The Depression Was Great for the American Kitchen

It’s possible to argue that the Great Depression is the era that made American food as we know it. It was the decade when the refrigerator roared into the American home, when many of the frozen and convenience foods we now take for granted came to market, from Birds Eye frozen peas to Ritz crackers.

The modern kitchen, with its capacious cabinets fixed to the wall, an electric or gas range rather than a ponderous coal stove, a refrigerator keeping foods fresh and dainty for days, was not born in this decade, but the '30s are when we first got a glimpse of that future. The '30s were also a decade of transformation in the food supply chain, with tractor-plowed fields feeding into the recognizable forbears of modern supermarkets. A modern American home cook plopped into a farmhouse kitchen of 1918 would be hard pressed to get a meal out of unplucked chickens and unregulated flames. Send us to the kitchen of 20 years later, and most of us could probably turn out a pretty credible meal.