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.

[quote ambereeree]@1dayatatime I have a 89 year old neighbour who's never eaten spaghetti or pasta because foreign food doesn't agree with her![/quote]
We used to call Goulash "Spicy Beef Stew" as my grandad had similar views. He loved it ;-)

Any other Canadians remember or have the Five Roses Flour "A Guide to Good Cooking?" I have the 24th edition, published in the seventies. I still use it occasionally. The foreword says it had become a popular gift for "new brides."

I looked at it today and the whole last section is on "foreign fare, with sections for France (crepes suzette), Italy (lasagna), Switzerland (fondue), China (egg foo yoong, chop suey), Japan (teriyaki), and Scandinavian smorgasbord.

Yorkshire pudding is featured, as well as the cream puffs I remember helping my Mum make the choux pastry for.

I love this thread. Many memories of being in the kitchen with my dear Mum. I never did learn to make the perfect pies she did.

I was born in the mid 70s so my childhood was late 70s, early 80s.

I had a working class background, but down south. So for us, it was a Roast on Sundays. Leftover meat and veg was used to make Monday's meal - homemade pasties, cottage or shepherds pie etc. Other than that it was strictly meat and two veg. Faggots, Liver and Bacon, Gammon or chops. Later on we had Findus Crispy Pancakes etc. Always had a pudding after, often tinned fruit - peaches, fruit cocktail, or sometimes Angel Delight or a jelly. Rice pudding in Winter.

I remember going to a friends house in the mid 80s and thinking her mum was so cosmopolitan because she had foods I'd never eaten... pasta, spaghetti bolognaise, lasagne etc. These were really exotic to me.

Never had curry or rice as a main at home (only ever rice pudding), and didn't go to an Indian, Chinese, Mexican or Italian restaurant until I went to uni in the 90s.

I took my mum to eat her very first curry at an Indian Restaurant in the late 1990s. She liked her dish, and has been eating the same thing ever since.

@ivykaty44

*Many veg that we get now were unavailble in the supermarkets. peppers, aubergines, avocados, sweet potatoes and all squashes - unheard of*

They might not have been as common produce as they are now but they certainly weren't unheard of & a local green grocer would sell aubergine, avocados, peppers - there were many more butchers (52 butchers 1972 in the town I grew up in and now there are 2) and grocer shops than there are now.

They were available in some areas but I moved to a village in the North in 1987 and they had no aubergines or anything vaguely exotic. It did change during the 90s.

How about the seafood man that used to come round the pubs on a night time? With big wicker baskets full of jars of winkles and mussels?
I grew up in Australia and we had a wealth of exotic foods available in the supermarket. A culture shock coming to 70s Sheffield.

I can remember my first cooking experiences vesta curry’s, Brains faggots with tin tomatoes and chips , boil in the bag cod in white sauce .

My mother always put sultanas in her curry too and often peas & apple too! She made wonderful éclairs but generally wasn't a very good cook, she wasn't really interested. My aunt on the other hand was a fantastic cook and taught me how to make chicken chasseur, boeuf bourguignon, lemon meringue pie and baked alaska and often had "exotic" food like avocados and olives which I still love. In the late seventies my friends and I ate in a vegetarian restaurant which served huge serve yourself bowls of salads including bulgur wheat, puy lentils, Mediterranean veggies etc which were delicious and filling and we attempted Chinese food as there were Chinese grocery shops in the nearest city which we could hitchhike to and buy our ingredients.

I still use Delia's original cook book, plus a Readers Digest on I got when I got married in 1973

I was a teen in the 70s & i we only had meat twice a week- roast on Sunday, leftovers on Monday. Other neals were fishfingers, sausages & perhaps a stew or chops. No ‘foreign’ food. I didn’t have pasta other than tins of spaghetti & I didn’t have a yoghurt until after I left home.

Delia taught me how to cook. I became veggie at the end of the 70s and it was very difficult. Lots of veggie food (beans and soya) could only be bought at health food shops. Eating out was terrible with nothing on the menu and then just offered a cheese omlette.
Delia actually cooked some vegetarian food and they are still things I cook today. I also loved Rose Elliot and Cranks. the early Cranks recipe books have some great recipes and the Cranks restaurants were amazing places for veggies.

How about the seafood man that used to come round the pubs on a night time? With big wicker baskets full of jars of winkles and mussels?

I was thinking about this the other day - we were 70 miles from the coast & they'd be around every weekend. Does it still happen?

My mum was an adventurous cook for her time. Spaghetti bolognaise with extremely long spaghetti. My father grew prolific courgettes and unusual potatoes. We didn’t have a freezer, we just ate what was in season until we were sick of it. Lunch in the local Chinese introduced us to ‘foreign ‘food’, We loved it. Delia was a bit of a goddess and definitely to be watched and copied. Definitely no snacking in our house. We were all thin

I was a child in the 70s, ethnically white but my mother worked for the local Asian Women’s association - teaching English as a foreign language. Whilst she did this I was minded my her friend who was from Bangladesh so I grew up used to spicy foods. We were also invited to SEAsian weddings so got to eat loads of lovely spiced foods. This was my normal but when I went to school ( which was almost entirely white) friends thought we were very weird. I was bullied for “smelling of garlic” and the fact that we went out to eat in a local city in the Bangladeshi restaurants there was seen as very odd.

I was fairly young in the 70s but i remember meat seemed to last longer some how. I think chickens were bigger. Mum would buy a chicken for Sunday lunch and it would be enough for chicken and chips on Monday, Chicken and mushroom pie on Tuesday and boil the carcass for soup on Wednesday. Fair enough it was only feeding 2 adults and a small child but i dont remember them being stingy portions.

Delia came to our house in either late 70's or very early 80's. She worked for the company that made mam's posh new microwave, which was causing problems, and did some demo baking. Yes really!!

I went to uni in Liverpool in '73 and also taught locally until 1981.
Food in the halls of residence was not good!
But in my social group we a) ate out quite a lot eg Greek, Chinese, French....
b) cooked communally to a high standard, eg moussaka, beef stroganoff, roasts, vegetarian dishes. Katie Stewart's recipes were well-used; also Elizabeth David's and Anna Thomas's......but not Delia Smith's so far as I remember.
Aubergines and courgettes and lots of other 'sophisticated' foodstuffs were certainly available in Liverpool! Even to students........

Anyone else remember Rise 'n' Shine orange juice powder?

Not OJ powder but I do remember frozen orange juice. I loved it! You let it partially defrost then whisked it

I'm happy to read about the love for Safeways. I worked for them when I was in 6th form and eventually abandoned my plans to go to uni to work there full time when I left school. I LOVED it there. I also learned the special touch-typing style of ringing up purchases and eventually went on to teach it to new trainees.

At the time it was seen as very American and upmarket, a cut above Sainsburys or Tesco. One of the managers took a real interest in furthering my career (another straight woman before anyone thinks that's a euphemism). I learned so much about management and people and food. I got more education there than I ever did at school and I learned how to work hard because it was well run and the management had very exacting expectations The hours were long - we were open until 8Pm at night which was unusual 40 years ago but afterwards we had a brilliant social life that revolved around the store.

It was a little kingdom staffed by a bunch of eccentrics and I had so much fun every day. I left when I was in my twenties because to progress further I needed to drive and I was terrified of learning but I miss it still.

My mum was from a big family, my gran was born in Belfast and came to Scotland and had 14 kids! I was born early 70s and had meat every night apart from Wednesday as that was fish night. My mother was obsessed with how my gran cooked good food from scratch every day for 14 kids. All our family are obsessed with food and cooking though! No spag bol til the 80s though we did have macaroni cheese. Chinese takeaway/fish and chips or a restaurant on a Saturday night as my mum refused to cook on a Saturday..quite right! Salads with cold meat every night in summer. We had no processed food til well into the 80s.. Bernard Mathews turkey steaks or fish fingers! Before this I remember in restaurants asking my mum if I could please have fish fingers from kids menu as she just didn't believe in processed food/kids menus.. how times change!

I grew up in the 1970s. Spaghetti wasn't considered to be a weird foreign food at all. It was available in all supermarkets and was pretty much the standard meal served when a friend came round for tea after school.

Yes, if the oven was turned on it was filled, so a rice pud, or scones, pie or crumble was made to use up empty space. People had far less money than they do now. Electricity was expensive. The heating was only put on for a few hours in the evening, and definitely not over night. Strangely people made far less fuss than they do now, and didn't consider themselves to be deprived.

Meals were meat and two veg, always spuds, and whatever veg was available from the garden. Puddings were for Sundays, when we always had a roast. We shopped once a week, as supermarkets closed at 5pm, so if you worked you couldn't shop afterwards. Towards the end of the week things started to run out, so you made do with what you had. Meat always came from the butcher, never the supermarket. It was probably better quality but we ate less. A steak was 4oz. Now if you go to a restaurant the smallest steak you can order is 8oz. Standard is 10 to 12oz. My parents would have been and still are appalled by such large portions of meat.
My mum never used any packet or prepared foods, other than instant whip. Why she made an exception for that I can't imagine as it is disgusting.
Curries were a regular meal, but they were made with chicken, apple, sultanas, and spices. Odd, but actually quite nice. I prefer that to the tomato and coconut based sauces that are common now.
1970s food was ok, basic but nicer than people make out.

Yes! I love Delia, I still refer back to her cookbook at times as I always know her recipes will work. I was born in the 60s and remember a roast chicken was a special treat at the weekend, and if we had roast lamb my mother always used to mince it up and make a shepherds pie or rissoles. Oh, and olive oil was something you had to buy at the chemist in a tiny bottle, French cheese such as Brie was also a specialist thing.....fresh ginger was almost impossible to find too. Although given Brexit looks like we are heading back that way.....lots of things I took for granted now not available at the supermarket .......

Anyone have a Fine Fare in their town? It seemed HUGE to me as a child. When I see the building now (which houses a Superdrug) I can see it's teeny compared with the huge out of town Tesco we now shop at

I grew up in London in late 70s, early 80s and we ate Chinese and Indian food.

We used to go to my dad's favourite Chinese that he'd been going to since the 1950's when he was a child. As a jewish family we normally went every Christmas too!

My mum is foreign, so were most of our neighbours and we ate lots of different food, Delia seemed basic considering my mum was making everything including bread from scratch most days.

Meat was expensive though and I remember 'foreign food' being seen as a put down.

The first time I remember having Spaghetti Bolognaise was on holiday about 1970. By the time I was catering for myself at university about 10 years later it was the standard 'go to' dinner everyone cooked when they could not think of anything more exciting. Spaghetti and macaroni both came in long blue packets, as others have described.

Also does anyone else remember the cheesecake mixes in packets, also discovered those sometime early 1970s, which were regarded as a real treat for pudding after Sunday lunch.