How convenience foods like Stove Top stuffing took over the U.S.
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How convenience foods like Stove Top stuffing took over the U.S.
As Thanksgiving approaches, people with storied family food traditions will, naturally, have strong opinions about what belongs on the dinner table and how those items should be prepared. Is stuffing (placed inside of the turkey as it cooks) better than dressing (made separately from the turkey)? Should cranberry sauce be canned or fresh? What’s acceptable to purchase pre-made?
While some people will be looking forward to dishes made from scratch, others see nothing wrong with convenience foods, like the popular classic: Stove Top stuffing.
Stove Top stuffing, which was created by home economist Ruth Miriam Siems, was introduced in the early 1970s. As some packaged products have fallen to the wayside, Stove Top stuffing remains a celebrated product, with an Eater reporter describing the dry bread crumbs as “a perfect food.”
Laura Shapiro, a journalist and culinary historian, explained that instant stuffing has succeeded because it’s quick, it’s easy and it’s versatile.
“It did make it possible to have stuffing as a side dish any old time. You really did not have to have a large bird. And people love stuffing. Stuffing is a delicious thing. It’s kind of hard to go wrong with it,” Shapiro said. “So I think it added a new thing to the repertoire; it was something you could do pretty easily on the side. It pepped up a meal. Stuffing is full of flavor; it has a lot of zip to it.”
Other companies at the time had already developed their own stuffing, but the crumbs in Stove Top stuffing were just the right size. “[Siems’] patent was based on a certain size of bread crumb that makes the rehydration, or addition of water, work,” reported the Evansville Courier & Press.
Shapiro said that instant or convenience foods began gaining prominence after World War II. During the war, major food companies used their technology and resources to develop food for the U.S. and for the forces overseas.
“They produced all kinds of things that you could basically ship overseas and eat in a foxhole while the bombs are falling around you,” Shapiro said. “Then after the war, all this technology is up and running. The food industry knows how to produce these things. But there isn’t a war going on.”
So these companies needed to create a market for wartime food, Shapiro added.
There were all sorts of products like canned gelatin and canned hamburgers.
“They would can anything. They would freeze anything. They just let their imaginations run wild,” Shapiro said.
But the convenience food industry was not a success at first, Shapiro noted.
“People knew what cooking was. It meant putting your hands into real food and doing some work and moving things around and mixing and stirring and smelling and tasting. This was not cooking. So the food industry had to redefine these products and tell you that it was quick cooking, it was easy cooking, it was ready-made cooking,” Shapiro said. “All that took time. It took decades to redefine what cooking was, what eating was and what enjoying food was. That has been an ongoing project of the food industry since the end of World War II.”
Shapiro said the acceptance of convenience foods was a gradual process, with some products having more success than others.
For example, she said, frozen fish sticks hit shelves in the early 1950s and “struck a chord” with consumers, becoming “enormously popular.” She also noted that TV dinners were not popular at first, but eventually became accepted as a substitute dinner – maybe the parents bought them for their kids if they were going out, or someone at home would microwave one if the rest of the family wasn’t there.
The food establishment, which included renowned chefs such as James Beard and the editors of fancy food and women’s magazines such as Gourmet, were “very condescending” toward the rise of convenience foods in the 1950s, Shapiro said.
She said that the cookbook writer Poppy Cannon, who authored “The Can-Opener Cookbook,” was met “with scorn and distaste” from Beard.
“[Cannon] happily wrote about all these packaged foods. She really thought that they were a great advantage, that they would allow working women to come home and have a wonderful meal on the table in 20 minutes and the food would be delicious,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro added that despite his initial criticism, Beard himself eventually started promoting convenience foods.
Shapiro said new appliances also played a role in the ubiquity of convenience foods. Microwaves became widespread in the 1980s, making people accustomed to fast preparation times for products like frozen foods.
But the perception of convenience foods ebbs and flows. While convenience foods eventually became accepted, food historian Ken Albala said that in recent decades, more people seem to be interested in cooking for pleasure and using whole ingredients.
“People have realized that convenience foods aren’t necessarily good for you. And sometimes they’re not so much cheaper than making something from scratch, and that they’re really not always so convenient,” Albala said.
He noted that people are interested in fermenting foods, making sourdough bread – hobbies that came to a head at the beginning of the pandemic.
But there’s a nostalgia associated with products like Stove Top stuffing. He said that many people still eat it because their parents made it for them.
“I grew up in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, and there was no stigma against using convenience foods. If you opened up a can of cream of mushroom soup and poured it on your frozen green beans that already had the tips cut off and put Durkee’s/French’s fried onions on the top, then that was perfect,” Albala said.
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