25 Forgotten Country Appetizers from the 1960s and 70s That Are Too Good to Forget!

Every family gathering in 1960s and 1970s America started the same way, with a tray, the little smokies warming in the crockpot in the corner, the grape jelly meatballs simmering while somebody asked, what was in that sauce? These forgotten appetizers were the opening act of every potluck, holiday, and porch visit in country America. Real vintage recipes from real American kitchens, passed down through church cookbooks and handwritten recipe cards that are still sitting in farmhouse drawers today. These are 25 forgotten country appetizers from the 1960s and 1970s that are too good to forget. The nostalgic party foods that fed the good old days, one toothpick at a time. If this is your kind of channel, hit that subscribe button and ring that notification bell. We have got decades of forgotten American food to uncover together. Let us count them down. Hushpuppies. Every fish fry in the country south began the same way, with a basket of hushpuppies hitting the table before the catfish ever left the oil. Stir together cornmeal, a little flour, baking powder, salt, diced onion, and buttermilk into a thick batter. Drop it by spoonfuls into the same hot oil the fish fried in. They puff, roll themselves over, and turn deep golden in about three minutes. Drain them on a paper sack and serve them hot with butter. The outside crunched. The inside was steamy, oniony cornbread. The fish oil gave them a flavor no clean fryer ever could. At church fish fries and riverbank suppers across the 1960s and 1970s, the hushpuppies disappeared faster than the fish. The cook always made a double batch. It was never enough. It was never going to be. Panky Pankys. Here is the one with the name nobody could say without smiling, and the appetizer that ruled Midwest party trays through the entire 1970s. Brown a pound of ground beef and a pound of hot sausage together in a skillet. Drain it, then melt a pound of cubed Velveeta into the hot meat with a dash of Worcestershire and a sprinkle of oregano until it becomes a thick, savory, molten spread. Spoon it onto slices of party rye, those little square loaves made for exactly this, and broil until the edges of the bread crisp. Hot, cheesy, meaty, and gone in two bites. Hanky Pankys appeared at every Ohio Valley and Midwest gathering of the decade. Game days, card nights, New Year's Eve. They could even be assembled and frozen ahead, ready for the oven when headlights hit the driveway. Company never waited. Neither did the Hanky Pankys. Pickled eggs. The big glass jar of pickled eggs glowing on the counter of every country tavern, gas station, and general store. That was a piece of American scenery the 1960s and 1970s took completely for granted. Hard boil a dozen eggs and peel them clean. Pack them in a glass jar and cover them with a hot brine of vinegar, water, salt, sugar, and pickling spice. For the famous pink version, add the juice from a can of beets. Seal the jar and let them sit in the refrigerator for at least three days. The vinegar worked its way to the yolk, turning the whole egg tangy, firm, and faintly sweet. Country folks made them at home by the gallon and ate them with crackers, hot sauce, and a cold drink. The tavern jar disappeared. The homemade jar deserves to come back. Dried beef cheese ball. The cheese ball had a country cousin that ruled the 1960s and 1970s holiday table, and it was built around a little glass jar of armor dried beef. Chop a jar of dried beef fine. Beat half of it into softened cream cheese with sliced green onion, a dash of worcestershire, and a pinch of garlic powder. Chill the mixture, shape it into a ball, then roll it through the remaining chopped dried beef until the outside is completely covered. Set it out with Ritz crackers. The dried beef was intensely salty and savory, the cream cheese cool and tangy. Every swipe of the knife carried both, and the empty jar never got thrown away. It went into the cupboard and became a juice glass, which is why half of country America drank their morning orange juice out of a dried beef jar for 20 years. Summer sausage and cheese tray. Here is the last one. And every Christmas in 1960s and 1970s country America, the same glorious box arrived to make it possible. The Hickory Farms gift set. Slice the beef summer sausage into thick coins. Cube the sharp cheddar and the smoky cheese log. Arrange it all on a cutting board with a sleeve of crackers, a little crock of sweet hot mustard, and a knife that never got returned to the kitchen. The sausage was tangy, smoky, and rich. The cheese was sharp. The mustard tied them together. Nobody ever sat down to eat it. It was grazed standing up all afternoon long. Sausage cheese balls. No church basement gathering in the 1960s or 1970s was complete without a tray of sausage cheese balls, and the recipe came straight off the Bisquick box. Mix a pound of hot breakfast sausage, raw, with two cups of Bisquick and a full pound of shredded sharp cheddar. Work it together with your hands until everything binds into a dense dough. Roll it into walnut-sized balls and bake at 375 degrees until golden brown and sizzling at the edges. The sausage fat soaked into the Bisquick as it baked, and the cheddar crisped wherever it touched the pan. They came out savory, rich, and impossible to stop eating. These appeared at every potluck, holiday breakfast, and funeral reception across country America. The tray was always empty before the casseroles were even uncovered. Fancy? Never. The first thing gone at every gathering? Every single time. Here is what nobody tells you about the country appetizer tray. It was never really about the food. In the 1960s and 1970s, when company was coming, the appetizers went out first, on the coffee table, on the porch rail, on a card table covered with a cloth that only came out for guests. They said, we have been expecting you. Sit down. Stay a while. The meal is not ready yet, and that is fine, because the visit matters more than the supper. A relish tray cost almost nothing. A cheese ball took 10 minutes, but they turned an ordinary house into a place that was hosting, and they gave everyone something to stand around while the news of the neighborhood got traded. We did not just lose these recipes. We lost the hour before dinner. The countdown continues. Crab puffs. When the occasion called for fancy in the 1960s and 1970s, the country hostess reached for crab puffs, little golden clouds that looked like restaurant food, and came out of her own oven. Mix a can of crab meat with softened cream cheese, grated onion, Worcestershire, and a little mayonnaise. Spoon the mixture onto toasted bread rounds, or into miniature puff shells. Slide them under the broiler until the tops puff, bubble, and turn golden brown. The crab mixture was hot, rich, and creamy, with a sweet seafood flavor that felt like luxury, even when the crab came from a can that cost less than a dollar. These appeared at bridal showers, anniversary parties, and New Year's gatherings across country America. They announced that tonight was special. The tray came out hot and went back to the kitchen empty every single time. Potted meat on crackers. Right beside the Vienna sausages on every country store shelf sat its even humbler cousin, the little can of potted meat, the appetizer of the working man's lunch hour. Peel back the lid. Spread the potted meat across saltines, or stir it with a spoonful of mayonnaise and a dab of mustard for a richer spread. Add a slice of onion or a splash of hot sauce if the day called for it. It was salty, smooth, and deeply savory. Concentrated flavor built for hard work and small budgets. Potted meat fed field hands, mill workers, and deer camps across the rural south through the 1960s and 1970s. It asked for no refrigeration, no preparation, and no ceremony. It was honest food at an honest price, eaten by honest people. Modern America forgot it on purpose. The people who grew up on it never did. Rumaki. Here is the most exotic thing a country hostess could serve in the 1960s, and it came to her by way of a tiki bar in California. Wrap a half strip of bacon around a piece of chicken liver and a slice of water chestnut. Secure it with a toothpick. Marinate the bites in soy sauce and brown sugar, then broil them until the bacon crisps and the liver cooks through. The bacon was smoky, the water chestnut stayed crunchy, the liver turned velvety, and the soy brown sugar glaze tied it all together. Sweet, salty, and rich in one bite. Rumaki first appeared on a Polynesian restaurant menu in 1941, and by the 1960s it had crossed into every suburban and country party in America. It was the appetizer that made a farmhouse feel like a tiki lounge for one night. Then liver fell from favor, and rumaki vanished with it. Little Smokies in barbecue sauce. The crockpot arrived in the early 1970s, and the little smoky found its destiny, simmering in sauce on the corner of every potluck table in country America. Empty two packages of cocktail smokies into the slow cooker. Pour over a bottle of barbecue sauce, a few spoonfuls of grape jelly or brown sugar, and a splash of Worcestershire. Set it on low, give it a stir every hour, and let the sausages glaze themselves while the party happens around them. The sauce reduced into something sweet, smoky, and sticky that clung to every sausage. The toothpick jar sat right beside the pot. Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts. For the country hostess whose guests would not touch liver, rumaki had a cousin, and it became one of the most beloved hot appetizers of the entire era. Drain a can of whole water chestnuts, and wrap each one in a half strip of bacon pinned with a toothpick. Brush them with a glaze of ketchup, brown sugar, and a splash of soy sauce. Bake at 400 degrees until the bacon crisps and the glaze turns dark and sticky. The water chestnut stayed crunchy through the entire bake, the one vegetable that never surrendered to the oven. The bacon wrapped it in salt and smoke. The sweet glaze sealed the deal. These vanished from every party tray of the 1960s and 1970s within the first half hour, every single time. The toothpicks piled up on napkins all over the living room. Nobody ever counted theirs honestly. Country ham biscuits. Here is the appetizer that fed every wedding reception, funeral gathering, and holiday open house across the rural south. Two bites of pure country wealth. Bake small buttermilk biscuits, no bigger than a silver dollar, until golden. Split them while warm and butter them lightly. Fill each with a thin shaving of salty aged country ham, the kind that hung in a smokehouse for months. A dab of mustard if you wanted it, nothing else. The biscuit was soft and buttery. The ham was intense, salty, smoky, almost like the southern answer to prosciutto. One bite of each was the correct ratio. A platter of ham biscuits meant the occasion mattered. Country ham was the most valuable thing in the smokehouse and slicing into one was a statement. The platter never survived the first hour. It still would not today. Here is what changed everything. Somewhere in the late 1970s, the appetizer stopped being something you made and became something you bought. The frozen snack tray arrived. The plastic tub of dip arrived. The party platter from the supermarket deli arrived, shrink-wrapped, pre-arranged, identical from Maine to California. Faster, easier, and completely without a story. Nobody's grandmother had stirred it. No church cookbook had passed it down. No neighbor had carried it over with her name taped to the bottom of the dish so she would get it back. The food companies sold us convenience and we bought it by the cart load. What we traded away was the difference between food that came from somewhere and food that came from anywhere. The forgetting was not an accident. The countdown continues. Cocktail meatballs in grape jelly. Here is the appetizer that made every first-time guest at a 1970s country gathering ask the same question. What is in this sauce? And refuse to believe the answer. Roll ground beef into walnut-sized meatballs and bake them through. Drop them into the crockpot with one jar of Concord grape jelly and one bottle of chili sauce stirred together. Set it on low and let the sauce melt into a dark glossy glaze that clings to every meatball. Grape jelly. That was the secret. Nobody guessed it. Everybody asked. The crockpot arrived in the early 1970s and this recipe made it famous. A hot appetizer that tended itself while the hostess visited with her guests. The toothpicks went in the little jar beside the pot. The pot went home empty. Every single party without exception. Cheese straws. In the south of the 1960s and 1970s a tin of homemade cheese straws was the highest compliment a hostess could pay her guests and the standard hostess gift across Charleston, Savannah and every town between. Beat a pound of sharp cheddar with softened butter then work in flour, salt and a serious pinch of cayenne until it forms a stiff dough. Press it through a cookie press into long ridged ribbons or roll and cut it into strips. Bake at 350 until crisp and barely golden. They snapped like a cracker, melted like cheese and finished with a slow cayenne warmth at the back of the throat. Southern women guarded their cheese straw recipes like family silver. The tins came out for weddings, funerals, holidays and company. A store-bought version exists today. It is not the same thing and every southerner knows it. Boiled peanuts. Along every country highway in the south the hand-painted sign said the same two words. Boiled peanuts and the kettle behind it had been simmering since before daylight. Pour green raw peanuts into a big pot, cover them deep with water and salt it heavy, heavier than feels right. Boil them low for hours tasting as you go until the shells soften and the peanuts inside turn tender as beans. Eaten warm from a wet paper sack, cracked with the thumbs, brine running down the wrist, that was the whole experience and it was perfect. Boiled peanuts were roadside food, ball game food, porch food across the 1960s and 1970s south. Folks from elsewhere never understood them. Folks from there never needed them explained. Some foods are a place you can taste. This is one of them. Here is what disappeared along with these appetizers. The Visit. In the 1960s and 1970s country people dropped by. Neighbors came over on a Sunday afternoon with no warning and no occasion. Company showed up after church and every kitchen kept something ready. A tin of cheese straws, a jar of pickled eggs, crackers and a spread. Because hospitality was not an event you scheduled. It was a standing condition of the house. The appetizer tray existed because the Visit existed. When the visiting stopped, when the porch emptied and the television won and the neighbors became strangers, the tray had no reason to come out anymore. We did not just stop making these recipes. We stopped having the company they were made for and no delivery app has ever filled that seat on the porch. Relish tray. Before every holiday dinner in country America, the relish tray came out. The divided crystal dish that only left the china cabinet a few times a year. Fill each section with something cold and sharp. Sweet gherkins, ripe black olives straight from the can, carrot sticks and celery curled in ice water, radish roses, pickled beets, spiced watermelon rind pickles if the house had them. Set it on the table before the meal and let everyone pick while the turkey rested. Every crunch was cold, briny and bright. The perfect sharpening of the appetite before the heavy food arrived. The relish tray asked almost nothing of the cook and gave the table a sense of abundance. Grandmothers arranged them like jewelers. The crystal dish is still in the cabinet in a thousand American houses. The tray deserves to come out again. Deviled eggs. No appetizer tray in 1960s and 1970s country America left the kitchen without deviled eggs and no tray came back with a single one left on it. Hard boil a dozen eggs and have them lengthwise. Press the yolks through a fork and beat them smooth with Hellman's mayonnaise, yellow mustard, a splash of vinegar, salt and pepper. Spoon the filling back into the whites in generous mounds. Shake paprika over the whole platter from arm's length. The rust orange dust settling across every egg at once. Every country household owned a dedicated deviled egg plate. The one with the little oval wells and it only came out when company was coming. The woman who carried that plate into a church basement was carrying her reputation. Everyone at the gathering knew whose eggs were whose. Nobody ever had to ask. That plate is still in a cabinet somewhere in America right now waiting. Hot crab dip. The chafing dish era gave country America one undisputed champion. Hot crab dip bubbling away at the center of every holiday table worth remembering. Beat softened cream cheese with mayonnaise, a spoonful of horseradish, grated onion and a splash of Worcestershire. Fold in a can of crab meat gently so the lumps survive. Spread it in a baking dish. Scatter buttered cracker crumbs or slivered almonds over the top and bake at 350 until it bubbles at the edges and browns on top. It came out rich, creamy and faintly sweet from the crab with the horseradish humming underneath. Crackers went in. Crackers broke. Nobody cared. Hot crab dip turned a can of crab into the most important dish on the table. It was country elegance defined, inexpensive, impressive and gone in 20 minutes. Watermelon rind pickles. Here is one that might be the most country thing on this entire list. An appetizer made from the part of the watermelon everyone else threw away. Peel the green skin from thick watermelon rind and cut the pale flesh into chunks. Soak them overnight in salted water. Then simmer them in a syrup of sugar, vinegar, cinnamon sticks and whole cloves until they turn translucent and amber. Seal them in jars and wait. They came out sweet, tangy, spiced and faintly crisp like Christmas in a canning jar. Watermelon rind pickles sat on relish trays and beside ham plates across the rural south and midwest for generations. Stuffed celery. Picture a 1970s holiday party spread. Right there, front and center. A platter of bright green celery stalks, each one loaded with a creamy, savory filling that disappears in two bites. That's stuffed celery. Cheap, crisp and somehow elegant. When inflation was pushing beef prices to alarming heights and the OPEC oil crisis was squeezing every household budget, home cooks mastered the elegant stretch. Stuffed celery required almost nothing. Celery, cream cheese, maybe some olives or a dash of Worcestershire. Feed a crowd for under a dollar. Celery stalks were trimmed and dried. Softened cream cheese was whipped with garlic salt, paprika and whatever was in the spice rack, sometimes folded with chopped green olives or piped into the channel and chilled, then sliced crosswise into cool, crunchy, tangy coins. It looked fancy without costing anything. On a party table dominated by chips and canned dip, a platter of piped cream cheese celery said this host is serious. Today it's been replaced by hummus and crudités. But that cold, crisp snap against tangy cream cheese? Still irreplaceable. Three bean salad cup. Before anyone in America had heard the words protein bowl, the three bean salad cup was doing the same job at every church basement dinner from 1971 to 1979. Born from depression era frugality, adapted into 1970s canned good culture, green beans, kidney beans and wax beans, all canned, were drained, tossed in a sweet tart vinegar dressing and chilled overnight. That brine soaked through and turned each bean into a burst of sharp, sweet, acidic flavor. The dressing was simple. Cider vinegar, white sugar, vegetable oil, celery salt, nothing exotic. But the overnight rest did something magical. Flavors melded, beans softened slightly. The whole thing became more than the sum of its parts. Served in small paper cups or tiny glass dishes, it was the starter that doubled as a palate cleanser. The squeak of the green beans, the meatiness of the kidney, the soft chew of the wax bean, real textural variety. Nobody serves three bean salad cups as a starter anymore. Stuffed mushrooms with sausage. If one starter in the 1970s straddled the line between poor man's food and impressive dinner party fare, it was stuffed mushrooms, specifically with sausage, breadcrumbs and parmesan. Large button mushrooms were cheap and Italian pork sausage was the cheapest protein in many markets. Stems were removed, chopped fine and sauteed with crumbled sausage, garlic, onion and Italian seasoning. Breadcrumbs and grated parmesan went in. The filling was mounted generously into each cap and baked until golden, the mushroom releasing its liquid into a savory pool below. The result? Earthy, porky, herby. A crispy top, a soft yielding mushroom base collapsing against your tongue. Each one a self-contained little bomb of savory comfort. These were the dish that made guests say, you made these? They looked like restaurant food. They tasted like restaurant food. They cost next to nothing. That gap between appearance and reality was the entire aesthetic of 1970s party cooking. Stuffed mushrooms still exist. The sausage and breadcrumb original is better than all of them. Welsh rarebit. And by the way, if you stick around to number 12, you're going to encounter a Polynesian inspired party bite that disappeared completely from American tables and honestly should have never left. But first Welsh rarebit. Don't let the name fool you. No rabbit involved. What Welsh rarebit is, is possibly the greatest cheese sauce ever poured over toast and one of the decades most quietly beloved budget starters. Dating back centuries in British cooking, it entered American kitchens in the early 20th century and found its natural home in the 1970s women's magazine recipe column. The sauce. Sharp cheddar melted into a butter and flour roux, thinned with flat beer or ale, seasoned with dry mustard, Worcestershire, and a pinch of cayenne. Thick, glossy, intensely savory. That bitterness from the beer lifting the richness of the cheese into something you could not stop eating. Poured over thick toast and Welsh rarebit was the book club host's go-to. It required nothing exotic and produced something that genuinely impressed. Almost nobody makes it anymore. Cultural loss. Clam dip. Clam dip is the fingerprint the 1950s cocktail party era left on 1970s entertaining and it never fully faded. A can of minced clams drained and stirred into softened cream cheese with Worcestershire, a squeeze of lemon, onion powder, and black pepper. Five minutes. Made the day before. The resulting dip tasted like the ocean had been refined and concentrated into something thick, briny, and impossibly savory. With Ritz crackers or Fritos, clam dip offered textural contrast that made it almost impossible to stop eating. The crackers shattered. The dip clung. The clam pieces provided a slight chew against the smooth cream cheese base. It was sophisticated in the 1970s way, effortless seeming, a little retro glamorous, genuinely delicious. The cocktail party ideal in a bowl. Clam dip has been almost entirely displaced by guacamole and spinach artichoke dip, but among people who grew up eating it, one taste triggers a Proustian memory response like few other foods on this planet. Cheap, easy, iconic. Tomato soup shots. Here is perhaps the most elegant expression of 1970s budget cooking. A can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup reconstituted with whole milk instead of water, served warm in small juice glasses with a dollop of sour cream and a pinch of dried dill. The tomato soup shot. The practice of serving comfort food in miniature as a starter was an American translation of the European amuse-bouche, done with pantry staples, but presented with dignity. Handing a guest a small warm glass of velvety tomato soup said, this party has a beginning. Whole milk instead of water made the soup richer and creamier. The sour cream melted at the edges as guests held the warm glass. The dill was the one small detail that made people ask, what is that flavor? Tomato soup shots were served at dinner parties, holiday gatherings, and any winter occasion that needed something warm and welcoming without the cost of a full course. Nobody does this anymore. That's a genuine mistake. Number 12. Rumaki. Coming up in just a moment. Number 13. And I'm warning you now, it's the one item on this list that has the highest split opinion of anything we've covered. Half the audience is going to be totally on board. The other half is going to need a moment. Stay with me. Fried pickle slices. People act like fried pickles are a 2010s food trend. They are not. Fried pickle slices have been a fixture of southern home kitchens since at least the late 1960s. And by the 1970s, they were a party staple from Arkansas to Alabama. The genius was contrast. Cold, sour, vinegary pickle encased in hot, crunchy, seasoned coating. That temperature and flavor reversal was addictive in a way genuinely difficult to explain to anyone who hadn't experienced it. Dill pickle coins were patted dry, dredged in seasoned flour or cornmeal with garlic powder, paprika, and black pepper, and dropped into hot oil for 90 seconds per side. The batter crisped immediately. The pickle stayed cool inside just long enough to create that collision of sensations. Served with ranch or a vinegar forward hot sauce. This required almost no money and no skill. Just pickle slices, pantry seasoning, hot oil, and five minutes. Fried pickles are everywhere today. Bar snacks, fast food, chain restaurants. But the homemade 1970s cast iron version was a completely different experience. Leather britches. Here is a forgotten country food that sounds like a punchline and eats like a revelation. Leather britches. Dried green beans threaded on string with a sewing needle and hung from the rafters of the front porch every August across the rural hillbilly hollows of North Carolina and Kentucky were the 1970s Appalachian Mountain family's answer to a freezer they did not own. You took the dried beans down in January, snapped off the strings, and dropped them into a pot of cold water with a thick piece of salt pork. You brought the pot to a boil, reduced to a low simmer, and left it for three hours. What came out was nothing like a fresh green bean. The drying process had concentrated the flavor into something earthier, deeper, and more complex. A leathery, dense bite that carried four months of August sunshine into the middle of a West Virginia winter. Poor hillbilly country families across Appalachia had been making leather britches since the 1700s. By the 1970s the practice was nearly dead. Today it is almost entirely forgotten. Rabbit Pie. In the rural hillbilly country of the 1970s Ozark Mountains and the remote hollows of eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, rabbit was not exotic. It was Tuesday. A man who could not afford the 89 cents a pound that chicken cost at the Pike County General Store in 1972 walked the field edge at dawn with a .22 rifle and came back with a cottontail that cost him nothing but two shells and 30 minutes. The rabbit was skinned, cleaned, and cut into pieces. You browned it in lard in a cast iron dutch oven with onion, celery, salt, and pepper. You added water, covered it, and simmered for an hour until the meat pulled easily from the small bones. You removed every bone, returned the shredded meat to the broth, added diced potatoes and canned carrots, thickened the whole thing with flour, and poured it into a deep baking dish lined with homemade biscuit dough. A second layer of dough went across the top, crimped at the edges, slashed to vent. Baked at 375 degrees for 35 minutes, this forgotten country dinner emerged with a golden crust and a filling that smelled of rendered fat and root vegetables and wild meat. Poor hillbilly families across Appalachia fed their children on this every winter of the 1970s. Hominy with Fatback. Hominy, dried field corn soaked in lye water until the hulls released and the kernels swelled into something chewy, starchy, and almost meaty, was a 1970s Appalachian hillbilly staple so fundamental to the poor country families of Kentucky and Logan County that it appeared on the table three or four times a week without comment. You fried thick slices of fatback in a cast iron skillet until the fat rendered and the exterior crisped into something amber and crackling. You set the fatback aside and dropped the drained hominy directly into the hot rendered fat. The hominy sizzled and popped against the iron. You stirred it, salted it, and let the flat faces brown against the skillet surface for three minutes per side. The result was something crispy on the outside and yielding in the center with a corn flavor so concentrated it bore almost no resemblance to fresh corn. The fatback sat alongside, salty and crackling. This forgotten country dinner fed poor hillbilly mountain families across Appalachia for generations. By the late 1970s, processed corn products had replaced it on most tables. The knowledge of how to make real hominy from scratch is nearly extinct. Souse meat with corn bread. Here is a forgotten 1970s country food that made use of the parts of the hog that modern grocery stores have decided do not exist. Souse meat, called head cheese in other parts of the country, but known simply as souse across the poor rural communities, was made every November at hog killing time without exception. The hog's head, feet, and any remaining trimmed scraps went into the largest pot available, covered with water, and simmered for three hours until every piece of meat fell from every bone. The bones were removed by hand. The meat was chopped fine, returned to the reduced cooking liquid, seasoned hard with sage, black pepper, red pepper, and salt, then poured into a loaf pan and set in the cold to firm overnight. Poor hillbilly country families across 1970s Appalachia made souse meat every winter. It required nothing beyond what hog killing day already provided. Kilt lettuce. Kilt lettuce, the name comes from killed as in wilted, was the 1970s hillbilly country answer to the salad that poor mountain families could not afford to dress with anything from a store. What they had was a garden full of tender young leaf lettuce in late April, a slab of bacon in the salt box, and a bottle of apple cider vinegar on the shelf. You fried thick slices of bacon until crispy and removed them into the hot bacon fat still in the skillet. You poured a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar. It hit the hot iron with a violent hiss and a cloud of sharp steam, then a spoonful of sugar and a pinch of salt. You poured this hot dressing immediately over a bowl of fresh torn young lettuce leaves. The heat wilted the lettuce within 30 seconds into something silky and collapsed. Groundhog stew. Here is the forgotten 1970s hillbilly country dinner that made outsiders recoil and mountain families shrug. Groundhog, also called woodchuck across different Appalachian communities, was a legitimate and commonly eaten wild meat throughout the decade. The critical step every experienced hillbilly cook knew. Parboil the cleaned and quartered groundhog in salted water 30 minutes first, drain completely, discard that water. This removed the musky flavor from the fat. Then you brown the parboiled pieces in a dutch oven with lard, onion, and garlic. You added potatoes, canned tomatoes, dried beans, salt, black pepper, and enough water to submerge everything. You covered the pot and simmered 90 minutes until the meat was fork tender. The result was a thick, dark, deeply savory stew that tasted of wild countryside. Poor hillbilly families across the remote hollows of southwestern Virginia considered this free food. The groundhog cost nothing but a morning and a trap.