Tag: Food and drink

1950-1999 Food & Drink

1950s American Pie

Post author By Estelle
Post date October 7, 2018

DC Thomson, the Scottish publishing house, holds a huge amount of nostalgia value for me, The Beano being my absolute number one childhood read. I got the comic every week, collected the single character booklets, and dreamed of catapults, minxing, and big piles of mash with sausages sticking out. And I’m never getting rid of my Dennis the Menace and Gnasher fan club badges.

So the new DC Thomson book, Pass it On: Cooking Tips from the 1950s, appeals to both my real nostalgia and the kind of fantasy nostalgia I have about times which pre-date me. Can you feel proper nostalgia about things you didn’t actually live through? Reading so many old books has almost given me false memory syndrome.

The book is a guide to what home cooking used to be – a collection of recipes and tips sent in to The Sunday Post, People’s Journal and The People’s Friend by those women who cooked for their families in the face of culinary challenges we can’t quite imagine today – the food rationing of the Second World War didn’t come to an end until 1954 for some food items, including meat, cheese, butter, preserves, tea and sugar, and frugality was key.

There’s a lovely selection of original recipe pages you can look at here and I decided to have a crack at one of them. My favourite recipe genre (and the staple of recipe books up to the 1950s), invalid cookery, is here along with recipe suggestions for your Government Cheese – the nickname of the mild cheddar which was the only type available until the end of rationing. Mind you, I’m a month into a dairy-free diet on account of my new baby son and his sore bottom, and even Government Cheese is sounding wildly delicious to me at the moment.

The bread omelet sounds good, like a slightly more elaborate eggy bread.

Then there’s the Carrot Mould, which lives up to the old British stereotype of cooking, boiling carrots into baby food for a whole two hours and then turning them into an unnecessary shape.

The Gingerbread Upsidedown Delight is definitely one I’m making at some point, the Enid Blyton-style name adding to its appeal.

But I made the American Pie.

There’s been more than 40 years of speculation about what Don McLean meant in his chart-topping song, but I think I can say with confidence that this wasn’t what he was singing about. This one is a bit of a mystery – I mean we know the phrase “As American as apple pie” but there’s nothing mentioned about a pile of macaroni, cold meat, tomatoes and breadcrumbs. This is obviously a way to use up the leftover meat probably from the Sunday roast. I wondered about which meat to use – it could be Spam for full retro effect, but I went for turkey and smoked ham as that sounded at least a little bit American to me.

Despite my initial thoughts that this comes from a place where people didn’t quite get macaroni – it should be coated in a sauce surely, not used as a plain unflavoured base – it was actually quite pleasant, a smooth and creamy element to the dish. The whole thing has nothing to hold it together though, and just flops into a pile of ingredients on the plate. It would be better with an egg to hold it together and some cheese on top, but then again, that would probably be an extravagance too far in the age of rationing.

The book is available here and I think it will be going on my Christmas list.

Tags 1950s, American Pie, food, Food and drink, Vintage recipes

1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

Cadbury’s “99”, 1936

Post author By Estelle
Post date October 2, 2016

Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 8th July 1936

Today’s post began through a fit of annoyance that literally every flavour of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream contains eggs, thereby making a trip to the cinema with my egg-allergic little girl an ice-cream free zone. And it ended with a minor dairy-based historical discovery and an ultimately unfulfilled quest.

So, I was looking up which ice creams contained eggs when I stumbled on the website for The Ice Cream Alliance, and an interesting little section on the wonder that is the Cadbury’s “99”. The “99” being a delicacy that Wikipedia tells me is enjoyed not only in Britain, but also Ireland, South Africa and Australia, and, I need hardly say for British readers, consists of a cone of soft-serve ice-cream, garnished with a specially-sized flake chocolate bar.

I was forced to go to the park and buy one for illustrative purposes at this point.

Yes, it was nice, thank you — Yes, it was very nice, thank you

Here’s the facts, as we know them. Why is a “99” called a “99”? Good question. It’s a Cadbury’s trademark to describe “a scoop or swirl of soft serve ice cream with a Cadbury chocolate flake in it,” yet no one is clear about the original meaning of the name, including, apparently, Cadbury’s.

What’s that? A tiny historical mystery, you say? I’m on the case!

The Ice Cream Alliance says Cadbury’s is cagey about the origins of the “99”. Wikipedia at least gives some dates, stating that the “99” as we know it now, cone, ice cream and Flake and all, has been served since 1922.

Although, come on, the Screwball isn’t really a “99” in a plastic cone. There’s a crucial ball of bubblegum at the bottom, and definitely sauce and/or sherbet involved.

An aside – red sauce on a “99”, Wikipedia tells me, is called “monkey blood” in some regions, which is exciting. This is my reference point for sauce on an ice-cream though – “I didn’t ask for sauce.” “I didn’t give you sauce.”

Anyway. Both Wikipedia and Cadbury’s own website date the origin of the Flake itself from 1920, when a Cadbury’s employee shrewdly noted how excess chocolate fell off the moulds in a drizzly, thin, flakey layer. Unfortunately I can find no evidence of adverts in any archives until the 1930s and even Cadbury’s website illustrates the invention of the Flake with a 1960s ad.

What I did find, though, was this. Brand new information – to me at least, and also apparently to Wikipedia and the Ice Cream Alliance, seeing as there’s no mention of it anywhere else I’ve seen. From the British Newspaper Archive, a fairly extensive campaign in 1936 advertising the new invention of the “99”, within adverts for Flake.

It’s obviously a newish thing in 1936 because the hook line is “Have you tried a 99?” Importantly, though, this 99 is not a 99! It’s an ice cream wafer sandwich with two strips of ice cream and a Flake in the middle. Your confectioner will be happy to provide.

Now it seems unlikely to me that in 1922 the “99” came into being, fully formed as we know it today, only to be replaced by something different in 1936, presented as new, and then reverted back at some unspecified point. PLUS, there wasn’t even soft-serve ice cream in the UK until the 1940s, hence this 1936 concoction consisting of ice cream blocks. Depending on who you believe, Maggie Thatcher may or may not have had a hand in developing soft serve for the British market. Which has put me off it a bit.

Still, though, I can’t find mention of this anywhere else, and, you know, maybe Cadbury’s has even forgotten it themselves. I still haven’t got to the bottom of it, but if any readers have any memories of “99” which are different to today, please let me know.

Sussex Agricultural Express, 3rd July 1936

Tags 1936, advert, Cadbury's 99, Food and drink

1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

Barr’s Iron Brew, 1906

Post author By Estelle
Post date May 1, 2016

Before Irn Bru was Irn Bru, it was Iron Brew. Up until 1946 when a new law declared that drinks couldn’t be described as a “brew” if they weren’t actually brewed, and so the spelling, if not the pronunciation, was changed to keep within the letter of the law.

The basic Scottish hardness of Iron Brew’s advertising strategy is already in place in 1906, with the drink being endorsed here by champion wrestler and cable tosser Alex Munro, and all-round champion athlete of the world Donald Dinnie.

Here’s an illustrated advert to show what they actually looked like.

Oh, for the days when you could be the all-round champion of the world and look like Donald Dinnie. He was a big celebrity of the day and well hard to boot. He’s been called “The Nineteenth Century’s Greatest Athlete”, and had the honour of heavy artillery shells used in the First World War being called “Donald Dinnie’s” in recognition of just how rock he was. To be fair, he was 69 in 1906, if this is when this illustration of him was made.

Here’s Alex Munro, who excellently won bronze at the 1908 Olympics and silver at the 1912 Olympics in the Tug of War event. Oh, how I wish they still had Tug of War, but sadly that ended as an event in 1920. It reminds me of all those strong man programmes you used to get on TV in the 80s, around the time World of Sport was on.

Here Iron Brew was apparently an essential part of the recuperation of “The Fasting Man” Mons. Beaute, who held the world record for fasting at the time. 40 days with only Barr’s Soda Water as sustenance, and recovering afterwards with a heady mix of Iron Brew and Bovril.

Tags 1906, advert, Barr's Iron Brew, Food and drink, Irn Bru, Iron Brew

1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

No More Drunkenness, 1909

Post author By Estelle
Post date January 23, 2016

This is a kind of anti-Rohypnol advert from 1909. It’s a product that you surreptitiously slip into the unaware’s drink in order to sober them up.

“No More Drunkenness” is promised with “the Great Coza Powder”, which has “the marvellous effect of producing a repugnance to alcohol in any shape or form.”

The USP for this product is that the user isn’t aware that they’ve taken it. It’s for other concerned members of the drunkard’s family for administer in “coffee, tea, milk, beer, water, liqueurs or solid food, without the partaker’s knowledge”.

The troublesome imbiber suddenly doesn’t fancy a drink anymore as the powder “does its work so silently and surely that wife, sister, or daughter can administer it to the intemperate without his knowledge and without his learning what has effected his reformation.”

I’m not sure exactly how it works – you can get a free sample sent out to you, so it’s obviously not a one shot deal. Maybe you have to take it every day.

Annoying as the drunkard is, I suppose it’s not technically moral behaviour to secretly slip them some Coza Powder. Or it wouldn’t be if this remedy wasn’t pure quackery, and easily made in your kitchen right now. One of my favourite publications, The British Medical Journal’s “The Composition of Certain Secret Remedies” of 1909, the very same year as this advert, was a take down of the old Victorian and Edwardian pharmaceutical industry with analyses of all those “never fail” medications. It dismisses Coza by its findings that all it consists of is ordinary bicarbonate of soda, cumin and cinnamon.

Tags 1909, advert, alcohol, Coza powder, Food and drink, pharmaceuticals

1900-1949 Food & Drink

After-Christmas Recipe – Wholemeal Biscuits, 1928

Post author By Estelle
Post date January 5, 2016

Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 29th December 1928

So it’s back to work for me today. Can’t complain really – it’s in distinct contrast to the days when I was a shop-girl and had to work the busiest day of the year on Christmas Eve, with it all happening again on Boxing Day.

This year it’s been wall-to-wall truckles of brie, salted caramel cream liqueur, marshmallow snowmen and bubble and squeak, and so perhaps it’s time for a more austere diet to kick in. As the recipe below says (before giving the instructions in one, long sentence) “After the surfeit of the festival season it is often a relief to see something that is not garnished with clotted cream or chocolate icing. Wholemeal biscuits seem an eminently suitable change…”

It’s a kind of digestive biscuit which was, as evident in its name, was considered an aid to the digestive system due to the presence of bicarbonate of soda. Notwithstanding the fact that most of it decomposes into sodium carbonate during the cooking process and so having little actual effect, this particular recipe only calls for a pinch of the stuff anyway.

Nb. This is the first time I have come across the concept of a “saltspoon” as a means of measurement. Apparently 1 saltspoon equals 1/4 of a teaspoon so this would mean 1/8 teaspoon of salt in the recipe below.

After-Christmas Recipe

Wholemeal Biscuits

After the surfeit of the festival season it is often a relief to see something that is not garnished with clotted cream or chocolate icing. Wholemeal biscuits seem an eminently suitable change. Here is a good recipe for them:-

Ingredients:

1/2lb wholemeal flour

1/4 pint milk (about)

1oz caster sugar

1oz butter

1/2 saltspoonsful salt (1/8 tsp)

A pinch of carbonate of soda

Dissolve the butter and soda in the milk by warming, mix the flour, sugar and salt together, add the milk, mix the whole into a stiff paste, roll out thinly, cut in rounds, pierce all over with a fork, place on a greased tin and bake 25 minutes.

Tags 1928, baking, digestibe biscuits, Food and drink, Vintage recipes

1900-1949 Food & Drink

The Ovaltine Egg Farm, 1930

Post author By Estelle
Post date December 7, 2015

Until I saw this advert, I didn’t realise that eggs used to be a vital component of Ovaltine. They even had their own egg farm next to their original factory in the UK, based in Kings Langley, and which they used in the advertisements. “Malt, milk and eggs, flavoured with cocoa,” was how they described it. Today Ovaltine is owned by Twinings and has ditched the egg, apart from the “may contain traces of egg” disclaimer. As all food adverts were apparently compelled to do from around 1850-1950, the claimed nutritional value was paramount.

Eggs, and the associated implication of nutritional value, were indicated in its original name of Ovomaltine which references “ovo” for egg, and malt. It was invented in Switzerland in 1904 and is still called that there – amusingly, the reason for its name change to Ovaltine in the UK in 1909 was apparently because of a spelling mistake on the trademark application.

It was a household name of a brand thanks especially to the “The Ovaltineys” radio programme. It ran from 1935 until 1952 on Radio Luxembourg, with a break while the station closed for the duration of the Second World War. It might have ended over 20 years before I was born, but even I know the “Ovaltineys” jingle as sung by The Beverley Sisters.

In 1953, the brand got more positive publicity for its nutritional value when Sir Edmund Hilary took Ovaltine with him on his expedition to climb Mount Everest. Now, I associate it more with a soothing, warm-milk-to-help-you-sleep, kind of effect, rather than climbing mountains.

I’m always a fan of Art Deco buildings, and the Kings Langley factory is a beautiful example. It closed in 2002, and now it’s been converted into flats, but with the same listed façade. And where the The Ovaltine Egg Farm was based is now the site of Renewable Energy Systems Ltd.

The company doesn’t make it very clear where it’s manufactured for the UK now. But it does have some more vintage Ovaltine ads available on their website, which are worth a look.

Tags 1930, advert, Food and drink, Ovaltine

1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

Do You Suffer Gladly from Flatulence, 1932

Post author By Estelle
Post date May 30, 2015
2 Comments on Do You Suffer Gladly from Flatulence, 1932

If you will insist on drinking acid lemonade when you’re thirsty and farting yourself silly, why not try the “safe” drink Glucolem instead? It’s safe because it’s mainly made of glucose, not lemon juice like the “unsafe” lemonades you like. Your friends are probably already drinking it and scorning your flatulent ways.

Tags 1932, advert, Food and drink, Glucolem, The British Newspaper Archive