We'll Eat Again in Quotes

Living in style: a Duchess conceives it to consist in taking her breakfast at three o'clock in the afternoon—dining at eight—playing at Faro till four the next morning—supping at five, and going to bed at six—and to eat green peas and peaches in January. (Pierce Egan, Life in London, 1821)

A dinner of boiled fish, and of plain vegetables destined to be mixed by way of sauce with all one eats – a piece of roast beef cut from the hardest and most tasteless part of the carcase... Chairs with rush bottoms, sometimes covered with a cushion, which the least movement causes to fall to the ground. (A foreign visitor describes the British home circa 1850. Things hadn't changed much in the 1950s.)

Rejecting all dishes whereof Lady Tippins partakes: saying aloud when they are proffered to her, 'No, no, no, not for me. Take it away!' (Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens, 1864 A Victorian banquet was like a tasting menu or buffet, and you didn’t have to eat everything. There might be a printed menu so you knew what was coming up.)

Don't, when you drink, elevate your glass as if you were going to stand it inverted on your nose. Bring the glass perpendicularly to the lips, and then lift it to a slight angle. Drink sparingly while eating. It is far better for the digestion not to drink tea or coffee until the meal is finished. Drink gently, and not pour it down your throat like water turned out of a pitcher.  It is not proper to drink with a spoon in the cup; nor should one, by-the-way, ever quite drain a cup or glass. (The White House Cook Book, 1887)

You had to have, when you ate, one food brought in after another, each with fresh plates and different kinds of instruments to eat them with, as if on purpose to take time and trouble the servants. (Crewe Train, Rose Macaulay, 1926)

The 1910s dining table, which would be dotted with olives, salted almonds, sugared green peppermints, and chocolates in cut-glass bowls or silver dishes. (Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion, 1954)

I seem to remember that, in those far gone days, the waiter took his order from just one of the diners, usually the one who would be paying the bill. So, say, wife and children would say what it was they wanted and Father would relay the order to the waiter, editing it as required… When a couple was out together, the convention was that the man would order and pay, all those years ago. If a group of men were dining out together, other than at their club, again, it would be assumed that one of their number would be the host, (even if they shared the cost afterwards) and he would be the one to place the order. (A friend writes.)

More here, and links to the rest.

We'll Eat Again: the 80s

1980: M&S starts selling packaged sandwiches, and everybody follows.

Boeuf en croute (Beef Wellington), salmon en croute

Belgian creperies were everywhere. (The crepes were wholewheat, and stuffed with stuff. They were small, thin, limp, tepid and not much use if you were actually hungry.)

Vegetarians ate “something something bake”. Layered aubergine, tomato and mozarella. Or stir-fried veg with satay sauce.

fried potato skins with dips

raspberry vinegar

raspberry coulis (very thin, non-fattening sauce)

garlic cheesecake

steak sandwiches washed down with Rolling Rock, Sol and Peroni

rocket

sun-dried tomatoes (as a dish on their own in too much olive oil)

pesto

French onion soup

beetroot shavings

American burgers and burger sauces

blueberry muffins (fairy cakes)

blueberry cheesecake

kiwi fruit

nouvelle cuisine (Tiny portions on a black octagonal plate. Again, no use if you're hungry.)

raw baby spinach salad

herby sausages with far too much sage

sushi

balsamic vinegar

shiitake mushrooms (You were supposed to grow your own on a log.)

pears in chocolate sauce

tomato tart

fried black pudding with potato/swede mash (Black Lightning)

Banoffee pie

baby vegetables

mange-tout peas

wild rice, red rice from the Camargue

black Puy lentils

steamed vegetables (Meant you had to buy a steamer - it was a decade of kitchen equipment.)

brandysnap baskets

mustard dressing with whole dark mustard seeds

crudités

mozarella in carozza

deep-fried breaded Camembert

sorrel soup

But the bread in sandwiches was always stale, unless you went to a café where they made a bespoke sandwich before your very eyes, taking the sliced bread out of the plastic. Thank heavens for Pret!



More food here.

We'll Eat Again

While updating my mini ebook Whatever Happened To...? I began to yearn for Oat Crunchies and prawn-flavoured Niknaks. So I put together this menu for the perfect retro dinner party.

This is the food I want to eat again. I’ll do a menu of chops and boiled cabbage followed by junket, all washed down with sweet white wine, another time.

STARTERS
Cold consommé with sour cream and chives
Caramelised onion tart
Crudités and dips

ENTREES
Veal escalope
Minute steaks
Chicken Kiev
Turkey rissoles

SIDES
Rye bread with caraway seeds
Cottage loaf
Poppy seed rolls
Orange and watercress salad
Curly parsley
Green salad (butterhead lettuce) with French dressing
Russian salad (cooked diced vegetables in mayonnaise)
Pommes Duchesse (creamed potato swirls)

PUDDING
Swiss roll
Apricot gateau
Dundee cake
Individual fruit pies
Seed cake and sand cake
Ambrosia creamed rice
Apple doughnuts
Apple strudel
Baked apples
Banana custard
Black cherry yoghourt
Lemon meringue pie

CHEESE COURSE
Smoked cheese
Cheese Whiz
Cocktail biscuits

WASHED DOWN WITH
Aqua Libra

DESSERT
Clarnico mint creams

Buy the book! It could prove useful if you are writing a novel set in the last 50 years.

More food here.

More 60s Food

In the 50s, aprons were all frilly and feminine (or gingham), and if a man wore one – cue laughs. Mid-60s, Habitat started selling unisex butcher aprons, with a practical plain design of white stripes on navy (it was traditional, but went with the geometric and yachting themes in fashion). They sold in millions and coincidentally it became OK for men to cook, and kitchens and dining became far less formal, with earthenware plates instead of fine china, and stainless steel cutlery instead of ornate silver. You ate round the (stripped pine) table in your (big, Victorian) kitchen.

Previously, the woman slaved in the kitchen for three hours, passed the food through the serving hatch, then nipped round to the dining room and joined her guests. With smart eat-in kitchens guests could talk as the hosts cooked, and even help out. It was also part of the “fun!” approach to life. No more boring white candles and Georgian candlesticks, have these pink/red/blue ones in a stainless steel modernist holder! Don’t launder those napkins, have a red paper serviette! Don’t decant everything into separate vegetable dishes you'll have to wash up, bung everything into this oven-to-table casserole dish decorated with futuristic snowflakes! And the quickly prepared food (spag bol) was a lot tastier than the standard roast and two veg.

It was DIY cooking (led to the 70s fondue party – playing with your food!). It was a new kind of oneupmanship, and some caught on faster than others. It was about being modern.

There was a lag between the vanishing of railway porters and the invention of pullalong suitcases, and a similar gap between the disappearance of servants and the junking of the stuffy lifestyle they had made possible. Duvets, dishwashers and freezers helped, too. 

Sheets and cookware became colourful. And mugs (easier than fragile cups and saucers). Plastics enabled patterned formica wipeclean worktops and wacky cutting boards. No more scrubbing kitchen tables. And goodbye antiques - a circular mirror framed in red was the icon of the new look.

So what did we eat in our trendy new kitchens?

Coffee ice cream, rum’n’raisin ditto.

Steak was a treat. It had to be rare. We bought sets of serrated steak knives. But if you ordered it in a restaurant you quite often didn’t get a steak knife and it was practically impossible to eat.

Potato scoops produced spheres of mashed potato, like melon or ice cream balls. They went with radishes/tomatoes cut into flowers. (How I miss those mashed pot balls in a sea of Bisto gravy.)

Mortadella: a horrible pallid sliced Italian sausage. People were outraged if you wouldn’t eat it. Why? It symbolised “abroad”, and sophistication.

Smorgasbord:
pumpernickel
lettuce
cottage cheese
tinned mandarin segments

With variations including mayonnaise, smoked salmon and caviar. It was sooooo sophisticated! And delicious. Wet, sweet, salty and bland. And pumpernickel was different in those days: thinner and blacker and tasting faintly of salt and treacle. Oddly, it was delicious with butter and Silver Shred marmalade.

As well as fussing about how to eat pasta (twirl it round the fork), there was an immense amount of fussing about how to cook it. You had to take it off the heat just before it was cooked, and then quickly decant it so that it didn’t go on cooking because otherwise it might go soft and it wouldn’t be al dente and that would never do! It might become like very soft spaghetti in tins. Middle-class food always has to be tough. Meanwhile common people were making macaroni mould in a pudding basin (it's rather delicious – combine with cheese sauce and peas and eat cold). We still had pudding basins – they were left over from the steamed-pudding era.

Food was more expensive. Sainsbury’s sold bags of cracked eggs, and corner shops (then called “grocers”), sold bags of broken biscuits.

I'm sick of kitchens like science labs with an "island" you can't sit at. I miss those big kitchens with useful tables. Time to revive them?

More here.

Food in the 60s

Food suddenly became quite... nice! Instead of being used to punish your children, it was used to keep up with the Joneses who had been on holiday to Italy.

eggs Provençale
omelettes
artichoke vinaigrette
prawn cocktail
Instant Whip
Lyons Princess Sandwich

Dairylea cheese triangles (in many flavours, in a presentation box)
chicken/veal/ham/cheese sandwich breadcrumbed and deep fried

steak tartare
almost-raw steaks
steak au poivre
steak Diane (flambee)
filet mignon (very thick steak eaten almost raw - possibly popular because unobtainable during rationing)
peppers, red and green

melon with powdered ginger and no sugar
melon with everything
melon balls (made with a special device)
prosciutto crudo (very thin smoked ham)
prosciutto crudo with melon balls

paprika
Russian salad (delicious, and probably out of a tin or bottle)
Danish pastries

Caerphilly/Cheshire/Wensleydale (very sharp, sour cheese that you had to pretend to like)

trout, trout, trout, trout
flans
cocktail biscuits in the shape of clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades
salade Nicoise
Irish coffee

crème brulee, especially making your own
avocadoes which you had to force your children to like
terrines
tuna mould in a ring
salmon mousse
kipper pate

Briefly, Swiss and Dutch food was very chic – fondue, Emmental and Gruyere, Petit Suisse (a bit like creme fraiche and delicious with caster sugar). Dutch Edam cheese with its red wax coating was everywhere.

50s Food

The standard meal was boiled mutton, boiled cabbage and boiled potatoes. It was even worse when the mutton was cold and the cabbage had been boiled for three hours.  We also ate cold tongue and cold ham (both delicious).

Breakfast and tea were lovely (Chelsea buns, lardy cakes, fairy cakes, cup cakes, pink icing, shredded coconut), lunch and dinner were revolting. Huge joints of meat were cooked and eaten for Sunday lunch. (Joints had been unavailable during rationing, wartime and after. After years of bacon and sausages, people fell on steak and roast beef. Not so much fun for children who struggled to cut it and chew it. We’d have been happy with sausages – or macaroni cheese – or fish and chips.)

Anything that might have made this spartan fare palatable – butter, chutney – was strictly rationed, even when rationing was over. The mindset lingered for years.

Vicarage Mutton
Hot on Sunday
Cold on Monday
Hashed on Tuesday
Minced on Wednesday
Curried Thursday
Broth on Friday
Cottage pie Saturday.

But we always seemed to be eating it cold, with overboiled cabbage and plain boiled potatoes – no butter, no marge, no chutney. And there was some silly theory that you couldn't drink while you ate, so you couldn't "wash it down" with the chlorine-flavoured water which was all we were offered.

For school lunch, we were often given “mince” – grey, tasteless and overcooked but at least you didn’t have to try and cut it using adult-size knives and forks, or chew it using tiny milk teeth.

Spaghetti came in. Bohemians were ahead of the game. Many wondered how to eat it, so they cut it into short lengths – sometimes before cooking. Others bossily snapped: “Twirl it round your fork!”, “It’s supposed to be al dente!”, and “Don’t cut it!”. Heinz brought out tinned spaghetti (very soft, in sweet tomato sauce). We ate it on toast. The middle classes had hysterics.

The Afterlife of Things 3

A few words about sauce boats. Yes, like mustard pots, they came with their own little stand and special ladle.

There were prohibitions about adding anything to your food. You couldn’t add too much. Of course, the gravy or sauce in the one sauce boat had to go round everybody and you had to calculate your share. Child’s play! But if there was never quite enough sauce or gravy, why not make double and have two sauce boats? That would have been much too logical. Meals weren’t supposed to be enjoyable, they were ordeals by cutlery. This one lapsed in the 60s too. More here.