It seems a bit funny, at first, to think of foods having changing fashions the way clothes do. But when you stand back and look at what people eat, what they avoid, and how those change, you can see them. It becomes that much more evident when you look at older cookbooks.
Two things I've noticed about former fashions, based on 1950s cookbooks, and those are dates and nuts. Many, many, recipes call for these. Many cookie and brownie recipes include nuts. Chocolate-chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, and various other recipes, even to using walnut halves as garnish. We've made candy that includes nuts, too. However, right now the nuts in question are pecans, because I received two pounds of pecans as a Christmas gift. Yes, as a gift! For an enthusiastic baker, that IS a good gift.
Dates are quite uncommon as an ingredient nowadays, and aren't the most evident item in the grocery store. In our commissary they're on the top shelf above where raisins and such are; things that are in low demand are always shelved above eye-level. Still, the 1950s books have a large number of recipes using dates. One Junior Cookbook recipe upcoming is a Date-Marshmallow log. It's quite sweet, as I recall from having made it previously, and uses whipped cream and graham cracker crumbs. We'd never come up with these combinations now, but it's worth trying the old fashions!
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