Why was a glass of orange juice a starter?

[NutellaEllaElla]

I learned this recently. Is it true? What don't I know that might help me understand this?

Are prosciutto wrapped melon balls still all the rage as a starter at weddings?

Yes, I don't remember "fresh" orange juice being available regularly at home before about the mid 80s. In the late 70s, we occasionally had the Libby's stuff in a jar/ bottle that my dad was in charge of. We had very little of that as kids!

I noticed that the chips were called "French fried potatoes" on the Berni menu. That seems very 70s too.

Eating out was a big treat when I was a child. I remember being taken to see a film in the West End then going to a Chicken Inn where we ate chicken in a basket for which they gave you plastic gloves as you were supposed to eat it with your fingers. It was so exciting.

I remember once staying at a guest house, again in the 80s. You got bed, breakfast and evening meal. Not dinner or tea but evening meal. It seemed so posh, we might as well have been at the ritz. It was the classic orange juice steak and gateau type stuff. They also served alpen at breakfast which was very adventurous.

Ooh the dessert trolley in the good ole days when you, the waitress, would arrive at work at 5:30 pm , set up the dessert trolley with gateaux , rum babas, Charlotte rousse and a fresh fruit salad with a jug of cream. This trolley would be wheeled around in the heat until 10 pm when everything would go back in the fridge,to be got out again the next day….and the next…..and the next. Grim.

Ah catering early 80s style. The hotel I worked in was exactly how it worked.
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Ambrosia...

My dad used to send boxes of oranges to relatives for Christmas. One of my cousins told me years later how much they all looked forward to the arrival of the box.

I inherited my mother's "best" cutlery collection, all patiently gathered in the same design over several years, and one of the items which never gets an outing nowadays is the box of grapefruit spoons; the bowls of the spoons lengthen into a rounded point designed to scoop out the segments, So fresh "exotic" fruit, such a melon, could definitely be considered a course in its own right.
I attended a rather grand wedding as a young teenager, where I encountered nectarines for the first time; I think we sometimes forget how rare such things were unless one moved in very affluent circumstances.

Along with grapes for the I'll, not an every week purchase.

Ill 🤒

I have vintage grapefruit spoons! They have a slightly serrated edge to cut the segments out too. Love them!
I also remember a restaurant local to us growing up that had a sort of tall glass fridge where the Black Forest and desserts would be displayed. In the 80s they had fresh figs and cream, so sophisticated!

I read a book, it was an autobiography set in the 50/60s, and when they were children and got a cold, (I think five or six girls with just a mother)it was a huge treat that they would be bought a navel orange as they were really poor.

@mathanxiety Thats so nice. My aunty got brain damage in the seventies when she was about 4, no one thought she would pull through, she was allergic to penicillin, and my dad was only a few years older, and said their dad took a crate of fruit to the children's ward that cost £40 when she was in the all clear. He said it went down better than any chocolate or crisps with the kids which I never understood when I was young ❤

Gosh I’d forgotten this about Orange juice. Oh and shrimp cocktails I loved them.

I think this too. People ate differently then and these conversations are making me see how much we see as normal to eat now, as in lots more food for one meal. Yikes, although I don’t typically get a starter or dessert just a main but those servings are huge.

Oh yes! I'd be up for that - veggie though

Fruit juice starters (orange juice was very expensive back then)

Veggie scampi and chips or chicken in a basket

Black Forest cake for pud!

Buttered fresh sliced bread wrapped around asparagus.
Deviled eggs.
Pigs in Blankets - spicy saugages wrapped in bacon.
Cherubs on horseback - cream cheese stuffed prunes wrapped in bacon.
Devils on horseback - olives stuffed with a tiny piece of chilli wrapped in bacon
Angels on horseback - oysters wrapped in bacon.
Tomato juice.
Orange juice with fizz.
Melon balls with prawns.
Sardines or tomato on a dry biscuit.
Tooth pick with pinapple, cheese and ham.

Yes I had this in the early 90s as I wouldn't eat my main if I had a starter

My MIL still serves a slice of melon as a starter at celebration meals - birthdays etc.

I also remember egg mayonnaise as a starter in the 70s - egg cut in half on a bed of chopped lettuce covered in piped mayo with a sprinkle of paprika.

So a friend of mine is really into food history and reposts quite a few things and got me interested. it seems that menus gradually slimmed down in the 20th century, especially starting in the 1930s. Before that you'd see these massive multi course menus at nicer restaurants and dinner parties. That got gradually condensed into the modern 3-4 course menu. The original first course was something quite light (both US and UK which had fairly similar menus then). That stuck as the menus slimmed down and the starters could also include the soup and in America, the salad. But the choices were actually quite similar, I was a bit surprised to see it. Today in parts of the US those original first courses stick around in "relish trays" that come out at the beginning with olives and celery and radishes.

Older American menus also have the fruit juice or fruit cup/grapefruit starter, along with shellfish (if available). I remember visiting my American grandparents in the 1980s and while some of the bigger starters were getting popular there, the choice was still much simpler. But yes as a child it was prawn cocktail if you were lucky!

The modern more elaborate composed starters seem to have begun around the 1990s. So the menus shrunk and then grew again, it seems like. But at the posher places the portions really aren't massive I don't think, it's that the number of elements in any given dish that's changed. It's not enough now to just serve someone a slice of chocolate cake off the trolley; it's got to have a sauce and ice cream and nut brittle or some such.

Me too, especially at 70s prices,

Rationing didn't end until 1953, so the young adults of the 1970s/80s will have grown up with it, and smaller, less varied, more locally produced meals.

I remember in the 80's getting a carton of Just Juice. I was so excited, I kept opening the fridge to look at it.

We never ate out as a family in the 70's. I remember a friend said her parents had gone out with another couple for a meal. I was confused as I had no idea why they would do that 😁 The only food we ate out was fish and chips (a huge treat) or an ice cream at the seaside. I was allowed a 99 from the ice cream van.

After seeing a poster mention it on another thread I recently watched all episodes of the Supersizers on YouTube, all based on different time periods and one of the decades they featured was the 70s. Lots of ready meals and dried food 😁