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.

The variety and quality of food available now is amazing.

But one thing that was better in the 70s imo was bread.

We had 2 excellent bakeries near us and we used to buy the most delicious freshly baked white and brown loaves - crusty on the outside, soft in the middle, malt bread too, with apple and cream puffs on a Saturday.

I personally loathe all packet sliced bread. And non-packet loaves on sale at Waitrose eg Gail’s are dire. Sainsbury’s does the best supermarket bread - they still bake it themselves.

There are a couple of bakeries near where I live now but they‘re nowhere near as good as the old ones.

My lovely Mum cooked curry and added dry fruit to it ,spaghetti bolognaise,home made pizza and also used a pressure cooker which scared me !!

The ice cream van used to come on a Sunday and I would be sent down with a big bowl which they would fill up and we had it (slightly runny!) with our apple pie for dessert.

I have so enjoyed reading the posts on this subject, has brought back so many memories. Our first fridge in the 60s was a gas one with a pilot light! My parents were very traditional and it was meat and two veg most days, except on Friday when mum did chips because money was getting short by then, for us children that was the meal we most enjoyed. As for spaghetti, for years I thought it came in a tin in tomato sauce until I went for tea at a friend's whose mum was more adventurous and I was served spag bol with 'proper' spaghetti. It was a revelation! Also, the only time we had rice was in a rice pudding, it was never served in a main course. Milk was always delivered and mum used sterilised milk in the tall bottle which gave tea a very distinct taste, cream came out of a tin as did salmon, fresh salmon was unheard of. Chicken was very expensive and an occasional treat. The only takeaway was fish and chips until the late 70s when I was introduced by a friend to Chinese and Indian. My world became much wider from then on. Happy memories though, haha.

Born in 1967 and lived in a South Wales mining village. My mother was a dreadful cook but both DGM were brilliant. Everything was bought locally, we had three groceries, three butchers, two greengrocers and a bakery. There was so much choice and the baker was amazing. I wish I could buy his bread now. On a Friday a fishmonger in a van would visit every street. It may not have been exotic and people didn't have a lot of money but the basics were great. We had curry, kedgeree, salmon potato and white sauce plus the usual roast and veg (my least favourite, veg mush).
Eating at either DGM was the best.
Does anyone remember Findus double deckers? They were frozen mash on the top and mince or fish at the bottom covered in batter. They were deep fried, always burned on the outside and still frozen in the middle

My mother was a terrible cook. We had mince, boiled eggs and sausages in rotation.
I think there were three schools of cooks. One was the meat and two veg cook, then there was the eat from the freezer cook. Freezers were a new thing and few people had them. I remember going round to a friends house and having Findus pancakes from her chest freezer followed by Artic roll. That was amazing to me. Then there was the health food cook. Whole meal bread and flour, make your own bread, everything fresh and lots of pulses.
I ate Vesta packet curries as a teenager and thought they were amazing. Chinese takeaways became more of a thing in the eighties along with Indian food. I hadn’t eaten pizza or pasta until the late seventies. A lot of American food came into
vogue then. Burgers, chips and pizza . I never had things like that at home.
I think ‘foreign food’ became mainstream in the eighties.

Perhaps this is a silly question but how was Sunday roast stored so you can use it for a few days without a fridge? Nowadays we panic if the chicken was left out overnight.

We always had a fridge and I didn't know anyone that didn't in the 1970s. In the 1960s I remember an elderly relative having a meat safe. A metal cupboard with perforated sides that kept the flies/cat/dog off. She lived until she was 101.

Early 70's and 'Jacket Potatoes' a huge treat usually near Bonfire Night
Long slow gas oven cooking and then the flesh scooped out and mashed with cheese and onion and put back in

This was considered the biggest luxury above Meat, due to the cost of the Gas! And of course, cakes and casseroles were put in to make the most of the fuel..always had a pot of lard in the fridge, used to make gravy and the gravy saucepan was on the go almost the whole week. No waste whatsoever.....Bread and Butter pudding for pud, ice cream if we were very good and otherwise tinned fruit and evaporated milk. Chicken a huge treat on Sunday otherwise lamb or beef and always a shepherd pie on a Monday

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

... although now I've googled, I think I must have got that wrong about the Flying Pizza, or I've misremembered and it was another restaurant. Oops.

I think it was owned by Italians, but I can't really remember. I do remember that it was 'the' place to go - people in their posh cars used to pull right up on to the forecourt!

There was another Italian called, I think, Mamma Mia, that opened up further down Street Lane, and there were rumours of a mafia-style war between the two of them!

@ambereeree

Perhaps this is a silly question but how was Sunday roast stored so you can use it for a few days without a fridge? Nowadays we panic if the chicken was left out overnight.

We definitely had fridges i the 70s! As PP have said, it was the era when freezers started to become more affordable. We had a big chest freezer in our basement.

Our freezer was actually a gas fridge. The pilot light was at the back right-hand corner, and we always had to make sure nothing covered up the little vent hole, otherwise it would extinguish the flame and then we'd risk having a gas leak!

The other thing I remember is that fizzy drinks were the exception rather than the norm. In the 60s, we used to have Corona soft drinks delivered in the street by a man driving an electric vehicle, like a milk float. All in glass bottles - I think there was a deposit on them as well.

A bottle of Coke at a restaurant was a rare treat. We drank milk or squash - I was never really keen on orange squash, but we had Ribena and a brand called Quosh. They made a flavour called tropical, which was bright green, like Fairy Liquid/Swarfega.

Perhaps this is a silly question but how was Sunday roast stored so you can use it for a few days without a fridge? Nowadays we panic if the chicken was left out overnight.

Everybody had fridges and houses were quite cool, I remember a lot of pantries too so you could keep things in there like butter in a dish not going rock hard in the fridge.

We drank milk or squash - I was never really keen on orange squash, but we had Ribena and a brand called Quosh.

And Nesquik with the milk. I was crazy over the banana flavour. I was given it with two homemade ginger biscuits as a Saturday morning treat - topping up my sky-high sugar levels!

@3potatoesplus1
I'm so glad you had a gas fridge too. I thought I was imagining it as my brothers don't remember it and think I'm mad!

We didn't have a fitted kitchen but had a cabinet with a drop down front. Hot water was from a scary Ascot geyer. There was an enamel plate (trendy these days but not to me, remembring them the first time round when they were utilitarian) fixed to the ceiling above. This was to prevent the polystyrene tiles bursting into flames!

@lidoshuffle my 89 year old neighbour still has and uses the drop down cabinet.

Oh, we was posh! We had a Hygena kitchen fitted in our new house, when we moved in in 1971. And a dishwasher! We had a huge cooker, with an eye-level grill that also had a rotisserie (never used!) and two slots at the top right to hold the salt and pepper pots.

I grew up in the 70s. For context, I'm a Londoner of Irish parents.

We got a lot of both British/English and Irish meals, so roasts, shepherds pies, sausages and mash, boiled bacon and cabbage and spuds (hated that, never ate it.) We also ate a far amount of Fray Bentos pies!!!!

We had spuds with every meal, except occasionally we had spaghetti bolognaise (which was as adventurous as my parents, especially my dad got. ) Rice was for puddings!

We had desserts on Sundays, sometimes a cooked one like fruit crumble, but often stuff like tinned fruit salad and evaporated milk or Angel delight or sometimes ice cream.

Some of the cookery shows I remember were Fanny Craddock and the Galloping Gourmet who would cook a meal then invite someone from the audience to eat with him.

@lidoshuffle I know, people think I'm mad when I say we had a gas fridge, but my mum was thrilled with it when we first got it. Also, we too had an Ascot for hot water except the thing fixed to the ceiling above ours was actually made of asbestos!!!! Definitely would not be allowed these days. I can remember standing at the kitchen sink washing my hair under the long arm which came from the Ascot 😲

Ah I didn't see @3potatoesplus1 that you had one too! No-one believes me when I say that there used to be gas fridges.

This was the kind of cooker we had

Does anyone remember when Neapolitan ice-cream had a green stripe instead of the vanilla?

I do remember there being a green stripe - it was pistachio - but I thought it was instead of the chocolate? I have never liked chocolate ice cream and thought it stemmed from when they replaced the pistachio with it!

I am so glad someone else remembers the green stripe - nobody else I have mentioned it to does! It was lovely, real Neapolitan ice cream in a block - wrapped in newspaper at the shop to keep it cold on the way home!

@Etulosba

Perhaps this is a silly question but how was Sunday roast stored so you can use it for a few days without a fridge? Nowadays we panic if the chicken was left out overnight.

We always had a fridge and I didn't know anyone that didn't in the 1970s. In the 1960s I remember an elderly relative having a meat safe. A metal cupboard with perforated sides that kept the flies/cat/dog off. She lived until she was 101.

We got our first fridge in 1959 or 1960. They weren't uncommon in the 60s although my grandparents didn't have them. I got married in 1970 and didn't have a fridge for a year and thought it was awful to last a year without one. I did have one of the big cuppboard with the drop down door. They were actually really practical and held an amazing amount of stuff, although we all seemed to have less stuff back then.

My grandma (this was late 60s) had a wonderful cold store in her house. It was quite a large room completely lined in stone, i.e. stone walls and stone floor. She kept all her perishable food in there such as milk, cheese, butter, fruit and vegetables, game and meat. It smelled lovely - I used to go in there just to drink in the smell! I so want a larder!

I still have the original Dairy Book of Home Cookery but updated to the new version a couple of years ago. It is very similar. I also have various M&S Cookbooks from the 70s and the Supercook Entertaining Book. They all have some great recipes.

I remember the first time my mum cooked a bolognese, she rubbed one garlic clove around the pan and we all thought the taste of garlic was nearly overpowering. We had tonnes of pies and dumplings to fill us up, because pastry was so much cheaper than the filling alone. Lots of our meals had offal and we also ate quite a bit of rabbit, which was also cheap. Pudding would often be chopped bananas in Angel delight.

@MrWendel

Thanks *@Pogostemon*. This whole thread is really opening my eyes - we think nothing of buying smoked salmon on a whim for packed sandwiches nowadays. I don't think there are many foods now which have that sense of eagerly anticipated 'special occasion' food, as you describe for Christmas smoked salmon.

I do miss the excitement of special treats for Christmas/birthdays/Easter. The thing I remember most is fresh double cream at Christmas and Easter, so exciting. The rest of the year it was tinned evaporated milk.