Five foods out of fashion

[Gifted Gourmet]

article from the Independent UK

Salad Cream

In the culinary dark days of the 1970s, smearing salad cream on lettuce had an air of sophistication about it...

Lard

Cultural references to lard abound - the DJs Mark and Lard, the insult "lard-ass" and "lardy", the tub of lard that posed as a contestant when ...

Jellied Eels

Once a delicacy in the East End of London, eels were boiled for an hour and a half and the juices created formed the jelly ...

Liquorice

No Liquorice Council or Liquorice Makers Association lists sales but there seems to be less about.

Tripe

Edible offal made from the stomach of cows, sheep or pigs was once a prized part of the meal-time repertoire...

Have any opinions on these whether you are a resident or a visitor to the UK?

Somehow, I thought tripe was having a "rebirth" lately ...

[Jenny McClure]

I remember when Heinz said it was going to discontinue Salad Cream. People went crazy and started to buy it in bulk and I think there was even a mini campaign. So Heinz kept the product in the end. After it all, some said it was a marketing ploy to boost sales. I know a lot of people who still use Salad Cream but not as a Salad dressing, more likely, instead of mayonaise in a sandwich.

[Mrs Woman]

I don't use salad cream for salad. I use it with chips, ooh divine! Makes a change from mayo on the odd occasion

Never liked tripe (or dripping for that matter) even though I'm a northerner. And the jelly aruond the eels would put me off (although I wouldn't mind giving eels a whirl). Liquorice has always seemed the most boring of sweets to me, apart from the blue and pink spoggly ones that probably aren't technically liquorice. As for lard, hmmm no chance when you have lovely butter and oils to use instead.

[Andy Lynes]

Liquorice Braised Tripe with Larded Jellied Eels and Sauce Salad Cream - there you go, right back at the top of the list of any self respecting gourmet's list of 100 things to eat before you die.

[fisherman]

Lard has totally different uses to 'lovely butter and oils' so it gets used regularly in my kitchen. Use the right ingredient for the job, rather than let your preconceptions make you use something else.......

[Basildog]

Salad Cream on Cheap Pizza!

[BigboyDan]

Here in Texas we use lard and tripe (Menudo), and plenty of each.

[rjs1]

Liquorice Braised Tripe with Larded Jellied Eels and Sauce Salad Cream - there you go, right back at the top of the list of any self respecting gourmet's list of 100 things to eat before you die.

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Hope to die well before eating this

[srhcb]

I was just thinking that four of the five have textural "issues"?

SB

[Tim Hayward]

Back in the day I was unfortunate enough to be involved in research for an unnameable company which supplies 'Noodles' in 'Pots'.

Part of the result was the odd finding that men are turned off food most easily by 'textural issues' whereas women were most affected by smell.

Pointless, but somehow useful to know.

Anyroad, in my book those five are nowhere near unspeakable enough. I'd nominate....

5. Heinz 'Toast Toppers'. Particularly the chicken and mushroom flavour. Little tins of gloop you were supposed to spead on toast before slipping under the grill to produce something that glued to the roof of your mouth like napalm.

4. Canned chile con carne from the machine at Stokewood Rd swimming baths, Bournemouth, circa 1979. Someone must have come up with a cheap experimental substitute for TVP. This stuff tasted like crumbled packing chips in curry sauce.

3. 'Mince'. The idea of serving ground meat as the protein in a main course, without attempting to form it into something or flavour it can only be some sort of joyless throwback to rationing. Guaranteed to choke a goat.

2. Knorr Spring Vegetable Soup. The tomato pieces never successfully reconstituted, leaving tiny chips of scarlet plastic floating in the scum on top of the soup. This was a blessing as it was the only way to distinguish the product from a steaming mug of hot vomit. In spite of the risk of exposure, frozen half to death and feet bleeding, young cadet Corporal Hayward was entirely unable to drink this crap on the top of the eighth of the Ten Tors

1. Butterscotch Angel Delight. A petrochemical by-product which uncannily pre-dated 'Molecular Gastronomy's' foams by at least two decades. Utterly, utterly revolting. Capable of clinging to the teeth and ruining meals for the next two weeks.

That feels better.

[Basildog]

There's nowt wrong with a Butterscotch Angel Delight with an Aero crumbled into it before it sets.Thats cooking that is.

[muichoi]

Usual crap. There was nothing sophisticated about salad cream, even in the seventies. I was there. Lardo is extremely fashionable. Jellied eels may have been popular, but were always the opposite of fashionable-though UK eel consumption is about three times higher than it was in the seventies, mostly due to Chinese restaurants. Tripe would be the next big thing if it were available. Even St. John uses disgusting blanched pap.

[Hallie]

Might I add to this list:

-tinned pies (Fray Bentos, I'm talking to you)

-pickled onions

-scotch eggs

-lamb neck (never bought it, never understood, never will)

-rollmops

[muichoi]

What on earth is wrong with lamb neck? maybe you'd like a nice loin 'medallion' instead?

[Tim Hayward]

There's nowt wrong with a Butterscotch Angel Delight with an Aero crumbled into it before it sets.Thats cooking that is.

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Dear God, Man!

And they let you cook food? For innocent people?

[fisherman]

What on earth is wrong with lamb neck? maybe you'd like a nice loin 'medallion' instead?

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More than a little bit of snobbery on this thread, lamb neck is one of those cuts that rewards a sympathetic chef, like lamb breast or pigs trotters. I guess some people prefer fillet steak or medallions

[Andy Lynes]

I love lamb neck - I use it to make navarin of lamb or any lamb stew/braise in fact. Treat it gently and it's very forgiving and full of flavour. There's a particularly good Locatelli lamb stew with peppers served with polenta that works really well with neck. It's one of those rare cuts that taste great and is still good value for money.

[Hallie]

What on earth is wrong with lamb neck? maybe you'd like a nice loin 'medallion' instead?

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More than a little bit of snobbery on this thread, lamb neck is one of those cuts that rewards a sympathetic chef, like lamb breast or pigs trotters. I guess some people prefer fillet steak or medallions

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The truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of lamb in general. Perhaps its the sum total of a number of bad childhood experiences where the lamb was always fatty, greasy or overdone. I've usually shied away from cooking with it because I'm always afraid of getting it wrong. The concept of lamb neck totally perplexes me. A bit like ox tail. I'm not sure the end result will justify the effort.

[Carlovski]

Liquorice Braised Tripe with Larded Jellied Eels and Sauce Salad Cream - there you go, right back at the top of the list of any self respecting gourmet's list of 100 things to eat before you die.

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Actually I think that's on the menu at Juniper!

[naebody]

Liquorice Braised Tripe with Larded Jellied Eels and Sauce Salad Cream

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That sounds dangerously close to salmon in licorice aspic with asparagus, pink grapefruit and Manni olive oil. But what kind of nutjob would serve that?

I'd argue the most out-of-fashion meal in Britain would probably be medallions of Chilean seabass with sundried tomatoes, mâche, toasted pine nuts and a raspberry vinaigrette. There's nothing so unfashionable as yesterday.

Edit: on reflection, I'd argue that tripe, lard, licorice and eel all fit quite nicely into our current food-mile-obsessed, nature-protecting, pretention-breaking zeitgeist. And, given the recent habit of finding some faux-historical English name for foreign things (cf. burnt cream vs. creme brulee), it can't be too long before Gary Rhodes is insisting that his mayonnaise is in fact "genuine" salad cream.

Edited June 5, 2006 by naebody (log)

[davebrown]

Coleman's "white" sauce.

Manages to combine both the bland and the revolting, especially when served over boiled turnips weeping their cooking water.

[Andy Lynes]

Manni olive oil

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A sideline when he's not touring with Primal Scream I assume. Not many olive groves in Manchester though are there?

[naebody]

Manni olive oil

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A sideline when he's not touring with Primal Scream I assume. Not many olive groves in Manchester though are there?

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Perhaps he has a growers' cooperative with Bez, who is something of an enthusiast.

[Andy Lynes]

I suppose the pair of them are renowned for being well oiled most of the time.

[Tim Hayward]

Coleman's "white" sauce. 

Manages to combine both the bland and the revolting, especially when served over boiled turnips weeping their cooking water.

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Oh Yes!

Now you've got me going....

Boil-in-the-bag cod steaks. Bland fish, in white sauce, in a plastic pouch. Dear God, could anything have been more utterly revolting. It looked, when hot, like recently used horse condom.

My Granny (peace be upon her) used to hang the bag from a knittting needle into the kettle thus procuring those two delights of elderly ladies, 'a nice cup of tea' and 'a nice bit of fish', simultaneously.

For those Hyacinth Bucket characters with pretensions to suburban grandeur, there was a more sophisticated 'parsley sauce' version, enhanced by tasteless green flecks.

All were served with the ubiquitous frozen pea (eGs passim) or the awful frozen 'vegetable medley' which seemed to comprise the solid elements of puke in an easy-to-serve, Kwik-heat pellet.

In a calculated act of child abuse, my school used to combine the frozen vegetable medley with the white sauce to create a 'vegetable macedoine'. So named, we supposed, because it looked and tasted like it had recently passed through a Macedonian.

David Kilgore, the Ganymede of the Lower Sixth, once languidly observed that, 'If Alexander the Great had been forced to consume this stuff, it was little wonder he'd laid waste to half of Europe'.

Such wit. Such Beauty.

He's an overweight, bald mobile phone salesman now.