Lemon Puff biscuits
I loved Lemon Puff biscuits, which are still made now. The rectangular (or round, depending on the brand) sandwich has a sugar glaze on the outside and a tangy, lemony, soft filling that is best eaten by removing the top biscuit and sliding the filling off on to your tongue with your front teeth.
I tried them again recently. They seemed far smaller than I remembered, and the lemon taste seemed really artificial – but this may have been part of the original charm. I don’t remember coming across real lemons as a child. Good news: the crispy glaze is still there. But they seem undercooked compared to yesteryear; not browned off enough for a satisfying crunch. Isn’t this always going to be the case with childhood food? Remembering is better than revisiting. Elaine Ehrenfried, 66, Romsey, Hampshire
Birds Eye chicken pies
In the 1980s, my dad and I both used to come home from school and work at lunchtime for our main meal. By far my favourite was when mum served Birds Eye chicken pies (other, deeply inferior pies are available). I’m now 45 and they are still my comfort food of choice. I always have a box in the freezer in case of gloom.
They’re delicious – the shortcrust pastry is like nothing else. Ideally, I’d like mashed potato, carrots and broccoli with it, but when I briefly lived alone in my 20s I’d have one with supermarket frozen Mediterranean veg for my main meal twice a week. Ironically, the one time I didn’t eat them was during the pandemic, as I wanted to save the pleasure until restrictions were lifted. My vegetarian husband once asked me to make him the closest approximation I could. It was very hard. They are alchemy. Hannah Currington, 45, Market Harborough, Leicestershire
Findus Crispy Pancakes
Thanks either to the marketing team at Findus, or perhaps just my parents, Findus Crispy Pancakes were an amazing treat to look forward to. Minced beef, that staple of the 70s and 80s, was our go-to filling. They would be served with oven chips, baked beans, ketchup and bread and butter. Those crispy pockets, grilled to death from frozen, were like a mouthful of napalm if you were too eager to get stuck in. But we were happy to wolf down this perilous food as a family every Thursday. Something magical happened when you layered oven chips on to buttered white bread, then beans and ketchup, then a slice of the pancake, and then more ketchup and a lid of more buttered bread. I’m surprised we still have our own teeth. Over the years, they’ve been phased out and brought back – but these days I’d prefer to keep the memory (and my oesophagus) intact. Matt, 50, Salford
Campbell’s tinned meatballs
My sisters and I used to have these with spaghetti, on nights when mum wasn’t in the mood to cook (or on the rare occasion she and dad were having a takeaway for dinner after we’d gone to bed). The “meat” was nondescript mush formed into spheres and the tomato sauce was a lurid red, but, on top of spaghetti it was a culinary delight. Funnily enough, I never saw my parents eat them – and I’m not sure I’d feed them to my children now, either. Hannah Ebbatson, 42, York
Viennese Whirls
My absolute favourite – crumbly shortcake with icing sugar that coats your lips and feels every bit as decadent as a Cadbury’s Flake. The jam-and-cream filling makes the whirl just as substantial as a Victoria sponge. When these were brought out after dinner it seemed like the height of luxury. To this day I can smash through a whole packet in one sitting with a pot of tea. In the old days, we almost certainly always had a supermarket own brand, but now I like to splash out on the Mr Kipling ones. Charles, 36, The West Country
Baked Alaska
Our mum would always create some sort of pudding for our evening meal, and with six of us at the table it wasn’t often that we were all happy with it. But Baked Alaska was everybody’s favourite – even mine, and I hated vanilla ice-cream. The contrast between the hot meringue – straight from the oven – with the cold, slightly melted ice cream below was like magic.
A collective silence would settle over the normally boisterous table as we all tucked in. My mum always says she wasn’t a good cook, but she really was, and still is. Mandy, 59, Bristol
Ketchup
As a small child, I wouldn’t eat anything without ketchup. Roast dinner? Ketchup. Shepherd’s pie? Ketchup. Lasagne? Ketchup. I also loved ketchup and peas – the lovely sweetness of the peas balanced so well with the acidity of the ketchup, which provided a lovely glue-like sauce to hold them together on a fork. Unfortunately, the dream of that taste is better than the reality as a 30-something adult. Carly, 37, Bournemouth
Soreen malt loaf
I always forget how good Soreen malt loaf is. It wasn’t something we ever had in the house, but my gran would occasionally put some out and I would destroy that bad boy, either plain or slathered in real butter and jam. What appealed about it to me as a kid was that, because it was a “loaf”, it seemed like a sneaky way to trick adults into buying something sweet without them realising. (Being seven, I thought I was smarter than adults.) I assumed we never had it at home because it cost an arm and a leg, but later, in my early 20s, I noticed it was about 28p a loaf. File alongside pikelets and Heinz Toast Toppers. Antony, 47, Tamworth
