DINNER parties are a staple of any social calendar and menus have changes a lot over the years. We take a look back at some classic dinner-party dishes from the 1950s through to the 2000s.

Dinner parties weren't hugely common in the 50s - this wasn't so long after the end of World War Two, and rationing was fresh in everyone's memories.

Starters would likely seem extremely dated to us now, dishes like devilled eggs or shrimp puffs.

The main event may have been a classic celebration of meat with roast with potatoes and vegetables on the side.

For dessert, any type of fruit cake was generally a hit.

By the 1960s, cocktails and nibbles to start the evening surged in popularity. One particular favourite was cheese and pineapple on a stick - ideally served stuck into half a grapefruit, hedgehog-style.

This was also a decade of experimenting with cocktails, and guests would be served drinks like whisky sours and sidecars.

Spaghetti Bolognese was seen as a wildly exotic and refined dish and was a common main meal at dinner parties, paired with red wine.

Trifle was a popular desert, the layers of fruit, sponge, custard and cream made it a perfect centrepiece to any table.

Heston Blumenthal once described the 70s as "the decade that good food forgot" but it was the age of the prawn cocktail which was the classic starter of the decade.

Duck a l'orange would often feature as the main course with Lemon meringue pie to finish. While many dishes from the 1970s haven't quite regained popularity, this is one dinner-party favourite that will still please many modern diners.

In the 1980s French cuisine was considered the pinnacle of fine dining with French onion soup a common starter.

Chicken was not as widespread as it is now and posh nosh would have included chicken kiev.

To end this (already very rich) meal, chocolate mousse would be a classic move. It might seem more like a children's dessert nowadays, but at the time, it was the height of sophistication.

French food was still popular throughout the 1990s, and pate was a common starter at any dinner party.

For mains in the Nineties, people were keen to move past your classic chicken dish (so Eighties!) and started experimenting with other birds, like quail.

Tiramisu became the dessert of choice at get-togethers, the coffee, ladyfingers, cocoa and mascarpone creation was hardly new but it found huge popularity during this decade.

The 2000s saw vegetarianism was on the rise and more shopping for organic produce.

Salads were a good way to show off fresh and local food so a starter might be a watermelon and feta salad.

For the main, if full veggie was off the menu, people went for opposite end of the food spectrum, perhaps a juicy steak. Popular in restaurants, people were following suit at home - something which could be down to the ubiquitous low-carb/high-protein Atkins diet.

Finishing off a meal with a flourish would possibly have meant whipping up a creme brulee for pud.

Spare a thought for all those who have kitchen blow-torches cluttering up their kitchen cupboards; they probably haven't been used since 2009.