Old-fashioned foods which should make a comeback

[BarbaraVineFan]

I am just making a cheese and potato pie for lunch, which I last ate circa 1988. It's basically mashed potatoes mixed with an egg and a fuck load of cheese, more cheese on top and then baked in the oven. Bloody lovely, relatively cheap and filling.

Which other old-fashioned foods do you make /have you made recently which you think should make a comeback?

You can get those in Pound shops.

Well it's what we called blancmange growing up, given that we are not french, to quote Ed Balls.

Thank you, will try that.

I know..we felt so fancy 🤣 and they were so difficult to eat as they wobbled all over the place, which meant we approached them with great trepidation as we had to have our best table manners for a ‘posh’ dinner. I know I had visions of the avocado leaping off my plate and landing in someone else’s lap with prawns and shredded lettuce scattered everywhere 😱

Loved that stuff! Hadn’t thought about it for years..it was very sweet cream wasn’t it?

1st XH was Irish and very fond of boiled bacon and cabbage, served with plain boiled potatoes. He also liked what he called brown stew, which was basically just stewing beef, carrots and potatoes in a casserole, and happens to be what's for dinner tonight.

I hate blancmange, so my mum would make jelly, chop it small and mix it with evaporated milk. That was very nice. She used to make a really good rice pudding too.

And our family has a tradition- cheese and pineapple on sticks appears at every festive gathering.

I love stovies too, but I make it with square sausage. It comes out great in the slow cooker too.
My grandad used to make lovely soup from the veg grown in his garden, with pearl barley through it. A bowl of that (in one of those soup bowls that had a recipe on the side) and a quarter of strawberry bon bons from the shop was a top notch meal

yes! We used to call it flintstones cake but I’m not sure why!

@Fgfgfg That is a travesty, to mess with Lemon puff biscuits.
Someone on a Thread wanted a desert mix with milk. It is Angel Delight and it is on Tesco website.

Recipe saved! Thank you.

One of my favourite school dinners (80s) was chicken in white sauce. Must try to recreate.
There are Facebook groups that have this sort of food. Vintage British Recipes. Council Cuisines - more a mix but regular cheese pies, corn beef hash, chips.

Ulster Fry - I don't know if it was just location, but it was some sort of meat product that was mainly salt and fat and absolutely delicious as part of a big fry up. I haven't seen it since I moved away from the Wirral in the 1980s. Having that on a butty with white bread and loads of marge was heaven (and as I now can't have gluten, it's never going to happen, but a lass can dream).

My grandmother used to make home made rice pudding that you could serve in slices, it was solid when cooked and tasted amazing. I've never managed to recreate a home made rice pudding quite as robust.

it will set without gelatin.

@Arlanymor fingers crossed for you!

We still cook all of the stuff we had when we were kids. Toad in the hole is a regular, either with mash & onion gravy, or with a roast dinner in place of the meat. And we had cheese & potato pie last week. Sardines (in ketchup) on toast, kippers with brown bread and butter, shepherd’s pie, sausage & onion puffs, bacon & cheese puffs, sausage casserole, mince with carrots, onions, baked beans and boiled potatoes. DH makes corned beef pasty pie and cawl, banana custard, beef casserole with dumplings, and I can’t remember what it was called, but there was a dish with a stew base, and covered in almost a crumble topping, but it was more solid than the crumble you’d get in a pudding. Not like pastry, or dumplings, but it was solid.

Lidl do an own brand box of rose and violet creams. Not as nice as Hotel Chocolat but they do in an emergency.

That would have been a milk jelly in our house.

Thank you, she was indeed! She used to make wedding cakes and every bit of the decoration, quite ornate by today's standards, was hand made, she sat for hours piping on to metal moulds to make tiny 'vases' for the sugar roses and so on. One year a cake was awaiting collection and my little brother bumped into it and a vase broke, he wasn't seen again for many hours after her ran out, not knowing about her collection of 'spares'!
One year I gave her a bottle of brandy when we were living overseas with duty free booze, in October brother called and she said 'I used that brandy for the Christmas cakes, I didn't recognise the name but it smelt OK'. He took her shopping and into a wine shop to show her Remy Martin Napoleon brandy! They were bloody good cakes that year.

we called it chocilate concrete

My Nan made these, but cooked them in cider!

good on your Nan!

I found these in a chip shop, I was so excited because they were one of my favourite school dinners, but they were vile. I’m not sure if they were different or my taste buds have changed.

That's milk jelly

Mincemeat is good in baked apples too, gives a bit more flavour.

I've made it a few times but I'm just not crazy about it. My mum loves it but it was one of the two childhood dinners that were to be got through with the thought that 'This too shall pass.'

Neck of lamb was the other one and the addition of pearl barley to a stew was not very welcome.

The rest was very good.

I was lucky, had delicious school food (except tapioca!)
Favourite, steamed chocolate sponge pudding with peppermint custard.