago

      Man, it’s gotta have 3 or more large eggs, a pound of block or hoop (not Velveeta) cheese, grated + some to go on top, and real butter. If it’s not golden brown with crispy edges, it’s not done. Even better if it has shrimp, crab, or lobster in it.

      • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        Like macaroni pie, I love breadcrumbs on top and just an ungodly amount of mature cheddar… literally by weight more than the pasta, and some milk!

      • Darnton@piefed.zip
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        12 hours ago

        Technically, the roots of mac and cheese can be traced as far as medieval Italy, but in the same way that Italian noodles were born in China.

        Yeah, because Italian “noodles” weren’t born in China. That is a myth that has long since been busted.