✦ Meet the team
Shelly
Chief Investigator
Department of Vintage Recipe Recovery
Duties include Tracking down forgotten recipes, collecting culinary artifacts, photographing evidence, and reporting findings to the public.
You can also find me on my new Flickr account, where a real human (me) shares recipes and my photography - 😊
Favorite Movie: American Graffiti
Favorite Vintage Dish: Cornflake Hash Brown Casserole
Next up… Joan
Joan Here…
Joan
Chief Domestic Scientist
Vintage By The Bite Research Laboratories
Duties include Conducting recipe trials, supervising taste inspections, documenting kitchen experiments, and approving recipes for the public.
Favorite Movie: Johnny Guitar
Favorite Color: Lime Sherbet Green
Welcome to Vintage by the Bite
Vintage by the Bite is a browsable vintage food website with a little tongue-in-cheek humor, dedicated to preserving the recipes, food culture, dining traditions, and everyday life of the 1950s through the 1980s.
Every page is designed to feel like flipping through a favorite vintage magazine. Alongside step-by-step tested recipes and original food photography, you'll discover stories, forgotten restaurants, celebrity recipes, vintage advertisements, newspaper clippings, entertaining ideas, and carefully curated collections that bring the past back to life.
New discoveries are added regularly across the blog, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and our ever-growing Vintage Recipe Library.
What You'll Discover
✦ 200+ nostalgic recipes across the blog and recipe library.
✦ 1,900+ preserved recipes in Grandma's Vintage Recipe Collection on Pinterest.
✦ Recipe Paper Trail features that trace recipes back to their original sources whenever possible.
✦ Fun Retro Facts history cards tucked between recipes, sharing fascinating bits of food history, pop culture, and everyday life from decades past.
Whether you're here to cook, reminisce with Shelly and Joan or simply browse, we hope Vintage by the Bite feels like opening a well-loved magazine that's been waiting on the kitchen table just for you.
✦ Take A Look Inside Vintage By The Bite
Headings ......... Main content
Sections ............ Featured topics
Blogs ............... Individual stories & recipes
Hubs ................ Related content
Headings
Jump to a Section or Hub
Lost Recipes & Forgotten Dining
Featured Sections
Roadside Americana
Retro Food Stories & Pop Culture (celebrities)
Mid-Century Favorites
Featured Sections
Joans Recipe Research Lab
Small Batch Recipes
Found in the Archives
Featured Sections
Recipe Paper Trail
Newspaper Clippings
Vintage Advertisements
Vintage Cookbooks
Retro Sips & Vintage Desserts
Featured Sections
Vintage by the Bite Originals
Featured Sections
Retro DIY Rescue
Kitchen Adventures
Related Content
Hubs
✦ Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: Are the recipes you share authentic vintage or modern interpretations?
.A: Most recipes featured on Vintage by the Bite are authentic mid-century originals, sourced from my personal collection of vintage cookbooks, newspaper clippings, community cookbooks, magazines, and brand pamphlets.
No AI recipe recreations are used. All posts and blog content are hand-edited.
I also share vintage-inspired recipe blogs. These are modern creations that capture the flavor, style, or spirit of the era.
Every recipe on the blog whether original or vintage inspired is personally tested, photographed, and styled here in my retro kitchen, unless clearly noted as archival content.
Standards & Systems
✨ Look for my labeling system at the bottom of each recipe so you’ll always know what you’re reading:✔️ Authentic Vintage Recipe
(Includes year and source when available and only original scans are used No AI recreations.)
✔️ Vintage-Inspired Original Recipe
(Modern originals that feel mid-century but aren’t pulled from a booklet or clipping)
✔️ Archival Content
(Shared for historical reference and preservation)
✔️ Tested or Untested Entry
(Clearly noted on recipe)
Look For These Badges
Q2: You’ve mentioned you test recipes - what exactly does that cover?
A: When I test a vintage recipe, I always try to keep the original recipe completely intact.
My testing focuses on how it behaves in a modern kitchen, not on changing it. In the notes, I’ll share things like whether a recipe sets up the way it’s meant to, if an ingredient is no longer made or has changed over time, how the texture holds together, and whether cooking temperatures or timing need close attention.
These observations provide helpful context while still honoring the recipe exactly as it was written.
It's the "leave the pink sinks" side of me. 😊 Leave it be... it's survived all these years don’t change a thing.
Original Food Photography
Photography by: Shelly O. Photography
Vintage by the Bite food photography, archival styling & original imagery.
Official Notice
Vintage By The Bite Research Laboratories
Joan is a fictional character employed by the fictional Vintage By The Bite Research Laboratories. She has no formal education in Home Economics, Domestic Science, or laboratory sciences, despite carrying a clipboard with complete confidence.
Any references to laboratory procedures, official investigations, or scientific findings are presented with a generous helping of tongue-in-cheek humor.
The vintage recipes, historical research, photography, and recipe testing, however, are very real.
Welcome to my vintage home
Amazon Storefront
This collection features the retro-inspired kitchen gadgets, décor, cookbook favorites, and everyday essentials I personally use throughout my 1940s home. 
Affiliate Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. The products featured in my 1940s bungalow list are items I personally use, own, or genuinely enjoy.