Grilling the hot dogs first lends them a deeper, smokier flavor, and the buttermilk-cornmeal coating fries up to a thick, fluffy shell.

A version of this three-ingredient side dish used to figure in many cookbooks, this one comes directly from food editor Ian Knauer’s great-grandmother Elizabeth Macaulay....

These homemade fudge pops, which call for just five ingredients you may already have on hand, will bring your memories to life.

Here’s one of my mother’s very favorite dishes.

Looking through my mother’s recipe file, I found a few doozies. I don’t remember that she ever cooked this very ’50s dish; I think I would have remembered.

Mom liked this dish even better than the shrimp, because mussels were not only quick and easy (especially if she could get me to clean them), but they also had one additional virtue: They were very inexpensive.

These are not the usual oatmeal cookies—they are rich and nutty, and they look like lace.

Mom loved this dish. So did every other mother in the ’50s.

This is another strange blast from the past that I found among Mom’s clippings. I do remember this one; Mom was very fond of it.

Mom had a friend who was an excellent cook, and we were lucky enough to spend most of the important holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas) at her house.