What a great thread. I've really enjoyed reading about all your favorite foods and restaurants.
I teach cooking classes. I'm doing a series of classes now on "Fashionable Food", which covers food trends over the past several decades. My students loved the following recipe, from the 1950's.
FRUIT COCKTAIL CAKE
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg, beaten until light
2 cups fruit cocktail with juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup chopped pecans
Mix first four ingredients into a large bowl. Add the egg, fruit cocktail and vanilla. Mix well. Pour into an 8x12-inch buttered and floured pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven until cake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. When cool, sprinkle with a mixture of 1/4 cup powdered sugar, mixed with 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Serve with ice cream or lightly sweetened whipped cream.
(this cake is almost more like a pudding than a cake. Very dense and moist.)
Oh, I remember making that - it's goood! What a fun job you must have. Do you have the book about American "company food" from the 1950s and 60s? I loved it. Can't think of the name, but will look for it. Mine's in storage right now.
Thinking of fruit cocktail reminds me of two more "grandmother" favorites. One was a fruit salad she would make with fruit cocktail, real whipped cream, fresh orange segments, coconut, pecans and mini-marshmallows. I still get hungry for it sometimes, but make it with CoolWhip and also add blueberries and bananas. Thank heavens for the "extra cherries" fruit cocktail they make nowadays - I always wanted more cherries in grandmother's fruit salad.
Also, she used to make an extra-wonderful dessert pudding which we all called Nesselrode Pudding, but wasn't really the authentic nesselrode. It was a baked vanilla custard with halved maraschino cherries, pecans, whipped cream and vanilla wafer crumbs swirled into it. I've lost the recipe a dozen times and don't have it now, either. That was my very very favorite dessert for many years, but didn't get to have it very often.
Oh, found the name of the fun book -- "American Gourmet" by the Sterns. It has a subtitle with the word "swank" in it, lol. Amazon doesn't seem to care much for it - but I loved it. One of the recipes from it I did one night for company because it was so easy - mushrooms stuffed with thawed-out Stouffer's Spinach Souffle mixed with crumbled bacon, pecan bits and cheddar cheese, then baked till bubbly. My guests gobbled them so fast I didn't get any!