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 agree. Bread pudding not to be confused with bread and butter pudding.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER I’m only up to page 9 but here is another recipe for Cheese Pudding from 1948:

two ounces of bread crumbs
half a pint of milk
two ounces of grated cheese
one egg
pepper and salt
pinch of cayenne pepper
quarter of a teaspoon of made mustard

Heat the milk, add the bread crumbs, cook for a few minutes.
Take the pan off the heat. Add the yolk of an egg, cheese and seasonings.
Beat up the white very stiffly and lightly fold into the mixture.
Pour into a greased pie dish and bake in a moderate oven for about 40 minutes till risen and brown.

@soupfiend The milk is the soaking milk. I add apricots and glacé cherries to mine, makes it more of a fruit cake than bread pudding.

Panackelty, not to be confused with pan haggerty. Superb.

There seems to be a lot of debate over how to make blancmange.

Like mince pies it started out in the middle ages as a meat based dish (in this case chicken with almonds and rice). Over time it developed into a sweet dish made with milk and gelatine, the latter later sometimes being replaced by cornflour, and flavouring/colour were introduced. Packet versions would be the cornflour type.

I remember this from when I was a child; my mum used to buy it a lot (which suggests it was quite cheap). Nice though.

Talking of blamange , Do others remember symingtons table creams? They were yum

Isn't blancmange basically pannecotta? Call it pannecotta and I bet people will eat it and think it's super fancy.

I always make my own stuffing. Highlight of Christmas dinner for me. And my own gravy with the meat juices,flour, stock cube and the water from the Brussels sprouts.

No idea what it was called, savoury pancakes with a creamy chicken filling

Also a salad in our house always had tinned peaches added

It's a school dinner one - BBQ sausages with an insanely drool-worthy sticky sauce back in the 80s. I've tried to make it with recipes and packets, but none have remotely come near to what I had originally. This would be my last supper if I can only taste it once again!

From school dinners, I've always loved a good quiche with chips, salad and salad cream.

I used to eat a Homity Pie (cheesey potato) from a baker's in Bakewell (Derbys.,) for many years, but after a hiatus I went back to try one again and it was nothing like what I had originally. Maybe they had changed the recipe, but it was so plain tasting.

Happy Shopper did chocolate cornflake bars and chocolate rice crispie bars, IIRC.

The link between societal obesity and UPFs has been mapped across lots of countries with staggering results.

It's introduced. It becomes popular. Obesity boom.

Bit of a coincidence if the people of a country just largely decided to suddenly eat a lot more and move a lot less a the same time, huh?!

For us it was the 80's, for remote regions of countries it's been much sooner but the result is the same.

You can get them in Tesco , we spotted them recently and tried them, they taste just the same as they ever did , £1.19 for a 6 pack

School dinner kedgeree.
Potato cakes grilled then slathered in butter.

@TiddlesRiddles that is the best way to eat potato cakes! I don't mind them in an Ulster fry, but far better grilled and overflowing with butter. Even nicer than crumpets.

Steak and kidney pudding
Arctic roll
Spotted dick

Trying to explain the last one to an American friend of mine was hilarious. One day we were having a silly friendly argument about something they do in the States, I can't recall what and she blurted out "you guys are weird! You eat dicks!" When I finished laughing my head off I explained that maybe she doesn't want to use that expression in the UK, or people might get the wrong idea! 😂😂😂😂

I remember this!

I knew faggots as savoury ducks, indeed used to make them as part of a holiday job. When I moved to Wales, Brains marketed something similar, but not identical.

I see they're now called Mr Brains.

I just looked up blancmange and found two out of three recipes involved gelatine sheets...

I'm going to make some!

I plan to make some too, but none of the recipes I looked at had gelatine in them.

I see your Wet Nelly and offer you Stuffed Monkey.

@TomatoSandwiches now I am confused about where you come from! Gypsy tart is, as far as I know, very specifically from Kent, Lardy cake isnt!

There were some biscuits called honey creams (I think) which were around when I was a child. A bit like Jammy Dodgers but oval and with a honey flavoured filling. They were lovely!

Blancmange is a milk based pudding thickened and set with cornflour. No gelatine or jelly involved at all. It's basically like making thick custard (with custard powder) and letting it set but without the colouring and vanilla flavour. In fact I used to make chocolate custard and serve it like that when my children were small.

There used to be a crisp that was like a triangle, but with the points rounded , and a pin prick hole in the middle. They only came in salted flavour. I loved them.
They might have been called wig-wam’s