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A guilty Pleasure
Appears in
By Liz Harfull
Published 2018
Wakehurst Golf Club’s Selected Recipe Book, revised edition, c. mid-1970s (State Library of NSW).
It’s the dish that family cooks from the 1970s are most embarrassed to talk about, but a favourite of the children who grew up eating it, even if they are now ashamed to admit it
Classic apricot chicken comprises just three ingredients—chicken, a packet of French onion soup mix and a tin of apricot nectar. In today’s culinary-obsessed Australia, it fails on many levels. It uses pre-packaged flavourings laden with salt, and pre-cooked and pulverised fruit that comes out of a tin. There are no fresh herbs and exotic spices, no particular kitchen skills are required, and the maker cannot boast of spending long hours of virtuous labour producing it—which is exactly why the dish found its way into the Wakehurst Golf Club’s Selected Recipe Book.