Cooking in the 1970s

[ambereeree]

I've been watching Delia Smith cookery shows from the 1970s and some things really stood out so if you were an adult then please enlighten me.
Delia introduces dried beans and lentils as a food of the future because meat is expensive and scarce and we'll all be eating more plant based substitutes. Of course we all know now meat is cheap and not great quality but people eat loads. What was it like in the 1970s?
Also most of her dishes are European-did you cook Indian/Chinese food in the 1970s?
I was born at the end of the 70s and am not ethnically English so always had non English food. I remember my mum making Indian savoury snacks and taking them into an mainly white English primary school and the teachers all excitedly gathering to have a taste of spicy foods.

Fruit juice was a real novelty too! At least fresh juice was - it was usually bottled and long life stuff - orange, grapefruit or tomato only! My mum used to buy a pack of frozen orange juice that was in a cardboard tube - I think it was concentrated, so you made it up with water.

The Keith Floyd tv shows were very entertaining. They must be worth finding. His French book is extremely good, he explains in an entertaining way.
In an interview he praised Marguerite Patten, her books taught me to cook. He also praises Elizabeth David, her first books on French Cooking inspired me to change from Vesta in my bedsit days to real cooking.

I'm remembering more things now - early 80s, grapes were out in winter as they came from South Africa and I boycotted South African goods because of apartheid. My parents did use some ingredients that were considered exotic, they liked olives, fresh herbs and seafood. I think they were more open to experimenting as they had been going on holiday to Spain and France since the mid 50s, and tried new things there (their first holiday abroad was to Mallorca in 1955 - it cost them 10 guineas each - a lot of money at the time). My mum was a good cook, and we ate well. Her baking was wonderful. I still miss her lemon meringue pie, chocolate eclairs and florentine biscuits. Dad wasn't a bad cook either. He liked making jam and pickles too, and there was a bit of a craze for home brewing and wine making in the 70s (I remember Demi-johns bubbling away in the spare room). He would have to visit fish merchants at Hull, Grimsby, and the north east coast of England and Scotland for work, and would come back with loads of fresh fish and seafood. We had a freezer from the early 70s, and that was always full.

@ScribblingPixie

Cakes were only home made, I don't know whether you could buy them but I guess we couldn't afford

M&S. My friend's mum didn't bake (heresy) and used to buy a raspberry jam victoria sponge or a swiss roll from M&S every Saturday. Also trad bakers - we used to get doughnuts, bread pudding & iced buns from ours occasionally.

They weren't only homemade - we were allowed a cake each from the bread shop when my mum bought bread for the week. Things like coconut macaroons, fondant fancies, doughnuts. Note the bread shop - this was before supermarkets widely had in-store bakeries baking fresh bread every day.

I think Delia is quite ahead of her time with her suggesting for lentils and beans to replace meat.

We still have the Hamlyn All colour cookbook. DH used it today to make a cake.
DM was very traditional and food was a combination of potatoes, mashed boiled or chipped, veg,sausages, ham, corned beef, belly pork, tinned salmon or chops and eggs. Roasts on Sunday but rarely chicken, bacon and egg for lunch on Saturdays. I became a vegetarian as soon as I was old enough to cook for myself.

I had my first pizza in 1978 when my best friend made them in Home Economics.

I was a child in the 70s, living in a small town with very little ethnic diversity. Mum liked to cook everything from scratch- with food mainly bought from market stalls in town. She considered any pre-packaged foods to be a waste of money so things like cheese spread, angel delight and 'dream topping' (a sort of fake cream made from powder) that my friends often ate were seen as a real treat.
Dad often worked overseas and brought back stories of exotic food and occasionally some to try.

The combination of this with mum's determination to cook all meals from ingredients that could be bought on the market was...interesting. I remember her version of pizza was a base made a bit like large flat scone and topped with tinned tomatoes and cheddar cheese (no herbs, garlic or other toppings).

I'm loving this thread and learning a lot about why my mother cooked the way she did for us in the 90s, she stuck with what she knew from her childhood rather than expanding her horizons. She still insists she hates garlic!

I remember my uncle, who worked in lighting for the BBC, saying that Fanny Craddock chain-smoked (and dropped ash) into everything through any rehearsals and that the crew would only eat what she cooked during the recording. Ugh.

Anyone remember The Galloping Gourmet?

Graham Kerr... the Galloping Gourmet?

My mum and dad used to eat some disgusting things- tripe and elder, muscles with vinegar on, sardines on toast, liver and kidneys, beef dripping fat on bread, tapioca pudding... never got used to any of these!

Delia was also young so appealed to a generation of people cooking for families in a way the likes of Fanny Craddock in her posh frocks didn't. Delia also did a cookery slot on Swap Shop aimed at kids. She did bang on about "freshly ground black pepper" a lot.

Thursday was shopping day and the best day of the week. DM didn’t drive so would go to the minimarket by bus and do a shop then a big cardboard box would arrive a couple of hours later with her groceries.
Tea would be a baguette with banana and a strawberry ski yoghurt and my Jackie magazine would be waiting when I got home from school. (And of course Thursdays meant TOTP to diverge from food)

That's the one @XingMing
Sardines on toast isn't disgusting @FreekStar

I have Delia's How to Cook series of books, and still use them.

My gran was a great traditional cook. Her casseroles and brisket roasts were always delicious, as were puddings, pies and cakes.

My mother on the other hand chucked everything into the pressure cooker with an Oxo cube and hoped for the best. Serve with plain mashed or boiled potatoes, no butter.

We had cheap cuts of meat or mince, veg and potatoes cooked this way every single night unless it was ham and lentil soup, also made in the pressure cooker obviously. Fridays were usually fish, which was whiting fried in flour and egg. Hot pudding every day but she didn’t like giving us too much sugar in the custard so pretty tasteless.

There were only 2 big supermarkets, one wasn’t even in the same city, and you went there as a special trip every few weeks to buy tins, huge tubs of margarine and toilet roll. Fruit, veg, meat and fish were bought separately and we were always going into the Co-op because you got milk tokens for children that you did something with in there.

John Tovey was another TV cook/chef who was popular in the 70s.

I’m half Asian so had lots of curries (not always so great I remember not liking a fish curry (which I still don’t like) and being forced to eat it)

On my English side my nanny would cook curry mince it was vile she would add sultanas and the rice was boil in a bag rice
But she made great roast dinners and meat pie

I remember eating mince (in gravy with mash), stewing steak, lamb chops, sausages. pork chops 🤢, I don’t remember eating chicken apart from in a curry

I remember supermarkets in the 1970s- Where I lived we had Asda, Hillards, and a Morrisons and a co-op nearby - we shopped at them weekly for essentials but also shopped at the local independent shops and market too.

Lots of mince and suspicious looking steakettes which came from the butchers and were like thin, tough burgers. I shudder to think what was in them!

I'm going to look for some of her cook books when the charity shops open.

Seedless grapes were less ubiquitous back then, too. Got a shock when I got some seeded grapes from the greengrocer, last year.

No one drank much wine either down our way. I remember we’d have half a glass of Mateus Rose at Christmas lunch. Then a few years later chianti and Liebfraumilch and Laski Riesling became popular. Home made wine was a big thing though and DM had Demi johns fermenting all over the place. In the 80s we all got into Sicilian red in a big way.

Sardines on toast is delicious.

I was bringing up my family in the seventies. We (DH and I have always shared the cooking) cooked Italian dishes, curries, lots of casseroles - beef carbonnade, goulash, quiches, vegetarian dishes with pulses etc. Duck à l'orange was our favourite special occasion meal 😀. We used Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Robert Carrier, Ada Boni, and the Galloping Gourmet amongst others, for inspiration.
My MiL had lived in Cairo for years and was a very adventurous cook. She used to walk miles to find avocados. We were lucky enough to live in a big multi-cultural city so spices were never a problem.
I read these threads and 😮 at the things people think weren't available.