Tag: food

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 Food & Drink

Vintage Recipe – Sarah’s Ginger Bread Biscuits

Post author By Estelle
Post date January 26, 2016

Last year my mum revealed that she had what I’d always wished my family had – an old family recipe book belonging to my great-grandma, who I called “Nan”.

I’m an avid recipe scrapbooker, pasting cuttings and print-outs of interesting-looking recipes into a succession of notebooks. The best of those recipes, the ones that work and I will make for my family over and over, I write down in my ultimate notebook, which is a copy of River Song’s Diary from Doctor Who. I started doing this years ago in order to start my own family recipe book for my children. With my daughter’s allergies, the focus has changed a bit, and now I’m trying to find vegan baking recipes that we all can enjoy, seeing as it’s strangely very hard to find shop-bought baked goods that are both dairy and egg-free. Especially as those are two of the most common allergies for children.

I’m slightly baffled as to why me and my brothers, all of us interested in food and cooking, were never aware of the recipe book before, but that fact that this thin green exercise book exists at all is a cause for joy. There are no dates in it, but I think it’s from when my grandma was a teenager, as some of what looks like her school-era writing is in it, which would make it from the 1920s-30s.

I’m planning to work my way through making a selection of the recipes, and I started here, with “Sarah’s Ginger Bread Biscuits”. I don’t know who Sarah was, but she evidently made biscuits which were good enough for my Nan to seek out the recipe. Also, as a bonus, there’s no dairy in them, the fat being made up of lard. In order to make them suitable for my daughter I included egg replacer instead of the egg, and soya milk to mix with the bicarbonate of soda. And I ended up using Trex vegetable fat instead of the lard too, but it’s a similar thing.

This is the recipe:

Sarah’s Ginger Bread Biscuits

Ingredients:

14 1/2oz flour
4oz lard
5oz syrup
8oz sugar
2 tspns ginger
1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda
1 egg

Method:

Rub lard into dry ingredients, with a little salt.
Add warmed syrup warmed and the soda dissolved in a little milk.
Add egg, well beaten.
Mix all well together, roll out.
Next day cut with an egg cup and bake in a hot oven.

When I mixed the dough I didn’t roll it out, instead I kept it in a lump and put it in the fridge overnight. The next day I divided it into walnut-sized balls and flattened them with a fork rather than cut them with an eggcup. The biscuits spread and won’t keep their shape in any case. When you take them out of the oven they are soft, so wait a minute before moving them onto a wire tray to cool.

The verdict – they do indeed taste like gingerbread, and when freshly made are a delicious combination of crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. After a day they will have hardened a lot, and develop the classic crunchy texture of the gingernut biscuit. Which is nice, but not quite so delectable as the fresh version. They didn’t last long in my house, so thank you Nan!

Tags food, ginger bread biscuit, vintage recipe

1900-1949 Food & Drink Victorian

Vintage Recipes – Brown Windsor Soup

Post author By Estelle
Post date July 16, 2015
2 Comments on Vintage Recipes – Brown Windsor Soup

Brown Windsor Soup – surely the stuff that the British Empire was built on? I know of it through Tony Hancock ordering it in an unappetising 1950s canteen, the Carry On team being served it for dinner it like unadventurous Brits in Carry on Abroad, and, well, in numerous other comedy settings from the 50s to the 70s. It’s famously the dull embodiment of dreary British cuisine and looks a bit like sludge. Although I can’t remember the ingredients ever being specified, I imagined it as a kind of thin, liquidised beef stew.

So it rather blew my mind to learn on Wikipedia that, in all likelihood, Brown Windsor Soup never actually existed as an actual, real thing from Victorian or Edwardian times. It was first included on the odd menu in the 1920s and 30s and thereafter apparently mainly used as a jokey kind of reference to terrible, dull British food.

Michael Quinion has investigated, and makes the claim that Brown Windsor Soup is first mentioned in print as late as 1943 – in the book The Fancy by Monica “great-granddaughter of Charles” Dickens. He has a few theories as to where the name came from. Firstly, there was White Windsor Soup, an undeniably real Victorian dish. Secondly, Brown Windsor Soap was also a definite, very famous, type of soap. And so there might have been some kind of confusion between these two items, or possibly a deliberate mashup of them both, for satirical purposes or otherwise.

I decided I wasn’t going to take Wikipedia’s word for this. I was going to uncover some true Brown Windsor Soup, as enjoyed by Queen Victoria. Wading through The British Newspaper Archive, the extensive search results that immediately popped up looked promising. However, on closer investigation, it was a quirk of the reading software of the Archive, which isn’t always entirely accurate on account of the age of the papers scanned, and the tiny typefaces that can be used. Every result referred to Brown Windsor Soap, not soup.

However. There is another type of Victorian soup that may have been the Brown Windsor in all but specific name – the vague-sounding “Brown Soup”.

In basic form, this could be “Beef Tea” – either in invalid cookery form or as a kind of Bovril drink, like this one, “Bouillon Fleet” from 1889:

Or here on this restaurant menu in 1890, which was probably a more substantial version:

And it was served as a starter at the New Year’s Dinner at a “Home for Old Men and Women” in Glasgow, 1895. This stereotypical Victorian menu consisted of brown soup, beef-steak pie and plum pudding.

Talking of pudding – look! A recipe for “Brown Windsor pudding” in 1897. It’s a spiced fruit steamed pudding which sounds gorgeous. I’m guessing that this was a reference to the aforementioned soap, which was also advertised as containing spices such as cinnamon. If there was spiced food based on the soap, then maybe “Brown Windsor Soup” should properly also be cinnamonned, gingered and cloved, a bit like Mulligatawny soup?

Here’s a 1913 recipe for brown soup. It’s made of beef and vegetables, but made extra brown with the addition of Bovril and browning. None more brown.

And one from 1916, with instructions on how to make the soup extra brown, by browning the flour in front of the fire.

The People's Journal, 4th November 1916 — The People’s Journal, 4th November 1916

And another one. It all sounds quite nice to me.

The first actual mention of “Brown Windsor soup” I found, on a Hartlepool menu from 1928. It was from Binns’ Restaurant – perhaps they invented it?

A 1928 recipe for Brown Soup here, using vermicelli to thicken, if wished.

Brown Windsor still being served at Binns’ in Hartlepool in 1931:

A prize-winning brown soup recipe from 1931. I suspect that the winner, Mrs G. Walker, had seen the “Everything That Is Good” recipe above, in 1928. Veeerry similar.

Windsor soup was finally commercially available in the 1940s. Batchelor’s version is here, although it wasn’t called “Brown”. Tinned foods were handy in wartime, it’s “A meal in itself” and could be heated “at the minimum of fuel cost”. Although “quantities are rather limited and a little patience may be needed,” in order to obtain some. Emphasizing its potential scarcity makes it sound more desirable, of course.

Finally, the last reference I found. Because The British Newspaper Archive only goes up to the mid-1950s, so far. I love the Britishness of the “If you must eat out…”

I wonder when the very last bowl of Brown Windsor soup was eaten? Maybe there are people still making it out there, although what their recipe is, who knows? I couldn’t find anything specifying what makes “Brown Soup” different from “Brown Windsor”, if there even is a difference. And so, now I feel the need to invent my own version – a very gently spiced, very brown, beefy, vegetabley kind of concoction. Watch this space.

Update – thanks to Steve in the comments below, who let me know that there was now a date of 1926 as the first reference on Wikipedia. This is it:

Portsmouth Evening News, 24th February 1926

And after some more research I’ve found a 1926 reference to Brown Windsor in Binns’, earlier than the 1928 version above. Still a few months later than the one in the Portsmouth Evening News though.

Tags brown soup, brown windsor soup, carry on films, food, The British Newspaper Archive, Tony Hancock, Vintage recipes

1900-1949 Food & Drink

Vintage recipes – Old Fashioned Macaroni and Cheese, 1910

Post author By Estelle
Post date May 28, 2015
2 Comments on Vintage recipes – Old Fashioned Macaroni and Cheese, 1910

Macaroni cheese is probably my ultimate in comfort food (well, second to my mum’s world-beating mashed potato). It sounds to me like a fairly modern, American invention – after all, I thought the British were introduced to proper pasta in about 1975. At least, I’ve got a promotional pasta cookery pamphlet from 1978 that talks about its chosen foodstuff as a new and original thing. (It also has a strange lasagne recipe too – no meat sauce at all, just béchamel on every layer with chopped ham. I need to try it one day.)

But no! I was as wrong in this assumption as I could be. It turns out a version of mac ‘n’ cheese is in what might be the world’s oldest cookery book, Forme of Cury, from the late fourteenth century. There, it consists of fresh dough boiled in sheets and sandwiched in layers of cheese and butter. A bit like that lasagne from 1978. Elizabeth Raffald provides the first macaroni cheese recipe we’d properly recognise, in her The Experienced English Housekeeper of 1769, and Mrs Beeton included two recipes for it in her 1861 Book of Household Management.

And my excellent copy of Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book from 1910 has its own version too, below.

Ruth Goodman’s Victorian Farm tells me that the word macaroni in 19th Century recipes was used to describe all shaped pasta and that the macaroni usually available in Victorian shops was very thick and required a long cooking time to soften. This explains the timing of an hour’s boiling in my Edwardian recipe, I expect, rather than a preference for boiling it to a mush, like their carrots. The macaroni also came in long tubes, which you had to cut into smaller lengths yourself. And apparently it also needed washing.

I gave it a go, changing a few things for the modern world.

No boiling of the macaroni for a hour, and no browning it in front of a fire, sadly. Also, I’m not sure how many people the recipe is intended for, as the book doesn’t mention this for any of the recipes. But 3oz of pasta was not enough for two greedy 21st century portions so I upped the amount to 5oz. It’s unusual that there is more cheese by weight than macaroni in the recipe – despite adding more pasta, I kept the sauce amounts exactly the same, and it worked fine. Although the recipe seems to guide you to throw all the sauce ingredients together without cooking but maybe white sauces were too obvious to give much direction for. I like that soft cheese curds were also an option instead of the grated hard cheese.

Here it is.

Macaroni and Cheese.

3oz macaroni (I used 5oz)
4oz cheese
1oz flour
1 1/2oz butter
1/2 pint milk
Pepper, salt, cayenne, 1/2 tsp mustard powder

Wash the macaroni, drop it in short lengths into 1 pint boiling water. Add a little salt and 1/2 oz butter. Cook gently about 1 hour, then drain.

Grate the cheese or, if soft, press with a wooden spoon through a wire sieve. Put 1 oz of butter into a saucepan with the flour. Mix and add the milk and seasonings. Stir in 3oz of the cheese, add the macaroni, and mix.

Turn into a hot, greased pie dish. Sprinkle remaining cheese over. Brown in front of fire. Serve very hot.

Old fashioned macaroni and cheese, in a pie dish

It was definitely of the old, plain school of macaroni cheese, which would be too non-jazzed-up to be included in a recipe book these days. But that what I like about Mrs Rea – good, solid, day to day recipes that work, rather than a recipes dreamed up by a celebrity chef purely in order to have an original theme for their new cook book. Plain it might be, but lovely, smooth and tasty nonetheless. I will be making it again. In fact, writing this post now, I wish there was some left that I could eat Nigella-style in front of the fridge, but it’s all gone.

Tags 1910, food, macaroni cheese, Mrs Dora Rea's Cookery Book, Vintage recipes

1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

You Need Biscuits to Keep You Going, 1948

Post author By Estelle
Post date May 18, 2015

Right, so this is the new Keep Calm and Carry On, as far as I’m concerned.

For the good of your health, have a biscuit! Well, so said the “Cake and Biscuits Manufacturers War Time Alliance Ltd” in 1948. I love the way the fact that a pound of sweet biscuits is proudly presented as containing (a strangely specific) 2,204 calories, which would be cause for shame now.

This also happened to be the first day the National Health Service came into being.

I don’t know about you, but this is an extremely apt motto for my office at around 3pm. In fact, I’m off to print a copy of this to place over the special “biscuit desk” we have (and which is just one reason I love my new job).

Tags advert, biscuits, cakes, food, The British Newspaper Archive

1900-1949 Adverts Food & Drink

Eat More Fat, 1937

“Atora puddings solve the difficult problem of children who dislike fat.”

Not a sentence I can imagine would be used in today’s advertising. These adverts are from The Children’s Newspaper, and it is true that children do need fat – apart from other things, fat helps in the development of brain cells. Did you know that the brain can contain up to 60% fat? (More in some people’s cases….) Fat is of course one of those food groups that was celebrated, then demonised, and recently started to be rehabilitated as a useful part of your diet. My grandma could eat a mound of fat – she preferred the fat to the meat – and she was slim all her life and lived to a good old age too.

“Medical testimony proves that the children – and adults – with weakly and “chesty” tendencies, who most need nourishing fat, are the ones who don’t like it.”

Oh, I do like the idea of eating suet puddings for the good of your health. I’m sure the 1930s style diet is worth a try. I’m quite tempted to try something along the lines of this blog, The 1940s Experiment, where a woman lost weight by following Second World War rationing recipes. I could try the 1920s-30s version, the typical diet from just before rationing came in (well, it sounds more fun anyway – apart from the Mice in Honey). Nourishing Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisps all round!

The Children's Newspaper, 8th May 1937 — The Children’s Newspaper, 8th May 1937

Tags 1937, Atora, children, fat, food, Vintage recipes

1900-1949 Food & Drink

Radishes Have No Food Value, 1929

Post author By Estelle
Post date May 6, 2015

The Southern Reporter, 24th October, 1929

Some vegetable-based advice from 1929 here, but it’s a bit harsh on the poor old radish, which is declared to have no food value.

It’s also really wrong. The radish is a good source of vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin C and antioxidants, especially one called sulforaphane which might help fight cancer cells. In your face, 1929!

I’m fascinated by nutrition knowledge and advice though, the way it changes, and how we’re still finding out things all the time about how the body works. Doing Weight Watchers some years ago, I saw a slimming tip from an old issue of Jackie magazine promoting cheese as a dieting snack. On the Weight Watchers points system, cheese was one of the first things to be, very sadly, ditched, as you can probably use up a days worth of points on one small block. So this seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. But then the Atkins diet came in, advocating avoiding starchy foods and promoting protein and fats, and it suddenly didn’t seem so crazy after all.

And it will all change again, I expect. Maybe like Woody Allen predicted in Sleeper:

Tags 1920s, 1929, food, Sleeper, Woody allen

Adverts Animals Food & Drink

Spratt’s Dog Cakes, 1895

Post author By Estelle
Post date May 2, 2015

I enjoy the bold use of space and sense of minimalism in this advert for Spratt’s “Meat Fibrine” Dog Cakes. Founder James Spratt invented the idea of dog biscuits, inspired by seeing dogs on Liverpool docks scoffing down hardtack – the sailors weevil-busting biscuit. (Well, that’s if the “Dicky Sams” weren’t using the hardtack to make scouse.)

The name lives on in the Spratt’s Complex of Tower Hamlets, London, which was one of the first warehouse conversions in the 1980s. It used to be the old Victorian dog food factory, which at one point was the biggest in the world. They also had a dog show department, which must have had something to do with the fact that James Spratt’s assistant, a 14 year old Charles Cruft, later founded Crufts Dog Show.

Spratt’s produced over a billion dog biscuits for the army dogs of the First World War, and food for the dogs of the polar expeditions too. Here’s Ernest Shackleton’s snow dogs promoting Spratt’s dog cakes with a bit of frolicking in front of their posters:

Tags 1895, advert, dogs, food, polar explorers, Shackleton, Spratt's