Iconic Picnic Staples From The ’60s That Need To Make A Comeback

The summer months rolling in can only mean one thing: It’s picnic time. Picnics have been a feature of American life for almost 200 years, with the eating style coming to the country from Europe in the 1830s. From the get-go, a picnic was an opportunity to create a portable feast that would make you the envy of your friends and family — as time went on, they didn’t get any less extravagant (although a host of picnic hacks started to appear that made life much easier). In the mid-20th century, though, picnics reached new peaks of excitement. A combination of processed food becoming more available and ever-more ambitious recipes led to an explosion of iconic picnic foods in the 1960s, which have been somewhat frozen in time as bygone curiosities of that decade.

Although some picnic staples from the time may still be recognizable today, you’d be unlikely to be serving them at your next outdoor event any time soon. These days, things like deviled eggs and Boston baked beans may show up in other places, but they have a deeply retro whiff about them around the picnic table. Others, like lemon Jell-O cake or onion loaf, are unlikely to be seen anywhere at all. If you’ve ever wondered what your grandparents were eating at their ’60s neighborhood picnics, grab a blanket and take a seat.

Onion sandwiches may not be most people’s idea of a tasty treat, but back in the 1960s they were all the rage. These sandwiches are recommended by none other than James Beard himself in his classic 1960 tome James Beard’s “Treasury of Outdoor Cooking,” as part of an on-the-go menu that you could enjoy straight out of a hamper. While Beard doesn’t go into detail about how to make the sandwiches in the cookbook, his later text “Menus for Entertaining” goes into more detail about their specific recipe. Beard’s sandwiches consisted of brioche rolls cut into circles, with thin slices of salted white onions slathered in mayonnaise housed between each slice. The edges of each sandwich were then rolled in parsley, giving them a studded effect.

Beard’s onion sandwiches weren’t just a picnic staple. They were also a cocktail hour hors d’oeuvres, with their briny bite serving as an unusual palette cleanser between sips of liquor. Plenty of other chefs throughout history have praised the simple power of an onion sandwich, with Martha Stewart also being a fan. However, you’re pretty unlikely to find them on a picnic blanket these days, with most people now leaning toward foods that won’t give you such pungent breath.

Spare a thought for the humble popcorn ball, folks. These sweet, crunchy treats used to be all the rage back in the 1960s, and there was a time when they would be tucked into picnic baskets across the land. The beauty of popcorn balls were how easy they were to rustle up. Etiquette expert and cookbook author Amy Vanderbilt’s recipe for them, listed in the 1961 text Amy Vanderbilt’s “Complete Cookbook,” requires just four ingredients. You simply had to melt molasses with sugar and butter, pour it over popcorn, and then form them into balls.

Popcorn balls have since been left in the dust at picnics by flashier candies, but there’s still something appealing about them. They have a particular allure for folks who are into myths and legends, thanks to the handed down story of their alleged creation. Apparently, popcorn balls were created during a Nebraska summer, which was so hot that the sun popped the corn growing in the fields. A subsequent rainstorm watered all the sugarcane down into syrup, with the liquid sugar flowing down a hill, covering the popcorn, and rolling it into massive balls. Now, we’re not sure how true all of this is, of course — but don’t you love a good story?

For a good chunk of time in the 20th century, jell-O was used for way more than its intended purpose. Jell-O became an unexpected ingredient in cakes, giving them a sturdy, chewy consistency and a bright, vibrant hue. When it came to picnics, lemon jell-O cake was a particular favorite. Appearing in cookbooks designed for picnics in the 1960s, lemon jell-O cake took little more than putting a few packaged ingredients together, baking the mixture, and then pouring over a lemon syrup to soak the sponge through.

Lemon jell-O cake was easy to make — it appealed to time-strapped cooks who wanted something sweet for their picnic with no fuss. But it also had a secondary appeal. The sturdiness that jell-O gave these cakes meant they were great for transporting, and ideal for popping in a picnic hamper and taking to the park. Plus, if lemon wasn’t people’s thing, they could pick from the massive range of jell-O flavors available in the 1960s, including blackberry, orange-banana, pineapple-grapefruit, and even seasoned tomato. Yep, that’s right, people: Savory jell-O was a thing. Hey, it was a different time.

The middle of the 20th century was a time when curried flavors were everywhere. Over in the U.K., coronation chicken was all the rage, and in the United States curried salad was being dished out at every picnic. Curried salad shows up as one of the star recipes in “Better Homes & Gardens: Barbecues and Picnics,” a 1963 book promising instructions for 135 individual dishes for all of your picnicking needs. Better Homes & Gardens’ recipe is for a hearty, filling salad combining potatoes, chopped eggs, and artichoke hearts in a creamy dressing infused with curry powder. It’s a dish that was spicy enough to bring the heat to colder summer days, or cooling enough (thanks to all that dairy) to temper even the highest of thermometers. Best of both worlds, right?

Other curried salad recipes from the era opted for different ingredients, with rice sometimes featuring instead of potatoes as the primary carbohydrate. Eggs were typically the protein of choice, but you could also use chicken if you liked. Curried salads aren’t exactly unheard of these days, but there’s no denying that they feel way less trendy than they did back then.

Of all the iconic picnic foods of the 1960s, deviled eggs are probably the most recognizable — but you’d have to be attending a pretty throwback event to find them in this day and age. These amped-up eggs can be found in a host of different cookbooks from the era, and they represent an ideology that feels distinctly American: Why enjoy food in its basic form when you could take it apart, spruce it up, and reassemble it to make it taste even better? This thought process led to countless deviled eggs, with their yolks mashed with mayo, onion, cheese, and even sardines, sitting on picnic blankets.

Contrary to popular belief, though, deviled eggs weren’t invented around this period. Instead, they date all the way back to 13th century Rome, where the first stuffed egg recipe have been traced to. The “deviled” part of the name came into play in the 18th century, and in the early 20th century the modern form of deviled eggs took shape, a jarred mayo became a standard item in supermarkets around the country. Deviled eggs are just as delicious today as they were in the ’60s, and although they’re no longer fashionable, they’re due a resurgence.

In our humble opinion, angel food cake is a dessert that went out of fashion for no reason. It’s light, airy, potently sweet, and it can go with any filling or frosting you desire. Most of all, it offers a delightfully delicate counterpoint to the heavier, stodgier foods on the menu during picnics. Perhaps that’s why it was such a frequent presence at outdoor events in the 1960s, with cookbooks of the era continually recommending angel food cake as a dessert for those long, hot summer days.

People also loved angel food cake for its ability to be served in more unusual ways. The 1963 “Better Homes & Gardens: Barbecues and Picnics” recommended making cake kabobs with it, by cutting up angel food cake, dipping the pieces in honey, condensed milk, or redcurrant jelly, and then coating them in flaked coconut. The pièce de résistance was that you could then toast the kabobs over an open fire, giving the coconut a delightful toastiness. This recipe was as good for a camping weekend as it was for a picnic. Sadly, angel food cake eventually fell out of favor at picnics — but maybe 2025 is the year that it finally comes back to the mainstream.

Name a classier picnic salad than the Waldorf. This dish was one of the leading salads of the 1960s, and it wasn’t just on restaurant menus across the country: It was in picnic baskets too. Despite its elegant appeal, Waldorf salad has a portability to it which made it pretty appealing for serving at outdoor events. Perhaps this is why those famous connoisseurs of good food James Beard and Amy Vanderbilt both recommended serving it at picnics and outdoor functions in their respective cookbooks.

To make a good Waldorf, though, you had to do it right. Beard pointed toward the fact that this salad is often thrown together hastily and poorly, and flagged that it needs just the right ratio of apple to celery (three cups to one, in case you were wondering), for it to shine. We don’t blame him for pointing that out. After the Waldorf salad was invented in the late 19th century, it quickly spawned a host of copycat recipes, including one in the 1930s that recommended taking the ingredients and plunging them into jell-O. Yeah, no thanks.

Deviled ham is one of those foods that feels frozen in time (even though you can still find it in stores today, if you look hard enough). Back in the 1960s it was the talk of the town, and a picnic staple that seemed to marry flavor and convenience. Although deviled ham feels like one of those foods that was born out of the relentless culinary experimentations of mid-century America, it was actually invented long before that. This canned meat spread was first introduced to a mass market in 1868, and during the 20th century it was advertised relentlessly, no doubt contributing to its popularity.

As a picnic staple in the 1960s, it was common enough to find it spread on sandwiches or crackers on its own. It was also frequently used in combination with other ingredients. The “Better Homes & Gardens: Barbecues and Picnics” book lists it in recipes for various sandwiches. In a slightly more retro move, it’s also an ingredient for a dish called “Mushroom Buttons,” in which mushroom crowns are stuffed with deviled ham and then grilled kabob-style. Look, we’re not the biggest fan of deviled ham at the best of times, but even we can admit that sounds pretty good.

Boston baked beans is one of those dishes that you wouldn’t ordinarily associate with picnics — but the 1960s were a different world. Back then, Boston baked beans were considered a worthy part of any picnic menu and were fashionable enough to be included in Amy Vanderbilt’s cookbook, as part of a picnic meal plan that included cheeseburgers, tomato and onion slices, and peppermint candy ice cream to finish things off.

We’ve gotta say that although you’re unlikely to find Boston baked beans at a picnic these days, we’re pretty glad that people embraced them so much in the ’60s. Their popularity acted as somewhat of a revival for the traditional dish, which has been around in its modern form since the 17th century (although it was likely first made hundreds of years before in the United Kingdom). Its ability to keep people satisfied and energized while being made from dried ingredients made it popular during the Revolutionary War. Nowadays it’s generally a fixture on menus in more traditional New England restaurants, as opposed to being served at picnics.

We’re of the opinion that the best picnic foods are the simplest to make, and despite the ’60s being a time of ever-more extravagant food choices, it seems like some items fell in line with this mindset. One such item was onion loaf, a dish that was easy to prepare and effortlessly tasty. Included in Amy Vanderbilt’s extensive list of picnic foods of the era, the onion loaf consisted of three ingredients: Crusty bread, butter (or margarine), and onion salt. The butter went on the bread, and the onion salt went on the butter — and then all it had to do was sit in a warm oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or on a barbecue wrapped in foil until hot.

Vanderbilt recommended serving this loaf with salad or chowder, and we bet that it’d make a great base for a sandwich too. Her onion loaf is way less complicated than the modern version, which consists of fried onions pushed together into a loaf shape and served as a barbecue side. Perhaps its simplicity was its downfall, but we have a lot of time for the easygoing prep and punchy flavors that this staple promised.