This Vintage Weight Watchers Recipe From The '70s Is Questionable, To Say The Least

It's not looking good for Weight Watchers, which may be forced to file for bankruptcy as it struggles with $1.6 billion in debts. But back in its heyday, the company was all the rage for its quaint flashcards with low-calorie recipes created to help women lose weight. The Liver Pâté En Masque is one such recipe. Originally greenlit in 1974, it had a resurgence on social media in the early 2000s after being rediscovered, drawing mixed reactions. 

The main elements of the dish are 2 envelopes of unflavored gelatin, 1 cup of hot bouillon, 2 cups of canned green beans, a ¼ cup of buttermilk, and an unmissable pound of chopped up liver. All the ingredients are blended to a smooth mixture, poured into a mold, coated with a glaze, and chilled before they are garnished with chicory and radish slices.

Seasoning includes an eclectic concoction of onion salt, pepper, thyme, mustard, and sweetener, and the result is a grayish, wobbly, jelly-esque cake. "This scares the hell out of me," one person commented online. The Liver Pâté En Masque is meant to serve four, but a blogger, who tried her hand at the recipe, couldn't even stomach a bite.

To understand how this questionable dish came to be, it's best to take a look at what was actually going on in America in the 1970s. First off, inflation rates were soaring, which meant living costs were up. On top of this, people were grappling with high unemployment rates and a series of energy crises. This meant money was tighter than usual, which led to many people spending less when it came to food, and perhaps this looked like opting for liver, priced lower than ground beef.

This was also around the time that fast food chains started to dominate the dining scene in the United States. McDonald's launched the infamous Quarter Pounder in 1971, the same year that Cup O' Noodles hit shelves. But the popularity of fast food came with a backlash, as interest in cooking as a leisure activity also grew. Across the pond in Britain, for instance, Delia Smith's Bible of cost-savvy recipes, "How to Cheat at Cooking," became a smash hit. Consumers had an appetite for simple, homemade meals, just like the Liver Pâté En Masque. 

What's more, in the 1970s, the beauty standard was skinny, fueled by slender film stars such as Lynda Carter and Farrah Fawcett. Dubbed the lycra era, diet pills, fad diets (e.g. the notorious Beverly Hills diet), and juice detoxes were all the rage. This explains the era's fervor for low-cal eats. Molded asparagus salad, chilled celery log, and fluffy mackerel pudding are just a few of Weight Watchers' other "greatest" hits from the 1970s. These dishes didn't just challenge the palate and the eye; they also reflect the era's evolving (and often puzzling) ideas about health and diet culture