Tastes from your childhood

[ChippySauce]

What could you really really do with, right now?

I want my Granny's toad in the hole.
She could make it like no one else - no soggy batter bottoms and served with onion gravy... delicious!

My mums Sunday dinners used to be epic i can still taste her beef brisket, sadly she doesn't really cook much any more but her Sunday dinner was amazing.

My grans lentil soup I've never been able to replicate it.

My mum’s custard meringue (basically a hot ilse’s flottantes baked in the oven, or my grandma’s meat and potatoes pie made with suet pastry.

Oh yes! It’s tastes totally different doesn’t it?

Grannie's steak and kidney pie and rice pudding

Father's lokshen - which I have never been able to replicate - pretty sure it's because I can't get my hands on a kosher chicken.

My Mum's root vegetable broth was wonderful, and the smell of a baked apple takes me right back to my Grandma's house around 1969. Freshly made mint sauce (chopped garden mint and vinegar) on new potatoes is the essence of a summer dinner for me.

Quality Street as they used to be in the early 80s. Matteson’s salmon spreading pate - fish paste in a tube essentially, but bloody lovely. Orange ice-cream from a shop in Brampton in Cumbria - more of a milky sorbet than ice cream, really. The closest I’ve ever found was at Nardini’s in Largs.
Also, Beecham’s powders before they started filling it full of aspartame. My mum used to make them for me in a blue cup with my name on.

My mum’s sherry trifle. She was a Pioneer, lifelong teetotaller , but that trifle was fabulous.
my Irish granny’s soda bread and her salad sandwiches and brack. My English granny’s bread pudding and homemade stuffing.

Proper cherryade

Those lemonade ice lollies. Sparkle, I think?

Aga toast and my mum’s roast dinners.

Proper cheese on toast done under the grill till it's blistered and bubbly and crusty.
Haven't got a grill anymore, and just can't get that same yummyness. 😔

Parkin - modern stuff is not treacly (?) enough and I can't find a good recipe. Even saint Mary Berry can't make good parkin. It's not ginger cake it's parkin. It should have an almost liquorice taste. Maybe I need to add liquorice.
😪

@MaMisled
i think we sold those crisps in the tuck shop for 2p! Were they called Snaps? I have a vague memory of a crocodile

@MaMisled
i think we sold those crisps in the tuck shop for 2p! Were they called Snaps? I have a vague memory of a crocodile

choc cup cakes that used to come in a six pack from Sainsbury’s with a thick slab of dense icing on the top and then chocolate sponge. You can get similar cakes at Waitrose now but they’re too posh and not the same!

My (Black Country) grandmothers faggots, made with fry put through her ancient mincer and the "kell" membrane holding them together. Her toffee apples, coated with what was actually butterscotch to all intents and put on a split stick of kindling.

@MaMisled I remember them! Really thin and crispy, never found anything like them. I think they might have been around in the 60s too.

Oh and my Scottish granny’s homemade tablet

Eden Vale choc top yoghurts. I used to have one in my lunch box every day - they had a solid tolling of chocolate across the top that you had to break to get into the yoghurt.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smiths-Snaps-Spicy-Tomato-Snacks/dp/B00WS7GM00

these are what I remember from the 70’s

Oh yes, proper Parkin! My mum’s was epic, and I wish I had the recipe. I know it had a lot of black treacle in it - perhaps that’s the secret?

@MaMisled could they be Burtons Piglet puffs?

@the80sweregreat I too love a good roast beef dinner.
I'm convinced the old gas ovens make a difference.
Most ovens are electric now.

Ooh yeah. They were so good. You could get orange and lemon flavoured ones too couldn't you? 😋

I also wonder if it’s the ingredients that have changed ? Veggies , meat even potatoes tasted differently when I was a child. Might be old age or lack of taste buds now , but I do think that food just isn’t as nice anymore!

My mum’s mince pies at Christmas, and her steak pies (she was brilliant at pastry).

Wow, I haven't thought about these in years, but now I have another hankering. This thread is making me so hungry!