Photos of dishes from the Seventies cause hilarity on Twitter (2024)

Looking for inspiration for your next dinner party? These recipes may not be of much use, but at least you'll know you can't make anything much worse.

A Twitter account called@70s_party- started by London-based Anna Pallai - is offering up photos of the type of fair you might have been cooking up if you were hosting in the bygone era.

The dishes, which don't appear to be very appetising, are proving a hit with social media users, who can't get enough of what households used to serve up in the Seventies.

One picture of spaghetti hoops in aspic, a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé, is particularly stomach turning, especially when topped with bizarre, grey, cylindrical matter.

Another bizarre combination is ham and bananas hollandaise, suggested in McCall's Great America Recipe Card Collection.

Spaghetti loaf is yet another unpalatable option suggestion by a 70s recipe book. It seems to include bits of bacon and is decorated with olives and tomatoes.

The account was started by Anna, a publisher, who found her mother's recipe books hilarious.

The addition of aspic recipes, a way of serving food that was all the rage from the 1950s onwards and was a popular dinner staple throughout the United States, truly captures an era that taste forgot.

One such creation is a chilling blood red ring with king prawns, tomatoes and fresh basil.

Another bizarre and eye-catching suggestion for serving food to your guests is to create a ball of green leaves and decorate it with strawberries on a toothpick.

Then put in on a stick and put the stick on a pot, so that it looks like a tree.

How about some ground up spam as a patio dip in a green pepper which you can eat with a cracker to your hearts content?

And for the sandwich love in your life who can never decide which to have, the party loaf with shrimp, cheese and chicken bacon fillings.

The account also shows how cheese presented in a ball with a glacier cherry on top was the high of fashion and dining sophistication in the era.

Who can resist an individual tiny chicken served in a pastry basket and adorned with olives, parsley and...green grapes?

Miracle Whip suggested mixing salad dressing with lemonade a gelatine for an attractive platter to serve alongside cold meats and one meat roll that seems to be pork, stuffed with chicken and bacon, is served in a red jelly with festive decorative flowers on top.

Jellied chicken is another retro dish that most days many would only consider serving to their dog.

A French recipe books throws up some interesting suggestions featured on the account, such as a grey-looking take on Japanese mushroom dumplings. What looks like trout smothered in red sauce, decorative mounds of cream cheese and button mushrooms is featured in the book.

Anna started the Twitter account 'for a laugh' after flicking through her mother's old recipe books and realising how 'hideous' the dishes looked.

Anna's Twitter feed, which she is planning to turn into a book, is a glimpse into a lost world of hostesses swathed in chiffon, elaborate, over-the-top techniques and a love of stuffing ingredients inside each other such as prawn terrine in a lettuce or mince inside mashed potatoes.

With 70s Dinner Party attracting over 25,300 followers, Anna explained to FEMAIL in December, when the account had only 9,000 followers, how she drew inspiration for the account from her mum's books.

''I'd always liked looking through my Mum's old cookbooks and the older I got, the funnier the recipes seemed,' she said.

'I started off posting pictures on Facebook but realised that my friends might not appreciate a constant stream of ugly food.

'I thought a dedicated Twitter feed would be kinder on their eyes, but really I just did it for a laugh.'

Discussing the over-the-top presentation, Anna said: 'It's fairly shocking on the whole but that's not to say that people in years to come won't think the presentation today is just as awful.'

She added: 'And at least there wasn't seemingly the smugness attached to presentation then - certainly no clean eating hashtags.'

The collection of pictures have been taken from her 72-year-old mother Chris Payne's Robert Carrier and Betty Crocker cookbooks.

Ms Payne served up similar creations when Anna was a child.

The bio for the comical Twitter account reads: 'If it's ticked, my Mum's cooked it. May contain nuts and food from other decades.'

She has also had a go at some of the elaborate dishes herself: 'One of the first things I remember making is a shepherds pie that had sliced sausages for the walls and peas for the roof.

'I think that would still be a standout dish for any Michelin star restaurant.'

Prem is another pretty unappetising looking creation. The mysterious meat is simply advertised as 'useful meat'.

Tongue anyone? A tongue, tomato sauce and backed mashed potato dish is unlikely to be a hit with diners these days.

Social media users have been quick to comment on the dishes.

One wrote, 'I remember some of this horrific stuff. It lasted well into the '80s in many troubled, middle-class households.'

While another added, 'If you don't follow @70s_party you will never know the meaning of fear.'