Cartoon Cuisine

Purple Mush Dinners: A Discussion

Early episodes of The Simpsons are many things: ground breaking and hilarious come to mind – but having stellar animation with great attention to detail? Not so much. I’ve been re-watching the early seasons recently and I have to ask: what are the Purple Mush Dinners the Simpsons family keeps eating at dinnertime? Exhibit one is from Bart the Daredevil, but there are many more…

Exhibit Two – Lisa’s Substitute:

Purple-Mush-Dinner-Screenshot-2

Even the PETS are eating the Purple Mush!

Purple-Mush-Dinner-Screenshot-Pets

The weird thing is that Season One includes some fairly detailed dinner shots such as “The Crepes of Wrath”:

The-Crepes-of-Wrath-Screenshot

And the Season Three episode “Dog of Death” is good too, featuring chub night!

Dog-of-Death-Dinner

For some reason, in Season Two, the animators didn’t want to bother creating a detailed meal as the family sits around the dinner table and so they settled on “unidentifiable stuff on a plate” as the go-to food option for the Simpson family. Why the Purple Mush Dinners though? Almost any other color would better represent food since so few foods are actually purple.

I’m not sure what a reasonable representation would be for this type of meal: Eggplant? Ground beef dyed purple? Fruit (purple is a fruit)? I guess I’ll never know…

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17 Responses to “Purple Mush Dinners: A Discussion”

  1. Ace Avatar
    Ace

    could be purple potatoes! and no, i don’t mean ube; purple potatoes are a seperate tuber entirely. maybe marge wanted to spice up her mashed potatoes a bit and added some purple ones

    Reply
    1. Eats Like A Duck Avatar
      Eats Like A Duck

      Interesting theory! I have to wonder though if the supermarkets Springfield of the 90’s even had purple potatoes? Especially as Marge is apparently suspicious of or-e-gano (what the hell?).

      Reply
  2. Evil Homer Avatar
    Evil Homer

    Purple is a fruit

    Reply
    1. Eats Like A Duck Avatar
      Eats Like A Duck

      You choose fruit, you live with fruit.

      Reply
  3. bigjoe1221 Avatar
    bigjoe1221

    It might be ube halaya, the only purple food stuff out there. Though, it is filipino and usually used for desserts like cakes.

    Reply
    1. Eats Like A Duck Avatar
      Eats Like A Duck

      Perhaps Marge is more culturally sophisticated then I realized? Or more likely, it’s those lazy animators. Did you know they can’t even create live animation? Apparently it’s a terrible strain on their wrists.

      Reply
  4. T Bryan Avatar
    T Bryan

    I know exactly what the purple mush is. “We got beets!”

    Reply
    1. Eatslikeaduck Avatar
      Eatslikeaduck

      I love how excited that makes Lisa, because it certainly does not make me excited.

      Reply
  5. ignacio becerra Avatar
    ignacio becerra

    mashed potatoes and beets!

    Reply
    1. Eatslikeaduck Avatar
      Eatslikeaduck

      I mean, it has to be something with beets since they were so popular with Springfield’s founder!

      Reply
  6. Kate Avatar
    Kate

    Could be beetroot

    Reply
    1. Eatslikeaduck Avatar
      Eatslikeaduck

      That was a suggestion in the facebook discussion as well! I don’t think American’s know what beetroot is, so I’m left to conclude that this might have been it’s less popular (but very attractive) cousin Rootmarm.

      Reply
  7. teightytwo Avatar
    teightytwo

    I’ve always wondered if the Korean animators received notes on what colour the less important props – like food – should be. Even if it wasn’t purple/grey, what the hell are they eating? Some sort of casserole, maybe? Unless they’re eating piles of mashe potatoes for dinner…

    I’ve also noticed that Lisa’s dinners are usually whatever the rest of he family is eating minus the meat. So a side of potatoes and greens, really. I get that it’s a nuisance to draw something completely different for a background prop but it’s always made me worry for Lisa. Not much nutrition you can get from daily meals of mashed potatoes and salad greens, I don’t think.

    Reply
    1. Eatslikeaduck Avatar
      Eatslikeaduck

      My understanding is that Marge likes to add a little bit of meat juice to Lisa’s vegetables so at least we can be sure she’s getting some protein from that!

      Reply
  8. Glenn S. Avatar
    Glenn S.

    Perhaps in season 2 Marge discovered the “exotic” purple yam (or ube) and was using it liberally in her recipes.

    Reply
    1. Eatslikeaduck Avatar
      Eatslikeaduck

      I’m now starting to realize this might be a Rootmarm type of dish. Do we have confirmation that Homer isn’t Marge’s attractive cousin?

      Reply
      1. Glenn S. Avatar
        Glenn S.

        If they were their kids would’ve ended up being horrible freaks with pink skin, no overbites and five fingers on each hand.

        Reply

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