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?

I used to adore semolina as a child, with a dollop of jam in it. When we were in the Czech republic we were served it for breakfast with a puddle of melted butter and some cinnamon sugar. It was divine. I'm thinking of making some next time I need dessert after a Sunday roast. Just the ticket for a cold winter's afternoon. It's so easy and cheap as well.

We eat a lot of semolina in this house, with a dollop of lemon curd. It’s glorious

I’ve made brandy snaps. I don’t remember much other than you wrap them around the handle of a wooden spoon.

I do bread and butter pudding often with croissants or brioche or whatever we’ve got left. I do bananas, caramel and chocolate in some sort of combination depending what I’ve got knocking around.

Pound stretchers sell them.

We have that but with chopped up bacon in it and a teaspoon of mustard powder as well. Served with baked beans 🙂

I used to love bread pudding; bread & butter pudding was totally different.

Left over bread, whatever dried fruit was available, mixed spice (how exotic !) , sugar, all soaked in a little milk, then baked until solid.

As long as there is an adjoining room filled with large chintzy sofas to eventually doze off on!

Angel Delight !

You tried the Waitrose one? it’s decent.

Vestas were my introduction to 'foreign' food!

Semolina is vile. I hated it as a child. Slimy texture and all. Shudder.

I loved beef olives at school. I think that was what they were called. They were lovely.

We had this as kids in the 80s / 90s. We called it cheese pie, had it with baked beans. Crunchy top, gorgeous and cheap. We didn’t add the egg though, just lots of black pepper.

Mince and tatties. We all silently laughed as Granny would yet again serve it (we also including our fathers, uncles and aunties). Try as I might over 40 years later I still can't reproduce the deliciousness of it.

The highlight of my year is turkey dripping on toast with lots of salt and pepper on Boxing Day. It's the best breakfast of the year.

That’s right! ….then my Nan filled both ends with whipped cream

that's pretty easy. Sieve the cooled boiled onion with the water you cooked it in to get all the skin and sringy bits out. Season to taste, or boil the onion in a stock cube. My mum would beat an egg into hers but you need to be careful not to make too much liquid so add the egg to about the same volume of the sieved onion mixture. have ready your crumbled stale bread mixed with your choice of dried herbs. add the egg and onion mixture and stirr it in so it soaks in. You want to add about as much liquid as will give you a kind of plasticene mix so you could make balls. Go easy though. Let it sit for a while to let the liquid absorb so you can decide if you need to add more. Make balls or dump the whole thing in a greased oven proof dish. Dot the top with butter and bake for around 20 minutes at 180 ish. The recipe is all umm and ish ish because my Mum never measured anything.

That sounds a bit like a friend making a 'rice ring' for a dinner party. Apparently if was totally inedible and she came round next day, mortified, to ask if I knew what she'd done wrong. Turned out that if she wanted a pinkish rice ring she should have added a bit of red colouring, not just kept adding Tabasco until it was the right colour

Black Forest gateaux…..love it.

i make a Boxing Day Pie every year which seems to be a dying tradition.

dd’s bf (not from the uk) laughs if she ever says she’s had porridge for breakfast. Says it sounds like something from Dickens and asks if we are still on rationing! 😁. So even though it’s still common here it’s obviously not in North America I guess.

yup. a thinnish slice of braising steak rolled around stuffing and slow cooked in gravy. You need to pack them in the dish quite meatly so they don't unroll

@EdithStourton these are seriously good. I buy them for a friend quite often but I can walk past the shop, they do ship though and their other stuff is good too.
https://obanchocolate.co.uk/products/rose-violet-creams?_pos=1&_sid=281e695ec&_ss=r

You needed to include dry rice to absorb the liquid it produced. What else were you going to do with a marrow?? It could taste quite good.

Oh and the past few years I can’t find cartons of Birds Rum sauce at Xmas which is sad.

That's quite surprising, they call it oatmeal but I think its pretty common.

Ha ha, I’d actually just googled that and realised. I think maybe he doesn’t realise porridge is oatmeal. Am going to get her to ask.