The Retro Pasta Dish That People Loved To Eat In The 1930s

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The Retro Pasta Dish That People Loved To Eat In The 1930s By Alexa Valme Sept. 14, 2025 2:09 pm EST

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Irish-Italian spaghetti is one of those dishes that's hard to categorize but easy to remember. First published in Better Homes & Gardens in the 1930s, it starts with a base of ground beef and onion simmered together, then folded into a sauce made from two cans of condensed soup — tomato and cream of mushroom. A few shakes of chili powder, hot pepper sauce, cayenne, and black pepper add spice, while a final snow of Parmesan over the spaghetti rounds it out. The result isn't quite Italian ragù and certainly not Irish stew — it lands somewhere in between, resembling a pasta hotdish that's hearty, thrifty, and undeniably American.

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