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What did you have for tea in the 60s & 70s?

334 replies

bbcessex · 06/11/2018 13:02

I’m a 70s child with a very poor memory!!

looking at the housework thread made me wonder what a typical meal plan looked like in the 60s & 70s?

I can remember a lot of pies & stews, and chips with omelette.. what did you have ?!

OP posts:
user1484400574 · 07/11/2018 14:50

60s child
You have to remember 1st and foremost every food eaten was seasonal back then.

My mum was a great cook, worked P/T school term. She would prep the night/morning before, peel potatoes sort veg etc.

We had lots of soups, made from butchers bones, ham hough, ribs, veg, broth, lentil sometimes with butter beans in it, tomato soup had small boiled potatoes in it delish. Lots of bread and butter with soup and evening meals.
Puddings were great, crumbles of every fruit, baked rice with raisins yum, tapioca frog spawn we called it, semolina and jelly & custuard was made from custard powder.

Full cooked breakfast on Sundays porridge or toast the rest of the week. Butter not marg home made jam great days out picking from hedgerows blackcurrants red currents yum.
Plenty salads in summer she put tinned peaches in them with home made thin sliced chips salad cream cold meats, jar beetroot and pickles yum.
Lots of stews beef lamb chicken with veg in delish. Fish in milk with mashed potatoes. Always bough a big sack of them and trays of eggs from local green grocer. Lots of veg carrots leeks fresh peas turnip caulis cabbage brussel sprouts green beans, hated broccoli kale. Loved rhubarb stick raw with a little sugar wrapped in a paper when out playing.
Butcher for all meat, chicken pork beef, loved a silverside or brisket roast on Sundays gravy to die for.
Lots of scrambled egg on toast, lunches omelettes eggy bread yum.
Usual

Always two courses Sundays 3 always a soup roast and pudding loved Sunday dinners.
Nothing was shop bought always cooked from scratch very little convenience food we had.
Every school holiday dad would take us out for a meal mum loved that. Sunday best clothes on, varied where we would go. Sit in chip tea, local hotel a real treat, or to the coast if the weather was nice to a cafe. Fab days still remember them.
Sometimes at the weekend we would get an ice cream or ice lolly from the ice cream van than came around most days.
Odd sweet but not a lot as usually full till next meal. Drank water all the time with meals big jug on the table, milk and tea as I got older.
Latterly she would cook pasta, rice, chili con carne curries etc.
We never got a choice nor did mum cook more than one meal, you ate it or had bread and butter, we loved her cooking apart from dads liver he wanted occasionally, we got soup and a sandwich then.
Always fresh fruit in the house again seasonal fruit, used to look forward to strawberry season the best.

As I grew up with this type of cooking/eating I done the same for our family, always try to cook what is in season, usually cheaper too.
Taste so much nicer and can be done with a little ahead preparation as I work term time like my mum did.

Now our family are parents them selves they do as I and my mum did, with the odd convenience meal as a time saver.
Their children eat what is cooked and in the main they do, they dont cook more than one meal.

I really think we were more active in those days and ate what was offered with meals very little snacks, as we were hungry when meal times came around, we had no after school clubs apart from brownies/guides or scouts for my brother.

woollyheart · 07/11/2018 15:21

We had fairy cakes - baked in a metal tray with moulded shell shapes.

Penguinsetpandas · 07/11/2018 16:06

We didn't have anything not plain/British at home so no spag bol, no chilli, no Indian, no Chinese. Got Chinese in the 80s and that was wonderful. First time I had spag bol was in London at around 20, chilli was even later. Made pizza once in a lesson in 80s but never had that at home. We were deepest countryside which may have affected things. Food we eat now is totally different and only the roasts, and sweets remain with the odd steamed pudding but now with fresh custard. And the squash we have now isn't chemical soup. We eat Chinese, Indian, Italian, French as well as odd English meal and can also afford things like steak which parents couldn't in 70s. After school was generally beans on toast then which "advanced" to a microwave meal in 80s. Though it has improved partly as I married a French husband who is a wonderful cook.

AdaColeman · 07/11/2018 16:12

Moulded shell shapes ~ they were Madeleine moulds, how lovely!

Nuggetsandwich · 07/11/2018 16:19

Mince and mash
Arctic roll
Angel delight
Rice pudding
Roasts
Gammon with leek sauce and boiled potatoes
Stews and dumpling
Chops
Egg and chips
Spaghetti bolognaise
Vienetta
Liver and onions
And my Dad made a good curry now and then.

Sarahb1969 · 07/11/2018 16:39

I still have my Mum's Hamlyn all colour cookbook 😀 The chocolate mousse recipe was for dinner parties!!

We lived in Cornwall and had a door to door fishman. We had monkfish tails as poor man's scampi - what a dream now.

Does anyone remember the orange juice that came in a small plastic tube from the freezer section that was defrosted and rehydrated with water???? It was a real treat.

Most weeks where like other pp. I do make the Sunday roast last at least two days - but no minced up cold meat shepherd's / cottage pie! Can't stand the texture and hate it still.

My DM and MIL both got their first microwaves for those little mini pizzas - thought they where buying into the whole readymade thing when everything almost had been made from scratch. Tinned carrots and peas where about as fast food as we got!! Although Dad might slip in a Fray Bentos pie if Mum was working or on a course - very, very rare.

I am still very much a cook after the old ways (with much less chips and potatoes) - but then I think that it's a pretty balanced diet with some slight tweaks. My DH and DC are all fit and healthy so it can't be all bad.

thenightsky · 07/11/2018 17:00

I still have my Mum's Hamlyn all colour cookbook

I have that book too. I got it when I did A-level Home Economics at school in 76! I still make the tuna fish pie recipe regularly. Smile

Graphista · 07/11/2018 17:03

"Are stovies tattie soup?" Err no

Recipes vary regionally even by family precisely but basically a stew of red meat (usually lamb or beef - it's a "using up the roasts leftovers" recipe), potatoes and onions, stock and seasoning (almost everyone I know uses a lot of black pepper!) plus any roast style veg leftovers that need using - carrots, swede whatever.

Liverpudlian friends think it's very similar to scouse.

MrsPear - I have a dd who was born in the wrong decade for sure! Despite the potato hatred she likes traditional quite plain food. Stews & casseroles, roasts, meat pies, fry ups, meat & 2 veg (as long as no tatties 😂 unless it's instant mash - only potato she'll eat. She prefers dumplings, bread & butter or rice it or noodles with them - weird kid 😂), haggis.

But we also like pasta dishes, stir frys (not too spicy though), more "adventurous" stews/casseroles type dishes like ghoulash and stroganoff, mild curries, chinese style food, if we eat out (not often and not at all at the moment as my agoraphobia bad) she likes going for Japanese or even Thai or Korean, but she has certain things she likes and rarely varies, whereas as long as it's veggie I'll try most things.

MrsKoala - I get what you're saying, but also several of the items you mention were not only not the norm for the time but also expensive - even now! Eg veal.

"how could I have known it wouldn’t have garlic? Why doesn’t it?!)" because garlic is a more Mediterranean herb and when stovies developed wasn't grown in Scotland (or indeed likely any part of the U.K.). Durham being so close to Scotland it's not surprising there's some crossover of foods/traditions as even "back on the day" there'd be some migration of scots to northern English towns and cities - there's even parts of England that were once part of Scotland.

Now getting lots of mentions of soup. There was ALWAYS a pan of soup on the go - would be prepped Sunday while mum sorted the roast and in a huge pan (basically a cauldron!!) and lasted all week and 😱 stayed in the pan not refrigerated or frozen. Mum would ladle a little into a smaller pan and reheat, how did we not get food poisoning?! Usually scotch broth but sometimes "plain" lentil, potato and leek, cock-a-leekie, oxtail (which I wish there were a veggie version of!) but rarely was soup at dinner time, it was more a lunch dish or sometimes as a snack (how heakthy is that?!) if we were hungry after school - mind you a "piece n jam" was also used for this (not so heakthy)

We (the kids) were all slim and fit.

MrsKoala · 07/11/2018 17:37

Graphista - I don’t know about cost then (late 70s and 80s), but we were comfortable with money - but that’s different from being posh. You can be posh and poor or working class and rich. They were in a group who had done well from social factors. My dad had grown up in slum housing, so he certainly wasn’t/isn’t posh - he still talks in rhyming slang!

I think all the meals on that list are very of their time. If I went to a restaurant and saw that list I’d think i’d gone back in time to the 70s. A lot of things on the thread like shepherds pie etc are timeless, however, but those are very time specific to me. Like sun dried tomatoes are very late 80s early 90s. It’s just fashion.

Like sultanas in curries - just why!?

woollyheart · 07/11/2018 17:45

Yes, always sultanas in curry! I don't even like sultanas in cake!

MrsKoala · 07/11/2018 17:51

When mil died a few years ago I got her cook books and the ones from the 70s - particularly curry recipes are hilarious. They contain Branson pickle and sultanas and hardly any spice whatsoever. I am tempted to try some of them to see how bad they can be!

Mitzimaybe · 07/11/2018 17:56

Polony! Mentioned upthread; how had I forgotten that? Apparently I once asked for it for my birthday tea. I have no recollection of that but I'm sure my mum didn't make it up. I hate to think what's in it.

Veg included cauliflower cheese, cabbage (boiled to mush) with paprika sprinkled on it (we wuz dead sophisticated, see) and turnip (which southerners would call swede) which was also boiled to mush-with-some-tough-fibres-in-it.

Mitzimaybe · 07/11/2018 17:56

I always felt jealous of friends who got Angel Delight. We never had that. I probably liked the name as much as the taste.

Talith · 07/11/2018 17:57

70/80s kid here. For a while it was some Whole Living lentil and bulgar collective gloop, quiches, nutloaf, Sunday lunches at my nans with a roast or beef casserole then tea with tomatoes and meat paste on bread followed by jelly, and then after a few years I think my mum returned to work and it was packet Lean Cuisine microwave meals and tinned soup. The old big tin shared four ways.

Talith · 07/11/2018 17:58

Oh yes swede! Mashed with buttery carrot. A staple.

WhentheRabbitsWentWild · 07/11/2018 17:59

1970s

Chicken Casserole
Stew
Roast chops with trimmings
Omelettes
Prawn Cocktail (if out or Mum was entertaining)
Chicken in a Basket (see above, if at a pub)
Ploughmans lunch (pub usually)

Puddings
Tinned fruit and evaporated milk
Syrup sponge minis (came in little pots)
Cake
Rice Pudding

WhentheRabbitsWentWild · 07/11/2018 18:00

And Angel Delight My aunt worked where it was produced in Banbury and sometimes would post down quite a lot to family in London .

catinboots9 · 07/11/2018 18:01

The first few answers on this thread remind me of Shirley Valentine

stclair · 07/11/2018 18:01

Mum was a good cook but these do sound a bit grim:

Chow mein - mince and cabbage cooked in electric frying pan with a spoonful of chicken noodle soup mix thrown in (was actually very nice!)

Sausages with a gravy made to include raisins and baked in the oven with grated carrot on top 😋

Silverside cooked in pressure cooker with onions and carrots with mustard sauce - mmmmm

Mum’s famous “vegetable “ soup which had a ham hock at the bottom of the stock pot!

Flounders

Always a pudding, usually fruit based with a crumble on top of some sort.

stclair · 07/11/2018 18:02

Oh, and Mum always bottled her own peaches and bottled tomato soup. Sooo good!

TheQueef · 07/11/2018 18:04

Haslet or potted meat from the slab at the butchers were our best pack up, on white, always involved a home made scotch egg the size of a football.
No cutlery and you couldn't get your gob around it Grin
Sliced onion and cucumber pickled in malt.
Lump of cheese.
Slice of fruit cake.
Apple or pear.

Being the youngest amongst brothers I had smaller portions so packing up was a banquet for me.

MrsKoala · 07/11/2018 18:10

Does anyone else remember orange juice being served as a starter in restaurants? I remember one restaurant having a set meal and you either had a thimble of juice OR egg mayonnaise (half a boiled egg with a dollop of mayo and a sprinkling of paprika) as a starter.

ScreamingValenta · 07/11/2018 18:14

Oh, yes - chicken in a basket when we went out! I used to souse it with half a bottle of vinegar. It never occurred to me to worry about what bacteria might be lurking in the wicker basket (which was always lined with a red paper napkin),

rogueantimatter · 07/11/2018 18:14

Boiled beef with barley and veg soup made in the same pot
Smoked fish
Gammon and pineapple
Boiled bacon and cabbage
Liver and onion casserole
Another Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie household here
Beef stew - yum
Vesta chicken curry
Bacon and eggs for a sunday treat
Sausage and baked bean casserole
Spag bol
Prawn cocktail
Home made meatballs
Roast chicken
Not much pasta
Not much spice
Salad - hard boiled eggs, tinned veg salad, cold ham, lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes
Mince with tatties and neeps mashed together ( clapshot) and white pudding
Corned beef slices with tatties and veg
Corned beef hash.
Tinned Goblin hamburgers
Tinned meatballs
Quiche

High tea type 'supper' hours after dinner at 9.30pmish if visitors were in of white filled rolls and home made baking and biscuits. Yum.

VioletCharlotte · 07/11/2018 18:16

I was born mid 70s, so my memory may be more of the 80's, but I remember having -
Fish fingers, mashed potato and beans/ peas
Lamb chops
Roast
Sausages
Casserole (used to detest it!)

Pudding was usually -
Angel delight or ice cream with Swiss roll/ tinned fruit
Tinned rice pudding (occasionally with jam - yuck!)

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