Cooking in the 1970s

We had a lot more vegetarian meals like cheese dishes such as macaroni cheese, cauliflower cheese, Welsh Rabbit/rarebit and egg dishes like Spanish Omelettes, souffles, quiches and jam omelettes.

There were more pastry bakes like sausage or fish flan, boiled bacon rolls, tuna fish or bacon and sausage meat pie, fish pasties, curried fish pasties, mince meat pie. Lots of dumplings and cobblers. We had home made pizzas but with a scone base.

I also remember powdered orange that you made into juice by adding water.

Mince was served with Pearl barley (which I didn't like) to make it go further

You would have hated the WWII recipe I saw the other day for “barley mince”, which was pearl barley, flavoured and coloured with gravy browning and Oxo to make an unconvincing imitation mince.

I remember Danish open sandwiches being on the afternoon tea menu at the John Lewis silver service restaurant. They were the most expensive item by far, twice the price of everything else, so we weren't allowed to order them. TBF, as exotic and exciting as they sounded to us, they were still less enticing than the chocolate eclairs so we didn't really care

The other item that fascinated us was the mysterious "hors d'oeuvres"on the lunch menu. We knew what they were from an Enid Blyton story where the children begged to be allowed to order them in a restaurant so they sounded very alluring. They too were eye-wateringly expensive compared to the other starters (the ubiquitous soup of the day or orange juice) so we never got to order them. They were probably just a devilled egg, something on a piece of melba toast and devils on horseback or something else equally uninspiring and of the era.

My other memory of lunches with my DGPs there is that the waitresses always seemed to look scandalised that we were allowed to order from the adult menu as small children. They clearly thought we were spoilt. The children's menu wasn't designed for fussy eaters, it was more a case that steak and salmon were too good for children. The children's menu was the same as the adult menu (with smaller portions) but it only had the cheapest options.

On reflection, the whole idea of going out for lunch or dinner at a formal restaurant in a department store seems rather bizarre now. It really was incredibly formal, with starched white linen and heavy cutlery, the manager in a morning suit and waitresses in black dresses with lace caps. I suppose going to a "proper" restaurant wasn't suitable for children but JL was family friendly.

That all changed in the 80s, as did the JL restaurant. We thought it was rather exciting when they swapped it for a self service food court with a creperie and soda fountain. My DGPs didn't feel the same way

80’s rather than 70’s, but I remember my dad watching Ken Hom, and buying a wok and a Chinese cookbook which was all very exciting!
We also had a lot of chips with things, or smash instant mashed potatoes. I remember peas, broccoli, and cauliflower, but no exotic veg. Salad was lettuce, tomato and cucumber, with salad cream or vinegar. I think they discovered M&S french dressing in about 1990!

Libby's Spanish Rice

One dish my mum used to make was stuffed peppers. Green peppers (because they were all you could get originally), stuffed with Libby's Spanish Rice (from a tin). A sort of tomatoey, onion and pepper rice, if I remember rightly.

We used to buy every new chocolate when it came out to give it a go - the first box of Revels was quite an event.

Ooh, I'd forgotten about Taxis. They were my favourite. I liked Blue Ribands too - very similar. Strangely my Mum always bought Taxis but our next door neighbour always got Blue Ribands, both because they considered the other inferior for some reason!

This thread is a sociological gold mine!
I'm reading every post which I rarely do

@mumsnet could it be saved in Classics please?

Oh yes, the Danish open sandwiches were a thing - I remember pics of them in an old cookery book. My mum did a whole party themed around them once - so colourful. Another thing we had that I loved was suet roly poly with bacon inside and an onion sauce. I made it when it was so cold the other week for the first time myself but put mushroom in instead of bacon & it was delicious.

Some of the wrapped biscuits, like Clubs and Taxis didn't have proper chocolate on them. They've been upgraded since the 70s!

I used to love a paste sandwich. The poshest sandwiches at birthday parties were Philadelphia!

Anyone remember Shipham's Salmon and Shrimp Paste? It was THE thing to have a kids' parties in the 60s instead of the previous jam sandwiches and jelly! Goodness know what was in it!

Best thing was homemade crinkle cut chips deep fried in dripping mmmmmm

I loved chicken paste on toast and I also loved sandwich spread too. I couldn’t face them now. So grim!

Pudding was usually tinned fruit with either evaporated milk over the top or a slice of vanilla ice cream from long block in the freezer. I loved drinking the syrup out the bottoms of the bowls when my mum wasn’t looking.

I grew up in the seventies and never realised how lucky I had things and what a varied diet I had. We had meat all the time but smaller portion sizes of it.

I remember having rissoles a lot - ground up meat patties. I remember more fish and more chicken thighs and drumsticks, lots of cottage pie, shepherds pie, Lancashire hotpot, toad in the hole - sausages were better quality, cornish pasties, scotch pies, cheese and onion pasties, home made sausage rolls, meat loaf, marrows stuffed with sausage meat.

Pasta was either tinned spaghetti hoops or sticks and mostly dried macaroni or spaghetti. There was more tinned meat, fish and seafood. We had tinned prawns and cod's roe.

We had a lot of french cooking and just a few spanish and italian dishes like paella and macaroni cheese, spag bol or very occasionally lasagne. I recall having risottos and tandoori drumsticks or thighs or sweet and sour chicken and rice or Goulash. We had kedgeree for weekend breakfasts or smoked kippers. We had very basic curries with rice too - medium or hot served with fried coconut, chopped boiled eggs, mango chutney, sliced bananas and including dried fruit cooked with it.

We had mushrooms but it was mostly the huge ones or dried ones. Courgettes were sliced and fried with almonds or in ratatouille. I think we had tinned peppers not fresh ones. Peas were dried peas, soaked then cooked to make mushy peas or we had tinned pease pudding.

Moussaka was one of the only Greek dishes I remember - done with potato slices; we had taramasalata too but not houmous or olives. We had danish open sandwiches and rolls and pickled herring. In fact lots of pickles. Lots of sandwiches with meat or fish paste.

I remember having lots of rice pudding,semolina, jams roly poly, spotted dick, banana in custard, tinned pears in chocolate sauce, tinned fruit salads, baked stuffed apples, curds and whey and junket, blancmange and jelly and carnation.

We had a Pizza land in Southampton, late 70s, I think. A bit behind Brighton .

I preferred Smash too, as it had no lumps. School instant mash was horrible, in fact the main meals for school dinners were awful: spaghetti bolognaise = mince with a tin of spaghetti mixed in, goulash = orange coloured stew, curry = yellow coloured stew and a "chicken" pie with some unidentified orange/pink meat! We filled up on cooked puddings instead: crumble and custard, sponge and custard, gypsy tart, peach conde - semolina + tinned peaches, rice pudding...

Salmon was really expensive, both salmon and trout were fished locally but we only ever had trout at rare restaurant outings.
I remember having smoked salmon sandwiches at a rich aunt's and being shocked it seemed raw. Does anyone remember those fish and meat pastes? Not nice.

We didn't have salmon very often as it was really expensive. Prices only came down when commercial fish farming took off, but that wasn't reliably established until the mid/late 70s.

We drove out to the country on Saturdays to buy sackfuls of fruit and vegetables which were stored in a shed next to the house. It was my job to bring in a bowl of potatoes each afternoon and some else's to peel them.

My other chore was to bring in the crate of milk bottles delivered to the gate each morning.

At dinner we ate corned beef, roast beef, sausages, pizza, meatloaf, Shepherd's pie, liver & bacon, or roast chicken on special. occasions. Turkey and ham on Christmas.

Vegetables were potatoes either boiled, mashed, baked or roasted,with boiled carrots, peas, beans or salad. Very simple.
Weekend lunches were savaloys or corn on the cob with buttered bread.

School lunches were sandwiches and an apple.

On the weekends there was baking, maybe ginger crunch or chocolate crunch, Albert square or jam roll.

No sweets except sometimes Woollies pick 'n' mix after shopping day (Friday.) Sweets came from agricultural shows and the like - a quarter of jazzy buttons from the Peter Symonds van. Town-dwelling friends did get to spend pocket money at shops, so occasionally, there would be a sticky paper bag handed round with cola cubes, or pineapple cubes or sherbet lemons, or aniseed balls or sherbet pips. Chewy bananas or shrimps. And packets of candy cigarettes. I remember once in the holidays, we were at a friend's for the day, in a village up the road. We went to the corner shop and they had Spangles and space dust! Her mother was ace - we slept in the caravan in the garden and were allowed to have midnight feasts. (We read loads of Blyton.)

Blast from the past. I loved the orange ones.
I can still sing the Trio add

Oh yes! I loved a United. I'm amazed they don't make them any more.

McVities United bar

And biscuits were only very occasionally of the chocolate variety - usually digestives, or Rich Tea, custard creams or bourbons. Sometimes Peek Freans sandwich biscuits - a bit like Jammy Dodgers but with a pink cream filling.

When I was very young we had relatives who worked at Fox's in Batley so biscuits were always broken and in huge plastic bags. We would have a tin of biscuits at Xmas.

Fox's made (probably still do) biscuits for M and S so we had some really nice posh biscuit pieces.

Remember Uniteds? The king of chocolate biscuits!