What food can you remember from the 1970s and 1980s? Bring your crepe suzette memories over here!

[TheStroppyFeminist]

We are cooking deep fried brie tonight, which we will have with cranberry sauce. We are following it with brandy snaps filled with cream. Lovely but very fattening and very 1980s restaurant style. I know it was mainly wedges of deep fried camembert in the 80s though.

Other dishes I remember:

Steak Diane, flambeed at the table with a French mustard sauce
Crepes suzette, also flambeed at the table, with grand Marnier, which was an orange liqueur, urgh!
Tornedos Rossini, which was fillet steak with pate on top IIRC
Cockles cooked in a French mustard sauce
Sole Veronique, which had green grapes in the sauce
Egg mayonnaise, which was hard boiled eggs, cut in half with mayo and paprika on top

What other delights were there? Most of these are my memories of restaurant food bur I also remember butterscotch Angel Delight and the disgustingness that was blancmange!

Vesta meal kits. Curries and Chinese style packet meals.
My mum used to take them when we used to go camping and was probably the most exotic thing we ever ate.

Chicken and mushroom toast toppers. Fiendish Feet yoghurts. Sara Lee double chocolate gateau. Mini Kievs. I don’t understand why modern food is full of ultra processed ingredients but so many delicious processed foods of the past have disappeared.

I worked in restaurants in the 80s. My favourite dish was scampi mornay, with piped and toasted mashed potatoes around the edge. Scrumptious.
Other typical mains were Dover sole, sole meuniere, Steak Diane, Steak au poivre, Tournados Rossini, Osso Bucco and Steak Tartare 🤢
On the sweet trolley there would be a Gateau of some sort, creme caramels, fruit pie, fruit salad or cheese board. If it was a posh place they would do cherries jubilee or crepe suzette. On a trolley in front of the customer. With naked flames. One for the show offs. 😉

We seemed to have a lot of Findus Savoury Pancakes followed by Angel Delight or ice cream with Ice magic.(no wonder I’m on the weight loss threads nowadays!)

Findus crispy pancakes
A frozen pizza thing that was a piece of French stick cut lengthways with ham and pineapple topping ( can't remember name)
Supermarket budget "mad cow" burgers
Dried packet soups
Ovaltine teething rusks (which were technically my baby sister's but I used to nick them out of the pantry and put butter on them and eat them because they were lovely)
Ploughman's lunch with an enormous chunk of cheddar and pickled onions at the pub.
Chicken in a basket ( also a pub meal treat)

puddings:
Rum baba or Black Forest gateaux for a “posh” pudding. Mums home puddings were spotted dick, jam roly poly, steamed syrup pudding, rice pudding.

Prawn cocktail.
Scampi in a basket.
Birdseye frozen trifle.
Heinz tinned potato salad.
Artic roll.

You beat me to it.
I would add heinz tinned puddings which had to be boiled in a pan of water for what seemed like 3 days.

Frozen mousse tubs. I think they were findus?
I remember a peach melba one that was gorgeous.
Vesta chow mein.
Edam cheese. And awful bland mild cheddar.
This horrible boring brown thin sliced bread, Allinsons?
The Margherita pizza from M&S chiller section. With one basil leaf. Never had a better supermarket pizza!
Really nice creamy Mr Whippy Ice cream in Dublin.
Bewley's sausage and chips, also in Dublin.

Tinned ravioli as a starter on a hotel menu. I thought it was very posh!
Shippams paste sandwiches.
Rise and Shine powdered orange juice.
Vol au vents.

I loved those tinned Heinz puddings.

Baked Alaska. Party piece desert of family friend. I was always delighted when she made it- ice-cream in the oven!!!

In restaurants, orange juice was sometimes a starter!

@Whatareyoutalkingaboutnow I worked in restaurants as well.

I remember the dover sole on the bone being the choice of the ladies who lunched but were on a permanent diet.

I also remember Stork SB margarine, ewww!

ETA 70s ad with Brucie

https://www.facebook.com/classicUKadverts/videos/stork-sb-margarine-classic-british-tv-and-cinema-adverts/169222278355615/

Birds trifle mix
Nestle tinned cream
big oval shaped tins of ham at Christmas McVities Tunis cake also at Christmas
Heinz sandwich spread
no idea if any of these things still exist.

I associate cod mornay with the 70s. Also chicken in a basket.
People used to make curry with raisins added.

Beanfeast. We lived on that for a bit when we bought our first house and had to wait a few days for the fridge to be delivered. I think it was soya mince.

Ski yoghourt, which I first remember from the 1970s. Disappeared at some point. My favourite flavour was pear.

As well as little glasses of orange juice, you could have a little glass of tomato juice as a starter. Lovely stuff. Britvic is the brand I mostly remember.

Also frogs legs with garlic butter
Balled melon with, ISTR, glace cherries? Have I made that up?!

Glass of orange juice as a posh starter

Frozen orange juice concentrate in a can that you mixed with water

I used to eat Rise and Shine like sherbet

My mum and dad used to have dinner parties with other couple friends. Mum used to cook some lovely dishes.
I remember
Melon boat with glace cherry starter
Beef stroganoff with rice main
Chocolate brandy mousse pud.
I could eat that whole meal right now.
She used to use Marguerite Patten recipe cards that she had in a little box.
Ah memories

Pub meals were mostly in a basket so they could accommodate children eating in the garden (we’re not allowed into pubs generally).
All the frozen foods (I started my career at Birds Eye). There was uproar when arctic roll was discontinued!
My mother used to make lemons filled with smoked mackerel pate for dinner party starter and oranges in caramel for pudding. I used to slip down and pilfer after eights the morning after.

Sarah Lee Pecan Pie

I actually made brown bread ice cream today!

I miss the days of 4 options of Vesta meals. There was beef curry, paella, chow mein and something else (I forget). I loved all of them, they were nothing at all like actual food from the countries they were supposed to represent but they were really nice all the same. I also used to love reading the stories on the back of the boxes as a child.
Now you're doing well to find a Vesta Chow Mein in a supermarket and they're comparatively expensive. I also remember we used to get three or four meals (depending on how old me and DSis were) from two boxes and that seems to have changed now, too.

I also loved Potato Puffs (crisps).
My grandma used to make trifle as pudding on the regular.
Jelly and ice cream at children's parties.