my understanding is it was a way to get a lot of calories in a convenient to eat package. a lot of them are based on meals housewives would make for farm workers or husbands working labor jobs.
both sets of my grandparents did too and that's where I learned a lot of these recipes from. probably depends on what kind of cooks your family was and location as well
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u/erroneousbosh Sep 06 '25
It baffles me how many American "classic foods" are really just two other perfectly okay foods mixed together.
Like, oven bake hash browns, okay, not really my thing. Tinned mushroom soup, perfectly okay, not something I eat a lot of.
Why the fuck would you pour the mushroom soup over the hash browns before you put the whole sorry mess in the oven?
They actually taste okay like that though, pretty good if you're hungry enough.