Retro-style 1970s prawn cocktail

ELEANOR BARNETT relishes a once-derided dinner-party classic and traces its origins back to the early 20th-century US

- ELEANOR BARNETT

This iconic 1970s dinner-party starter features prawns coated in a pink sauce, served cold on a bed of lettuce in a cocktail glass. All the rage at suburban soirées across the UK into the 1980s, by the 1990s prawn cocktail had fallen out of fashion in Britain, becoming a symbol of culinary gaucheness.

Yet this iconic retro dish has proven to be a steadfast guilty pleasure, coming back into fashion every few years with almost cyclical predictability. Mary Berry zhuzhed up the dish in 2018; more recently it was food writer Tom Parker Bowles singing its praises. And almost every British celebrity chef has created their own version of a prawn cocktail, each with their own little twist – for good or for ill.