A century ago, an American meat menu could include a few surprises for today’s shoppers: kidneys, boiled tongue, young pigeon, and even turtle. These were not all dare-you-to-eat-it dishes. Some appeared in practical household cookbooks, while others belonged to restaurant dining or particular regional traditions. Looking back at them reveals how much the definition of an ordinary dinner can change, and how easily familiar foods become unfamiliar.
There is an important distinction behind this culinary time capsule. Americans in the 1920s did not all eat the same foods, and a cookbook recipe does not prove that every household served it weekly. The eight meats below had established places in American cooking around that period, rather than being universal staples. They are less prominent in mainstream meals today, although several remain valued in regional, cultural and restaurant traditions.
The Butcher-Counter Cuts That Lost Their Spotlight
Beef Tongue
Tongue once had enough of an audience to warrant several preparations in Fannie Farmer’s cookbook. The 1918 edition includes boiled corned tongue, braised fresh tongue, and calves’ tongues, showing that cooks had more than one way to bring it to the table. This was not simply a substitute slipped into a dish unnoticed; it was an ingredient with its own recipes. Its recognizable appearance later became part of its challenge, as cookbook author Jennifer McLagan explained on Gastropod: “Tongue puts people off because it looks exactly like the tongue in their own mouth.”
Lamb and Veal Kidneys
Kidneys also had a substantial place in the older cookbook repertoire. Farmer included lambs’ kidneys, broiled veal kidneys, and veal kidneys served with a sauce incorporating Madeira wine. Those variations matter because they show an ingredient used in both straightforward and more elaborate cooking. Gastropod traces American consumption of kidneys and other lesser-used cuts into the 1930s, before industrialized meat production and changing shopping habits moved offal away from the center of the plate.
Sweetbreads
Despite the bakery-friendly name, sweetbreads are meat: the thymus or pancreas of a young animal, usually a calf or lamb. They fall under the category of offal, which includes organs and other animal parts outside familiar muscle cuts. McLagan pointed to early editions of Joy of Cooking as evidence that sweetbreads belonged to ordinary American cookbook culture. They haven’t vanished, but Britannica notes that organ meats aren’t widely consumed in the United States and Canada.
Liver
Liver is probably the least surprising entry here, but it deserves a qualification: less prominent doesn’t mean impossible to find. It still appears in dishes such as chopped liver, and Gastropod host Cynthia Graber recalled enjoying her family’s version with onions and fat. Early editions of Joy of Cooking also included liver recipes, according to McLagan. More broadly, food scientist Carlos Álvarez told National Geographicthat offal consumption has declined in recent decades, particularly in developed countries such as the United States.
Calves’ Brains
Brains sound like a startling menu item now, but Farmer’s 1918 cookbook included them among its meat preparations. Their presence does not establish that all Americans ate them regularly; it does show that a major household reference treated them as food cooks might prepare. Britannica also identifies brains among the animal parts historically associated with American rural cooking. Their retreat fits a wider change in attitudes toward organs, although no single explanation accounts for every cut or every household.
The Smaller Animals That Made Dinner More Varied
Rabbit
Rabbit had an established place in American food traditions, especially where hunting or raising animals supplied the kitchen. Its history includes Indigenous consumption, domestic rabbit keeping, and later government encouragement of rabbit production during World War II. That wartime chapter should not be confused with evidence that rabbit was a nationwide weekly staple in the 1920s. Its subsequent decline also has multiple explanations: research identifies price competition with poultry and the animal’s overlapping identities as livestock, game, and pet as obstacles to wider acceptance.
Squab
Squab means young pigeon, not a city bird scooped from the sidewalk. Popular Science documented how pigeon meat went from a familiar American protein to a specialty increasingly overshadowed by factory-farmed chicken. Producing it also has practical limits: young pigeons depend on their parents for feeding, making mass production harder than for chickens. In the magazine’s 2018 reporting, producer Tony Barwick summed up the industry’s position succinctly: “We’re a minor species.” Squab survived, but largely outside the everyday chicken-dinner market.
Turtle and Terrapin
Turtle occupies a different historical lane from economical butcher cuts. Turtle soup and terrapin dishes became prestigious restaurant offerings, though they were once subsistence food. NPR places diamondback terrapin’s fashionable period between the mid-1800s and the 1920s;Food & Wine reports that terrapin dishes began disappearing from menus during the latter decade. Overharvesting and habitat damage helped drive that decline. The tradition nevertheless continues in New Orleans, where restaurants serve soup made with common snapping turtle rather than treating every turtle species as interchangeable.
Why Yesterday’s Dinner Started Looking Unusual
These changes did not happen because Americans collectively woke up and rejected eight ingredients. Squab faced competition from chicken, while turtle supplies suffered from intensive harvesting and environmental damage. Offal followed another path: McLagan described how cheaper muscle meat and the shift from butcher shops to supermarkets worked against highly perishable organs. “Meat becomes very cheap,” she told Gastropod. “So they want the roast, they want the rib roast, they want the tenderloin, they want these parts.”
Changing expectations mattered, too. Food historian Paul Freedman told Food & Wine, “Things of the relatively recent past, organ meat, for example, are now shunned.” That observation does not mean these foods disappeared from every American community, or that yesterday’s diners were somehow more adventurous than today’s. It means familiarity is powerful. A boiled tongue once read as a sensible recipe, while a chicken breast now needs almost no explanation, a reminder that “normal dinner” has its own history.
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