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

FAQs

What food did we eat in the 1970s? ›

1978: Croissants

In the '70s, "Americans went wild for flaky, buttery croissants," Lovegren writes in Fashionable Food, and they would either buy them from croissant shops or make them at home using refrigerated Pillsbury Crescent dough.

Dinner: American palates became more sophisticated thanks to Julia Child, but many 60's meals were still dominated by convenience foods like this terrifying olive,celery and cheese jello salad. Buffet dinners of beef stroganoff, green beans amandine and flaming cherries jubilee were popular.

The global food crisis of 1972–74 was the result of unusually poor harvests in many of the world's major production areas. South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa were particularly hard hit and needed to import basic foodstuffs to avert famine.

1970s: Chicken livers and Egg McMuffins

Coupled with the decade's passion for fondue, booze, muumuus, and all things funky and foreign, this resulted in some interesting food trends.

1973: Chilli Con Carne

This classic combination of minced beef and kidney beans has been a treasured recipe ever since.

1978: Ben & Jerry's

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield became the new snack gods when Ben & Jerry's hit the market in 1978.

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 ...

What sweets were in the 60s? ›

Think of all the different flavours of boiled sweets imaginable; rhubarb and custard, chocolate lime, cola cubes and lemon sherbets. All mixed with black jacks, parma violets, love hearts, aniseed balls and the favourite milk chocolate of the time.

Pringles, Pop-Tarts, Doritos, Starburst, Chips Ahoy!, Gatorade, Sprite, and Ruffles all debuted during the decade, and fast food came into its own with McDonald's. New kid-friendly (read: super-sugary) breakfast cereals abounded, like Froot Loops, Honeycomb, Cap'n Crunch, and Lucky Charms.

“And when I think about a '70s dinner party, I think about excess.” She decided to revive two of the decade's most popular desserts: the soufflé and the showstopping Black Forest cake.

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.

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'.