Halloween Menu Ideas Through the Decades
Join me on a nostalgia trip
As I sat down to plan my meals for the coming week, I was excited about picking a Halloween menu. One of my kids actually gets Halloween this year, so I feel liberated to get into the theme. Well—as much as my general effort/energy allotment (meagre) will allow.
Whereas last year I painstakingly cut up pepperoni to make a mac and cheese jack-o’-lantern and was met with a blank stare, this year I am confident food in a silly shape will hold more appeal.
I must confess, I love Halloween-themed food, but entire menus are not always easy to find, nor are there an agreed upon Halloween foods. In fact, as I combed through many magazines from Octobers past and books that generally have menus for most holidays, Halloween was often excluded.
There are many reasons for this, I’m sure. The foremost, I would imagine, is that it is primarily a kids holiday that occurs, most unfortunately, right at kids’ dinnertime. This means that we are all trying to either shove food in our mouths before running out, or coming home to something that is hopefully already cooked, hence the popularity of chili as a Halloween dinner.
The second is that it is a holiday of sweets for kids and partying for the older set, so we mostly see desserts for the younger, and maybe cocktails for the older.
All that aside, I wanted to take a nostalgia trip to see what else I came up with for those books that did offer up some Halloween ideas. Here are some of the fun things I found.
1950s
Halloween Cake from Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook.
This witchy cake from 1950 would still be beautiful today, if you are a person who is able to make such a nice witch out of melted chocolate. I am doubting my proficiency in this one, but maybe a stencil with cocoa powder would work just as well, and perhaps be a bit easier for the more decorationally challenged (it’s me, hi) among us.
Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook Menu: Hot Dogs, Rolls Spread with Catsup, Canned Shoestring Potatoes, Jack-o-Lantern Cooky Faces, Apple Cider, Toasted Marshmallows.
This menu is made to be served around a campfire, for the ghost stories of course! It is a fun easy menu if you live somewhere where you don’t have to wear a coat under your Halloween costume so that you’re a sad, puffy Sailor Venus. To choose a random example.
Hot dogs definitely seem like a solid choice, though, when you come in the door at almost literally bedtime.
1960s
New York Times Menu Cookbook “Supper for Halloween” Menu: Witches’ Brew (Hot Buttered Rum with Cinnamon Sticks), Shrimp Toast, Buttered Nuts, Eleanor Hampstead’s Scalloped Oysters, Mushrooms Florentine, Orange Bavarian Cream, Chocolate Pudding I.
While Halloween was still for the kids in the 60s, Craig Claiborne did not seem one to miss a chance for a party. Here is a beautiful menu that I bet would go over as well today as it did 60 years ago.
I picture a very sophisticated older lady serving this in an urban apartment with lots of warm, dark paint colors on the walls to her eclectic mix of friends. I love the idea of orange Bavarian cream and chocolate pudding as a Halloween dessert, and I would like to try that when I am (fingers crossed) a sophisticated older lady entertaining my eclectic friends.
As for now, I might settle for stealing the idea of hot buttered rum, or something else hot and spiked.
1970s
Ideals All Holiday Cookbook Menu: Dainty Rolls, Beef Stroganoff, Candy Apples, Halloween Date Cake with Orange Butter Frosting.
This menu seems pretty classic, with a stew, some rolls, a cake, and classic candy apples. This stew is slow cooking, perhaps to be left in the oven while all the trick-or-treating fun happens and taken out after, just like chili! So if you hate chili, here’s another idea.
It also includes that all-time Halloween classic, candy apples. I haven’t had a candy apple in years, and it could be a fun thing to bring back. Preferably in the form of the candy apple’s tastier counterpart, the caramel apple.
Ghost Cake with Flaming Eyes from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls.
I really love this adorable cake and its simplicity. That’s a 9x13 cake mix cake with the corners cut off and turned upward to make the hands reach out. The eyes are eggshells and sugar cubes. This is a cake that would be very fun to decorate with a kid and then set on fire. Flambé for bébé.
1980s
Southern Living 1988 “Invite Spooky Friends To This Party” Menu: Quick Little Pizzas, Nutty Popcorn Balls, Gingerbread Man Cookies.
Pizza is a great Halloween idea, and Southern Living suggests eating before the main event. I probably would not make two-thirds of the menu sweets right before the candy bonanza, but I bet the sugar onslaught wasn’t quite as intense in the 80s. Or maybe it was and that was the 80s for you.
1990s-2000s
Southern Living 1999 Menu “No Trick to Treats for Teens”: Hot Apple Cider, Chili-Cheese Dip, Salmi Rollups, Almond Delight Dip, Chocolate-Peanut Butter Snacks, Marshmallow Popcorn Balls.
Another Halloween classic seems to be the popcorn ball. A popcorn ball paired with a candy apple would be a fun nostalgic Halloween menu if you want to layer sugar on your sugar fiesta, or if you are person who doesn’t get trick-or-treaters, have trick-or-treaters, or is not a trick-or-treater (been there).
Taste of Home Quick Cooking Annual Recipes 1999 “Speedy Spread is Spooktacular” Menu: Great Pumpkin Sandwiches, Bat Wing Soup, Frankenstein Salads, Black Cat Cupcakes.
Taste of Home Quick Cooking Annual Recipes 2002 “Scare Up This Fun Feast” Menu: Boo Beverage, Monster Munchies, Bewitching Chili, Cauldron Bread Bowls, Candy Corn Cookies.
These are all ideas you can pretty much riff on without a recipe, and honestly I think they’re great because they’re easy. I especially like the little pumpkin-shaped quesadilla-type thing (Great Pumpkin Sandwich) and I think I’ll use it for my menu. I like the cute whipped cream ghosts on the Boo Beverage, too.
Taste of Home Annual Recipes 1999 “Spooky Supper for Hungry Goblins” Menu: Jack-o’-Lantern Burgers, Broccoli Boo Salad, Wormy Orange Punch, Graveyard Cake.
Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2006 “Good Gobblin’ for a Ghostly Night” Menu": Spooky Joes, Halloween Caramel Apples, Spider Cupcakes, Great Pumpkin Brownie, Fingers of Fright.
Here we have two ideas for Halloween cheese cutouts, which work until you put the top of the bun on, I guess. I have my eye on that retro punch and graveyard cake.
One more thing—do people still make those popcorn gloves? They are bringing back murky but intense nostalgia.
2, 4, 6, 8: Great Meals for Couples or Crowds “Halloween Hoopla” Menu: Pumpkin-Peanut Curry Noodles with Five-Spice Seared Scallops and Shrimp, Looking for Mr. Goodbar Sundae.
If we’re talking early 2000s, we can’t miss Rachael Ray. I am definitely intrigued by the pumpkin peanut noodles. Peanut noodles are a big hit around here currently, and adding some pumpkin could be a fun way to alleviate my boredom and check some Halloween boxes. Win win.
2010s
Sugar Ghost Cupcake from Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2010.
Is that a cupcake with too much fondant? Yes it is! We must be in 2010. And I’m not quite ready to go back there yet. Let’s stop.
My Halloween Menu
Honestly, probably chili, Great Pumpkin Sandwiches ca. 1999, and tiny pumpkin candies. (My favorite Halloween chili is this one, not least because serving beans is equated to torture by some in this house and it has pumpkin.) Maybe something mummy shaped, too, because mummies are popular in this house.
Happy Halloween!
p.s. I didn’t cover the 1940s, but
did a fun post on that recently if you’re in the market.
I’m late to this party but I remember many of these magazines! We stuff meatloaf in skull shaped pans and form mashed potatoes into crossbones. Fun and easy.
Thanks for the mention!