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Old-fashioned foods which should make a comeback

984 replies

BarbaraVineFan · 17/11/2024 12:18

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?

OP posts:
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GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 18/11/2024 11:07

MikeRafone · 17/11/2024 22:04

Fairy cakes

not “cup cake” or muffins

but good ole fairy cakes

I still make fairy cakes for Gdcs’ birthday parties. Chocolate ones, with chocolate butter cream and a Smartie on top. Can still buy fairy cake cases but they’re getting harder to find.

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 11:12

My Mum made what we called "rice mush". A packet of savoury rice with chopped up corned beef stirred in. I used to make it when we went camping, with only a small stove to cook on.

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 11:13

The cocktail sticks with a cube of cheese, ham, and pineapple also with silverskin onions!

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TrumpsTan · 18/11/2024 11:19

JudgeJ · 18/11/2024 10:52

I use them for Yorkshire Parkin every year, lovely and sticky. The Christmas pudding recipe is also the best I've ever made.

Oh I loved Farmhouse Kitchen with that lady who was like your favourite Aunty or Nan!

Recipes were basic , but filling and nutritionous. Ive got the book somewhere in this house😁

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 11:31

MyOtherProfile · 17/11/2024 12:58

Thanks to this thread I have just slipped a packet of jelly cubes and a tin of carnation into my online grocery order to make blancmange this week. Wonder what the kids will make of it!

That won't be blancmange, but milk jelly. Make the jelly with half the recommended water, make up to volume with the Carnation, and whisk vigorously. As it sets, you get a layer of firm bubbles on top. We called it honeycomb mould.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 18/11/2024 11:41

I think my family may have been very different from some of yours back in the 1960s and 1970s. My parents were children during the war and when rationing finally ended and you could get unlimited sweet stuff my Dad in particular was delighted, having a very sweet tooth. My Mum was never without a packet of sweets in her handbag and would often hand out boiled sweets or Mint Imperials to while away the time on a short bus journey. We always had sweets in at home and as a Scottish family our diet was very heavy indeed on saturated fat, salt, white sugar and white flour. We had sliced white bread and butter, with jam or lemon curd if we wanted it, followed by cake, chocolate biscuits or similar every evening as part of our high tea, following a substantial cooked main course. Portions were generous and we could eat as much as we wanted. Fortunately our diet was also pretty varied in other ways.

We had fish fairly often and we had plenty of soups, often incorporating barley, peas, beans or lentils. We had a decent range of vegetables and in the summer we often had salad (traditional British salad - leaves from a round lettuce, sliced cucumber, sliced tomato, pickled beetroot, pickled onions, salad cream). Tinned fruit was a staple. Fresh fruit was considered expensive and my brother and I were expected to share an apple or an orange between us. Brilliant reverse psychology, albeit unintended, because I grew up regarding fruit as a great treat and sometimes used my pocket money to buy an orange to have all to myself, because I never needed to buy sweets.

My Mum made liberal use of convenience foods as soon as they became available. All the people claiming that food in the 70s was additive-free - not in our house it wasn't! Angel Delight and all sorts of other packet mixes were used. Arctic roll, ready-made trifle sponges, lemon meringue pie mix, ready-made flan cases (sponge or pastry), meringue cases, ice cream made of god knows what (it looked awful when melted, let's put it that way) - and that's just the sweet stuff. This was purely to save time. Mum was and is a very good cook, but when she was working full-time, catching up on the housework and the laundry was her priority outside work, not cooking.

Oddly enough my brother and I were not overweight as children. We weren't skinny, but we certainly weren't fat. I really can only explain this by saying we took a lot more exercise then and burned a lot more calories keeping warm (no central heating till well into the 1970s).

Possibly worth mentioning too that in spite of the above diet, my Dad lived till 89 and my Mum is still with us at nearly 92.

MyOtherProfile · 18/11/2024 12:17

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 11:31

That won't be blancmange, but milk jelly. Make the jelly with half the recommended water, make up to volume with the Carnation, and whisk vigorously. As it sets, you get a layer of firm bubbles on top. We called it honeycomb mould.

Yeah someone already said that. But in my childhood it's what we all called blancmange. We wouldn't have had real blancmange for the same reason Ed Balls said in his book about food that they didn't have garlic growing up. Because they're not french!

chattyness · 18/11/2024 12:20

echt · 18/11/2024 03:01

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.

Ah yes savoury ducks, so much nicer ! My dad's favourite, mum used to get them from the butchers stall in the market on a Saturday morning and he'd have one on the side of his plate with his bacon butty, sometimes he'd give me a wee taste of it which made me feel special 😊 but mostly us kid had the Mr Brains faggots with mash which we loved as well.

Breadcat24 · 18/11/2024 12:30

@Pippatpip - your request for a no sausage meat stuffing
Fresh parsley stuffing
1/2 loaf stale white bread
2oz butter
1 egg
2 tablespoons sr flour
3 teaspoons dried thyme
handful chopped fresh parsley
2 sprigs fresh sage- just use leaves
salt and pepper

melt butter, add dry ingredients, mix in egg - add splash milk if mix is really dry. roll into balls. cook in oven with bit of fat

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 18/11/2024 12:55

MyOtherProfile · 18/11/2024 12:17

Yeah someone already said that. But in my childhood it's what we all called blancmange. We wouldn't have had real blancmange for the same reason Ed Balls said in his book about food that they didn't have garlic growing up. Because they're not french!

Blancmange is really not comparable to garlic! Milk puddings of all kinds have been a British staple for centuries - milk, some sort of sweetener, some kind of thickener, possibly other flavourings. Tapioca, sago, rice pudding, semolina pudding, custard*, blancmange.

*When we had custard growing up it was always made with hot milk, sugar and Bird's custard powder. Later Mum moved over to buying it in tins as a time-saver. I didn't know it was traditionally thickened just with eggs until I was an adult, I think. Even the sainted Delia adds a little cornflour to her egg custard, though.

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 12:56

BourbonsAreOverated · 17/11/2024 13:44

try a world war 2 cookbook. There was definitely one in there

obviously had a shit load more cheese now we aren’t rationed

I used to make one from an old Women's Weekly cookbook; where you soaked the bread in milk overnight. Long gone now, alas. Delicious magazine have a fairly plain recipe with breadcrumbs.

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 13:08

EdithStourton · 17/11/2024 14:42

I take it you mean poached as in, transportation to the Colonies, not simmered gently in water...

And yes, when our DC were young, we ate a lot of beef stew (with dumplings and possibly beans), steamed puddings, mince cooked in 101 creative ways.

We were seriously skint when I was in my teens and DM would produce fantastic tasty meals from cheap cuts and whatever was in season.

When we were first married, I used to make a lot of bean casseroles. Very cheap and filling.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 18/11/2024 13:14

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 13:08

When we were first married, I used to make a lot of bean casseroles. Very cheap and filling.

So did I. I also added beans to meat stews to make them go further. I'd always eaten beans, lentils etc but not in those quantities. I started getting stomach aches and issues with wind Grin which I was a bit worried about so consulted my GP, who told me very confidently that it was IBS. No, it wasn't. Once my gut got used to these much higher levels of fibre everything settled down again.

chattyness · 18/11/2024 13:19

I remember a "minute steak" I used to buy from Iceland back in the 80's it nothing like real steak of course, it was probably so ultra processed but it was so bloody tasty, we used to make it into a steak toastie with fried onions & mushrooms. It only took in a minute under the grill or in a hot pan because it was pressed wafter thin. It was sold in packs of 10 I think ,I'm sure I bought some from farmfoods one time as well, but can't find it now as we don't live near any supermarkets for me to check. I would love to try it again.

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 13:21

Gagagardener · 17/11/2024 15:57

HNRTWT - TLTR. But my husband wants Tripe and Onions. He has to make do with what I will cook and enjoy: Liver and Onions. Delicious!

Can't understand why liver is so cheap; we eat it about 3 times a month. In the unlikely event anyone else wants some: liver is often available in Sainsbury's and Tesco's.

I love lamb's kidney in a casserole, but it's almost impossible to find lately. I finally managed to get 2 large trays in Tesco, and froze them. Unfortunately they're whole; so I'll have to cut them up myself when I thaw them out.

MyOtherProfile · 18/11/2024 13:21

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 18/11/2024 12:55

Blancmange is really not comparable to garlic! Milk puddings of all kinds have been a British staple for centuries - milk, some sort of sweetener, some kind of thickener, possibly other flavourings. Tapioca, sago, rice pudding, semolina pudding, custard*, blancmange.

*When we had custard growing up it was always made with hot milk, sugar and Bird's custard powder. Later Mum moved over to buying it in tins as a time-saver. I didn't know it was traditionally thickened just with eggs until I was an adult, I think. Even the sainted Delia adds a little cornflour to her egg custard, though.

But the term blancmange is old french, and Ed Balls mum believed garlic was also french. I wasn't suggesting garlic and blancmange were similar 😆. I didn't say milk pudding in general, I said blancmange!

Username056 · 18/11/2024 13:28

Can I say thank you to the person who posted the recipe for Cremola. I loved it and still remember the orangey/yellow coloured box it came in.

However in our house it was always called “Creamola”. And pronounced like that. I can see now that this was wrong!

I wish you could still get it.

ByHardyRubyEagle · 18/11/2024 13:29

Not sure if this has been mentioned but I haven’t seen those little pots of crème caramel in ages!

Also, semolina.

Scentedjasmin · 18/11/2024 13:32

Egg custard with nutmeg on top.

DaisyStarburst · 18/11/2024 13:46

From Berkshire, never been to Kent, we had Gypsy Tart at school dinners, loved it. My mum tried to make it but it never worked.

StaunchMomma · 18/11/2024 13:54

JudgeJ · 18/11/2024 11:04

True but I also think that we lived different lives when we were children. We had three meals a day and between those there may have been an occasional biscuit, piece of fruit, not the constant snacking. When I read that parents were taking a 'snack' for their child to eat after school I was amazed, the child was probably travelling by car and having something to eat when they got home, they should be no more exhausted at the end of a school day than we were!

I agree that snacking culture wasn't a thing back then and is rife now.

There's no getting away from the fact that UPF's are terrible for our health, though. More and more data is dropping from all over the World and it's bad.

godmum56 · 18/11/2024 14:07

ByHardyRubyEagle · 18/11/2024 13:29

Not sure if this has been mentioned but I haven’t seen those little pots of crème caramel in ages!

Also, semolina.

marks do them, also bon maman, I think waitrose have them too

DustyLee123 · 18/11/2024 14:15

My DM used to make trifle with pink blancmange instead of custard

sueelleker · 18/11/2024 14:16

Thevelvelletes · 17/11/2024 17:51

Mr Kipling can do one those mass produced monstrosities have to be the worst cakes in creation.

Mr Kipling must have shares in a sugar company. Everything is far too sweet.

ByHardyRubyEagle · 18/11/2024 14:16

godmum56 · 18/11/2024 14:07

marks do them, also bon maman, I think waitrose have them too

Thank you kind stranger! We are poorly accommodated with shops in my area but I’ll have a look in marks next time I’m in.

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