How to Make 80s School Cafeteria Pizza

Food historian Max Miller stumbled upon the original recipe for 1980s/90s school cafeteria pizza (you know, with the iconic rectangular slices) and decided to whip up a batch (with “pourable dough”).

Tastes just like it. You can like — all of those herbs are exactly the same as they were. I think maybe it tastes a little fresher than I remember, like the flavors are a little heightened…but that’s that’s them. This is the pizza…

While the pizza was baking, Miller talked about the history of school lunches (following up on his video about school lunches during the Depression) — it’s a story that features J. Edgar Hoover and The Black Panthers.

You can find the pizza recipe on Miller’s website or in the original 1988 USDA publication Quantity Recipes for School Food Service courtesy of the Internet Archive. The pourable dough recipe is on page B-15 and the cheese pizza recipe is on D-30. (via @ernie.tedium.co)

• education
• food
• how to
• Max Miller
• pizza
• video

Pemmican: History’s Power Bar

From Max Miller’s informative & entertaining YouTube channel Tasting History comes this lesson on pemmican, a mixture of meat and fat/tallow that was invented by the indigenous peoples of North America. Pemmican’s main attributes are its shelf-life (years), portability, and nutritional value, making it an ideal “power bar” to be taken on expeditions or long ship voyages.

See also Miller’s videos on hardtack. (via open culture)

• food
• Max Miller
• Native Americans
• video