The Spirit of Seventy-Six!

In honor of the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, all recipes through July 4, 2026 will be from Centennial and Bicentennial cookbooks and the 1796 first American cookbook. Enjoy this look at the (gastronomic) spirit of ’76 as we head into the sestercentennial!

I’ve also published a Sestercentennial Cookery with recipes and photos.

Cheesy Olive Bites: Betty Moore’s Cheese Olive Puffs, from the 1976 Benton Harbor Bicentennial Cookbook.; seventies; 1970s; cheese; olives; salty snacks; recipe; Benton Harbor, Michigan

If you use normal pimento-stuffed olives, one of these with a bite out of it looks practically Lovecraftian. Of course you can use any pitted olive for the inner portion of these snacks. Garlic ought to be a good choice.

These are a nice snack for the snack table at a picnic. They’re cheesy, but not at all messy.

Baking these in a covered grill should be pretty tasty, too, if you enjoy smoky cheese.

Drop in again soon for another vintage recipe! I’ll have a different recipe every Sunday afternoon throughout the year. Keep an eye on this page or subscribe to the RSS feed for further details. You can also browse past featured Club recipes as well as some of the vintage promotional cookbooks I’ve used as sources. And I collect many of these recipes in A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

Recipe blogging:

Originals:

Inspirations:

Archives:

The more you know about food, the more you can enjoy life. — Elizabeth Gordon (Cuisines of the Western World)