New books by Raymond Blanc and Pierre Koffmann retell the truth that British food came back from the brink. If it were not for the émigré chefs, I hate to think what we would be eating in British restaurants now. Fishfingers à la King, with pea jelly ring? Such horrors existed, or let’s say they were perpetrated, in the 1970s, by Sainsbury’s recipe cards, the Good Housekeeping Institute and in the books of that serial offender
Robert Carrier.
An embarrassment of showboat dishes are in Anna Pallai’s 70s Dinner Party: The Good, the Bad and the Downright Ugly of Retro Food (Square Peg, £9.99). Stuffed grapes, potato salad log (don’t ask), cherry pineapple bologna — this is actually a sausage main course; tomatoes stuffed with aubergine and kiwi. Kiwi? It is a book of photographs and wry, very funny captions. It takes pride of place in my loo, a reminder of what did not happen.
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