10 Items in EVERY 1950s Kitchen... That FADED Into History 

You're pronouncing Hoosier quite erroneously

@@lindaward3156 -

the home (1920's), I grew up in in the 1970's still had a Bell RED hardwired Telephone w/ rotary Dial, it was Long Distance , as it had 120 feet of phone chord. lol.

TV bakers and Chefs still use hand Sifters today.

in the 1900's cars replaced the Horse , and we ate the Horses (canned Horse meat), and you could still find Canned Horse meat in the 1950's .

In the 1950s our home was adjacent to the dairy farm that delivered our milk. Sometimes, just for nostalgia, the owner would deliver the milk on our street using his pony and old fashioned milk wagon. Then, a couple of years later, my uncle got a job delivering the milk for this dairy farm. I loved getting up early to wave hi to my uncle from our back door window as he swapped the bottles in our metal milk keeper on the back porch.

I remember our milk bottles having a cartoon type picture of a farm and the slogan, “On the farm, in the dairy, and now in the bottle.”

But the money they could make from it!

Not only reusable, but recyclable. I worked in a glass plant as a student, and watched the bottles come in, get crushed and then fed into various cauldrons.

stew Leonard's has glass and its $7 a gallon, $4.59 for plasstic

Milk stored and sold in clear glass bottles exposed the milk to sunlight anytime they weren't in the refrigerator, degrading the Vitamin D in the milk. The Hoosier Cabinet was no longer popular with the advent of the built-in cabinets in the 1930s and early 40s. The cabinet named for its home, in New Castle, Indiana, which is about 20 miles east of me. Hoosier Cabinets and their many copiers, such as the Seller's Cabinet, as well as others were basically gone from most kitchens, except perhaps for some farm kitchens not yet being modernized by the spread of electric service in large and small rural areas, by the later 30s and early 40s when the economy from the Great Depression was beginning to ease up. By the 1950s, they were pretty much a memory, and not a big part of the 1950s postwar economy. Their biggest era of influence was in the 1920s, not the 1950s. Some of the companies that got their start building and selling the "Hoosier style" cabinets (including the company in New Castle, Indiana) had branched out to producing the new style of matching built-in cabinets, or were making other household needs, or gone out of business. Many vintage ads and catalogs of the times easily attest to that. Butter molds were definitely a thing of Grandma's kitchen, from before the 1920s. Most people were getting their butter from their local markets, and the newer supermarkets, rather than finding a source of that much heavy cream for churning, a laborious task that busy 1950s moms, raising as many as 4 to 6 kids, plus caring for a husband, a household, and possibly even the yard, if not more, didn't have the time to devote to such a chore. Butter molds at best were Grandma's antique nicknacks for kitchen wall decorations, not daily use. My mom grew up in a wartime military family, following her Army Officer father with her mother as well, around the States, in places like officers family quarters, and civilian housing in places like Atlanta, Ga., while he served in the Phillipines. Then, after the war was over, on her parent's farm in her early teens to college years in the later postwar 40s and 50s, and there are plenty of stories and photos, taken by her Art Teacher mother during and after the War. I came along in the depths of the Baby Boom in 1957, following a 1956 wedding. So, I've got plenty to back me up on this stuff, in addition to my own personal research into American and British wartime home front culture and activities, and how they differed and how they were alike, for the past 25 years or so.

Yes, And we only got from this the mother earth affected. We dont have cure for cancer, for AIDS, still have war, hungry people, we still die, anyways, I was watching a documentary some days ago,on hiw ghe weather is getting high, and the poir peopke there painting their roof white, so they could stayed inside home, and the scientist asking for us, ocidental people, try live a most simole life, to preserve out earth. To watch this video made me remember of that. How we became materialistic people.

My mother´s Frigidaire ice box lasted 52 years also.

I just bought an old electric percolater made in the bronx baby ... best tasting coffee by Miles

I have a GE Refrigerator that is over 40 years old and still running. It has also never needed any repairs.

@@nancykramer7700 my parents bought a G.E. fridge in 1982 when we moved to Connecticut. It lasted 45 years was still working great but door hinge broke and we couldn't find replacement so we retired it acouple of years ago or it still be working.

My parents' GE refrigerator was moved to the basement when my mom got her side-by-side (which lost a lot of cold and frozen temperatures. ) The GE frig was bought when my parents bought a new house. I was 9 months old. When we finally sold the house 54 years later, the frig was still running. We left it with the house.

It's also great for combining your dry ingredients.

Are you sure? I decided to sift flour for a while and there was no difference. Not in taste, not in ‘fluffyness’

Was that two cups of flour, sifted or two cups of sifted flour? I weigh it. @@debbylou5729

I do bake. No difference

It’s a myth. Originally sifting the flour was to remove any weevils or other insects from dried goods. Due to improvements in processing flours and modern storage methods these are no longer a real problem.

Many of us do!

Me too 😊

Me, too!! 🤔😆😆💋💖🌵👵🐺🖖

Except the 'rotary' phone.😂

So do i

Refrigerator is still called ice cupboard - jääkaappi - in Finnish. :D

I bought an antique Hoosier many years ago. Had no flour bin nor sifter, but does have a metal-lined "bread drawer" (but I use it for crackers.) I love the slide-out porcelain top for the additional counter space and the Hoosier stores all my dry goods (flours, sugars, rice, beans, pasta, etc.,) with enough room left over for my small collection of cookbooks. I also have an antique metal bread box. Those old things were made to LAST!

My recollections are much the same. I was born in 1947.

I still call the frig the ice box sometimes. My grandfather built a new kitchen for my grandmother and put a bread box in as a drawer with a metal lid that had holes in it. Whenever we visited, I always opened the drawer to smell the bread. Even after grandmother stopped using it for bread, it still smelled so fragrant.

Thats what I thought. Ice boxes and ice delivery were outdated in the 50s. The hoosier was popular in the 30s, but I still have one and I love it!

I just thought they were cutting boards, thanks for the info!

I'm going to remodel my kitchen soon and plan to insist on a breadboard. Sometimes we'd have an extra guest for a midweek dinner, so one of the kids would eat at the pulled out breadboard.

I wish I had a bread board.

When I went to Finland with my husband after we married, his apartment there had a pull out cutting board. Apparently all kitchens there have those. I didn't know it was for bread making too. I love that. Need that here in the states.

Oof, so that's what that was for. . . at my grandma's house , we used that as a cutting board.

I still use a hand cranked mixer as well as a manual can opener and they can still be found in stores, more items not "Faded Into History"!

Yup me too - and mine is the same as the one featured with the crank handle.

In areas of high humidity or a rainy day, flour tends to "pack" in the bag or even in a tin. Sifting is a must.

Agree. Especially the flour sifter. Serious bakers always sift their flours, even today.

@@swimmarfishyMine is like the one with the plastic handle broken off. Almost all 1950's utensils had wooden handles not plastic. Hate the AI voice.

Boy does that bring back a memory. My mom had to stab the frozen blocks of ice to loosen them from the freezer. It was hard work taking the better part of a Saturday morning. Really uncomfortable too for us kids to watch mom attacking the fridge like Norman Bates.

@@tamedshrew235 I had a mental picture of the scene you described. It would have been something Norman Rockwell could have painted.

We had a mom defrosting unit in our overseas kitchen! I got my first self defrosting fridge in 2004!

@@v.m.8472 I helped Mom put the ice chunks in the sink. LittleKidMe thought it was so cool! Mom&Dad bought a big ole chest freezer in the mid 1960’s sometime. Mom would defrost it with the pans of hot water and finish up any reluctant spots by putting the vacuum hose on the “out” hole, the warm air would melt the ice. Hand-held hair dryers weren’t available then.

I am 86 years old and my recollection remember that time before 1950 was not even homogenized it was only pasteurized I had only a little cardboard cover to cover the Bottle of milk as for Flower sifter I still have a News one now only difference is it’s battery operated ha ha ha What about the Coldwater Flats That even was still used Until the beginning of the 1950s

My best memories of my great grandmother were of baking molasses cookies with her. I was the only one of her great grandkids that had interest in her recipe book, so I have a dairy farmer's depression era cook book (With german twist! Grandma was born in Bremen in 1908. Passed in 2008 shortly before her 100th birthday.)

Imagine having a time machine to experience it for a brief 5 hour moment then pulled back to the present time. Heh I was born in 1989 so while we have no time machine to see it as it was back then at least there is other ways.

Yes--tying together the processes involved with food prep in the Fifties with what has been done for hundreds or even thousands of years is a fine reminder that what we call progress is often a matter of distancing from and forgetting about historical continuities. I think we are poorer for that.

We used ours ( I still have one) to make ham salad or bologna salad ( you never hear of that one today). I cherish mine but admit I am more likely to use my food processor today. Anna In Ohio

I still have one, too.

Same here. While we sometimes use the sifter (I'm just too lazy and don't feel like cleaning it), we rarely use the hand mixer. But we've always kept one around the house.

(: We, or the World is always going back to the old ... !!!!! That will never stop ... !!!!! I doubt that we would be typing on computers or phones if not for typewriters!!!!! ... (:

Best part is manual tools can be used even if the power is out which happens lots where I live when there are storms.

I love my Sellers cabinet. It even has ant cups on the legs.

You are blessed! I would love to have one, but have no room. One day I will, Lord willing!

Ours had a wimpy magnet to catch the lid out of the soup

My Mom did too, and the wall mounted pencil sharpener!! I'm 67.

We have a wall-mounted beer bottle opener. It goes on every move. ❤

There is much much wisdom in all you say!! Thx for sharing… ❤❤❤

P.S. BLESS YOU, and HAPPY EASTER! ❤🙏🏻😘

God Bless you

I have always thought that the Women's Lib movement lost the plot. If their mission was to empower women to be able to do whatever they wanted to do, without having to be discriminated against, or blocked in their progress by anyone else, why then demonize those women who DID make their own choices, just because it may not have been YOUR choice?🤷🏼‍♀️ I am 67 now, and grew up and "came of age" in the mid-70s, right in the middle of that era as a teen and young woman. I married at 19, strictly by my own and my husband's choice to do so, not out of any rush or "need," other than we loved each other totally, and wanted to be together. (We are still together, at 48 years together the end of this coming July.) We did not live together first, mostly because we didn't want to, and him being in the Air Force at the time did not make that possible or even affordable at the time. Legally, neither of us would have been protected by any kind of law favoring married couples. And financially, we would not have had access to the financial benefits of marriage in the military. No Basic Allowance for Quarters (BAQ) at the same level as married couples; no access for me to the military medical care system for dependents - at the time, this was before Tri-Care - it was all basically free, including all prescriptions (and birth control pills), surgery with a minor charge for my food - like a couple of dollars a day. And so forth. Plus I would have no access to the Commissary for groceries, where everything sells at cost, tax free. No Base Exchange - like the Base Department Store, the laundry/dry cleaners for uniforms, etc., the gas station, always cheaper than in the civilian market. Basically anything that existed beyond the Base Gate would be beyond my reach. Not to mention no legal say in his medical care, or the ability to travel with him to any future changes of duty station - on the government's dime of course. Or living together without those benefits in much more expensive areas of the country, or in Asia, or Europe. Just LOTS of things we could not justify doing without, for the sake of "making a statement." Not to even begin to mention raising a family without them. We got married in 1976, me at 19, him at 20, and ended up making LOTS of statements!!😅 We still are!

Mine are sunflowers 😊

My grandmother also had a canister just for crackers (saltines usually) and one for malted milk powder.

Yes, always on a bride’s requests at the bridal gift store that sold china sets, etc. That’s where you went to buy wedding gifts since the registry was their secret….quite a business back then!

Still do.

Do you remember the can that sat on the back of the stove that Grandma collected grease in?

Remember how the lid (actually the fourth side of the box) folded down when you opened it, providing a cutting board for your loaf of bread.

I have never seen a wall mounted can opener. And I bake, so of course I sift! All bakers know to sift 😊 I’d be charmed to the end of time if I got molded butter. That’s something I’d expect at a high end restaurant or hotel.

I also still use a hand held manual can opener.

I use a bread box.... It's actually the microwave....

My biggest regret is turning my old pink General Electric refrigerator in to the electric company because they said it wasn't energy efficient. Yeah the freezer part you could only fit a couple trays of ice and a few other things.. we had to buy a deep freezer to keep all our freezer items in. I loved that refrigerator though we kept it in the basement and bought a full sized modern refrigerator. I have lived in my home 30 years and had to replace 2 refrigerators. Anna In Ohio

My mom used her meat grinder for grinding cranberries, orange peels and nuts for cranberry salad during the holidays. When I got older, that was my job.

Here in Poland I can get a kilo of flour for about 20p sterling. A small loaf of bakery bread is about .79p. It's so much cheaper to bake bread at home, too. Taste and cost and the pleasure of baking. Not sure why anyone buys bread.

I buy my bread at the bakers, like many of my fellow contrymen. They use much less preservatives, if any. My mother has still a bread box in use and I miss it dearly because the bread becomes stale less fast in it.

I think most households in Germany have a bread box. At least most people above the age of maybe 50. Even if you don't bake your own bread or buy it at a bakery, it's convenient to store it all in one place.

Me, too.

Me too

Same

Me too.

@@TrillianaEM My grandmother had a very old metal kitchen flour cabinet. There was a storage bin on the very top, a sifter funnel beneath (that a large crockery bowl fit beneath). She bought flour in 20 pound sacks (and the printed fabric the flour was delivered in was used to make simple play wear and even underpants for us children). She made everything from scratch: bread, noodles, biscuits, dumplings, pie crusts, crumb toppings on Dutch apple pies and fruit cobblers, etc.

This is a very odd answer. Presifted flour was introduced long after the 1950s. Every decent baker knows sifted flour is necessary for measuring if you do not weigh your flour. We were taught in my late 1960s home ec class to always sift flour before measuring. Many recipes for baking called for sifted flour, specifically.

I was going to say, real ice boxes were already disappearing in the 50s. According to my dad, my grandparents got rid of theirs and bought a refrigerator in the 1950s. Dad almost took it off their hands, then Mom talked him out of it and made him buy a refrigerator instead.

Same here. Although sometimes I have to call it the fridge because if I say icebox people look at me like “what do you mean? what’s an icebox?”

I was born in the late 1950s and never saw an ice box until I started visiting antique stores. My grandparents had refrigerators and of course, our suburban home had a refrigerator.

I was born in 1953 and grew up in Maryland. We always called refrigerators "ice boxes." I live in the west now and I've never heard anyone call it an ice box.

But the door was right at eye level to a small child. I was scared to death that one day I'd have the oven open and my daughter would come charging into the kitchen, burning her face on that open door. 😢

If you aren't afraid of a small child tumbling into a burning hot floor model when the door is open I doubt you should worry about an oven that is higher up than most infants or small children. @@lucindawelenc2191

Grew up in a town in Illinois. Early '50s. We had milk delivered every morning, left on our back steps in a metal crate. One quart milk bottles with paper seals on top. My mother would leave out the empties and the milkman would replace them with full bottles. Pasteurized to whatever degree they did back then, but not homogenized. Cream would rise to the top.

@@DoubleDogDare54 Understand completely. I think a lot had to do with location. Southern California in the 50's was probably very different than Illinois in the 50's. Location, location, location. 🙂🤷‍♀️💛🌻

Where does the fats go now? You REALLY don't want to put it down the drain! Trust me. It's a VERY expensive plumbing repair and it goes NOWHERE. My great grandmother used to dump that cr*p down the drain and it was STILL THERE 70 years later! Clogged the pipe, 3 feet or MORE, top to bottom! 100% clogged! Plumber never saw anything like it in his 5 years.

😩 Modern porkies are so lean-mean-hormonemachines that their bacon hardly gives any grease on the pan, and the stuff that oozes out tends to just go all gooey and sticky. I used to have a small re-used glass jar for the purpose, no sieve, who in their right mind would take out the tasty crunch 😅. Not aany more, no grease no jar 😥.

Our bacon grease was stored in a cleaned out coffee can.

Now they sell bacon fat in a jar.

So did we! Nothing better than frying sliced potatoes and onions with bacon grease in a cast iron skillet. Yum!!

We still had milk delivery until the late 80s, and I heard they restarted it about 5 years ago. I still have one of those manual hand mixers, and my grandma was still using a stove top percolator well into the noughties. For all I know, my cousin still has it.

I still have milk delivered...whole milk...Royal Crest Dairy...Southern Colorado...I don't like grocery store milk!@@kme

Aww that's so nice! (Mrs. Ed ) 🌷

😫

That was well into the 80s though mum just used an ordinary metal sieve. Weevils were the biggest issue, and they were usually in the packet of flour when you bought it.

@@musicandbooklover-p2o”Now with added protein!” 😂

@@squirehaggard4749 Oh I well remember them in the bags of flour (and this was the 70s and 80s, they like the warmer climates which didn't help) and they look like moths - or these ones did. Sifting or sieving - either works just as well - was essential unless you fancied the extra protein.

Hmmm ... Growing up in California in the 1960s and 1970s, we sifted flour but I never saw insects in it. I started doing all the family baking around age ten. I sifted flour so I could measure accurately and not have too much flour from the flour settling during shipping. No weevils. How odd. What country are you from?

My mom used a coffee percolator to save the bacon grease for cooking..the inner basket would strain out any crumbs.

💯 agree with you. (Born in 1952, BTW) Had a different brand of electric mixer AND the hand mixer; the size of the task determined which one got used. NEVER had an icebox, though I was aware of them. We had a top fridge/bottom freezer unit. I feel better now. On to minute three of the video...😉

I agree. I was born in 1956 and we had a refrigerator freezer, a separate freezer, and a Sunbeam mixer. I still sift my dry ingredients with a sifter. Then my baking powder doesn't clump up.

No ice boxes in the 1950s and we also had a Sunbeam stand mixer, called a mixmaster.

We still have sifters

I have an antique butter mold. My family got home made butter every weekend from a farmer’s wife. The delivered milk is missed. Milk was so good. And yes, we had a table mounted meat grinder. More people make their bread now than in the 1950s. Then Wonderbread was the thing then.

HA! I used to install those systems when I got out of school. '70 RULES!

I remember my mother bathing me in the washtub when I was a young child. I always liked it and have fond memories of it.

Bottle openers and the dual purpose "church key" (other end for punching holes in evaporated milk, beer, and motor oil cans were essential not only for kitchens but for vehicles are more a '50's relic than a couple things in the video. I'd put butter molds and even ice boxes more in the '40's, though both my grandmothers were still making butter in 1960.

​@@nancykramer7700 I've only seen that on westerns. Who was your mother-- Laura Ingalls Wilder?! (Just kidding! )

I still use my stainless steel electric frying pan! I even do a small roast in it rather than in the oven. Mine came with a heating element in the cover for broiling, but I removed it because it seemed too dangerous.

I grew up with my Mom’s electric fry pan - I thunk we got rid of it in 2001 when she needed to move back to our home state. Wish I had saved it!!!

We had an early Sunbeam electric fry pan. It was steel and you had to be careful when you washed it because the handle was not submersible. It was much more shalllow than later ones and the lid had no little vent in it like the later ones did. This was in the mid fifties. My mother treasured it as it made everything easier. I vaguely recall that a little cook book came with it.

My husband just bought me one lol My parents (my mum) still use the ancient electric frying pan they've had since the 70s. I even have an electric wok.

I use one when I really need to control the temperature while frying, such as for pancakes or kapusta.

They still make them I use one every day bought my last one on Amazon. Anna In Ohio

I bought a stove top percolator Amazon for $20 about 15 years ago. Works great. It came with a plastic knob and I went to a very old hardware store and sure enough, they had the glass one I was looking for as a replacement.

A lot easier to wash !

We had one when I was growing up in the 50's, but my mother caved and went with electric ones after that. I use a hand one, replaced once in 50 years.

Same here. That was how one survived/didn't go hungry through to the next growing season, but families and communities had to actually Work for it. And that has been the case right down through the ages. It was such skills that not only preserved human civilization but allowed it to progress. Now it's all just considered a "novelty", a throwback.

@@eatiegourmet1015 Yea, verily.

So hard to keep clean.

I juiced about 75 limes last week, some with a citrus reamer, but most just by squeezing manually. The reamer comes in handy when I juice lemons, although I have a wonderful mechanical juicer for when I want to juice a lot of lemons. (I don't have an orange tree, so no fresh OJ.)

@@mariateresamondragon5850 I use the lever press type for lemons and limes.

Display them in a blog. People around the world would like to see and read about each item.. alongside the sentimental value.

@@hana.the.writer5074 I don't have anything like that. No tic toc. No Facebook. No mains power. No mains water. When the solar system shuts itself, I use whatever is suitable. Yes. Have a generator, but it's never been started. Brand new. 2 years....eat the sheep. No probs. Catch rabbits, or the cat will usually turn up with a little one. It's just a bit different from yours. 😃

Now that brought up a long lost memory of my mum plugging in the iron to the light socket hanging from the ceiling. That was in the 1940's. The iron seemed often to be needing mending (my dad was an electrician) and so did the toaster, the sort you watched to see when the toast was done. The moment you turned away it burnt!.

We'd take turns sitting on the top and cranking the handle.

Our ice cream maker was a Sears brand with the wooden sides and crank handle. The ice cream was so cold you had to drink water with it.

That's a good idea, maybe I'll get one.

Even if they pre-sift, wouldn't it just clump again having sat for so long. I don't know i had to stop watching this. The info is ridiculous. Maybe in the UK they don't use that stuff anymore, but there are plenty of items still available that he said were gone 😂

Looked at today it's amazing how your grandparents lived and how hard they worked, wonderful people.

Our meat grinder has been stored under the counter in the cabinet for thirty years. I wonder why I've kept it...

Walk-in PANTIES???

Wonderful share. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👌🏻

Dang, you're my kind of gal.

I have up those electric can openers about 50 years ago - I have a manual can opener that I use quite a bit and it even works for use older ones (I’m 76)! I despise those electric can openers!!

They are perfect and small. Don't like counters full of electric one use gadgets. At one time I wanted to get rid of the toaster but was voted down. Did banish the microwave, the dishwasher, coffee maker, electric can opener, the cuisinart.

Yes a company called Lehman's from Ohio sells all those nice items. .! You can ask for their non electric catalog.

Home freezers became available in the 1950"s. We had a "locker" in a commercial cold storage. You had to drive into town to get your frozen vegetables.

More like pre-1930s.

My brothers would do the same, and my mother would get so mad at them...lol...One thing that I haven't seen mentioned was the built-in ironing board.

We didn't have the built in ironing board; we had to set the ironing board up under the light that was in the middle of the ceiling because that is where we had to plug in the iron. Weird, huh!@@5643437

Percolators are becoming a “thing” as I’ve seen the exact model of the one I grew up with in stores today (2024)!

Percolator coffee tastes the best ! And smells wonderful brewing! ☕

Yes! Our phone in the kitchen only was yellow with a very long curly cord! It was still there when Mom sold the house in 20001! The house (fri. 1956) wasn’t wired fir more than one phone so eventually Mom had to have people in to add outlets in a few bedrooms - the wires ran a,long the baseboard as thst was the only way they could be installed.

Yes, gave some privacy as a teenager when on the phone.

I had one on my phone. My son was young, cutting paper and phone was near. Said opps. Had cut the cord.

I still have a milkman delivering in glass bottles! 🇬🇧👍

@@torfrida6663where are you from? I didn’t think that still happened.

I'm still here.

Oh, shut up.