Hello, my name is Sophie and I love reading about old horrible recipes, specifically awful ones from the 1970s like this:
I thought it would be a fun idea to make some of the worst-looking recipes to see if they taste as bad as they look.
And boy was I in for a treat.
First up was Ham in Aspic.
The first stage in all of these recipes was preparing the gelatine.
I have never cooked with actual gelatine before, and this was quite fun to play with. That was before I realised it was going to be meat-flavoured. :(
I then made a stock and gelatine mix and prepared the first terrifying layer.
The first layer included garlic-stuffed olives, sliced hard-boiled egg whites, and cooked peas. I tried to arrange it like the pictures but this was IMPOSSIBLE. It was at this point that my kitchen started to become overwhelmed with the smell of dog food and eggs.
To prepare the next layer I cut up more hard-boiled eggs, chopped some tinned ham, and prepared the dates.
By far the most harrowing part of this experience was picking the meat jelly off of the tinned ham. I have no idea what the dates were for, but they did nothing to improve any of this.
All of that shit then went into the mould with the rest of the meaty gelatine.
People on Twitter were really excited about this stage.
After six hours of it chilling in the fridge, it was time to see my creation!
Here I am, a mere shell of the woman who had be so excited to cook earlier, with my creation. I can safely say this is the worst thing I have ever made in my life. My girlfriend described my masterpiece as "foul-smelling", while my friend Emily suggested local cats "would love it".
Of course, I ~had~ to taste it.
It smelled worse than dog food. I managed a tiny teaspoon before the smell of eggs and meat jelly was so overwhelming I couldn't stop gagging. I had hoped we could have a sort of dinner party tasting it but it was so bad it went straight in the bin. And then we threw away the bin and I moved out of my flat to get away from the smell.
Next up was Chocolate "Pie", which turned out to be neither a pie nor anything to do with chocolate.
The base of the "pie" was made from blended toast, which I then had to grill.
Obviously I completely forgot it was in the oven and burned it.
To create the filling I had to make a thin eggy custard, then chuck in some gelatine.
Then, instead of adding actual chocolate, the recipe told me to mix in chocolate essence and enough green and red food dye to "make it look brown" (actual quote).
Chocolate essence and all this food dye was also considerably more expensive than actual chocolate.
After I poured about half a bottle of each colour food dye in the mix, it was ready go in the pan!
It was then I realised I had made a grave error.
So I threw the bloody thing in the bin and spent the next 25 minutes cleaning my kitchen.
After a short lie-down, it was time to make the next gelatine horror show, a Fruit and Cheese Mold.
First I had to make a layer of jelly out of Diet Fanta and pieces of honeydew melon (aka The Worst Melon).
The next layer was a delightful mixture of cottage cheese, Fanta jelly, and, for some reason, ground cloves.
I then poured this sludge into the mould with a layer of citrus fruit and put it in my fridge with all the other gelatine nightmares.
After a couple of hours in the fridge it didn't look THAT bad (apart from the floating white cheese specks).
At last it was time for my pièce de résistance, the glorious edible centrepiece of the table, the "Crown Roast of Frankfurters".
Well, I tried.
