Retro food

[Stokey Sue Profile]

How nice PP! I could manage a bit of Black Magic

[Earthmaiden Profile]

How lovely, PP! Boxes of chocolates used to seem terribly exotic (and are still nice!) and Black Magic slightly mysterious. Do you remember the ads for Milk Tray where the handsome, mysterious man scaled great heights to deliver ... and all because the lady loves ... So romantic!

Love your book, Binky. I'd happily eat most of those things today.

[Sloe-Gin Profile]

Lovely gesture PP.
Those recipes would have been the height of sophistication! Even if they couldn't get authentic ingredients.

Meanwhile, in the pudding isle

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Don't all rush at once

[Earthmaiden Profile]

A very German retro-dish is Toast Hawaii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_Hawaii
My aunt still makes a whole baking tray of this for Christmas Eve every year to feed the family after church and before the gifting ceremony.

Gosh, the photo in that link takes me straight back to my first flight - to Australia, 1968. At some point during the seven stop journey, when we were somewhere in the region of the Philippines, something that looked exactly like that was served to us and we knew we were a long way from home and somewhere terribly exotic. We'd never had pineapple with ham before.

[herbidacious Profile]

I posted some pages from my early 1960s Marguerite Patten Cookery in Colour book about a year ago, printed on coloured paper with a very few colour photos. It's a window onto a different culinary world. That said, I think what really dates a lot of the dishes is not what they are but how they are presented. There are plenty of credible and appetising sounding recipes in it.

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Some of the original edition Delia's Complete Cookery feel very dates now. I suppose also some of my old little Sainbury's books. Sub cottage cheese for ricotta etc.

[herbidacious Profile]

That said, cucumber soup made with condensed canned chicken soup... post rationing mentality?

[herbidacious Profile]

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[Pepper Pig Profile]

[Earthmaiden Profile]

Times do change, don't they, Herbi!
Don't forget that no-one had a freezer and not everyone a fridge at that time so tinned foods which saved a lot of preparation were a godsend (to get chicken stock you'd have to have bought an expensive chicken and used the meat before making the bones into stock) and often quite tasty.

Campbell's really marketed their condensed soups for use as sauces and brought out a cookery book used all over the world. I have tasted a good few of the offerings, most not so nice now but we loved them then. I did like Thanksgiving green bean casserole in the US a few years ago!

Love the recipes you picked there!

[herbidacious Profile]

It's a treasure trove

That's got me wondering about stock cubes. Apparently, the earliest reference to them, or a form of them, is from the early 1700s, but they began to market them in the early 1900s. Maggi was the first brand, followed swiftly by OXO and then Knorr, so quite a European thing. Maybe a can of condensed soup made for a better base though. And no need to add cream.

When did fridges become ubiquitous, I wonder? My mother didn't have one growing up (but then they didn't have any electricity ) Their wealthy fellow church goers, the Moffats (as in cookers, mentioned before) had one and indeed a freezer so made themselves popular with their homemade ice cream - I get the impression my grandparents were not unusual in their lack of electricity.
My neighbour was telling me that when he moved into his house in the 70s, his other next door neighbours only had one electric socket which they used for a small black and white (of course) tv. So no mod cons at all. They dried a lot of food (on the balcony) and bottled stuff and the bottom half of their garden was all given up to food production.
When they moved out/died the incomers had not, apparently, noticed the dearth of electrical power points and in a state of shock, came round asking to borrow an extension lead.

[herbidacious Profile]

I have a Campbells recipe book. Not sure if it's the same one. Probably an '80s edition, although bought second hand much later.

[mistakened Profile]

I loved Campbells Tomato Rice Soup

I have a copy of What's Cookin'? Teen Age Cookery Book, published 1948, surprisingly with that title it is British. there is a recipe for omelette rolls using dried egg but the sausage roll recipe is standard. It does include Uses for Stale Bread

Moira

[Busybee Profile]

My dad is in his late 70’s and remembers, as an apprentice - so the early 60’s, putting in electrical supply in lots of farm houses up the dales. Electricity still wasn’t totally ubiquitous at this point.

My friend was married in the early 70’s and they bought a new Barret house, they didn’t have a fridge- it was the first white goods that they saved up to buy. So I’d guess mid 60’s to mid 70’s for most people getting a fridge?

I used to use Campbells condensed soups as casserole bases when I first left home, but can’t even recall seeing them for sale recently, are they still on the go? Probably superseded by jars of cook in sauce.

BB

[Earthmaiden Profile]

I think fridges were commonplace by the late 60s. When we left the Norfolk village in 1968 a lot of older people still didn't have them. In Australia everyone did - it would have been hard without in a warmer climate. We came back in 1970 and most people seemed to have them but they were still quite special. My mother refused to have one until she retired in 1985 . Strange really as we had had a village shop and she used the shop fridge and freezer for our domestic use right from the early 60s.

Our Campbells favourites were tinned tuna mixed with chicken or mushroom condensed soup poured onto crushed potatoes and condensed tomato soup mixed with pasta and generously topped with grated cheddar. I have tried both in more recent times and found them a bit rich.

Yes PP, electricity still being installed in the 60s. I remember one of our customers - a family with 4 young children - who lived away from the main village had a big ornate paraffin lamp hanging over the table as their main source of light. Main drains came to the village in 1967. That was when the older houses had designated bathrooms with flushing loos and baths with running water and plugs for the first time. The same year as Carnaby Street era in 'Swinging London' and two years before man landed on the Moon! But I digress from retro food.

[Seatallan Profile]

I could live without the mushroom basket....

The Banana Surprises remind me of a cookery book I had as a child. It was called something like 'Sticky Fingers' and it was full of recipes such as that. Most of them you'd never get away with now. The whole thing was one big sugar rush.

[Stokey Sue Profile]

I know my parents lived in a 1930s house, so had both gas and electricity, from about 1950. The house was in a street of identical houses, and by the time I was born in 1954 they had the full set acquired in those 4 years car, fridge and washing machine but mum thought we were the only family with the complete set of modern luxuries, and we only had them because until I was born my mother had a well paid full time job as a pharmacist

We didn’t get a tv until 1956 as there was no reception around Solent until the Rowridge transmitter was built then

[herbidacious Profile]

I read somewhere that people used to have fridge parties - dinner parties with all the food coming from the fridge - because it was such a novelty to have one. it might have been much earlier though when they really were considered to be a luxury. Some early kitchen appliances - washing machines certainly, not sure about fridges - were gas-powered. Gas v electricity was the Betamax vs VHS of it's day.

My parents had a tv by 1969 (there is a lovely photo of my father, sister and I watching it), but not sure how much earlier than that. I think we got a colour one around 1973. These things were, of course, hired, as was the washing machine. My parents got a video recorder in 1985. (I begged - wanted them to record Doctor Who for me when I went to university. Prior to that I had been recording just the sound on cassettes.) I think they were always a bit behind, no doubt due to lack of money, except with regard to computers. People usually manage to buy what they really want... And this was my father's thing. Although ironically - or not - he never had the internet. (He had dial up, but of course it very quickly became too frustrating to bother with.)

I imagine this (Edwardian) house would have had some electricity from the start. I think the bells for the servant must have been electric. (Buttons now painted over.) I am pretty sure the scary doorbell is original and seems to involve wires. There are no obvious defunct gas fittings/pipes.

We have this (near the floor in an alcove that obviously needs cleaning!):

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[herbidacious Profile]

Sorry that dirt is shocking. I am ashamed. It's not visible unless you get down on your hands and knees and look under a chair!

[aero280 Profile]

Television was available in Plymouth just in time for the Coronation, but the signal was very weak and you really needed a direct sight of the transmitter on Dartmoor, up the hill from the prison. We went to my uncles house on top of the hill to watch the Coronation. Our family didn't get a TV until 1956, and that was only BBC, until the Caradon Hill transmitter in Cornwall was built. I think that BBC and ITV had their own separate transmitters back then.

I think some of the really desperate "trendsetters" in the area had a multiple aerial array before the Coronation in order to get a signal from Wenvoe in S. Wales!!

But for retro recipes, I just take down my Radiation Cookbook

[Uschi Profile]

Television was available in Plymouth just in time for the Coronation, but the signal was very weak and you really needed a direct sight of the transmitter on Dartmoor, up the hill from the prison. We went to my uncles house on top of the hill to watch the Coronation. Our family didn't get a TV until 1956, and that was only BBC, until the Caradon Hill transmitter in Cornwall was built. I think that BBC and ITV had their own separate transmitters back then.

I watched Diana's and Charles' wedding in a cottage on the northern edge of Dartmoor way back in the '80s.

The giant salad sandwich is back. These days made to look like a gateau and the bread used for them is Turkish flatbread. My Polish neighbour made one and it was very tasty.
She went easy on the mayonaise using Philadelphia cheese or cottage cheese, too.