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.

ambereeree Thanks will have a look!

My dad worked in Italy briefly in the 1970s. I can vividly remember him coming home with a packet of proper spaghetti. We all sat around eating it feeling VERY sophisticated and exotic. Never had curry unless it was vesta. Never had takeaways - my parents would never have spent the money on them. Remember lots of soup, processed meat, meat paste but not a lot of actual fresh meat. We had chicken on a Sunday (leftovers eked out across the week). Chops were a big treat!

Meat was expensive and inflation was crazy, like 20% at some points.
We ate a lot of carbs to fill us up. One medium pizza for 5 of us (so 1 slice each) and garlic bread to fill up on. I can remember Mum being so excited about a new supermarket opening near us and how she had to have the car to get to it. Before that she walked to the local high street and went into each individual shop, all the groceries went on the rack under the pram and if we were buying loo roll one of the older kids had to carry it home. Frozen peas were also a big thing

The white Delia How to Cook series came later, I think? We ate meat in the 70s but not in the quantities people do now. Chicken was expensive but we often had chops - lamb or pork (1 lamb chop isn't much meat!), gammon, "curries" made from leftover roast meat (often lamb), spag bol, bangers & mash. We used to take the Vesta meals with crunchy noodles away on holiday. We also used to use cook in sauces - white wine, sweet & sour etc. If we used chicken in them it would be drumsticks or thighs I think, not breast.

In the 70s I'm sure stewing steak was the cheaper tougher cuts, but also more flavourful and did require slow cooking over an hour or more. Now it's better quality but less taste. Shin of beef (3 hours cooking) is delist but not so easy to find and takes a lot of trimming.

We had a roast every Sunday -lamb or beef, and sometimes pork.
Chicken was only for special occasions as it was so expensive.
We had fish on Fridays, always had a pudding of some sort and fish and chips was the main takeaway.

We didn't have a freezer, just an ice box in the fridge. My mum shopped at lots of different shops to purchase our food, -fishmongers, fruit and veg shops, butchers, milk was always delivered.
And a quaint deli type place called Masons where they served you from behind a counter and where all the fancy cheeses etc were displayed on shelves along the walls, and you paid in a booth.
Plus the weekly market of course for everything else.
I remember when a Sally Moreland opened and there were huge queues to get in. It was a family outing to go to the supermarket for some, and very exciting.
This was all common in the early 70s, before supermarkets really took off and captured the market.

Delia was The Bible and came out regularly. I still have all of my copies (that my Mum gave me for birthday presents) and use her recipes, especially for Xmas. Some of my favourites
Chicken in sherry and tarragon
Individual beef en croute
Chocolate mousse
Irish whisky Xmas cake
Souffle
Anything I’m cooking for the first time as you can absolutely rely that the recipe will work and taste great

Oh and when Delia used cranberries for the first time, it caused a nationwide shortage. She had HUGE influence

I remember stopping at the Butcher’s on the way home from work every day and buying the meat for our dinner (self & boyfriend)...it was always small amounts, usually a quarter of mince (about100g), or 2 or 3 sausages midweek and a couple of chicken quarters or pork chops at the weekend. We’d bulk it out with whatever we had in the cupboard. Anything that was leftover always went in a pie.

We had Chinese takeaway on Friday evening if we had the money.
This would have been around 1975.

The UK was also rather struggling in the 70s, with frequent power cuts, recessions, layoffs, strikes. So you absolutely would not 'waste' the oven by putting it on for a small thing.
My mum still cooks like this she'll only have the oven on once or twice a week and will oven all that she needs to then, and use the hob mostly.

@FawnDrench

We had a roast every Sunday -lamb or beef, and sometimes pork. Chicken was only for special occasions as it was so expensive. We had fish on Fridays, always had a pudding of some sort and fish and chips was the main takeaway.

We didn't have a freezer, just an ice box in the fridge. My mum shopped at lots of different shops to purchase our food, -fishmongers, fruit and veg shops, butchers, milk was always delivered.
And a quaint deli type place called Masons where they served you from behind a counter and where all the fancy cheeses etc were displayed on shelves along the walls, and you paid in a booth.
Plus the weekly market of course for everything else.
I remember when a Sally Moreland opened and there were huge queues to get in. It was a family outing to go to the supermarket for some, and very exciting.
This was all common in the early 70s, before supermarkets really took off and captured the market.

What is a "Sally Moreland"?

Meat you now find in poshe restaurants - lamb shanks and breast, beef cheek, pork belly etc- was really cheap and people knew how to cook them long and slow to make a flavoursome meal.

I can't remember when broccoli came on the scene; I never had it is the 70s. There was a lot of tinned veg.

I remember my first kiwi fruit in about 1982, it was 50p quite a lot then!

Late 70s early 80s is also when air travel started getting cheaper, and it wasnt just for the most well off. So normal people could suddenly afford 2 weeks in the sun, and that had a HUGE impact on what 'the masses' are. Olive oil went from being something youd buy in a tiny bottle from the chemist, to something youd have abroad, then buy at home.

Also more migration TO the UK, which meant that suddenly we had Chinese and Indian restaurants in most towns (ok those was a bit earlier).

Vesta Curry's as a treat.
Meat and two veg normally.
Jam sandwiches, sausage sandwiches and crisp sandwiches a frequent tea/ lunch.
Steak on birthdays.
Massive freezer with butcher bought meat in bulk. Including loads of home made brawn (bawk) and pork scratchings bubbling in the pan.
Home made pickled onions by the vat.
Very, very occasional home made pizza. If dad wasn't around.
No takeaways unless you count eating a pork pie in the street ( with instructions from grandad not to tell parents or gran...)
And chips and scraps from the chippy with maybe a pineapple fritter.
By late 70s with pocket money came the ability to buy chips and gravy from the local Chinese takeaway.
Odd wine concoctions such as nettle or carrot.
A lot of pressure cooked food.
Fishfingers, tinned salmon, tinned pies.

Monthly trips to the nearest supermarket (20+ miles) To stock up on washing powder and tins. Was a proper trip out and very exciting.
It wasn't until into 80s when we got Madhur Jaffrey and Ken Hom ( I got a wok for a teenage birthday). But never actually cooked anything remotely oriental until I left home.

@BMW6 We had curry with sultanas but also a hard boiled egg, sliced in half, on top!

Oh sorry OP I misread your post and inferred that you're not English, but you're said you're not ethnically English (nor am i). So I'm probably coming across as really patronising and saying things you already know
Very sorry.

I was a child in the 70s and we did eat meat frequently but it was cheap meat, eg brisket, shin beef, stewing steak, liver, bacon, sausages, kidney, mince, bacon bones (pork ribs cured like bacon), luncheon meat, boiled ham etc my grandparents ate tripe but I never did.

We used to get Chinese takeaway every now and then but it was expensive and we wouldn't dream of trying to cook it at home.

Although people like Delia were introducing these exotic foods in the 70s, it wasn't til the 80s that they became more widespread and people like us (very working class) were eating lasagne and pizza just like Garfield

I was born in 68 BUT recall watching Delia and remember her comments - we had high inflation, strikes, steelworks shutting down, and fundamentally many households were one income and interest rates on mortgages were 15% plus so financially was a difficult time, I think Delia was a bit ahead of her time in some ways but also many were turning to vegetarianism and looking at how to go off grid etc as the fuel prices were also high compared to income. Joining the EU widened foodstuffs including meat that were available. There were very few supermarkets and I don't remember them arriving in our small town till the 80s when we got a bigger Tesco. We had a very run down high street Tesco, a Market, butcher, greengrocer, deli etc. Spicey foods from abroad were rare as were takeaways beyond a standard chipper. No one delivered and most families were none or 1 car which was used for work generally. Sometimes there were pockets of food availability from other countries e.g. we had a big Italian Population in the town and a couple of restaurants but not really cafe or takeaway - we couldn't afford to eat out en famille at all. I recall one occasion on holiday in Llandudno we ate Italian and all had to learn how to use forks and spoons with tagliatelle - I must have been around 11/12 then as it was late 70's early 80s

My grandparents lived with us in the 1970s and my gran and mum did all of the cooking. Gran was very traditional and didn't like any kind of foreign stuff (garlic, pasta, curry, rice) she made fantastic pies and stews but my mum used to try more adventurous meals like spag bol !!
Mum went to an evening class to learn to make Indian food in the late 1970s.
We used to eat a lot of roast dinner type meals ........often with a small cheap cut of meat (belly pork / breast of lamb)and we wouldn't have much but the gravy would be lovely. Mum used to buy half a pig / whole lamb and fill up the freezer. All leftovers were used and nothing was wasted.
I love Deliah...........her books are the most used on my shelf!

I think it's hard for people now to understand how different it was. My parents are European so we had a reputation in the neighbourhood for terribly exotic food because we'd eat salami and olives and dress our salads rather than serve them dry with salad dressing. My mum sometimes put garlic on lamb or lemon on chicken - this was revolutionary (or foreign muck, dependingon who was gossiping).

A friend's mum was Danish and put smorgasbord in her children's lunch boxes. This was scandalous.

I have clear memory of sweet peppers becoming available in 1977. Our neighbours put some in a salad and everyone was trying them and saying how tasty they were.

I was a child in the 70’s. We had a lot of meals made with chicken thighs. They were cheap and could be bought in big bags in fine fare.
We did eat curry and rice. Home made with mince and veg and boiled long grain rice. We also ate a lot of potatoes boiled, mashed and roasted , veg in season and red meat. A full chicken was a treat and mainly had at Christmas when we had a large capon.

My brother introduced us to Vesta meals . I
loved the crispy noodles. My mum
always did fish on Fridays and made her own batter . I started driving in 1975 and took my
mum and auntie on a trip to the first supermarket in our area . It was a Morrison’s. Before that we went to individual stalls in the market.

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

I was born in 1964. I remember i first had pasta in 1978 when one of my DB's went to Uni and learned to cook Spag Bol and cooked it for me when he was home for the holidays! I did have Chinese occasionally as older DB worked shifts and used to bring a takeaway home from the only Chinese takeaway in town.
My parents were very much meat and two veg type people so every meal contained meat or fish definitely not pulses. Everything was served with potatoes of some description never rice or pasta. In fact I remember my DM ringing me in late 80's after I'd left home asking me how to cook boiled rice as DBro was coming to stay and she needed to prepare a meal for him on his arrival.

Oh and the only pizza we ever saw was the cheap cheese and tomato "pizza" from Bejams. I loved it as a child but my dad was part Italian and knew what pizza should be like. How could he do that to us?

No pizza until 1988 for us. Still remember the first one! Delicious