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.

I'm still a sucker for a Vesta. Particularly the Paella. Can't seem to get it now....

hansgrueber it was Dorothy Sleightholme in her Yorkshire kitchen. There was also an afternoon TV programme called Houseparty, where a young (ish) Mary Berry was the cookery expert.
For anyone who likes food nostalgia there is a fab cook book called The Prawn Cocktail Years. Crêpes Suzette, Osso Bucco, Chicken Kiev, Beef Wellington and so on.

@Monty27

Great thread OP. I was growing up in 70s. In my teens Chinese restaurants were a trendy thing. My DM would think I was really sophisticated when I started eating Vesta curries and even yogurt? She'd buy them specially for me even though no-one else in our 7 strong household ate them. I think she felt posh 🤣🤣

Oh and some of the veggie stews and stuff mentioned upthread would be nothing to do with health. It was to do with not being able to afford meat. It's a great topic really and brought back lovely memories ☺️

I think the veggie stuff was to do with health. The Cranks cookbook was very popular. Made you fart though. 😂

Ken Hom I’d say started early 80s.

I was born in the latter part of the 70s. Mum had Delia in her kitchen, but I don"t think she referred to it much. We began having more Forrin foid from the late 80s, but itwas usually convenience food, like jar sauces, packet sauces, or ready made from the supermarket. I went to the Deep Pan Pizza Co in about 1990 for my birthday. It was the first time I had pizza (apart from the terrible small ones with plasticky cheese from Asda). I had curry when I was about 10 on a school trip to a restaurant whilst we were doing India as a topic. I remember not liking it much! Now I eat lots of world foods.

My uncle, who passed away a few years ago, was at my mum's house once in about 2010 and declared he couldn't eat most of the food she'd laid on because it had Forrin ingredients in it, like garlic, peppers and lollo rosso leaves. My mum had to make him a special plain salad and sent my dad out for unseasoned burgers and chicken.

@tatianaBis I just watched one of his old shows as well and he's talking about the best wok.
@RampantIvy the shows on iplayer are 1984.
I'm really enjoying watching the old cookery shows.

I read these threads and 😮 at the things people think weren't available.

I agree. My DGM used to come for tea every week and would bring home baked cakes (including brownies, although they were a bit unusual), bags of sweets and chocolate I imagine half of MN passing out, comics and exotic/out of season fruit as a treat. Things like pomegranates, cape gooseberries (kiwi), dragon fruit, horned melons, kumquats, pomelos, ugli fruit, star fruit, lychees, physalis, mulberries, passion fruit, grenadillo, imported strawberries. Avocado pears were a popular starter. I've no doubt they were luxury items and supply was seasonal but she bought them in Sainsburys or her local greengrocer.

Curry (with sultanas), spag bol, and sweet and sour pork were on the lunch menu at my infant school in 1975 so presumably were thought of as mainstream foods.

This might be a local anomaly, but I remember Waitrose being slightly downmarket in the 70s. JL was as middle class as ever but Waitrose wasn't until the 80s. It could be that where I lived it was on the "wrong" side of town and was a bit small and dingy with less choice compared to the other supermarkets. I also seem to remember it stocking mostly Waitrose own brands (a bit like M&S). We only ever went there if we happened to be passing and needed something urgently.

Does anyone else remember Waitrose in the 70s? The M&S food halls were tiny, expensive, with a very limited range.

not sure if anyone has linked this yet
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=what%27s+for+dinner1970%27s

very good historical perspective.

a canadian version

Another uncle married a Chinese woman in the 80s. Chinese Auntie took me to London Chinatown with my brother (they lived there) and bought us something called Dragon Eyes in her first language. She didn't know the name in English. They were light brown, the flesh was white, and a big hard black seed was in the middle. The stalks were tied together. They were sweet and I ate so many I was nearly sick! It wasn't until I was much older that I realised they were lychees. I also tried mooncake, but I've never been a fan.

@HilaryThorpe

hansgrueber it was Dorothy Sleightholme in her Yorkshire kitchen. There was also an afternoon TV programme called Houseparty, where a young (ish) Mary Berry was the cookery expert. For anyone who likes food nostalgia there is a fab cook book called The Prawn Cocktail Years. Crêpes Suzette, Osso Bucco, Chicken Kiev, Beef Wellington and so on.

I was just thinking we should club together and write a cookery book. It would be great to compare food fads say how beans and lentils were considered as cheap food and being unable to afford meat. And now they're expensive and the food of the gods. Despite what people think about meat being cheap these days. It's only cheap because it's intensively farmed. Organic meat is unaffordable for many too. Round in circles.

I will look out for them @ambereeree. I have been watching some old Madhur Jaffrey cookery shows. She was a massive influence in my love for Indian cookery. I remember when it was so difficult to get hold of fresh coriander.

@StillGoingToWork

Another uncle married a Chinese woman in the 80s. Chinese Auntie took me to London Chinatown with my brother (they lived there) and bought us something called Dragon Eyes in her first language. She didn't know the name in English. They were light brown, the flesh was white, and a big hard black seed was in the middle. The stalks were tied together. They were sweet and I ate so many I was nearly sick! It wasn't until I was much older that I realised they were lychees. I also tried mooncake, but I've never been a fan.

They are like lychees but they aren't lychees. Lychees come in a pink casing and are a bit bigger. I prefer moon pie without the egg but my ds loves it

@RampantIvy was strange to see a young Ken Hom.
What's quite nice about the old shows is that they make simple dishes and use fewer ingredients. I'm not a great cook so I'm going to try to make a few.

@orangenasturtium

We used to shop at Waitrose & Sainsbury’s in the 70s and Waitrose was always slightly more expensive than Sainsbury’s.

@hahaha88 @stillgoingtowork do you mean longan?

We used to make fish cakes with either orange breadcrumbs out of a packet, or stale bread put in the food processor, and chopped parsley from the garden.

We had lamb chops once a week and a roast chicken on Sunday, with the leftovers made into curry (with sultanas) on Monday.

We’d have egg and chips too, and a dish of baked, layered potato, cheese and onion. We also used to have something called tuna, corn and rice... which was exactly that, but with chopped, boiled eggs, and sometimes onion; cauliflower cheese with bacon, or sausages, and toad in the hole too. Those were my favourite dishes.

Less favoured were fish fingers and spaghetti bolognese (the globules of orange fat that would solidify around the edges 🤢), and kippers or smoked mackerel.

My first pizza was at a place called Grunts in Covent Garden- it was amazing. After that, Dad started making pizza with a wholewheat bread base- it was lovely. We used to have it with chunky salad, with raw cauliflower.

My grandma would make lasagna when they came to visit, after a holiday in Italy around 1979.

My parents’ only concession to convenience food was fish fingers, ice cream, and ice pops in the summer. We also had German sausage quite often.

@orangenasturtium

I read these threads and 😮 at the things people think weren't available.

I agree. My DGM used to come for tea every week and would bring home baked cakes (including brownies, although they were a bit unusual), bags of sweets and chocolate I imagine half of MN passing out, comics and exotic/out of season fruit as a treat. Things like pomegranates, cape gooseberries (kiwi), dragon fruit, horned melons, kumquats, pomelos, ugli fruit, star fruit, lychees, physalis, mulberries, passion fruit, grenadillo, imported strawberries. Avocado pears were a popular starter. I've no doubt they were luxury items and supply was seasonal but she bought them in Sainsburys or her local greengrocer.

Curry (with sultanas), spag bol, and sweet and sour pork were on the lunch menu at my infant school in 1975 so presumably were thought of as mainstream foods.

Where do you live? All of those were definitely not readily available in south west Wales!!!

No sweet and sour or spag bol at my primary school in the 1970s.........I still have nightmares over the bright orange mashed swede we were served with a sausagemeat pie!

My mum used to make a Beefburger Sun for me when I was poorly when younger.

Beef burger patty face
Crinkle cut chips for rays
Tinned spaghetti hair
Cucumber face

I also remember Jaffa orange juice my mum bought in a tin from Sainsburys.

Yes! Tinned orange juice was a thing. Also frozen orange juice. I am not sure why. Was orange juice expensive then? I suppose that must be where the phenomenon of serving a glass of orange juice as a starter comes from.

This is a great thread.

Not just the difference between then and now, but the class differences it shows. I’m not judging or criticising anyone, I just find it sociologically fascinating.

I heard a story from the miners’ strike in 1984 that the German miners’ union had sent a load of food parcels over to help out, with packets of ground coffee. That was well meant, but puzzling to the recipients, because in 1984 miners in Britain didn’t drink ground coffee, it was instant, if they drank coffee at all rather than tea. Ground coffee was one of the class dividers at that time.

Delia couldn’t really present authentic foreign food because most of the viewers wouldn’t have been able to get the ingredients, whatever people say who claim to have been buying fresh coriander in the local greengrocer in 1974. I remember my mum mashing garlic salt with buttter for garlic bread. Fresh garlic or ginger weren’t very widely available, as for chillies or fresh herbs (other than parsley), forget it. Unless you lived in London, spices would have meant a trip to the nearest city that had food shops catering to immigrants.

Chicken must have become much cheaper at some point in the 70s. Suddenly all the chip shops rebranded as “fish and chicken bars”.

What was the purpose of the pineapple ring on the gammon steak?

We thought processed cheese slices were wonderful. My mum called it plastic cheese and for a long time I thought that was its actual name.

Every Christmas we had honeydew melon as a starter. That must have come from somewhere but I don't know where.

Bloody hell, the most exotic fruit we got in Salford was tinned fruit cocktail!

I'm a bit sad that more people haven't mentioned Madhur Jaffrey, arguably just as important as Ken Hom.

Although yes, both of them came along in the 80s not the 70s.

We might have got hold of some more exotic stuff if we had taken the ferry to Liverpool and visited China Town but I'm not sure my mum would have known what to do with them - she was raised on post war rations and didn't see a banana until she was 5!