A traditional Thanksgiving menu doesn’t deviate much from the classics. There’s the turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Perhaps there’s a different vegetable one year, and a fun salad or dessert.

Well, an unearthed restaurant menu from the 1960s goes to show that not that much has changed in terms of Thanksgiving food (aside from a few interesting sides). But the price? That’s a different story.

Reddit user u/AxlCobainVedder posted a vintage Thanksgiving menu for a Long Island Howard Johnson’s location in the r/vintageads subreddit. The multi-course Thanksgiving dinner would have set someone back only $2.25 and even less for children under 12, who could eat for $1.50.

Obviously, there’s a thing called inflation, which is why you can maybe buy a bag of rolls for that price in 2024. But there’s the thing: Using the inflation calculator from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, $2.25 in 1960 is the equivalent of $23.92 today. I’m not sure about portion sizes at Howard Johnson’s, but that seems like a great deal for an elaborate Thanksgiving dinner.

thanksgiving menu 1960spinterest

Jason Blatt/AxlCobainVedder / Newspapers.com

The menu starts off with your choice of a chilled fruit cup with sherbet or chilled fruit juice, followed by celery and olives. There’s no butternut squash soup, but rather a cream of celery soup with croutons.

Accompanying the turkey is giblet gravy and Cape Cod cranberry sauce. There’s mashed potatoes, glace sweet potatoes, buttered peas, mashed turnip, butternut squash, boiled buttered onions (!), sweet mixed pickles, rolls and butter, and Waldorf salad.

For dessert, there’s more sherbet—it was the 1960s, after all. Another standout dish is the New England plum pudding. Pie comes with cheese, and you get your choice of pumpkin, apple, or mince pies.

Drop your thoughts on this Thanksgiving menu in the comments. Better yet, do you think you can find a Thanksgiving spread like this today for $23.92?

Headshot of Allison Arnold

As the Associate Editor at Delish, Allie is a writer, reporter, and producer of features at the intersection of food and culture. Before Delish, Allie worked for publications including Apartment Therapy and Insider. She even spent time working in restaurants and breweries. Allie has dumpster-dived in NYC to expose food waste, reported on the invasive lionfish you can eat, and wrote about the growing trend of weed weddings. Her health and nutrition stories on hydration culture, bananas, and coffee have generated nearly 2M combined views. She loves traveling, running, and eating her way through new places and even has a thorough Google Maps ranking system for her favorite restaurants and bars! When not writing about food, she’s planning her next trip, lifting weights, or training for a race.  

Expertise: food & culture (Sustainability, Health, Travel) 

Education: M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, B.S. in Information Science (User Experience Design) from the University of Michigan 


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *