Food Ideas: 1960s Murder Mystery Party

1 1960s Party Food

1.1 Give Ordinary Food a Groovy Name

Try adding a 60s vibe to ordinary food by changing the name:

• Groovy Guacamole
• Hip Hamburgers
• Outta-sight Oatcakes
• Hippie Hash Browns
• Dig it Dip
• Far Out Fajitas
• Flower Child's Falafel
• Fab French Fries

Or add the name of one of the game characters to a dish:

• Starlight's Salsa
• Moonlight's Macaroni
• Pat's Pizza

1.2 Decorate Ordinary Food in a Groovy Way

The hippie influence of the 60s means that peace signs, flowers, hearts, and butterflies can add a 60s vibe to even ordinary food. Or use colors such as pink, orange, green, turquoise, red, and purple to make your food outta sight. Or make food into the shapes of retro items such as records.

A few suggestions:

• Add a large peace sign to the top of a round cake, cheesecake, trifle, or cookie by piping swirls of colored icing or colored whipped cream.
• Add a peace sign to the top of a savory dish such as a salmon mousse or chicken mousse using foods such as cucumber slices, olives, or halved baby plum tomatoes.
• Use cookie cutters to cut cookies, sandwiches, pizza or tray bakes into flower or heart shapes. Decorate cookies and cakes with colored icing, buttercream or whipped cream; decorate sandwiches with mayonnaise.
• Arrange berries into a heart shape on top of a cake or cheesecake.
• Use cookie cutters to cut heart or flower shapes out of a watermelon, melon, cheese slices, or sliced meat. Optionally, get creative and layer up smaller shapes on top of larger ones.
• Arrange halved oval or circular foods into the shape of flower petals and use a food with a contrasting color as the flower center. For example, use halved eggs, baby plum tomatoes or grapes. Or use cucumber slices, strawberry slices, radish slices or tangerine segments.
  • Tip: I found this easier to achieve when I was working with a large pattern. When I tried arranging strawberry slices into a heart shape on top of a trifle, I found that the large shapes of the strawberry slices didn't give me a good heart-shaped definition.
• Use food coloring to create 60s-style deviled eggs. (Hardboil the eggs, leave to cool, and peel. Slice in half and remove the yolks. Then add the halved egg whites into a bowl of water, food coloring, and vinegar until the egg whites are the right color intensity.)
• Create fruit skewers using colors of the rainbow to remind guests of the tie-dye colors.
• Create rainbow jelly desserts in clear glasses or bowls using layers of different colored jelly.
• Add the cupcake toppers provided with the game's decoration pack - or use alternative cupcake toppers of your choice.

1.3 Starters

 The Sixties was the decade of the cocktail parties, and anything with cocktail sticks was a hit. Try:

• Cheese and pineapple on sticks
  • Optionally arrange these into the famous "hedgehog" shape or add the sticks into an orange covered in tin foil. Colorful items such as cherry tomatoes, Maraschino cherries and olives were popular additions. Mini Silverskin Onions also go well.
• Cocktail sausages or miniature meatballs on sticks
• Shrimps or prawns on sticks
• Miniature flavored cream cheese "bites" sitting atop a slice of cucumber - use a cocktail stick to hold the hors d'oeuvre together

Food in "blankets" (bacon) was also hugely popular during the decade.  Optionally add a cocktail stick to the following:

• Pigs in blankets
• Olives in blankets
• Water chestnuts in bacon
• Cream cheese or tomato bites on bacon
• Vegetarian cocktail sausages wrapped in vegetarian bacon

Other options for starters:

• Salads, meats or fish encased with jelly or gelatin 
• Stuffed cherry tomatoes or stuffed celery slices
• Lipton onion soup dip
• Pate
• Prawn or shrimp cocktail
• Devilled eggs
• Mulligatawny soup 
• Cheese fondue served with crispy bread chunks, vegetables, meat cubes or even fruits such as apples and grapes
  • Note: if serving a cheese fondue, it may be best to serve this before the party begins to avoid delaying the game between the rounds. Alternatively, make it in advance and then reheat it. Note that some sites say cheese fondues can be reheated while others say it will make the cheese separate and become stringy; it might be best to experiment beforehand.
• Cheeseballs encased in a coating of your choice and served with Ritz Crackers
• Dips made with cream cheese - choose your recipe and serve with crusty bread and crudities
• Salad topped with garlic croutons, grated Gruyère and fried Spam
• Jelly salad. (See our Sexy Seventies Recipes for a delicious jelly, cucumber and sour cream salad that my mother used to make throughout the 60s and 70s.)

As an extra to many of these dishes, try some crisps introduced during the Sixties:

• Golden Wonder introduced cheese and onion crisps in 1962.
• Quavers were launched in 1968.

1.4 Mains

Swedish-style meatballs with grape jelly or lingonberry jam

Chicken à la King

Beef bourguignon

Shepherd's Pie

Duck a l'orange

Pineapple Meatballs

Steak and kidney pudding

Ham baked with pineapple

Oxtail stew

Meatloaf

Liver and onions

Meat or fish in a jelly mould with aspic

1.5 Desserts

• Tunnel of fudge
• Fruit in jelly
  • Note: for an adult version, try adding Prosecco, Vodka or an alcohol of your choice. Check a recipe to ensure the quantity of alcohol does not impair gelatin's ability to set the jelly.
• Cheesecake
• Black forest gateau
• Blancmange served with fruit such as stewed rhubarb
• Pink champagne cake
  • This is referenced several times within the murder mystery as the hippie commune delivered a pink champagne cake to Pearl for her birthday.
• Cupcakes topped with our themed cupcake toppers
• Cherries Jubilee - this delicious and impressive dish is said to have been invented to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee but it was a popular dish in the 1960s

You could keep desserts very simple and yet still bring back memories for those old enough to remember the decade. Serve a plate of Mr Kipling's French Fancies, a bowl of Angel Delight, or an Arctic Roll. 

1.6 Drinks

Cocktails such as Whiskey Sour, Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Sidecar, Bloody Mary, Martini or Gimlet.

Babycham

Teas and coffees could be served with the height of 60s sophistication - the "new" After Eights.

2 Our 60s Murder Mystery Test Party - Menu and Timings

2.1 Party Menu 1: Food Popular During the Sixties

For our first murder mystery party, we were catering for 14 people. We opted for food that was popular in the 1960s and chose options that we could make ahead so we could concentrate on enjoying the party.  

Starters

A choice of prawn cocktail, egg mayonnaise or shop pate. We served these with crusty bread.

Timings: We prepared these 2-3 hours before the party and kept the plates in the fridge. We sliced the crusty bread before the party and kept it cling-filmed. We put the butter in a butter dish to soften just before the party. At the end of round two, all we had to do was put the plates and the bread and butter on the table.

Mains

We opted for shepherd's pie as we could make this in advance and it was easy to serve a large number. We made both a normal and a vegetarian option. We served this with spiced red cabbage and peas.

Timings: We made the shepherd's pies and the red cabbage dish the night before and placed them in the fridge. We brought them to room temperature just before guests arrived and placed them in the oven at the end of the starters. At the end of the starters, we also boiled a full kettle of water. (This saved time when serving the main course.) At the end of round 4, we re-boiled the kettle of water and used this to steam the peas for 3-4 minutes. As the peas were steaming, guests were moving from the lounge to the dining room and getting themselves drinks.

Desserts

Lemon cheesecake or sherry and raspberry trifle. We served these with teas or coffees and that finale to posh 1960s dinner parties: After Eights.

Timings: we made the base and middle layers of both desserts the night before. On the afternoon of the party, we whipped the cream and added this to the top of the trifle. We also added sour cream to the top of the cheesecake. Shortly before the party, we added the berries to the top of the trifle and then swirled in lemon curd to the top of the cheesecake.

Note: had I thought of it at the time, I would have piped the lemon curd on the cheesecake in the shape of a peace sign and added colored cream to the top of the trifle in the shape of a heart. (See photos in section 1.2 above and section 2.2 below for how simple decorations can make such a difference to the cheesecake and trifle. Note that the same trifle and cheesecake recipes were used.)

2.2 Party Menu 2: Buffet Food Presented With a 60s Vibe

Buffet Mains

Devilled eggs with multicolored egg whites.

Selection of sandwiches cut into heart and flower shapes using cookie cutters.

Cheese and pineapple on sticks - with additional Maraschino cherries, mini Silverskin onions and cherry tomatoes.

Salmon mousse with a peace sign added on top with cucumber slices; crudities arranged in a flower shape around the central bowl.

Cream cheese dip with cheddar, mustard, and vegetarian bacon bits.

Watermelon cut into hearts and flower shapes with mint and balsamic dressing.

Lemon cookies cut into heart and flower shapes and then decorated with bright icing.

Pink champagne cake decorated with berry hearts and a peace sign.

Cheesecake decorated with a peace sign made out of piped lemon curd. Edible rice paper flowers were used as decoration.

Note: I added the edible rice paper flowers at the last minute to avoid the liquid in the sour cream making the flowers soggy.

For drinks, I kept things simple and chose a personal favorite of mine: Babycham.

3 Other Hosts' Food

3.1 Dinner Party for 6

Bonnie ran our Swinging Sixties murder mystery as one of her monthly "Dinner With Friends" meetings. She served:

• A cheese fondue with bread, fruit, and vegetables. This was served when guests first arrived before the murder mystery started.
• Steak Diane with roasted vegetables.
• Cherries Jubilee with homemade ice cream and a shortbread cookie dipped in chocolate and almonds. Cherries were flambéed at the table in front of her guests - this looked spectacular!
• She served Tango, tea, and coffee for drinks.

3.2 Vegan Pot Luck Buffet for 14 - 60s Style

Kelsi hired a beach house for her husband's 30th birthday and ran our mystery game as a focal point of the weekend. She asked each guest to bring a vegan version of the following dishes.

Buffet

Impossible Swedish meatballs 
Vegan shrimp cocktail 
Jello mould cake 
Macaroni or Macaroni salad 
Stuffed mushrooms 
Cobb salad
Braised dill potatoes
Fruit salad 
Vegan pigs in a blanket
Veggie antipasto platter 
Biscuits 
Citrus-avocado spinach salad
Asparagus roll-ups 
Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Drinks

Espresso Martinis 
Old Fashioned 
Vodka Gimlet
Mint Julep
Sidecar