👀 What is the opposite of food porn?
#313 | They really liked Jell-o in the '70s
I might be dating myself here when I tell you I'm old enough to remember cookbooks my parents owned. You know, the ones with photo pages, showing off dishes plated to look "fancy", which in ye olde days meant that everything was arranged in concentric circles or cut into little animal shapes or something just as quirky. Over the years, food trends (thankfully) changed, and I'd all but forgotten about those pages and their accompanying recipes. Until I unearthed an ancient cookbook at a friend's with a little recipe titled "Orange Surprise".
The surprise was that the recipe contained no trace of the eponymous fruit. It's jello, guys. It's a jello salad with carrots, canned pineapple, and no orange whatsoever.
Today's Thing isn't Orange Surprise, but it's along the same lines. Welcome to the 70's Dinner Party Instagram account, one of my favourite weird insta pages ever. It's a curated selection of cookbook pages from the '70s and beyond, when all was aspic and decorative vegetables, including recipes, photo spreads and the occasional advertorial. The unifying factor is that they're all... really, REALLY weird and probably all inedible.Â
Now if you're a young'un, you'd ask me - Oh Pai, how bad could it possibly be? Welp. Let me show you:
Remember those advertorial pages I mentioned?
Never cook any of this, please
Here's an aside about this particular Thing. Some friends and I got together last year for a 70's Dinner Party party. You know, to try things for science, so you don't have to. The menu was extensive, and at least three of the dishes contained some amount of jelly. And, of course, I brought Orange Surprise. It did surprise everyone on the day by being actually rather tasty.Â
- Pai
Orange Surprise is deeply disturbing and fascinating in equal measure. Maybe that's what they were going for?