International Flair in German Kitchens: TV cooking shows in the 1950s and 1960s

Ursula Heinzelmann | 11 February 2026

Nature goes through the stomach: The dishes we eat and how they are served often reveal a lot about the relationship of societies to nature. In the postwar period, canned fruit and vegetables were considered cosmopolitan delicacies, and star TV chefs in East and West Germany demonstrated how to prepare them. Meals were now taken in front of the telly.

Recipe for Toast Hawai[i]
Box-shaped white bread, lean ham, canned pineapple, thin slices of cheese, pitted sour cherries. Toast and butter the bread slightly, lay on top 1 slice of ham, 1 slice of pineapple, 1 slice of cheese. Toast it all under top heat, garnish with a sour cherry, serve hot. – Liesel Friese Fickenscher, “Wir haben Gäste, wir feiern Feste!” (We have guests, we celebrate parties!) (1961)

The first recipe for Toast Hawai[i] – later also called “Florida toast” – appeared in 1955 in the Edeka customer magazine “Die kluge Hausfrau” (the clever housewife). The gratinated creation consisting of cooked ham, canned pineapple, cheese and, as the case may be, a dollop of ketchup on white toast was the forerunner of the now popular Pizza Hawaii. Sliced toast bread symbolises the pseudo-international cooking style of the German economic miracle years. Toast Hawaii was supposedly invented two years earlier by the first West German TV chef, Clemens Wilmenrod, with real name Carl Clemens Hahn. His fiercest competitor in the claim for authorship of the recipe was Hans Karl Adam, a professional cook who later also appeared on television and whose recipe for “Adam’s Toast” included the dollop of ketchup. Wilmenrod was actually an actor. Between 1953 and 1964, he first appeared live on TV every two months, later monthly, in NWDR (Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk). He did not hesitate to devise whole meals out of semi-processed products in 10 or 15 minutes and used his imagination to give them names and tell their stories. He jokingly invented “Arabian Rider Meat” and “Stuffed Strawberries”. His combination of cosmopolitanism (Hawaii) and everyday life (sliced bread, canned fruit) went down well with housewives. Recipe names and ingredients satisfied the travel longing without leaving one’s own living room. Already in 1950, an Italian salad for the New Year’s Eve buffet had celebrated the new internationalism in the “Kluge Hausfrau”. The culinary horizon had widened – at least in the recipe titles – at first to include Italy and France, but occasionally other European countries as well. The term “à la Milanese” was used for pork, veal, sausages, and even asparagus and usually signalled the use of tomato puree and grated cheese (from 1958 on, explicitly Parmesan).

“French” stands for various combinations of cognac, garlic and red wine. In 1953, West German housewives first learned of a liberally adapted “Chinese” Nasi Goreng, which actually comes from Indonesia. Every two weeks from 1958 to 1983, the East German TV chef Kurt Drummer presented similarly embellished international dishes in the 30-minute show “The TV Chef recommends”. Like Adam, Drummer was a professional chef and headed the kitchens in the large Interhotels. His job on television seemed, among other things, to consist of steering the attention of the viewers to the ingredients that were available in the socialist state. He adapted the dishes correspondingly. He did not hesitate, alongside recipes from Cuba and the Soviet Union, to also list those from Italy and Austria in his cookbooks for the TV programme. In both East and West, television changed not only evening recreational activities, but also eating habits. People could comfortably eat and drink in front of the tube. On long TV evenings the family sat together with appetizers and canapés for all. Snacks such as pretzels, peanuts, and other munchies on the coffee table were a must. In West Germany, potato chips were produced for the first time in 1959. Strictly regulated mealtimes were a thing of the past. In 1953, the “Kluge Hausfrau” pointed out the brief time needed to prepare their recipes. The shortest amount of time for cooking and the generous use of convenience products – a trend that still goes on today.

The German text first appeared in the publication on the exhibition “Nature and German History. Faith – Biology – Power” in the series “Naturkunden”, published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin.