10 Retro Breakfast Recipes Your Grandma Made All The Time

Breakfast at grandma's house was always a special occasion. That's not just because it always felt cozy, comfortable, and safe, but because most grandmas had a knack for making breakfasts that you probably didn't get when you were at home. Grandma-approved breakfasts often had a sense of nostalgia to them, and a from-scratch nature that felt way more exciting than just grabbing a bowl of cereal. Plus, the retro recipes that grandma made every week came from a different era, one where the importance of a hearty breakfast was way more important — so you'd always know that you'd come away feeling full and satisfied.

What's pretty amazing, though, is that a lot of these breakfasts have pretty much died out today. You'll likely find millions of people across the country tucking into scrambled or poached eggs every morning, but egg in a hole is way trickier to find. Deviled ham pancakes, Dutch babies, and caramel rolls are also breakfast dishes that you're unlikely to see gracing many morning tables, but which still pack a punch (if you can find the ingredients to make them). Grab a cup of coffee, and let's take a dive back into breakfast history.

Egg in a hole is one of those dishes that is exactly what it sounds like (and honestly, we love it when that happens). It is an egg, in a hole. Simple! More specifically, though, the hole is in the middle of a piece of bread, which toasts in a buttered pan as the egg inside cooks at the same time. The result is a fried egg surrounded by warm, toasted bread, and an all-in-one breakfast dish where the dough soaks up both the yolk of the egg and the fat of the pan. It makes things pretty delicious, if we do say so ourselves.

It's slightly unclear where egg in a hole originally came from. Egg in a hole (which is also known as egg in a basket, egg in a frame, or egg in a hat, depending on which recipe you follow), first started showing up in American cookbooks in the late 19th century. However, at the same time, an Italian version of egg in a hole known as "uova fritte nel pane" began arriving on American shores with the first waves of Italian migrants. We're unsure whether the latter led to the former, but what we do know is that egg in a hole is rarely made today. We think that's a shame.

The middle of the 20th century was arguably a strange time for food — and mainly because deviled ham was at the height of its popularity. The canned ham product to end all canned ham products, deviled ham was being crammed into everything during this period, with sandwiches, mushrooms, deviled ham salads, and deviled eggs all being stuffed with the salty, weirdly creamy mixture. It didn't stop there: Even breakfast wasn't safe from deviled ham, and for a time deviled ham pancakes were being heavily promoted as the trendiest way to start your day.

Deviled ham pancakes were promoted by Aunt Jemima Pancakes as an innovative way to jazz up its product. In advertising material for the time, the brand promoted a recipe which involved mixing deviled ham with pancake batter, and then cooking the two together. It's no wonder that this is a recipe that isn't seen anywhere anymore. Although we get the logic of it (it's kinda like serving bacon and pancakes, but just in the same bite), the idea of chomping through batter studded with gloopy ham spread is enough to put us off our meals for the rest of the day, let alone our breakfast.

If your grandma was the kind of woman who was strapped for time, Carnation Instant Breakfast may well have been on constant rotation. This breakfast "dish" was a staple of the 1960s, and was promoted by Carnation as a quick way to get a nutritious breakfast. Every glass of this drink promised the protein content of two eggs, vitamins, carbohydrates, and a bunch of vitamin C for good measure. If that last ingredient makes you think it was citrus-flavored, it was in fact basically a kind of thin milkshake, which you made by adding a powdered sachet to a glass of milk and stirring the two together.

So, let's be honest: This isn't much of a recipe, right? However, grandma did have to pour milk into it — and it's undeniable that Carnation Instant Breakfast had a powerful effect on the folks who remember drinking it. The powder would never quite incorporate properly, giving you little crunchy pops of sugary granules mixed in with the drink itself. But it gave the breakfast drink a pleasing amount of body and made the drink feel way more substantial and filling. Carnation Instant Breakfast was eventually phased out, but if you look hard enough, you might find a couple of sachets in the back of your grandma's cupboard.

The Dutch baby is perhaps the coziest of all the breakfast dishes. We mean, with a name like that, how could it not be? Plus, it just looks comforting: A large round of fluffy, baked pastry, with the texture of a pancake but the dimensions of a pie. Dutch babies are basically Yorkshire puddings, but for those who have never tried that glorious food, they consist of a batter made of eggs, milk, and flour. To make Dutch babies sweeter, sugar is added (along with aromatics like vanilla and cinnamon), and then the mixture is poured into a hot cast iron skillet. When it hits the heat, it puffs up gloriously, and when it's slightly cooled it's sprinkled with sugar and topped with berries.

In a sense, Dutch babies are a kind of large, fluffy pancake, but they have distinct differences that help them stand out. The dry heat of the oven gives them a crispy, crunchy texture on the outside, while the inside remains chewy and soft. The caramelization that occurs in the oven also deepens their flavor. Dutch babies also have a bowl shape which allows them to hold toppings way more readily. It's the kind of breakfast your grandma would make on colder mornings to warm everyone up for the day, and while its prep time doesn't really work for modern schedules, we think it's time it came back.

It's fair to say that SPAM is back. In the last few years, we've seen an explosion of popularity for this canned meat product, with it being embraced as a retro food that can also be incorporated into fried rice, burgers, and hash. Somehow, though, SPAM and eggs haven't made as much of a comeback as you might expect. This combo, which was a grandma-certified breakfast dish, makes a lot of sense: It's essentially a version of bacon and eggs that doesn't rely on fresh meat. Instead, you could pull a can of SPAM out of the pantry and fry it up, making it perfect for thriftier shoppers who liked to stock up on canned cuisine.

SPAM and eggs began to lose its popularity once the first heyday of this product ended, but in certain places its shine never dulled. SPAMsilog, a dish consisting of SPAM, fried eggs, and garlic fried rice, is a popular breakfast in the Philippines. SPAM has also begun to be incorporated into breakfast dishes that you might not expect, with green eggs and SPAM offering a spin incorporating pesto (and with a fun name to boot). We have to say, though, that we'd love to see the classic combo back in action on breakfast tables everywhere.

If you grew up in the South, biscuits and red-eye gravy was likely on regular rotation in your grandma's household. It's a retro dish that offers flavor and function in one go, and while it's not particularly widespread today, it's always worth a revisit. Although you might assume its name comes from one of its key ingredients — coffee — it's more likely that it comes from how it looks when it's cooked. Red-eye gravy is made by deglazing a pan which has been used to make country ham. After you've poured the gravy into a bowl, the ham juice and coffee separate, with the coffee pooling into a pupil-like appearance in the middle of a lake of red ham liquid. It looks, in short, like a bloodshot eye (but it's way more tasty than it sounds, we promise).

Red-eye gravy is typically thickened and ladled over biscuits, but it can also be served alongside grits and eggs, or more simply poured over a slab of thick ham. It's also known as poor man's gravy, bird's eye gravy, or muddy gravy. We have to admit that none of these names are especially appetizing, which is perhaps why it's not as popular as it once was. However, once you give it a try, you'll be hooked.

Depending on how you feel about canned soup, Campbelled eggs might have either been a pleasure or a punishment. Perhaps the weirdest of all of grandma's breakfast dishes, Campbelled eggs was (and is) a slightly strange combination of canned soup and an omelet. It was made by opening a can of Campbell's soup and mixing it with some beaten eggs. Then, the mixture was poured into a hot buttered pan, and the egg-soup combo was cooked until set through. The resulting egg patty was then sliced and served.

We understand why this might have been appealing at one time. Using canned soup gave eggs a punch of flavor, and you could apparently use whichever type of soup you like, so you could customize it to your will. The soup would also work as a thickener, giving your eggs a silky smoothness. However, we can't also help but feel like this breakfast actually tasted pretty bizarre, and overly salty. It's little wonder most people (if anyone) makes it today.

Cinnamon rolls are still all the rage, but caramel rolls have slightly taken a backseat in the breakfast world. In our opinion, that's a big shame. These baked rolls, which were a favorite of grandmas across the country, provided an easygoing burst of sweetness first thing in the morning, and a glazed gooeyness that made them utterly moreish. In true mid-century fashion, they were also made way easier to make by companies like Bisquick releasing canned versions. You just had to slice them up, add the pan sauce, and bake them until they were cooked.

It's unclear exactly when caramel rolls stopped being as popular as their cinnamon-flavored sibling as a breakfast item. Perhaps people realized there was only room for one of them in their breakfast rotation; perhaps they're just a bit too sweet and sticky for modern tastes. Nonetheless, we think it's a bummer they've died out somewhat, and we want them back.

Of all the vintage breakfast dishes that grandma would make, none of them have as charming a name as apple pandowdy. This dish, which is primarily a dessert, offers a take on a crumble or a cobbler first thing in the morning, and it's a sweet treat that's both filling and refreshing. Recipes for pandowdy started being printed in cookbooks around the middle of the 1800s, and you can trace its roots back to German settlers in Pennsylvania. It remained popular nearly 100 years later, although nowadays it's started to feel like a curio from another era.

We think that's a shame, as apple pandowdy is undeniably tasty. The combination of sweetened fruit topped with a crusty pastry sprinkled with sugar is hard to beat. However, it's also a dish that takes a fair bit of preparation, which first thing in the morning isn't the top of a lot of people's agendas. As such it's no wonder that it's become something that's served for dessert (if it's still made at all), but once you've tried it for breakfast, you'll never go back.

Bacon strip pancakes scratch an itch in our brain that's reserved for retro, niche foods. This breakfast dish (which is also known as bacon pancake dippers) was promoted by pancake mix companies in the 1960s as a way to jazz up breakfast and combine ingredients in ways never thought possible. The concept of bacon strip pancakes is both simple and pleasing: All you do is pour pancake batter onto strips of bacon while they're sizzling in a pan, and almost cooked. The batter will pool around the bacon, forming a pancake that encases the meat, and makes a sweet-savory treat that gives you huge flavor in each bite.

If we're being honest, bacon strip pancakes are little more than a gimmick. You get exactly the same effect by putting bacon on your pancakes and eating them that way. However, where's the fun in that? Pouring the batter onto the bacon makes them handheld and allows you to dip them into the syrup instead of pouring it on top. It's the kind of dish that kids absolutely love — and a grandma's secret weapon.