Food that sounds great in books but is disappointing in real life

[BlowDryRat]

As a child I was very into reading the Famous Five and begged my mum to buy me ginger beer. It was a disappointing experience. It tasted horrible!

Ditto cakes made with chestnut flour (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) and the butterbeer at the Harry Potter studio tour.

How would you share a timtam, in a way that you couldn't share a penguin. Aren't they both wrapped chocolate-covered sandwich biscuits?

@TheSpottedZebra

How would you share a timtam, in a way that you couldn't share a penguin. Aren't they both wrapped chocolate-covered sandwich biscuits?

Timtams aren't individually wrapped, so you open a pack to share rather than pack a single biscuit in a lunchbox.

I have not heard of an omlette soufflé before, so that could be what I was missing. The question is, am I brave enough to give it another go?!

[quote MirandaWestsNewBFF]@Neap I’m glad you agree that Giles is insufferable - he is. I once caused some kind of furore on a fan group by calling him a tool in one of my posts. Thought I was about to bring on WW3.[/quote]
Giles is a walking prick in a Fair Isle sweater. (It wasn't Trennels, was it? I thought they were pretty immune to Giles' charms, even if there were occasionally all-out fights about whether Mrs Marlow was morally right to spend the proceeds of the Last Ditch on buying horses for her and Ginty...)

I suppose we usually trust Nicola's judgement on other people, and she thinks Giles can do no wrong -- even when he's encouraged her to be a bad girl at school, and she takes him at his word and breaks bounds to go and see him at Port Wade, whereupon he is absolutely foul to her and behaves as if she'd got him cashiered, she still takes his side against herself. And there's that strange moment in (I think) Run Away Home when Nick sees, but doesn't at first recognise, a fair-haired man on a railway station platform, and thinks something like 'he looked fairly gorgeous' before realising he's bloody Giles.

In one of the books - Run Away Home? - the Dodd children have elevenses of orange juice and cream, which Nicola remembers fondly. It seems a strange combination to me. Wouldn't it curdle?

@hagsrus0

In one of the books - Run Away Home? - the Dodd children have elevenses of orange juice and cream, which Nicola remembers fondly. It seems a strange combination to me. Wouldn't it curdle?

I think that comes in The Cricket Term (but may be wrong). That was what I thought too. Even if it didn't curdle, I think it would be pretty rank.

I thought the same about orange juice and cream, but I guess people buy ice cream floats which are similar idea.

Sardines on toast are grim. But in Treasure at Amorys by Malcolm Saville, they're planning a banquet and Jon says "everyone likes sardines".
I tried. I don't.

But one I did try and like is sprats from The White riders by Monica Edwards. There's a chapter called "nice fried in butter" and they are.

@hagsrus0

In one of the books - Run Away Home? - the Dodd children have elevenses of orange juice and cream, which Nicola remembers fondly. It seems a strange combination to me. Wouldn't it curdle?

Yes, I've always thought it sounded utterly disgusting, but then I hate any combination of dairy and citrus, anyway. Nick seems to see it as a familiar thing when she walks in on them, and gets all nostalgic, and as a non-Brit I couldn't decide whether it was a recognised combination here, or simply that the Marlows used to have it as children and Karen was passing it on to the Dodds.

Do they have it with toast and dripping?

And is that the same novel (even the same scene?) where Karen is making what seems like unnecessarily heavy weather of making baked apples stuffed with raisins or something? And there's a ginger cake that went wrong and is being repurposed?

as a non-Brit I couldn't decide whether it was a recognised combination here

I'm British and in my 40s and I'd never heard of it before the Forest reference.

They definitely have toast and dripping in Run Away Home, because Karen offers Nicola a mince pie which she's about to accept but then sees the Dodds signalling alarm because the mince pies have been donated to Edward Oeschli - so she hastily amends her preference to toast.

Karen makes something called 'Apples Browned' using a repurposed cake where there's a disagreement about fillings, and that's alongside the orange and cream drinking.

I always liked the sound of their 'Last Dinners' where they each got to choose a course/trimming before they went back to Kingscote. I don't know why Nicola liked Matchmakers so much (unless as a homage to Miranda's father because she liked him) - we used to have them at home and I never thought they were anything special - mint chocolate Twiglets.

Oooh, lots and lots!

In C.S. Lewis The Horse & His Boy, they drink something called iced sherbet which always sounded incredibly refreshing.

In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer's Boy, about her DH Almanzo's childhood on a prosperous farm in New York state. The descriptions of the meals are mouthwatering and the quantities are huge. Oyster soap served with crackers. Followed by roasted chicken served with mountains of mashed potatoes, heaps of buttered swede, piles of fried green beans, and a large pan of beans baked in molasses. Followed by pumpkin pie and apple pie (both served with heavy cream), and finally finished with a large slice of pound cake with ice cream.

The butterbeer ice cream at the Harry Potter Studio Tour is delicious. I was pre warned about the butterbeer drink and noticed so many unfinished cups of it throughout the cafe.

I got a butterbeer included with my ticket on a Groupon evening so wasn't too disappointed. I would have been cross if I'd paid an extra fiver for it!

I like a lot of the old fashioned British food mentioned upthread, as a child I liked tongue which you could buy in packets along with the sliced ham, but now I have got out of the way of having it. Sardines on toast, fruitcakes, Christmas cake and Christmas pudding, crumpets, English muffins, crumbles, pies and sponge puddings with custard. Still Lemonade made with lemon and sugar I like and you can buy it like that in M&S. I'm not so keen on pork pies anything with meat jelly, and kippers.
My mum and I were both fascinated to know what a seed cake would taste like as that is often mentioned in old stories. She got some caraway seeds and tried an old recipe which we found to be a bit of a let down after all the work she went to, to make it, it is a plain, somewhat dry, sponge cake with a very mild aniseed flavour you could see why it is no longer popular.

Marmalade sandwiches

This is a very old one! My Mum used to read me story books before bed (nearly half a century ago!) and one of the children in the story had ‘pink fish paste sandwiches’. I nagged and nagged and she gave in and bought pink fish paste and made me some.
Needless to say, they were disgusting.

@Whenthesunshines

This is a very old one! My Mum used to read me story books before bed (nearly half a century ago!) and one of the children in the story had ‘pink fish paste sandwiches’. I nagged and nagged and she gave in and bought pink fish paste and made me some. Needless to say, they were disgusting.

I used to live meat and fish paste as a child. I got some recently for my Brexit emergency stash. It was foul when I finally ate it. Inedible.

I think revisiting dubious food passions of your childhood is even riskier than risking foodstuffs from literature.

Love not live 🙄

We always had jars of paste on the go. Shippam's and Sutherland's are the brands I recall. I liked all the flavours. I think we had beef, chicken, sardine and tomato, salmon. I doubt there was very much actual protein in there. I dimly recall potted meat from the butcher's too.

@WellTidy

Root beer. Read about it in countless sweet valley high and sweet dreams books in my early teens. Went to the US as a 16 year old and was so excited to order it. It is rank.I proclaimed that ‘it tastes worse than mouthwash’ and the staff were doubled up repeating ‘she says it tastes like mouthflush’ over and over

Ive only ever tried it once, a Dr Pepper. I thought it tasted like TCP 🤢

@DudeistPriest

I like a lot of the old fashioned British food mentioned upthread, as a child I liked tongue which you could buy in packets along with the sliced ham, but now I have got out of the way of having it. Sardines on toast, fruitcakes, Christmas cake and Christmas pudding, crumpets, English muffins, crumbles, pies and sponge puddings with custard. Still Lemonade made with lemon and sugar I like and you can buy it like that in M&S. I'm not so keen on pork pies anything with meat jelly, and kippers. My mum and I were both fascinated to know what a seed cake would taste like as that is often mentioned in old stories. She got some caraway seeds and tried an old recipe which we found to be a bit of a let down after all the work she went to, to make it, it is a plain, somewhat dry, sponge cake with a very mild aniseed flavour you could see why it is no longer popular.

Poppyseed cake with lemon can however be lovely.

My mum and I were both fascinated to know what a seed cake would taste like as that is often mentioned in old stories. She got some caraway seeds and tried an old recipe which we found to be a bit of a let down after all the work she went to, to make it, it is a plain, somewhat dry, sponge cake with a very mild aniseed flavour you could see why it is no longer popular.

I'm impressed! I've always wondered what seed cake tasted like. It does sound quite nice.

I've read Mrs Beeton's cookbook and did consider trying some of her recipes. I can't remember many of them, but I do remember that for her, macaroni (assuming pasta??) was considered a sweet dish and served with sugar.

She also heartily recommended porter and stout for breastfeeding mothers.

Macaroni pudding. Yes, my mum used to make that occasionally in the 80s. Same general idea as rice pudding but with pasta. I think Nigella has a recipe for it.

I adore sardines on toast with slices of tomato on top. It was the first actual meal I cooked for myself at about 11.

There's the Ruby someone pony books - not the Jill series but another one - where they're always eating lardy cake. I've still never had it. Made with lard? My mum used to use lard in pastry but again we're spoiled and I only ever use butter. I seem to remember i did once have pound cake which I thought would be fantastic but it wasn't that great. I remember Jung Chang writing about Mao 'indulging the peasant's eternal dream of surplus food' very disapprovingly just before the Famine, and realising with a jolt that we live in that dream - surplus food, whenever we want it, whatever we want.

I'm impressed! I've always wondered what seed cake tasted like. It does sound quite nice.
It's not bad I think in the past people often liked something a bit plain to go with a drink, such as shortbread, rich tea biscuits, digestives, Madeira cake. The main interest was the drink.

I always wonder if the Chalet School's cakes 'full of nuts and cream' would live up to the hype..

On the other hand, I'm sure in one of the Mallory Towers or St Clare's books, they press sardines into ginger cake at a midnight feast which sounds truly horrible.

I really need to have a go at making Marilla's Raspberry Cordial from the Anne of Green Gables books and the Wow Wow sauce and Bananananana Surprise from the Discworld Series!

On the other side, I'm sure I