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.

@ApplePearsAndCrumble

I think in the 80s at least we had tinned asparagus.

My mother's dinner party menu (a constant) was;

tinned asparagus soup
steak on mustard crouton
chocolate cheesecake with tinned mandarin segments.

Sometimes she would make curried seafood pancakes.

I am feeling a yearning in my soul for this food! Maybe this weekend. :)

Yes... tinned or jarred asparagus. It was usually white and tasted lovely. I understand that our friends on the continent prefer white asparagus!

I love white asparagus! Never understand why we don't get it here.

I was nine in 1970, I had parents who had lived in Sudan in the 1950s and who had regularly visited France before then, they loved food and would embrace anything and everything they could and were interested in cooking well... we were relatively affluent though and lived just North of Glasgow where there was (and still is) a thriving Italian community and a growing Indian and Chinese community. We ate all sorts of lovely things that I still make today, goulash, pork and apple casseroles, rice in pilaff or biriani forms as well as roast dinner on Sunday afternoons - cooked whilst listening to that forces radio programme where people connected by choosing music for there loved ones overseas.

My dad often worked in Oban or Mallaig and used to come home with live lobsters running around the boot of the car.

We went to O Sole Mio in Glasgow from when I was quite young for all birthdays and celebrations - despite my parents' relative sophistication, I think it took a while for them to realise just how alcoholic my beloved zabaglione was! I was so sad to hear that it closed in January 2020

We occasionally went to the Reo Stakis steakhouse for Sunday lunch, but that was mostly so my mum and dad could have a bit of a lazy Sunday and we three children went out on the boating pond attached afterwards

We holidayed in Brittany and basically lived on langoustine and mayonnaise and baguettes

My mum stopped being a full-time parent to go to teacher training college when I was about eleven and didn't have so much time to cook, so what she did was teach me to make dinner one night a week, then when I was competent at that teach me to make a second meal in the week... I was just young enough to love the responsibility (and the fact that it relieved me of other chores) and just old enough to cope with doing it

Previous posters mentioned:
New Zealand butter - we had Anchor butter, just so yellow and buttery!
Safeway - we used to do a Saturday morning shop en famille and get to share a pack of Munchies afterwards
Live Aid Cook book - I still cook the soda bread and the vegetable lasagne out of that

This is such a lovely thread

I also remember the 'fish van' that came every week. My mum would poach a piece of fish in milk and seasoning then use the milk to make a parsley sauce and we'd have it with broad beans and potatoes. Then we also had the Co-op van every week which we LOVED. It was like a treasure chest on wheels. My Grandma would let us have a Cadbury''s fudge if we'd behaved ourselves!
There was a butcher's shop in out village that made their own totally delicious butter. We would get a lot of our meat from there. There was also a general stores and a greengrocer''s so we were lucky.

My mum was a good cook, but a plain cook. We were not well off, so would have a lot of offal - hearts, kidneys, liver, pigs hocks, neck. I detested most meat, but was made to sit there until I ate it. (No surprise that I have been veggie for 30 years now!)
Mushrooms were expensive and we only had them on Boxing Day - with steak...which we also only had on Boxing Day!
Later, in the 80's Flash-Fry steak was introduced and was cheaper, so we had that from time to time as a treat.
We had a lot of stews bulked out with pearl barley, which I hated then and haven't eaten since I left home. Dried peas, soaked overnight would accompany the pigs hocks (complete with sticky skin and hairs!). I dreaded seeing the peas soaking in a bowl as I knew what the next day would bring!
Everything was cooked from scratch. Roast on a Sunday - normally lamb as we would buy half a sheep and freeze it. (I distinctly remember us getting a chest freezer, it was a ground-breaking day and I wrote about it in my news book at school!!)
Monday would be the left over meat, minced up using a hand mincer attached to the side of the table, in a shepherd's pie. Or what we called Stewed potatoes....basically chunks of meat and potato boiled with onions. (tasted better than it sounds).
Mum would make her own steak and kidney puddings and steak and kidney pies...more often than not served with plain boiled potatoes.
Fish on a Friday, often yellow smoked haddock. Saturday we would sometimes have kippers for tea if we had been to the fishmonger in town that afternoon.
Bacon, egg and chips was a dinner, not a breakfast like it is these days. (obvs not with chips).
Chips were deep fried in the deep-fat fryer, in lard and then the lard was left to go solid again and get used over and over and over again!
Mum was a good baker, so we had lots of steamed sponge puddings, cakes, jam tarts and we had a pudding with most meals. Tinned fruit and Carnation milk was my favourite. We also had home-made rice pudding and sometimes frozen chocolate eclairs. Frozen cream sticks were a thing too.

Goodness, I could go on and on and on!

Creme caramel with its delicious brown syrup from the sachet. Ideal milk in a blue striped tin.

Treacle tart homemade with golden syrup and cornflakes.
Katie Stewart Lemon freeze ice cream made with lemons but also coated with cornflakes.

The free toy in cereal e.g. in Ricicles (how do you spell it?)until we learned how to find it which caused a lot of squabbling. there were little plastic toys that had cotton attached so they walked across the table pulled by the weight on the cotton thread.

On a slightly different note we also had very milky kids tea even in a babies bottle but probably early sixties not seventies!

The last two I made from the recipe in "Something To Do", a pink Puffin paperback with things to do for each month of the year.

I had that!

@Lovesabadboy

My mum was a good cook, but a plain cook. We were not well off, so would have a lot of offal - hearts, kidneys, liver, pigs hocks, neck. I detested most meat, but was made to sit there until I ate it. (No surprise that I have been veggie for 30 years now!) Mushrooms were expensive and we only had them on Boxing Day - with steak...which we also only had on Boxing Day! Later, in the 80's Flash-Fry steak was introduced and was cheaper, so we had that from time to time as a treat. We had a lot of stews bulked out with pearl barley, which I hated then and haven't eaten since I left home. Dried peas, soaked overnight would accompany the pigs hocks (complete with sticky skin and hairs!). I dreaded seeing the peas soaking in a bowl as I knew what the next day would bring! Everything was cooked from scratch. Roast on a Sunday - normally lamb as we would buy half a sheep and freeze it. (I distinctly remember us getting a chest freezer, it was a ground-breaking day and I wrote about it in my news book at school!!) Monday would be the left over meat, minced up using a hand mincer attached to the side of the table, in a shepherd's pie. Or what we called Stewed potatoes....basically chunks of meat and potato boiled with onions. (tasted better than it sounds). Mum would make her own steak and kidney puddings and steak and kidney pies...more often than not served with plain boiled potatoes. Fish on a Friday, often yellow smoked haddock. Saturday we would sometimes have kippers for tea if we had been to the fishmonger in town that afternoon. Bacon, egg and chips was a dinner, not a breakfast like it is these days. (obvs not with chips). Chips were deep fried in the deep-fat fryer, in lard and then the lard was left to go solid again and get used over and over and over again! Mum was a good baker, so we had lots of steamed sponge puddings, cakes, jam tarts and we had a pudding with most meals. Tinned fruit and Carnation milk was my favourite. We also had home-made rice pudding and sometimes frozen chocolate eclairs. Frozen cream sticks were a thing too.

Goodness, I could go on and on and on!

We must have had the same mother

No fish van here, but my Mum would poach "black Alaska cod" in milk and then also make a white sauce out of the milk. The fish was lovely, flaky, and no risky bones. Served with potatoes, veg and cracked allspice on top of the sauce, in the Swedish tradition.

I think the fish is also called sablefish. I think it might have been smoked. So good. Too darn expensive now even on the west coast of Canada.

Oh, and pickled herring my grandfather made for Christmas. Onions, and peppercorns, and vinegar. He went to the docks in herring season and made it from scratch. There was a radio station that sponsored the sale of buckets of herring for an "orphans fund."

We ate bowls full with those wheat crackers called triscuits.

Sorry if I am long winded but this thread keeps bringing back memories.

open.library.ubc.ca/collections/fisherman/items/1.0006767

My grandmother used to do the fish poached in milk and made into white sauce in the 50s. If it was smoked haddock the sauce was yellow. We used to go and buy it in Mac Fisheries.
I love the detail that this thread has brought to 70s cooking. So much innovation, experimentation and imaginative use of cheaper ingredients.

I don't know if others agree with me, but I wonder if this thread, which is so warm and memory-reviving, might be a good candidate for Mumsnet classics. It reads like an historical diary almost. So lovely.

Lots of fond memories here. My dad came from a solidly working class family and he used to tell me stories of his father going poaching and his mother cooking up rabbit ir pheasant. We also used to get the odd brace of pheasants left out for us by a neighbour and my dad would sit in the garden plucking them and gutting them. We also ate offal - liver, kidneys, I hated it. Loved boiled bacon though, done in the pressure cooker and served with parsley sauce.

My mum's parents had lived abroad and my grandparents used to have curry parties in the 70s. Inviting all their friends round for turkey curry with sultanas in. My mum was a good cook and happy to try new things - Chinese takeaway was her favourite. She was always on a diet though and used to count calories in a little book in the 80s.

@snowspider

We had New Zealand butter which was very yellow until Lurpak became available which I adored. At my grandma's in Wales the butter was very yellow and salty in a round pat with a Swan on the paper.

Shirgar Butter?

I remember we always drank tea, rarely coffee and if we did it was Camp coffee.

Tea was from a teapot and the tea was loose leaf. We had a strainer to go over the top of the mug and a woolley tea cosy for the teapot. I remember it was two scoops of tea and then 'one for the pot'.

I couldn't resist. These women could be my Grandma. This is what I meant by buckets. Grandpa prepared them all himself. He also made a mean bowl of oatmeal and a delicious stew with both beef and pork. Gave my parents a rest when we drove, believe it or not, 12 hours from our home in the interior of BC to the coast.

open.library.ubc.ca/collections/fisherman/items/1.0006770

@Porcupineintherough

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.

Mine too - pulses and olive oil were a staple in my house and I remember thinking it was very weird when served fish fingers and chips at a friends house.

@EBearhug

The last two I made from the recipe in "Something To Do", a pink Puffin paperback with things to do for each month of the year.

I had that!

So did I! I think I still have it.

I'd love this to go into Classics too, how does one nominate?

About to start this jigsaw...enjoy the memories.

I think you report the OP and make it clear you're not reporting a problem, you're asking for it to be considered for moving to Classics. I'll have a try at that now.

I enjoyed school dinners for the most part, but then I'll eat almost anything. My favourite at secondary school was ravioli (tinned), roast potatoes and flabby green beans (almost certainly also tinned). I don't recall whether there was any cheese for the ravioli. This was usually followed by steamed jam roll and custard. Stodgefest. I adored it and had seconds of both if I could. My poor arteries!

School dinners were self-service at secondary, family service at primary school (i.e. we sat around a table, the food was placed in big trays in front of a teacher or possibly a dinner lady, and she served it out to us and supervised while we ate). I have no memory of any of my primary schools employing teaching assistants. There were dinner ladies who supervised the playground so the teachers could have a break, I suppose. Useful job for a woman with school aged children who didn't mind having every weekday in termtime broken up by coming into school for a couple of hours. Taking in a packed lunch was unknown when I was at primary school in Scotland in the late 60s/early 70s. It may have happened at my English school, but in that case the numbers must have been tiny as I have no memory of it at all.

Frozen cream sticks were a thing too. And such a good idea if you only wanted a little bit. Inspired by this thread, I've dug out some of my 70's recipe cards and am going to do a bit of baking today.

I remember once having a box of frozen chocolates. I don't know if it was too expensive to become a regular treat or was a short-lived experiment from the manufacturer. We liked them, but they were clearly a gimmick.

@mathanxiety

Ah yes, the home brewing!

We always had a giant vat of ginger beer on the go, and my Dad used to make advocaat which seemed to involve dissolving eggs (shell and all) in some sort of brandy solution. It was lovely!

My grandad made his own wine, but it lost some of its appeal after he casually mentioned that he used the same sieve as the one for cleaning out the fish tank It was always referred to as "guppy wine" after that.

Seems from all the responses that asparagus was a lot more common than I thought

I remember the frozen chocolates. Brought out proudly at a dinner party. Poosibly from Bejam.