11 Once-Popular Summer Dishes You Rarely See On Picnic Tables Anymore

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As the weather turns hot and the sun goes down later and later, many of us get antsy to enjoy a meal al fresco. A summer picnic is just the ticket to satisfy these yearnings, and there are several important considerations to ensure a picnic is comfortable, safe, and delicious. These include guaranteeing adequate seating, shade, hydration, and keeping the bugs away from ourselves and the food we bring. And speaking of food, arguably the most critical part of planning a picnic is to map out the menu carefully. 

While there are plenty of perfect picnic recipes you could pack in your basket, some that were once quite popular have become less and less common additions to the menu. From mayonnaise-laden, creamy salads that many avoid bringing to picnics because they're so perishable to Jello-based oddities that simply have fallen out of favor, read on to discover the once-popular summer dishes that you rarely see on picnic tables anymore.

While a creamy salad is the perfect use for those leftover grapes, grape salad is a retro recipe that doesn't get much love anymore, outside of perhaps Midwestern and Southern church potlucks and community events. This dish features red and green grapes coated in a dressing made from cream cheese, sour cream, vanilla extract, and sugar. The whole thing is garnished with crunchy pecans and light brown sugar for some textural intrigue and color.

Though the genesis of this sweet salad recipe remains something of a mystery, it likely emerged during the 1950s when fruit salads were all the rage. What is certain is that it was a favorite of many families at holiday meals, including Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Many people say they have fond memories of a beloved aunt, mother, or grandmother making the dish for gatherings, while others say that they've enjoyed variations, like one Reddit commenter who mentions, "My aunt gave me a similar recipe years ago, but it has Cool Whip instead of cream cheese. My family loves it." Regardless of the precise ingredients, creamy grape salad is a dish that might just deserve a second look the next time you're planning a picnic menu.

Another popular old-fashioned picnic dish that has faded from mainstream popularity is the strawberry pretzel salad. Despite its moniker, this sweet treat isn't even a salad in the traditional leafy lettuce and vegetable sense. Instead, it's a delightful layered concoction lots of people have nostalgic memories of, like one Reddit user who knows it as a Christmas dessert, saying, "My mom's been making it as long as I can remember."

The use of pretzels as a base for desserts dates back to the 1950s, and, while the invention of this recipe is generally attributed to the iconic "Joys of Jell-O" cookbook from 1963, a version of this dish appeared much earlier in a civic club cookbook from Brentwood, Pennsylvania. Perhaps its greatest heyday was in the mid-1970s, when one Merrill R. Stephen won the grand prize in the recipe contest at the 1975 Florida Strawberry Festival.

The basic recipe is quite simple. It uses a crust, prepared from crushed pretzels steeped in melted butter, which is layered with a fluffy, creamy mixture of sugar, whipped topping, and cream cheese. The pièce de résistance on top of the dish is strawberry jello punctuated with fresh strawberry slices. Once chilled, this dish is a little sweet, a little salty, and a little crunchy, and it makes the perfect, refreshing dessert on a hot summer day.

Some recipes seem shrouded in controversy, even if the only thing debatable about them is their name, and that's exactly the case with Watergate salad. This nutty dessert salad, named after the infamous scandal, is a retro delight that many recall with fondness as the ideal al fresco dining centerpiece. One Reddit commenter notes, "You found one of my favorite childhood recipes," adding that it's "so cool and refreshing at a summer picnic." 

Though this dish may not be in vogue today, Watergate salad is a recipe worth revisiting. The primary ingredients that go into this dessert salad include pistachio pudding mix, canned pineapple, whipped cream, and chopped nuts. These are combined into a verdant concoction that resembles something akin to a pale guacamole or a chunky grasshopper cocktail.

Despite its name, this recipe wasn't invented in Washington, D.C. Though its conception carries some dispute, the recipe itself was popularized by the Jell-O brand, which introduced its pistachio pudding mix in 1976 and originally published the recipe under the name of "Pistachio Pineapple Delight." The salad didn't formally obtain the Watergate moniker from Jell-O until 1993, well after the dish had already become widely known by the controversial name. Some believe the term of endearment was issued because the recipe is as chock full of nuts as the government at the time, which seems as likely an explanation as anything else.

When it comes to historical dishes, few are as representative of the evolution of America as spoon bread. This recipe is something of a cross between a custard, a soufflé, and cornbread. It is light, fluffy, and scoopable, making it the ideal accompaniment to fried chicken or barbecue on a picnic menu. While this dish may be harder to find nowadays, it remains a sentimental favorite among some Southerners.

The origin of this dish likely dates back hundreds of years. Early colonists learned to cook with corn from Indigenous peoples after arriving in the New World. Recipes for batter bread began appearing in cookbooks like "The Virginia Housewife," Mary Randolph's iconic recipe collection dating to 1824. It's presumed that these recipes were adapted and improved upon, incorporating the sophistication of French culinary techniques by enslaved African Americans into more humble home cookery.

A purported favorite dish of former president James Monroe, the term "spoon" was not attached to this recipe for bread until 1904. It was in this year that "The Blue Grass Cookbook" was first published with a recipe inside entitled "Spoon Corn Bread." This recipe featured copious quantities of buttermilk and baking soda, which worked in tandem to produce the impossibly light and airy texture that's quintessential for this nostalgic dish.

While folks in the south still prepare ambrosia salad for annual holiday celebrations, this recipe has become something of a novelty item elsewhere in the United States, especially for picnics, where its main components may be somewhat risky in the heat of the summer sun. Lots of people can recall enjoying it at meals during their childhood, though, including one Reddit commenter who mentions, "This was 100% every time on the table at church potlucks."

Though specific recipes for this dish vary, a majority include some type of fruit, typically oranges, maraschino cherries, and pineapple, combined with mayonnaise, whipped cream, sour cream, or marshmallow fluff and perhaps some coconut, nuts, and/or marshmallows. Ones made with mayonnaise or sour cream tend to be served as a side dish, while those with cream or marshmallow fluff are generally offered up as a dessert, making the "salad" moniker somewhat confusing.

While the name of this dish refers to the food of the gods that can produce everlasting life, in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, the recipe itself has nothing to do with old legends. Its origins are somewhat more modern, dating back to the late 1800s. Several states lay claim to this dish, including North Carolina and Missouri. While the precise birthplace of this recipe is hard to pinpoint, it didn't become popular until its key ingredients became more readily available year-round, making them less of a luxury item and more easily affordable by anyone from any background.

Though some iteration of baked beans isn't necessarily a rare occurrence at a picnic, most of these come from a can. Authentic, slow-cooked Boston baked beans require a lot of time and patience — two things home cooks have less and less of in their daily lives. They also aren't exactly the ideal thing to spend hours preparing on a hot summer day.

Boston baked beans stand apart from the rest because they include molasses, which became Boston's calling card in the 18th century, when the city was at the heart of the rum trade. A natural by-product of rum production, molasses lends a characteristic rich, caramel-like flavor that helps to balance out the saltiness of pork fat and the earthiness of navy beans, which are also key components of these beans.

As for the origins of baked beans, it's hard to pinpoint where they came from, except to say that Indigenous peoples regularly cooked legumes with bear fat and maple syrup, and the Brits were well-known for their bacon-forward bean dishes. Both of these likely informed the recipe that eventually morphed into Boston baked beans. Today, the navy bean is considered to be the state bean of Massachusetts, and to this day, many Bostonians own a souvenir bean pot used to make their beloved baked bean dish.

While there seems to be some debate as to whether this dish is old-fashioned, a lot of people agree that the banana puddings often found at large gatherings in the South aren't what they used to be, though one Reddit commenter says, "To be honest I am unsure exactly why it fell out of fashion. It is just as delicious as it's always been." The banana pudding of yore was typically made using a homemade custard, layered with banana slices, vanilla wafers, and meringue, and served either hot or cold. Newer recipes typically forego the homemade custard and meringue, replacing these with Cool Whip and instant pudding, which is why so many view the real deal as something of a retro specialty.

As passionate as Southerners are about this dish, the history of banana pudding is quite complicated. Bananas were not mainstream in the U.S. until well into the 20th century. They were introduced from the West Indies by way of ports up and down the East Coast, where they slowly made their way across the country. The first mention of banana pudding, which presumably got its moniker from the British term used for trifle-like desserts, was in an 1878 New York Times column. The first recipe was published in an 1888 issue of Good Housekeeping, which was based in Massachusetts.

The earliest versions of this recipe used many iterations of cake and cookies to form the structure of the dish. It wasn't until 1921 that a woman from Bloomington, Illinois, published a recipe using vanilla wafers. That led to the dish being widely popularized when the recipe was formally published on Vanilla Wafer boxes in the 1940s.

Call it 7-layer salad, 7-layer pea salad, or overnight salad, chances are, if you were at a potluck or picnic in the South or Midwest in the 1950s, you'd find a batch of this recipe on the menu. Though the precise origins of this dish are murky, it is firmly cemented as a nostalgic recipe that's near and dear to the hearts of many families, despite the fact that mayonnaise-based dishes have become less popular at outdoor gatherings because of their perishable nature.

Though people may disagree on the precise ingredients, many recall family gatherings where this dish was served by grandma or a favorite aunt with nostalgia, like one Reddit commenter who mentions, "This is an old recipe my family makes for every holiday." Typical ingredients include iceberg lettuce, Cheddar cheese, cooked bacon, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, green peas, and scallions. These are layered in a trifle dish and topped with a mayonnaise-based dressing. This salad can be served immediately or allowed to marinate overnight in the refrigerator. While some recipes call for combining the ingredients ahead of time, purists balk at this, claiming that the only right way to serve the dish is for each ingredient to be visible in a distinctive layer.

Anyone who has ever planted squash in the garden knows that at some point during the summer, there will be a bumper crop of this vegetable that becomes virtually impossible to manage. Historically, folks in the South have frequently turned to casseroles as a comforting solution for every problem, and a dearth of squash is no exception. Enter the squash casserole, which, though perhaps still common on a Southern holiday menu, is less of a feature at a picnic owing to its richness, which makes it less refreshing or appealing on a hot summer day.

There are plenty of old-timey squash casserole recipes out there, with some being hand-written by someone's grandmother on a yellowed index card and written in an almost indecipherable code of cryptic measurements. Most of these recipes feature yellow squash, though any type of summer squash variety will suffice. The cooked squash is combined with breathtaking amounts of sour cream, cheese, and mayonnaise before being layered into a casserole dish and garnished with a buttery cracker topping. As the dish bakes, the squash absorbs all of that delicious flavor, yielding an almost soufflé-like texture.

Millionaire or million dollar pie is another Southern classic that originated in the mid-20th century, at a time when icebox pies became all the rage. This dessert likely got its name because the final product is a luxurious, rich, tropical-inspired masterpiece that tastes like a million bucks. Classic iterations typically contain sweetened condensed milk, canned pineapple, flaked coconut, and pecans that are combined and layered onto a graham cracker crust.

Modern versions may add cream cheese and gelatin to create a sturdier texture, but the classic is so good that one Reddit commenter mentions, "When the adults at family gatherings thought I was too young to understand ... they called it the Better than Sex Pie." Additionally, the original recipe has undergone something of a makeover, with the addition of maraschino cherries or cherry pie filling to the mixture, giving the filling a pastel pink hue. This rendition is often referred to as billionaire pie. Though you may occasionally discover one of these updated versions on a picnic menu, the classic recipe may be something of a culinary relic.

If you happen to be looking for pies that aren't popular anymore, one you may come across is tang or astronaut pie. Popularized as "the pie of the future," this tangy and refreshing relic of the 1960s is a true blast from outer space — kind of. The key ingredient in this refrigerator or icebox pie is Tang. Though often associated with NASA and space travel, this drink mix was actually invented in 1957 by one William A. Mitchel, the father of Cool Whip and Pop Rocks, as a vitamin supplement for everyday households. The powder made its way from home kitchens aboard space flights in 1962 because it was a great way for astronauts to mask the metallic taste of the water spacecraft, making it more palatable and linking the drink inextricably with NASA.

General Foods, the manufacturer of Tang, took advantage of this orbital fame and began incorporating it into its marketing of the beverage. This included developing a recipe for Tang pie. The basic ingredients include condensed milk, Tang, sour cream, and an entire tub of Cool Whip. These are combined, poured into a prepared graham cracker crust, and chilled until set. The result is something like a key lime pie on steroids. This pie is quite sweet, with a distinctive tartness that may be something of an acquired taste, which may explain why it isn't exactly commonplace at picnics in the 21st century.