Create a fun and delicious vintage Easter meal plan with these real 1940s Easter menus and vintage Easter recipes for inspiration. It’s a fun look into the past.
Easter is a great time to share delicious food with your family. I usually cook a meal for my husband, my in-laws, and myself for Easter. My typical Easter menu is ham, some potato dish, rolls, green bean casserole (people would be very disappointed if this wasn’t on every holiday meal plan), and some kind of dessert.
When I’m looking for meal inspiration I love to look at vintage meal plans like the 1950s Easter meal plan I shared in the past and now I want to go back to another decade and share some 1940s Easter meal plans.
These meal plans were found in a vintage magazine. Just like now every family would have had foods then generally served for Easter and won’t likely take a meal plan straight from a magazine but instead would use it more as inspiration, like we do with blogs and Pinterest now.
When I share these meal plans I do my best to find recipes in case you want to try to recreate one of these meals. I also often remake old recipes to share, so if there is one you want me to try out, be sure to leave a comment to add to my list.
1940s Easter Meal Plans
While I love to read vintage meal plans for all times and types of meals holiday meals are my favorite.
I love holidays and it’s so much fun to see the different ways people have celebrated over the years.
This meal plan gives five different types of meals that you could serve around Easter. There is a meal plan for breakfast, a big Easter dinner, a simple coffee, an easy supper, lunch for guests, or a family-style meal.
Big Easter Breakfast
- Hot Cross Buns
- Creamy Scrambled Eggs
- Tiny Sausages
- Choice of Cereal
- Citrus Fruit Cup
- Grape Jelly
- Hot Coffee
They suggested that you line up orange sections across the center of grapefruit halves for the fruit cups. And to serve the eggs and sausage they suggested placing the eggs on a warm platter with the sausages circling them.
Easter Sunday Dinner
- Dinner Braided Bread
- Baked Whole Ham
- Glazed Pineapple Slices
- Parsley New Potatoes
- Minted Peas
- Salad
- Relish Tray
- Fresh Strawberry Shortcakes
For the salad, they recommended using crisp lettuce, radish slices, shredded carrots, and tomatoes.
Late-Morning Coffee
- Cinnamon Fan
- Coffee or Tea
- Broiled Pear Halves
This was recommended for when a neighbor dropped in. For the pears, they recommended filling the centers of drained canned pear halves with drained canned fruit cocktail, sprinkled lightly with French dressing, and placed in a low broiler until light brown.
The pears sounded good until the French dressing! I think sprinkling with a little brown sugar would be a much better option for modern tastes.
Easter Supper
- Golden Crown
- Individual Fruit Plates with Honey Dressing
- Quick Chocolate-Cherry Pudding (chocolate pudding with canned cherries)
- Cream of Chicken Tomato Soup
- Salted Crackers
For the golden crown, they say to take little rolls dipped in melted butter, sugar, and nuts. Sounds like a lovely and easy bread to serve.
For the fruit plates, they recommended making a circle alternating orange sections and avocado slices with pineapple cubes and banana slices in the middle.
The soup was just a can of condensed chicken soup, a can of tomato soup, and 1 1/3 cup milk blended and heated.
Easter Lunch for Guests
- Cherry Kolache
- Luncheon Loaf with mushroom sauce
- Fresh Asparagus
- Endive and Cress Toss with Garlic Dressing
- Apricot Snow with Custard Sauce
For the luncheon loaf, they say it combines chicken, cheese, and spaghetti. I’ve not seen a recipe like this so I’m having a hard time imagining what it would be like.
Family Style Easter Dinner
- Cinnamon Rolls
- Broiled Lamb Chops with Mint Jelly
- Baked Potatoes
- Buttered Carrot Slices
- Celery Curls, Ripe Olives, Green Olives
- Chocolate Chip Cottage Pudding with Whipped Cream
For the lamb chops, they suggest using 3/4 to 1-inch thick chops and placing 2 inches below the broiler and browning them. They only called for seasoning them with salt and pepper. 
Looking for other delicious vintage Easter recipes? You can find 11 delicious vintage Easter recipes here on the site or if you just want to try a vintage Easter dessert you can find 12 amazing vintage Easter dessert recipes here as well.
PLANNING YOUR VINTAGE EASTER
If you want to plan a vintage Easter you want to be organized. I’m sure in the 1940s they would have just used a notebook or something similar to plan but we have a lot more options these days.
You can get my printable Easter planner to make it really easy to plan your Easter including your Easter meal and everything else you will have going on.
If you want something really simple to plan your Easter menu you can get this free Easter menu planning sheet by signing up below. It’s just one page so a lot more simple than the full Easter planner but if all you need to plan is your Easter menu it works really well.
The key to a stress-free holiday is to plan ahead of time and get what you can done ahead of time. Even with these vintage meal plans they often suggested you make dishes ahead of time to make everything less stressful on the homemaker.
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