Food For Thought

Any avid reader of alternative news/current debate media will have assimilated almost by electronic osmosis a rapidly expanding list of current worries. These worries probably started with the Covid farce, “vaxx” outcomes, “climate emergency/Net Zero”, immigration, etc. etc., as well as personal pet-hates of choice. Philip Larkin’s “They Fuck You Up” (aka ’This be the Verse’) poem comes to mind as well. It’s all doom and gloom so far in the 21st Century and the foreseeable future – or is it?

Well, let me tell you from my own “lived experience”, 1950s/60s life for many, especially working-class white Northern Britons (were there any other kind then?) wasn’t all good. Yes, the bonds of an indigenous society were still strong and heterogeneity of thought and deed was broadly uniform and therefore socially stabilising (although frankly stifling), but …

Let’s take a light-hearted wander through the cobwebby forgotten corners of the mid Twentieth Century (if readers relate to this armchair journey and perversely enjoy my ramblings, they might like to start contributing their own topic focused nostalgia either in article form or as ideas for us would-be writers to run with?).

So, dear reader, Chapter The First in which the writer muses over the sheer awfulness of 1950s/60s Northern British working-class cuisine. It was dull, often tasteless and relentlessly crap. Although on a plus side, it was also probably organic, home-grown, home-made and nutritious. Local vegetables (mainly in my case from relative’s allotment gardens) were very, very limited in variety, potatoes, carrots, turnips and cabbages and seasonally peas, broad beans and soft fruits. Nothing wrong with any of these – if they were cooked properly, but the de rigueur method for housewives who’d not yet heard of Elizabeth David was simply BOIL it to death in plenty of salted water. Fruit was similarly mistrusted unless made into jam or pies. Some families, that were well known to be strangers to soap, still had a bizarre fear of “germs” and probably thought overcooking everything would neutralise anything nasty that might be lurking inside. (These types were also always obsessive hand washers, but not keen on full body bathing unless going to see the doctor or into hospital.)

Unless from a large and poor family, meat and fish were the daily staples for the main meal, but in very modest quantities I seem to recall, compared to today, and always supplemented by piles of overcooked waterlogged veggies and possibly bread and margarine on the side. Having missed out on sugar and sweet things during, and even after WWII, everyone in the country had a serious sugar addiction and couldn’t get enough sweets and cakes. Some people (especially women like my own Grandmother), were never ever seen to consume anything except sweets, cakes and endless cups of tea with copious amounts of sugar added).

Eating out was strictly for special occasions that seldom included children (except for posh people’s genteel offspring who could be trusted to behave nicely), and generally involved eating broadly the same sort of meal as prepared at home, but slightly more elegantly served and all whilst surreptitiously eyeing the dessert trolley. Really adventurous people drank something called Dinner Wine (ideally white and sweet since red wine was deemed to be sour, maybe this was just my father’s pronouncement?) as opposed to the other types of available wine, such as routinely disgusting homemade fruit or vegetable wines, Tonic Wine from the chemists for the poorly/hypochondriacs, or Port Wine also used for largely medicinal purposes. I would have settled for a bottle of Gripe Water anytime and secretly took a swig whenever Mum wasn’t looking and also pocketed a Farley’s Rusk (other makes as we say these days weren’t then even available), or a packet of Chiver’s Jelly to share with friends in a death-trap poorly constructed Den, ideally hidden somewhere adults didn’t venture. However, I digress – back to the topic in hand.

Not every northern dinner (lunch) or tea (dinner) was meat and two veggies because convenience food was slowly creeping in, usually in the form of tinned and packeted fare. Hard-stretched mothers quickly embraced the allure of Fray Bentos tinned pies (which fed a family of four so must surely have been twice the size they are today?) and for the would-be sophisticates Vesta Ready Meals. grandparents and older aunties and uncles were aghast at such hedonism in the kitchen and the very idea of eating ‘foreign muck’. By the way, meals then were never ever eaten except on the dining table or in the back kitchen if it was big enough (most terrace house kitchens were the former scullery and as seriously tiny as a contemporary £1,500 pcm London studio flat).

On the subject of ‘foreign muck’, apart from Vesta’s seductively boxed readyish meals that actually needed a few saucepans, I recall nothing else remotely foreign foodwise except Mr. Jim’s Chinese Restaurant above Burton’s Tailors (not for children). I was also blissfully unaware of anyone not born in the same town to families that had lived there since the year dot. The few newcomers were either slightly mistrusted, at least for the first ten years, or euphorically embraced as being ‘exotic’ (this must have seemed strange to the single Chinese lad at my C of E Junior School who didn’t speak English with a sufficiently Yorkshire accent and so had to be schooled one-to-one by the Head Teacher in her office, but everyone still wanted to be his friend). How things have changed.

Where is this anti-nostalgic remembrance of dull 1950s/60s food going I sense you asking? Well, just think about what you eat and drink in a normal week. The sheer variety of different foods and beverages, the now boringly routine ‘culturally appropriated’ foreign inspired meals (as the wokistas don’t ever say, as they worship the latest food craze). Don’t get me started on the vegans who bizarrely crave over-processed slop moulded into the shape of the things they most abhor. When was the last time a carnivore felt moved to mould minced beef into the shape of a mushroom? Italian, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Fusion fare, we’ve got it all now by the ton. Imagine as a child in the 1950s or 1960s looking at even an avocado, a red pepper, a passion fruit and not knowing what it was, let alone what it might taste like – or more likely, still fathoming the extremely low chances of it making its way into your culinary existence of meat and two veg, fish and chips, potted beef sandwiches or gloopy milk puddings.

Let’s not forget school dinners (did posh schools or those down South call them school luncheons?). The monumental awfulness (apart from one or two extremely popular puddings) of this British institution deserves an article to itself. Who can forget the mystery brown meats, the gravy poured liberally onto everything, likewise lumpy custard, (even on salads unless quick witted enough to snatch the plate away from the harridan dinner lady serving it up), and of course the mashed potatoes, always two ice-cream scoopfuls with strange grey, brown, green or black lumps within (and frequently the entire spectrum)? Again I digress, but bear with me – salads! Salads were either Sunday tea affairs or dubious treats when visiting relatives. A 1950’s or 60’s salad was a sad affair consisting normally of a limp lettuce leaf, a piece or slices of cucumber and a tomato cut in half supplemented by tinned meat (luncheon meat, Spam or corned beef) or fish (sardines, strangely named Cucumber Salmon or much later into the 1960’s Tuna), with a dollop of Heinz salad cream on the side plus the ubiquitous bread and marge.

Food for thought (get it), how does Christmas dinner differ significantly from a twenty-first century normal Sunday roast? Let me put it to the jury that it’s virtually the same thing minus the paper crown. Is this a good thing or a bad one? You decide.

Finally, let’s revisit the horror film food staples for some pitiable kids’ past. I’d love to see USA-inspired Halloween ‘trick or treaters’ forced to indulge in some of the frankly gory stuff that was perfectly normal food in the 1950’s/60’s. Hands up who has eaten boiled pig’s chitterlings (the flat ones and the wrinkly sausage like ones)? Tripe and onions in a milky sauce that looked like a burst cyst and smelled almost as bad? Brains, beast‘s heart, sweetbreads and indeed all manner of offal mysteries?

Also, let’s not forget pig’s trotters that contained nothing but bone, gristle and jelly (and were often a bit hairy as well)? Soft roes on toast (not fish eggs as parents insisted, but actually fish sperm sacks complete with the little swimmers still inside). Done well these things are actually all quite good and far more wholesome and tasty than a frozen microwave ready meal.

But the texture and smell of tripe and onions and the assurances that it was wholesome and the easiest to digest food available to mankind, especially ‘invaleeds’ (sic) as the poorly were then called, has alas put me off this delight for life.

The lesson for today is, if travelling back to the 1950s or 60s be sure to take a twenty-first century packed lunch (or two) as the novelty of eating offal at the dining table on a regular basis may quickly wear off.

Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.

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