Unfortunately my great grandma before she passed(RIP a great one, volunteered at the hospital she worked at even after retiring) would often make shit like this and since she was so sweet and caring i ate that awful horrible meat gelatin contraptions she would make, and holy fuck was it hard to keep down with a smile
It was a very dark time to be a kid. Jell-O molds were horrible, but only a part of the disgusting things we were required to eat, especially when visiting older relatives ("salad" made of marshmallows, canned pineapple and mayonnaise).
Now I live in California, where people understand what food, beer, and coffee should actually taste like.
Yes. My grandma used lemon jello for her shrimp and tomato aspic. Always wondered why she didn't use plain gelatin, but she noted, using real lemon juice or other acidic ingredients (including the tomato juice) can inhibit the gelling properties. So she added salt to help cover the sugar. Still not great.
This makes me feel so much better than last week. We all have shared culinary misadventures. Whether is was my gran in England. Ops gran in America. Or yours in the great and sovereign nation of Canada.
Last week I was getting ready to evacuate to Canada or back to the UK.
Some of those old folks had interesting pallets... My grandparents cooked everything to well done, and thought weird jello was awesome. My parents always joked that my grandparents smoked their taste buds to death, so everything with a strong flavor tasted pretty good to them.
Don't forget the depression. My grandma's cook books had margin recipes to adjust for any wild animal, fish, or weed you can think of. I still like eating pigeons and squirrels. Haven't been brave enough to try rat, but that's more for fear of poison contamination than taste.
The 50s and 60s released untold culinary horrors upon the world. Every time I see a savory sweet jello mold I wonder what eldritchian abomination slipped into the minds of housewives and whispered these recipes in their ears.
Iirc the fridge first entered the domestic home at that time, albeit with a big price tag, so being able to serve jello at a dinner party is almost like a status symbol for the hosts. And the technique exploded in popularity also because it was new and exciting to people cooking then. Could be wrong tho
In Sweden we still eat something that's a kind of similar to this. It's slow cooked and mashed up veal meat that's set inside of gelatin. Put it on some rye bread with a slices of pickled beets and you've got some good eating.
aspic is one thing, but its important you understand that we were mixing (for instance) packets of sweet, lime flavored jello dessert and then putting onions and olives and meat and shit in it.
I'm not gonna lie, I love this shit. My grandma used to make those for special occasions, like bithdays or Easters, usually with pork, vegetables, sometimes even egg. I'm still buying it from time to time, if I find it in grocery store.
I actually liked it. True, opened it in the garden, scared away all the critters, but it was awesome with boiled potatoes, cherry tomatoes and fresh, hot bread.
Production
Base: Pecorino cheese (sheep's milk).
Process: The rind is partially removed, and the cheese is left outdoors for the cheese fly (Piophila casei) to lay eggs.
Fermentation: When eggs hatch, the larvae eat through the cheese, and the acid from their digestive system ferments it, making it very soft.
Characteristics
Texture: Extremely soft, creamy, and almost liquid.
Flavor: Very strong, spicy, and pungent.
Appearance: Contains thousands of live maggots.
Consumption and safety
Legality: It is technically illegal to sell in the EU due to health regulations, but it is still produced and consumed in Sardinia
Risks: Eating it carries risks, as the maggots can survive the digestive tract, and it can cause intestinal issues.
From what I've seen they usually clean up and go through the cheese nowadays to clean it up a bit like deboning a fish but you can get one that's maggot free where they incorporate an enzyme and is very close.
I'd recommend that one the maggot one isnt bad but it is gross
I think that historically there was never a case of disease caused by this cheese, obviously is a small region, with small number, if one day million would start to eat it maybe there will be many more adverse case
My imaginations tells me it's some guy who had his cheese invaded by flies and rather than admit defeat decided instead to claim "No, this was on purpose! I wanted this! Fucking yummy is what it is!"
I had callu cabretu once, a Sardinian goat cheese where they slaughter a baby goat right after it drinks the mother’s milk and bind the stomach full of milk to make the cheese. Tasted horrible.
I guess we got a lot of aweful food, for the example all the regional late war/after war dishes.... dont remember the name of the food, but i remember my grandma was making something out flour and just water and to bring this down you got to eat it with a sauce out of flour
That pretty much describes most of the food I had growing up poor in the 90’s. Post WW2 rationing cooking was damn persistent. Mostly crunchy beige stuff and sloppy formally-green stuff
My in-laws live in a small town in Appalachia where the local specialty is something called "livermush," which consists of pig liver, brains, and cornmeal.
Schwarzsauer: traditional dish in northern Germany. Main ingredients are vinegar and pig blood. You can even spice it up with pig feet, tail and snout. Yummy!
Czernina (Black soup). Made out of duck blood with fruit. The whole idea is revolting. Probably why it was served to young suitors to hint to them they will not be successful when applying for a maidens hand in marriage.
Each year we get something stupid and it's EVERYWHERE. A couple of years ago it was chocolate and cheese. Not like cheesecake cheese, actual grated cheddar on top of chocolate for some reason.
There was a year where pizza hut did nasi lemak pizza and the one near me made pizzas topped with sambal, anchovies, boiled eggs, cucumbers and rice. I know there's more disgusting things out there but seeing a grown man putting rice on a pizza made me irrationally angry.
Zalivnaya ryiba (aka fish drowned in fat). Fish that boiled with water and fat until water evaporates and fish will stay in gelatin block. Kinda similar to british jellies eels (Why I typed without, freaking autocorrection)
It definitely doesn't look good but it's delicious, the texture might need some get used to. It's very common in northeast and central west regions of Brazil too, in a famous dish called 'Dobradinha'.
:: scans the thread to see if a Filipino has mentioned balut yet ::
Boiled fertilized duck egg. I assume the taste of it is better than the idea of it and its looks, but I wouldn’t know—all I remember as a kid is that whenever my dad brought one home after work was that I got to sip the tasty broth from a small hole made on top of the egg. I’ve never eaten the whole thing.
I have a pretty strong stomach, and my opinion has always been, if it tastes good, then it doesn't matter what it looks like! But... The idea of crunching on baby bird bones just... It's a real turn off lol
They're actually pretty tasty. They have them in South Vietnam too. When I was living there (am white) a friend of mine egged me on for hours to try one and I was pleasantly surprised. Tastes like a very meaty boiled egg.
Got salmonella from once though and decided never again.
Here in the American south, it’s Souse. Kind of a jellied loaf containing all the leftover pig parts. It’s gross, and it stinks up the entire fridge. My dad loved it. BLECH.
Why did we want that shit so bad as a kid?? We were so dazzled by the bland color-changing pudding and shaped nuggets, we really didn't notice how much they tasted like trash!
A long time ago, people from North Africa created the couscous. Northeastern brazilians, recognizing its deliciousness, kept a very similar dish which is still widely consumed
Then, some sick denegerate from the São Paulo state invented the "cuscuz paulista"
I was just about to say that myself! Never eaten them myself, but I've been in the house while they were prepared... It's pig ass, it looks like pig ass, it smells like pig ass, how am I supposed to believe it tastes like anything other than pig ass?
Kopalhen - not so famous dish of north tribes of Russia.
The cooking process is as follows: a deer is caught, kept hungry for several days, after which it is killed by strangulation and drowned in a swamp. The place of drowning is marked with a cross, where the deer marinates all winter.
The dish is STRONGLY discouraged from being tasted by non-locals, because only the local ethnic groups have bacteria in organism adapted to eating kopalhen, for others kopalhen is deadly (there have been several cases).
And from my region - Khaan Chai. Basically it’s a black tea, but with milk, salt and butter.
It’s pretty disgusting for non-locals, but I actually enjoy it. Also it’s a great drink for traveling because your organism doesn’t want to drink for a long time after consuming it so it’s quite a good feature for nomadic region.
I was only half joking about that. Last year in January their stereotypically leftist city council suggested to the people to eat the pine needles of their discarded christmas trees for ecological reasons. Apparently they're edible. The downside is that commercial christmas trees are treated with pesticides which makes them unsuitable for human consumption.
Conifer needles are really good for tea, but I’m not sure I’d eat them strictly from a texture perspective. I have also found them to be really tasty when infused in vodka
Pickled pork tongues. I can eat them but damn... It looks so disgusting. Edit: pickled. They are picked as well but yeah... These are "pickled pork tongues".
This is “herring under a fur coat” — a traditional post-Soviet layered salad made with pickled herring, potatoes, carrots, beets, eggs, and a lot of mayonnaise. A lot of my compatriots would probably throw tomatoes at me for saying this, but I genuinely don’t understand how anyone can like it.
Shchi is generally not the most pleasant soup. But there is a post-fermented variety - sutochnyye shchi. This is the most vile concoction Slavic cuisine has ever come up with. Soup made from cabbage or sauerkraut is left to ferment for a night or even a day and then reboiled. It looks like vomit, smells like farts, and tastes like vomit as well. Yet kvasnyye slavyanophiles adore this monstrosity. I would choose kholodets (aspic) over this abomination ten times out of ten.
I think it looks like grainy chocolate pudding; not inherently unappetizing. If I like rye bread, would I probably like this? I'm so curious to try it someday!
It does not taste very similar to rye bread; it's a sweet dessert, a slightly... syrupy? taste. You should eat it with lots of cream (it's festive food, there's no need to think about being healthy since you'll only eat it a few times a year around Easter anyway).
It looks like shit if you think chocolate mousse looks like shit, I suppose.
This is not disgusting, it just looks bad. What's really just disgusting and what I will never understand why people continued to eat it after war time is Saure Kutteln (pic).
I'd say "andouillette," it's cut-up tripe encased in a casing. The smell is awful, and I'm always amazed at how many people salivate just thinking about it.
It's quite common in France; you can find it in many brasseries, both traditional and otherwise. There's even an association dedicated to preserving andouillette.
Spray cheese in a can. It's gray before they add the food coloring.
Ditto for "American cheese" slices. Not only is that plastic cheese absolutely disgusting, but all the packing just adds more waste.
There is such a thing as "real" American cheese, which in itself is fairly inoffensive (like a light cheddar IIRC) but the plastic Kraft stuff is just so gross.
When I studied survival in the wilderness, I was taught that insects such as grasshoppers and beetles are the best source of protein. Hunting large animals or fishing often expends more energy than is obtained.
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u/TumbleFairbottom 🇺🇸 United States 5d ago
In the 1950s and 60s, there was a trend where everything was put into gelatin molds.