That is what feast meals regarded like within the Seventies

This is what dinner party food looked like in the 1970s

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(CNN) — Ham and bananas hollandaise. Eggs in a cage. Beef tingler.

In the days before Instagram, before clean eating and kombucha, aspirational cooking — in 1970s Britain at least — meant a showstopper dinner party.

Set-piece dishes were designed to astound, and often confound.

Inspiration came from recipe cards and cook books, where the new art of food photography was entering its difficult, experimental teenage years.

The bland and the bewildering

The book is partly “a reaction against the self-satisfied nature of some food now, and the virtuousness that’s meant to go with clean eating and healthy eating,” Pallai tells CNN.

“It’s not like I advocate eating unhealthily, but I do think the food of the ’70s and that period was cooked to be enjoyed by other people, not only visually, but also to be eaten.

“Whereas now it’s very much about ‘look at this healthy thing I made for myself.’

“I far prefer something that includes others.”

The dishes’ names leap out as dazzling…

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