1970s Senses Taste
So let’s look at those senses to help us understand 1970s land.
In no particular order, here we go:
Sugar rationing : A few months after WWII started, rationing came in. Sweets & Chocolate started to be rationed in July 1942 and sugar was derationed in 1953 and everyone went sugar crazy – spending on sweets went from £100m to £250m a year
Taste
Let’s start with the well documented sensory nostalgia trip: TASTE.
Taste is comforting, it takes back to a past where we didn’t have to cook for ourselves, where someone – an adult made our meals and gave us treats. The 1970s was a decade of amazing new food technologies that brought a huge number of new food products at affordable prices to the masses.
Quick and easy cook food was introduced, many of us – our families transcended the old and new ways of kitchen management
Lil’s paternal grandmother who was born 1900 only ever cooked in the traditional style – everything made from scratch. It was not unknown for Lil to drop in on her nan and she would be standing at the giant wood block kitchen table skinning a rabbit plucking chicken etc everything from scratch = pastry/cakes/ soup
Her other Nan however, was a ‘modern’
Easy cook items such as Angel delight- just add milk and mix – producing a mousse textured desert that
Doorstep toast with dripping
Processed foods – the beginnings of a move away from
For the first time some families had freezers ( Lil’s family did not, they were too big to fit in her tiny house)
Oven chips
Fizzy drinks – only for birthdays and Christmas
The era of takeaway food had not really commenced – apart from fish & chips and the beginnings of Kentucky Fried chicken there was not really a takeaway food culture, in addition few families could afford the fancier things like curry and Chinese – which were also seen to be mysterious and a bit suspicious – in addition the aromas and look of curry & Chinese were seen to be mysterious .
Food & Drink : It was the heyday of new processed foods such as: Angel Delight, Smash Mashed Potato, Tinned Fruit and Veg, Salt n Shake Crisps frozen food (including mousse!)
No bottled water. No plastic bottles of soft drinks such as Coke & Tizer, which were not really drunk frequently – fizzy drinks were for birthday & Christmas.
First MacDonalds opened in UK 1974, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) – opened in 1965 but I didn’t see one for many years.
We loved Wimpy & The Golden Egg.
Berni Inn – steak and chips followed by Black Forest Gateaux
Babycham. Snowballs at Christmas. Brown ale/ lager NO micro-brewery stuff, Party Seven cans of beer.
Lots of people smoked – not just Girl Guides! - Players Weights, Embassy, John Player Specials, Rothmans, Silk Cut – had fancy advertising
School Dinners
In the 1970s almost everyone had school dinners, the only pupils who didn’t went home for lunch – yes they walked home, had lunch and walked back again – all in an hour and all the walking was undertaken without a parent or adult. The go home for lunchers were thought to be a bit strange, there may have been good reasons for it, but we didn’t know them and it made them the subject of conjecture and mickey taking. So the 99.9% of us who had school dinners shared our meals in rotas by class.
School dinners of the 70s were not like they are now. The meals were plain, traditional British classics, let’s have a look:
Shepherds Pie
Roast Dinner on a Wednesday once a month.
Fish and Chips on a Friday.
Spam Fritter – the most renown and classic school lunch.
Corned beef and potatoes (boiled)
Lumpy mash potato lumpy custard jam roly poly arctic roll
Semolina tapioca rice pudding
Babycham
Nine in ten Brits say certain childhood foods evoke nostalgic feelings...so which generational meal is YOUR favourite?
Sometimes the same meal could manifest itself in very different ways
Sunday roast at Highgate Nan’s house – delicious, mouthwatering. The waft of gravy made form the juices of a hundred previous dinners.
Sunday roast at Bounds Green Nan – retchy and disgusting, pulped cabbage, gravy made from granules of salty powder