The decade that taste forgot! Hideous 1970s recipes revealed (2024)

FAQs

What was one of the most popular hors d'oeuvres to grace holiday parties of 1970? ›

The cheese ball is the ultimate '70s party appetizer — and this classic chive and green olive cheese ball is sure to be a hit. Just roll that bad boy into a ball and serve it with crackers, it's really that simple.

1970s Dishes

But there's more; prawn co*cktail served with salad cream and tomato ketchup for a dazzling party snack; sherry trifle, soggy jelly-fruit flan, cool-whip, spam, stroganoff, steak and chips, egg and chips, fondue and frozen wonders.

The cuisine that the counterculture took to in the late 1960s, and then helped introduce to the mainstream in the 1970s, embraced whole grains and legumes; organic, fresh vegetables; soy foods like tofu and tempeh; nutrition-boosters like wheat germ and sprouted grains; and flavors from Eastern European, Asian, and ...

1970: Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn is introduced. Agronomist Redenbacher has found a yellow corn that expands nearly twice as much as other brands. In five years, it will be the country's largest-selling brand. 1970: Hamburger Helper is introduced.

Jell-O, rumaki, avocado pie, fondue, deviled eggs, and tequila sunrises took center stage of the culinary scene in the '60s and '70s. Although some of these items have faded away in popularity, others have endured the test of time and been updated to appeal to current-day tastes.

Popularly known as the “Basic Four,” the guide recommended a minimum number of foods from each of four food groups—milk, meat, fruits and vegetables, and grain prod- ucts (Page and Phipard, 1956). This food guide, with its focus on getting enough nutrients, was widely used for the next two decades.

Bread, potatoes, cabbage, beans, and various kinds of cereal were the base of local cuisine. There was usually only one dish per meal on the table on regular days. On holidays, there could be several dishes served during the same meal, but they were the same as those cooked on regular days, as a rule.

"English settlers in teh seventeenth century ate three meals a day, as they had in England... For most people, breakfast consisted of bread, cornmeal mush and milk, or bread and milk together, and tea. Even the gentry might eat modestly in the morning, although they could afford meat or fish...

What dinners were popular in the 1970s? ›

As of April 1973, the lab had identified three likely sources for making plant-based, meatless protein: canola (then known in Canada as rapeseed), sunflower seeds, and soybeans. "It is quite possible now to produce meat substitutes which smell and taste exactly like meat," De Man added.

1977: Buffalo Wings

Fried chicken wings coated in cayenne pepper hot sauce and dipped in blue cheese: Who doesn't love that buffalo stuff?

1970s. The 1970s marked the start of a reduction in our intake of vegetables. The average person ate a pound of red meat each week, compared to just over half of that today. Fruit juice arrived in the shops but only one in ten people consumed it regularly.

For a buffet you'd need devilled eggs, cheese and silver skin onion / pineapple hedgehog, twiglets, Black Forest gateaux for pud, mushroom and/or prawn vol-au-vents and if you're posh you need a poached salmon deforested with cucumber 'scales'.

1977: Pasta Primavera

Pasta Primavera was the talk of the town in Manhattan in the '70s, when Le Cirque chef Sirio Maccioni introduced this cream-based pasta dish, accented with an explosion of green veggies.

Chicken Chasseur is a classic recipe from the seventies that is just as delicious today. An easy one pot meal which is perfect for dinner. Every decade throughout the last century seems to have its own distinctive features. If you think of the 1920's you will think of the Charleston and flappers.