IT WAS the decade of the Korean War, TV coming to Australia and Melbourne holding the Olympic Games.
Today the 1950s seem a bubble of innocence and conservatism - qualities that have undergone a nostalgic resurgence of late.
- AWW The Retro Cookbook: Then and now, by The Australian Women's Weekly, rrp $49.95
Think Mad Men, trendy nipped-in, full-skirted floral dresses or the resurgence in banana splits.
The Australian Women's Weekly - in full flight at the time - pays homage to the decade in The Retro Cookbook.
Beautifully presented, the hardback reeks of nostalgia and vintage charms, from the checked table cloth and jelly moulds on the cover, to the mid-20th century advertisements peppered throughout that show how far we've come in the kitchen.
The AWW team have trawled through the pages of original '50s cookbooks to fill their 11 chapters, devoted to the milk bar, tea room, and supper club, and to the sinfully sweet.
Those from that generation will recall a time when cooked English breakfasts had no calorie-guilt, prawn cocktails were de rigueur, and trifle was an exotic treat.
Far from sticking to the meat-and-three-veg philosophy of the day, however, the book has a modern take on the old classics.
In hors d'oeuvres, there are devilled eggs alongside green onion blinis with chilli crab salad.
In the dinner with the Joneses chapter, steak diane runs alongside goat's cheese gateau - a complicated three-tiered creation not seen on the table at the Leave it to Beaver household.
This is a joy - read, cook and reminisce.
