Whatever happened to…

[Sam SpoonsParticipant @samspoons83065]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2020 20:58:45:

Back to food, having been exiled to England for 33 years I have at least had the good fortune to spend the last 18 in DE14, a noble postcode as it is home to Branston Pickle (now made abroad though), and as well as Marmite and Marstons – the latter of which actually features the postcode on its labels.

Even Melton Mowbray can only muster two staples – pork pies and Stilton.

Neil

I've just opened a can of Martens Pedigree and ,despite it being rebranded as an Amber Ale, it's a good a pint of bitter as you'll get in a tin.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Sam Spoons on 20/04/2020 21:37:09:

I've just opened a can of Martens Pedigree and ,despite it being rebranded as an Amber Ale, it's a good a pint of bitter as you'll get in a tin.

Yep, not sure why everything has to be 'ale' these days.

At least they haven't made it taste like grapefruit… (yes I do have a bottle here…)

Neil

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

Re. the dog poo being white in the old days. I believe they put in a filler, maybe chalk as they were made mostly of cereals and not to good for dogs digestion so added as a bulking agent.

Nowadays doges get offal and left over meat from several sources and it is mostly cooked and tinned or turned into dry food.

Remember cows were fed on fish meal and you could smell and taste in the milk

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

I am old enough to remember the early war years when you went to buy groceries in a shop like the co op that they had the shutes from upstairs that allowed them to fill the bags with sugar or flour. Butter and cheese was a massive block which they cut oblong blocks from. Also, paying, the money put in a container and wizzed across the wires or into a vacuum tube and you had to wait till it came back with the receipt and change. Milk was sold from churns and ladled out into bowls or jugs at the door.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2020 20:47:09:

You just ain't looking hard enough Peter!

Neil

.

No one can look hard when they are craving Heinz Steamed Treacle Sponge

MichaelG.

[NimbleParticipant @nimble]

Down here in N.Z. what we no longer can get is VENCAT MADRAS CURRY. Made by R Venctachellum in India. There are other curry powders but do miss Vencat

Nimble Neil

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Posted by Sam Spoons on 20/04/2020 21:37:09:

I've just opened a can of Martens Pedigree and ,despite it being rebranded as an Amber Ale, it's a good a pint of bitter as you'll get in a tin.

Martens?? as in Doc Martens? Now there's a beer that really sticks the boot in!!

[Sam SpoonsParticipant @samspoons83065]

It's got Sole

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 20/04/2020 20:47:09:

You just ain't looking hard enough Peter!

Neil

In actual fact, other than looking on't internet at Sainsbury's & Co-op, I haven't looked anywhere. It was just something that came up in conversation between her indoors & me.

But in all seriousness, given the current climate even if we did find somewhere that sold them, which Heinz no longer do, so it would have to be an equivalent, can it be justified wandering around to get them when the nearest supermarket is Sainsbury's? It's true that there is a small Co-op in the town, a Lidl across the road from Sainbury's and an Aldi slightly out of town, but when we can get everything that we need from Sainsbury's, then I can't see the justification for visiting any of the other three. And as far as Tesco, Morrisons, Asda are concerned, they are just too far away at seven or eight miles.

In fact I wrote the OP somewhat tongue in cheek as I had already discovered that Heinz no longer sell them, and I thought, rightly as it turned out, it might just trigger off a few more memories. And just to possibly trigger a few more, how about Gibbs Dentifrice, a hard pink substance in a tin which you rubbed your toothbrush on before cleaning your teeth, sherbet dips from the sweet shop, liquorice strips in various shapes, eggs stored in something called, I think, isinglass.

Right, that'll do,

Tootle Pip,

Peter G. Shaw

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Peter G. Shaw on 21/04/2020 10:39:28:

…

And just to possibly trigger a few more, how about Gibbs Dentifrice, a hard pink substance in a tin which you rubbed your toothbrush on before cleaning your teeth,

…

Tootle Pip,

Peter G. Shaw

Yes! I remember that! There was a hard pink general cleaner too, called Chemico – it'd scour the enamel off the inside of your bath. For all I know it was the same stuff…

[Nick Clarke 3Participant @nickclarke3]

Posted by Peter G. Shaw on 21/04/2020 10:39:28:

eggs stored in something called, I think, isinglass.

Not isinglass, which is a very high quality gelatine, but waterglass which was the common name for sodium silicate – 50 years ago Boots still sold tins of it – I bought some for a chemical experiment described an edition of 'Meccano Magazine'

[MichaelRParticipant @michaelr]

A lot of years ago I had a taste for these, a tin didn't last long.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Nimble, it was P.Venctachellum – P for pedantic I suppose! Yes I remembered those tubs when at boarding school, different coloured tubs for various strengths.

How about proper Victory 'V's full strength, tiger nuts and liquorice root sticks, malt extract and concentrated orange juice from the clinic – small bottle with a blue screw on top (1950 ish).

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Posted by Nick Clarke 3 on 21/04/2020 14:22:23:

Not isinglass, which is a very high quality gelatine, but waterglass which was the common name for sodium silicate – 50 years ago Boots still sold tins of it – I bought some for a chemical experiment described an edition of 'Meccano Magazine'

I discussed old methods of storage with my Mum some years ago. She distinctly remembered using isinglass for eggs. She was the daughter fo a czech farming family prewar: root cellars, pickles, fermented cabbage, hanging cherry boughs down a well to extend the season of ripe ones (and to cool the booze) and even collecting ice from the glacier and burying it in straw.

pgk

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Both isinglass, waterglass and aspic were used for preservation – the purpose being to exclude air.

I was looking at my mum's old shopping basket the other day – no way you would get a week's shopping in that for one let alone a family or a pack of 50 TPs. I guess it was fine because without a fridge you had to shop almost every day.

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

S-0-D, you hit the nail right on the head ! veg was always overboiled into a soggy mess, took me ages to teach my Mother to use far less water to cook them.

We did not have to put up with the horrors of powered eggs over here [I hate to think what they must have been like ], but cooking has come a long way.

Most of my cooking "skills" were learned using a Primus stove while cycling, many moons ago, how I,m still alive, I do not know.

Sad to see so many old brands gone. In my day, rice was never used as a main dish, mostly as a treat, with a lump of jam stuck in the middle. Now, I use rice as part of my main course, it,s a whole new world !

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Sometimes I wonder what planet I am from…

I can honestly say I can recall none of the culinary horrors others describe…

'

Our Mam was quite a good cook and baker (of cakes and pies, she never tried making bread), and our family ate well of a quite varied diet, though no more adventurous than most others in that 1950-60s era.

School meals? I cannot remember anything to complain about; and I loved the tapioca, semolina and rice-pudding others all sneer at. I still do! Mum made excellent baked rice pud.

'

S.O.D. pus his cake-testing skewer on it. It was never British food that was poor, and the country as a whole has a wide range of regional specialities as well as country-wide staples. It was lazy or inept cooking that let it down, and was so seized upon with great glee by the "life-style" columnists whom I grace not with the term "journalist", paid to discredit anything British, especially English.

As for "strange cloudy" ale, well your local pub might have been as bad as John Major's watering-holes that he infamously alleged heated their beers; but generally those days are thankfully past – though when we'll be able to sup good cask ale again is another matter….

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Like Nigel, we didn't too bad on the home cooking front although there were some foods I wasn't too keen on – the skin on rice puddings, and horror of horrors, pork crackling. Even now, I can still feel slightly sick at the thought of all that fat dripping off it. Yet my parents loved it. Tripe & onions wasn't that bad, although I wouldn't have it today. And beef drip on a slice of shop bought bread as Mum didn't like baking bread, yet her mother, who lived next door, always made it herself. One thing I do remember was eating anything up to 1/2 a large loaf of white bread with a Polish, (Krakus) jam out of a 2lb jamjar at a time. I don't think I was greedy, just a normal unfillable teenager.

Another was beestings milk which is the first milk produced by a cow after having had a calf. Dad used to like this stuff in some sort of pudding or cake. Sad to say, I wasn't impressed. I've a feeling that Dad got it for free as otherwise the farmer poured it away. I don't remember that phase lasting very long, maybe up to about 1950 as I can only just remember it.

As a WWII baby I was entitled to concentrated orange juice, ok from what I can remember, and cod liver oil, which wasn't ok so it got fed to the hens (Dad had them in the back garden, then across the road in a fenced off area and finally in battery cages in an outhouse at the rear of the house). When he first got the hens, he said that the first egg was for me. I turned my nose up at it! Sorry Dad.

Similarly, I don't remember anything really bad about school meals. Ok, the tapioca/rice pudding which was so sticky that it remained on the plate even when the plate was turned upside down – the silly things we did as school children! Probably the most memorable thing about school dinners was that grace was always said by the teacher whose lot it was to be on duty during dinner – except for the man who was a communist and didn't believe in such things as grace, instead we got a moments silence, and then "Sit Down"!

I also remember free milk at school – 1/3 pint, as I recall, and if there was any surplus, a mad scramble to get our hands on it – for those of us who drank it, that is. I must have had at at least a pint at times.

But you know, we didn't know any better, so we didn't feel hard done by, except when we got told off for turning our noses up at something or other.

Peter G. Shaw

[derek hall 1Participant @derekhall1]

Anyone recall the school pink custard?

Here is another one Angel Delight…

Regards

Derek

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Peter G. Shaw on 22/04/2020 11:48:15:

…

As a WWII baby I was entitled to concentrated orange juice, ok from what I can remember, and cod liver oil, which wasn't ok so it got fed to the hens

…

Peter G. Shaw

I'm surprised your reaction was so muted. Maybe the orange juice concentrate got better after 1950, but everyone I know who tasted it remembers it vividly, even from a very young age, and no orange juice since has ever really matched up to it. Perhaps young kids' taste buds are more sensitive.

[blowlampParticipant @blowlamp]

…the likely lads.

[Adam MaraParticipant @adammara]

Our house was requisitioned by the army in WW2, and we moved to a cottage in a village near Grantham to be near my dad a radio amateur on the RAF reserve who was called up early. He was then posted to Egypt for 3 years, and my mum became friendly with a Land Girl working on the next door farm. I only found out recently that my OG was used for a Gin and Orange drink to cheer themselves u!p! I survived, and the land girl eventually married mum's brother.

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Posted by derek hall 1 on 22/04/2020 12:01:41

Here is another one Angel Delight…

 

Regards

Derek

Well that’s still on sale!
In addition to the original it comes in Ready to Eat and (almost inevitably) No Added Sugar versions.

 

Edited By V8Eng on 22/04/2020 13:38:30

[Peter G. ShawParticipant @peterg-shaw75338]

Mick B1,

To tell truth, I don't really remember the orange juice, just a vague recollection, although I do remember the taste of the horrible oily Cod Liver Oil. I wonder if my mother diluted it at all, the orange juice that is.

Peter G. Shaw

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Then there was the cans of dried egg (origin USA). Tapioca was fine, (fish's eyes and glue as I recall it being called). Nice rabbit to eat.

[Author]

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