I don’t go LOOKING for trouble, Heaven knows. I was just curious about a food item—though I certainly do not write a food blog—and went into the Interwebs to answer my question. Someday I shall sum up my research into the history of the BLT, but I was sidetracked into a completely unrelated issue which is one of those polarizing questions which divides our country.
I never meant to walk into such a bulletstorm, but there it is. You do or you don’t. It is such a deep issue that the haters got started over seventy years ago, at a time when people tell me the spread of the problem was only beginning. The number of lovers grew, and the whole debate expanded to a point where it seems inevitable that the lovers marry the haters, or two lovers marry and rise up a whole family of haters. The lovers seem to me to slightly outnumber the haters, but there are haters out there disguised as lovers, if you read their posts closely enough. The problem comes down to three simple words.
Tuna. And. Noodles.
Most everyone traces this recipe back to the Pacific Northwest in 1930, thanks to research from an outfit called TASTE. You can check their website for the primitive origins of the dish, but several other experts chime in on the importance of the year 1934, when Campbell’s introduced canned Cream of Mushroom Soup. But perhaps even THEY were unprepared for the pressures of the Depression and World War II, which made even such a culinary expert as M.F.K. Fisher state that C of M was a ready comfort in times of trouble. Cooks found it an excellent substitute for white sauce in recipes (the original Tuna and Noodles was made with white sauce).
The experts have also stated that casseroles became a craze of the 1950s, without saying why. I’m guessing it was some combination of television (T& could be prepared ahead of time and refrigerated to be cooked whenever everyone had time) and suburban expansion (casseroles were really convenient for taking to get-acquainted potluck suppers.) In 1952, according to TASTE, one cookbook author was defiantly refusing to have the recipe in her book, and culinary critics were sneering at T&N as the supreme “dump and bake” recipe, not REAL cooking at all.
But this was the FIFTIES, caramel-covered carrot stick, and between the food companies and the women’s magazine editors, improving (gimmicking up) recipes was in full swing. The classic T&N, which apparently involved a cheese and corn flake topping and the addition of canned peas to the blend, was being gussied up with fancier cheeses, and any vegetables or spices you happened to have around: I saw (logical, since the carrots and peas frozen mix was spreading like an epidemic around the same time), spinach, pearl onions, dill, parsley, pimiento, green peppers, red peppers, jalapenos (as we move into a new century). The noodles can be replaced with any sort of pasta you choose, the corn flakes with bread crumbs (perhaps the original topping) or croutons or garlic bread of a chicken-and-dumpling sort of hybrid, while the tuna can be replaced with chicken, hamburger, salmon, lobster…the possibilities of course are endless. AND, this being the twenty-first century, some apparently conscience-less souls substitute low-fat yogurt for the cream of mushroom soup. Is nothing sacred?
Truth be told, some recipes go the other way. I know one cook who was bewildered to learn you do anything to this dish but boil up some noodles, drain them, and then dump in one can of tuna and one can of C of M, and then eat it right out of the pot. “Baking?” he demanded, “Topping? Why complicate your life?”
I yearn to see some educational institution announce a T&N Extravaganza, with professional chefs producing everything from the original 1930 recipe (or the 1932 recipe suggested for hospital kitchens) through James Beard’s variation through the wildest of Fifties extravaganza to a modern version with homemade fettucine, low-fat yogurt, salmon, Gruyere, and garlic croutons. There will, of course, be a protest march by the Tuna and Noodle haters, demanding pizza, but if we can get the deep dish and the thin crust radicals to go at each other, everyone inside can devour their uncovered dishes without fear.
Blogsy Babbles 