I stood at my kitchen counter, chopping what seemed like minute amounts of onion, bell pepper, and garlic, second-guessing my decision to try this particular recipe. How could it possibly taste good? How would so little garlic and onions and pepper impart any flavor? How could it not taste like … soda? It’s not that I am not an adventurous cook, I am, it’s just that if there ever was a recipe created as a gimmick, this was it. Well, this one and its peers from the 1961 recipe booklet 7-up Goes to a Party, by, you guessed it, the 7up company.
The booklet is essentially an advertisement for 7up, with recipes created to be made with the drink. It opens up with pretty standard recipes for a soft drink: mixes with pineapple juice, apple juice, grape. Then it quickly dives into less conventional uses, like sauces for fruits and for hibachi meats, and then goes straight into the unexpected: cooked savory dishes. Baked beans, chicken supreme, shrimps Louisiana.
When 7up first popped up in the 1920s, it was called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda. Quite a mouthful. And yes, it contained lithium. Initially, it was sold as a mood enhancer, supposed to put you in good spirits. Lithium will do that. But between the 1920s and the 1960s, the drink went through a name change and several different marketing campaigns advertising different uses for it. It had been medicine for the stomach, mixer in the post-Prohibition period, pure and wholesome drink for baby, the all-family drink, and everything in between. In 1949, with the ban on lithium, 7up lost what set it apart from others.
In the early 1950s, the company published a recipe booklet that used the drink in things like gelatin desserts, the ubiquitous gelatin salads, fruit salads, punches, sherbets, and even a ham glaze. Savory foods, however, did not make an appearance until several years later. In 1957, another recipe booklet finally brings us savory as more than a glaze with a recipe for baked beans. 7up had a bit of an identity crisis in trying to compete with other soft drinks. The fact that Sprite had just come on to the scene in the US in 1961 probably made 7up company executives a bit nervous too.
After the 1960s the drink kept changing marketing strategies, then changing hands for the first time (it had been family owned until then). And, eventually, it became just another soft drink owned by a large corporation and subject to the same changes, ups and downs, of all others. The most significant change, as far as recreating recipes from this booklet is concerned, is that sometime along the way, the formula for the drink changed. Probably more than once. Most importantly, the sugar went away and, just like most big-name soft drinks in the United States, 7up began to be sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. If all you’ve ever had is American 7up from the last 40 years, you don’t know better, but the difference in taste between the cane sugar sweetened and high fructose corn syrup sweetened versions is indescribable. And so, it was clear to me that I had to find Mexican 7up, which is still sweetened with cane sugar. This was the closest I could come to the 7up used in this recipe booklet.
To be clear, I did not seek out this booklet and I rarely drink 7up. But when it came across my search results for something else entirely, I couldn’t resist. Once I had it in my hands, the question was which recipe to make. I bought the booklet because of the quirky nature of the idea of cooking with 7up, so I knew I didn’t want to make something like a punch because that just makes sense. I wanted something unusual. I wanted, if I’m being honest, something weird.
This is how I found myself cutting aromatics at my kitchen counter in quantities so small that any person from Louisiana would look at it with disdain. I chose the Shrimps Louisiana, which loosely resembles shrimp creole, though even that is a stretch. I was certain that making a savory rice dish with a sweet soda was just madness. I knew it would be inedible, just like many of the often-mocked Jell-O salads of the time. More than knew, I hoped deep down that it would be inedible. I was counting on it being inedible, that would, after all, make a more entertaining story.
But, readers, I was wrong. It wasn’t inedible. It was good, actually. I was right about the onions, garlic, and green pepper; they don’t give much flavor. In that aspect, the recipe needed much more seasoning to work well. But I was wrong about the star ingredient. The combination of 7up and tomato juice makes the sauce taste almost like ketchup, but not quite so sweet and thick. It was quite pleasant.
One thing I would do differently if I was to make this again is to use raw shrimp and cook them in the sauce. That way the shrimp has the flavor of the sauce cooked in and the sauce has some shrimp flavor.
Making this recipe really challenged my assumptions about flavor, taste, and food combinations. It reminded me that we can’t always judge the proverbial book by its cover. It reminded me that even people with questionable recipes like those of the mid 20th century were not entirely devoid of taste in food, even if they used seasonings and aromatics so lightly they might as well not have bothered. But here they were not trying to sell you flavor, they were trying to sell you 7up.
I had no idea 7up used to contain lithium! Knowing this adds context to how 7up became a folk remedy for colds and flu.
Fascinating history, great write-up and beautiful photo of the finished dish!