What are some glamorous retro dishes?

Chateaubriand

Steak Diane

Veal Cordon Bleu

Veal Prince Orloff

Baked Alaska for dessert

Veal Oscar

Clams casino

This.

Oysters Rockefeller

Rack of Lamb

Baked Alaska for dessert!

Pink lady cocktails....or martinis and turkey tetrazini

Raw or baked Oysters

Roast Mutton, Pork or Turkey,

Stewed Rabbits

Plum Pudding

Mince Pies

Nesselrode

Beef Wellington. Expensive, but delicious, and not incredibly difficult to make.

And if you want to be retro-piss-elegant, make something in aspic for an appetizer!

R6 That looks like some recipe that appeared on Weight Watchers recipe cards collection that my mother had in the '70's.

old fashion or Manhattan

Iceberg lettuce wedge and bleu cheese rdessing

Lobster Newburg.

Chicken Kiev.

Here we go!

Okay, there's nothing more insanely glamorous than "chaud-froid" aspic sauce over meat. It's a sort of opaque aspic which is poured over meat or fish to form a solid coating, which is then decorated like a plastic children's toy. The Salmon Chaud-Froid in the picture is fairly simple, I'll try to find some of the more insane versions that used to exist.

I think it's called Ramaki - chicken liver with a water chestnut on top wrapped in bacon.

I remember my mother making these for dinner parties.

soup beans, cornbread weiners and kraut and fried taters and some mustard greens yumm yumm

In the 1950s, serving meat coated in chaud-froid on a bed of diced aspic was considered to be the height of piss-elegance.

Coq au vin

Dinner Party Troll, you've done this thread so many times over the years. Why does listing old fashioned dishes obsess you so?

There's nothing like an aspic

Foie gras

And why are you such a grumpy nitwit r21?

Change your tampon this week. You'll feel so refreshed.

And DL favorite Pancakes Barbara for dessert.

Harlequin Chicken owns this thread.

If it doesn't gel, it isn't aspic..

Peach Melba for dessert.

Stuffed rack of lamb, with tiny party hats on!

R2 here, forgot to sign my post.

Daube glace and shrimp Samantha.

Turkey tetrazzini. I love it.

Or beef stroganoff .

Pretty much any dish that you would see Jack Tripper cook on Three's Company. Seriously.

Coquilles Saint Jacques - basically large scallops broiled in their shell with a creamy sauce over them.

How about Raymond St. Jacques?

Crow

R10 is on to something. Beef Wellington is delicious. My mother made it with a red wine and mushroom gravy.

Omg the chaud froid is...wow

R37 agree. It also reminds me of that great scene from Love and Death when Napoleon is tasting his dish "I said, NO RAISINS." And then something like: I'm sure you had no problem making a beef Wellington!

I also love the mini ones they serve at "good old fashioned cocktail parties."

Pancakes Barbara!

I looked up a recipe for chaud-froid sauce, and it's basically a béchamel sauce with gelatin in it. Putting it on chicken breasts or salmon fillets might be fairly simple, but as you have to serve the results cold it might not be seasonally appropriate (outside of Australia). Maybe it could be a fish appetizer?

Still, I'd love it if the stuff had a revival.

R27, all these years (well, 25 -- I first saw Psycho in the late 80s as a young boy), I never knew he was saying that. Why, I only learned what 'aspic' is now, reading this thread. (I also used to think Marion was saying "These extended lunch hours give my boss sexist asset" when I was a wee lad.)

R18, you sound hot. Where do you live?

And it's actually a forgiving dish. My mom used the old Joy of Cooking recipe.

Oops, I am referring above to beef Wellington and r39.

R37

Bananas Foster

Cherries Jubilee

pressed duck, as served at La Tour d'Argent in Paris

gâteau St. Honoré

You can also find about 80 percent of these dishes at Le Perigord, in NYC.

Pancakes Barbara

As you probably know, mince meats pies were once made from meat, often game such as dear.

My aunt once actually did that, presenting her treasured minced meat pies made with venison. No one would eat it though.

R42, I was horrified that, in the dreadful 'remake' with Vince Vaughn, the line was changed to, "If it doesn't gel, it isn't Jell-o.."

Horrified.

>>often game such as dear.

Oh..My.

Lobster a la Riseholme, but of course.

R35 has excellent taste. I used to jack off to Raymond St. Jacques in one of those "Sex in the Cinema" articles in Playboy.

Molto delicioso R52

R49, I guess I'm the only one left who still likes mincemeat pie. Every year I buy one for myself, and warm up a slice when I want dessert, because nobody else serves it. I'd even eat the kind with meat in it, just to say I did!

And yes, mincemeat pie is delicious. Think of it as a slightly tart fruit compote, not something you associate with your dreaded momma.

R29 those party hats are known as lamb pants. Something my brother and I had to make for many of my mom's dinner parties

[quote]What are some glamorous retro dishes?

Brigitte Bardot

Edy Williams

Joey Heatherton

Roast ortolan would really make a statement, if you seek to impress.

Don't forget to provide white napkins for your guests to hide their heads from God.

R58, ortolans are a Eurasian/African bird, and not available in the US, unless you have them flown in at great expense. I don't think any culinary tiny songbirds are available in the US.

Tell me, cooks, how does one make a perfect beef wellington when you can't see the beef under the pastry? Meat thermometer?

Pheasant under glass

Trout amandine

Squab

There is nothing more memorably mid-20th-century than "Polynesian food"! Put pineapple and sweet-and-sour sauce on rice and hot dogs, and serve with so many Mai-Tais that nobody cares what they're eating!

r54 Still painting those bold, female nudes, dear one?

R6 - are those tampons on top?

The original Pancakes Barbara was more like a crepe or clafoutis made with a blackberry sauce.

Shrimp de Jonghe!

Lots of retro gems here...

Dubonnet with a slice of lemon; her majesty Queen Elizabeth II's favourite.

Why not nake it a fondue party?

bullshots! Beef bouillon with sherry. Noel Coward's favorite.

Riz a la Imperatrice, which is really just a fancified rice pudding.

Get a jello mold from the thrift store, for a really authentic mid-20th-century presentation!

Ditch the grub and throw all your keys into a punch bowl.

cum

R58 R59 More on the European songbird.

It's illegal to import them into the USA for consumption given their conservation status. It's illegal (State and Federal laws) to hunt native songbirds in the US for food. Fines (sometimes very steep) and possible jail time.

Game bird hunting is still legal but seasonal for most of those species.

Friends of my parents dined on ortolans in France back in the 70s or 80s. They couldn't stop talking about how delicious they were, while wearing purposefully guilty expressions because they'd never do such a thing in the US.

The reason I forgive the Datalounge all its faults, is that it's the only place on the net where multiple people chime in about subjects as obscure as eating ortolans.

Shrimp Cocktails for appetizers.

Crab cakes made of jumbo lump crabmeat or lamb chops.

Tomato Aspic is always a great side dish as is asparagus with Hollandaise.

For dessert, Cherries Jubilee, Bananas Foster, Coconut Sundae, Napoleons.

Do I smell Baked Pears Alicia?

As time goes by R62, I find they are less bold but more nude.

Are crab cakes and asparagus w/hollandaise old fashioned? I still make them.

Lamb Chops Victor Hugo

r77 Care to dine with me, Wednesday week, dear one? A fine dinner, followed by a few hearty rounds of piquet. Do let me know. Au reservoir!

[quote]R64

I'd venture to guess that most of you here only know about 'Pancakes Barbara' because of its reference in THE WOMEN (1939).

Tureen Of Beef

OP, nothing says retro glam better than hollandaise sauce! Let Julia Child, the French Chef, introduce you to The Hollandaise Family! Bon Appétit !

R75, thank you for mentioning tomato aspic. I had it once, in the very early 70's (yes, I'm old!) with my recently-widowed aunt and her boyfriend, in a restaurant in what was then a nice downtown, in Rochester, NY (I know, I know! incremently better than Buffalo, perhaps...) I really liked it! Never had since.

And I LOVE this retro thread; more please!

Snow on the Mountain was something my mother made every year for New Years.

Jill St. John

r82 Don't forget Terrine of Soup, OK?

What the heck pheasant under glass?

Turtle Soup

Nesselrode pie--the real thing, not that awful stuff with pudding and cheap candied fruit.

Mince pie--it used to be the second choice if someone wanted to serve a pie in addition to pumpkin this time of year

Plum pudding with brandied hard sauce--a British oldie for Christmas.

Peches Melba and Chicken Tetrazinni are old fashioned. Then there's Chicken Maryland which Nicole Diver makes in "Tender Is the Night." But if you really want to go all out, the novelist Sybille Bedford describes the foods of German high society in "A Legacy" and many of the late 19th century dishes have ten syllables. Bedford even tells you what salsa is in her 1954 travelogue "A Visit to Don Octavio" because no one in the US had heard of it. Then, Sally Lunn is a homey colonial dish.

Kraft old english cheese balls - delish!

Gelatin desserts - I love to get creative and decorate it into different shapes and colors

Classic campbell's shrimp dip - serve with potato chips

Banana bread

Baked mac and cheese

Mac and cheese is so glamorous and retro, r96!

R97: 20th century style Ratners restaurant mac and cheese

Moo goo gai pan or Chicken Almond Ding

Glamour AND retro seem to be lost on many here, Aspic yes. Mac and cheese and Moo Goo Gai Pan, no.

This calls for Chicken Pontalba (fried breast on a bed of potatoes and tasso ham with Bearnaise sauce over it)

Pig On A Blanket!

Look no further than the menu of the legendary Chez Cary, in Orange, California, the best restaurant in Orange County throughout the 1960s and 1970s:

This thread itself is so old as to be retro! R90 was from 2014, then suddenly *poof* it was 2019! How glamorous!

So are dishes popular in 2014 now considered retro as well?

Yes R106!

Steak Oscar

May I recommend the cookbook, Edwardian Glamour Cooking Without Tears, by Oswell Blakeston?

Chicken a la King

Floating Island

R26, my step grandmother had a collection of cookbooks from the world over. Time Life? No idea now. But the French edition had many recipes like it. She made a few of them, but mostly we went out. I never saw anything like I had seen in that French cookbook especially.