Anna Pallai, who works as agent and pr, grew in the ’70s eating meatloaf, hardboiled eggs and stuffed peppers, and when she found the mother’s grease-stained old cookbooks, she began publishing on Twitter the vintage images. Now, these images have been collected in this fun coffee-table book published by Penguin Vintage and selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in the Guardian and The Spectator.
Covering all the essentials, from starters through to desserts, dinner party etiquette included, this book is a joyful celebration for exaggerated, sickly, artificial and improbable recipes. Real towers of seafood, mayonnaise falls, triumphs of pink sauces, chemical colored stuffing, gelatinous aspic and zoomorphic plating. Elegance and “modernity” for the time, now a kitsch phenomenon smashing on social networks.
