# Eating in the UK in the 1950s



## Northerner (Feb 21, 2020)

All true!


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## trophywench (Feb 21, 2020)

You are wrong about the brown bread, it had the word Hovis embossed on the side, only came in a 'small tin' size and only happened on a Thursday.


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## Eddy Edson (Feb 21, 2020)

Surely "curry" meant "Curry Powder" added to fatty lamb and random vegetables then cooked until leached of all nutrients and texture, and served with chutney and rice?


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## rebrascora (Feb 21, 2020)

Eddy Edson said:


> Surely "curry" meant "Curry Powder" added to fatty lamb and random vegetables then cooked until leached of all nutrients and texture, and served with chutney and rice?



I think that might have been the 70s or 80s even. We used leftover turkey from Christmas though, never lamb.


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## Northerner (Feb 21, 2020)

rebrascora said:


> I think that might have been the 70s or 80s even. We used leftover turkey from Christmas though, never lamb.


Curry in the 70s was Vesta


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## Andy HB (Feb 21, 2020)

I don't remember the 50's. But it was apparent that my Mum progressively ate better as the years progressed into the 60's. My eldest sister is quite diddy (like my Mum). My next eldest sister is a good 3" taller. My brother is taller again at around 6' and I (being the youngest) used to be 6' 3" (I now admit to 6' 2").


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## silentsquirrel (Feb 21, 2020)

Curry for us was late 60s.  Sultanas always an ingredient.
I ate a lot of Vesta risotto when living in a bedsit with just one gas ring.  Vesta curries (chicken or beef) were no good as needed 2 pans!

My maiden name was Brown.  My father's nickname in the late 50s/early 60s at the school where he taught was Hovis - remember the advert, "Don't say Brown, say Hovis"?

I remember in the 50s carving up blocks of cooking salt with a knife.


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## Contused (Feb 21, 2020)

I'm fortunate to have lived more than five years in Tanganyika during the 1950's, so there was plenty of curry, bananas and oranges, rice, ground coffee, and pineapples grew outside in the garden. We also grew our own papaya/paw-paw, which we ate sprinkled with fresh lime juice and sugar.


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## Eddy Edson (Feb 21, 2020)

Contused said:


> I'm fortunate to have lived more than five years in Tanganyika during the 1950's, so there was plenty of curry, bananas and oranges, rice, ground coffee, and pineapples grew outside in the garden. We also grew our own papaya/paw-paw, which we ate sprinkled with fresh lime juice and sugar.


Yum!


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## nonethewiser (Feb 21, 2020)

Camp Coffee, still get the bottles, seen it not long ago, tastes disgusting looking back but was all mother could afford.

Still remember getting big orange in pillar case at Christmas, nuts also with bar of chocolate if lucky. Gifts were appreciated back then.


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## rebrascora (Feb 21, 2020)

I still have a bottle of Camp Coffee in the back of my baking cupboard. Thankfully it doesn't date back to the 50s but it may still be pre best before dates!!... Off to check...Actually no where near as old as I thought... BB 28/07/11!

We were really lucky, we got a sugar mouse with our apple, orange and nuts in our Christmas stocking and yes we really did appreciate it..... in those days nuts came in their shell and cracking them was more work than the calories you got from them. Anyone else have crocodile nutcrackers? I can remember when we got a ratchet nutcracker and the whole process suddenly became a lot easier!


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## Drummer (Feb 21, 2020)

In the 50s I lived in a house with an orchard, there were geese which used to peck my mum when she took the washing out to peg on the line and it was my job to shoo them away. We had hens - Rhode island reds - and then someone gave my dad a White leghorn cockerel and soon there were little red hens trying to stand on tiptoe to get their wings over their chicks.
My little brother was born at home on Christmas morning 1957 - I thought it was Jesus - and we had beans on toast for Christmas dinner.


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## Toucan (Feb 22, 2020)

Just to add to the list:

When 'Pappa dum' was something Mum said about Dad
'Naan' was a lovely cuddly lady that lived with grandad, and gave me sweets in a paper bag 
'Bhaji' was a chap that worked on the canal boats
Milk got collected from the dairy in a can, and fruit and veg didn't get wrapped up in multi-layers of plastic.

BUT - no emails, What's App, Internet. - Although it is easy to be idealistic about life without them, I wouldn't really like that, and we wouldn't be able to have this great forum!


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## C&E Guy (Feb 22, 2020)

Going back further, my mum worked for the milkman when she was a teenager, going round houses filling cans.

Some Christmases, if her father was out of work, during the 30s, they had no Christmas dinner except for some potted meat. 

No such things as food banks then!


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## eggyg (Feb 24, 2020)

C&E Guy said:


> Going back further, my mum worked for the milkman when she was a teenager, going round houses filling cans.
> 
> Some Christmases, if her father was out of work, during the 30s, they had no Christmas dinner except for some potted meat.
> 
> No such things as food banks then!


Ooh I loved potted meat, we got ours from the local butchers and we had to return the pot after we’d finished.


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## trophywench (Feb 24, 2020)

Don't think I've ever experienced potted meat myself, although Pete used to have all sorts of things when he was courting his first wife, stuff like potted head brought down from Scotland by his first's rellies.


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## eggyg (Feb 24, 2020)

I wasn’t born in the fifties, I’m a sixties gal! My dad liked to try all the latest food fads, such as Vesta and tinned curries from Homepride. Absolutely full of fruit I remember. I can’t ever remember having pasta in the kitchen cupboards. As for olive oil, that was for putting in your lugs when you had earache, you bought it from the chemist! On the odd occasion we went in a cafe, I used to eat the sugar cubes straight from the bowl, and not just one or two either!  Potatoes were either, boiled, mashed or chipped. Can’t ever remember have a jacket potato. We still use a teapot and real leaves, Darjeeling though not English breakfast. I think we have come full circle in a way, the 70s and 80s was all about convenience foods and microwave ovens and now we’re back to local produce and cooking from scratch.


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## Northerner (Feb 24, 2020)

eggyg said:


> Ooh I loved potted meat, we got ours from the local butchers and we had to return the pot after we’d finished.


We called it potted dog  

I actually don't remember eating in the 1950s as I was only born in 1958, so probably mother's milk and (later!) weetabix


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## eggyg (Feb 24, 2020)

trophywench said:


> Don't think I've ever experienced potted meat myself, although Pete used to have all sorts of things when he was courting his first wife, stuff like potted head brought down from Scotland by his first's rellies.


Maybe it is a Northern thing. The butcher’s wife, Mrs Relph, used to make it and we also collected rose hips for her and she made rose hip syrup and again we had to return the glass bottles. I lived in a small west Cumbrian village then. The mid sixties.


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## Tee G (Feb 24, 2020)

@Northerner - So great it made me giggle - thanks for posting


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## eggyg (Feb 24, 2020)

Northerner said:


> We called it potted dog
> 
> I actually don't remember eating in the 1950s as I was only born in 1958, so probably mother's milk and (later!) weetabix


I wonder what actually went into it? I’m assuming not dog, but scraps left over after the butcher had done his stuff. On second thoughts I don’t want to know!


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## grovesy (Feb 24, 2020)

The only potted meat I had was Shipmans jars of paste. I dont recall either the Co-op or Independent Butchef selling potted meat, and I am originally a Northern.


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## C&E Guy (Feb 24, 2020)

My gran lived in Selkirk and, when she came to stay with us, she made potted hough (pronounced "hoch - rhymes with loch) and put it in a plastic tub (as it was by then). I think the butchers also sold it. It was soft and fatty and not the most pleasant of "delicacies".  It was a southern thing for us.


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## silentsquirrel (Feb 24, 2020)

I remember potted meat in 50s and 60s, covered in a crust of melted butter to seal.  Much, much better than meat paste in jars. In the south of East Midlands, so not really North.

We often had jacket potatoes, @eggyg .  We are certainly eating much less processed food now than in 70s, 80s, 90s.


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## nonethewiser (Feb 24, 2020)

Still get potted meat here in Cumbria.  

When old man was dying of cancer he struggled to keep food down, only thing he could tollerate & fancied was potted meat, acquired taste & texture not for all.


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## trophywench (Feb 24, 2020)

Jacket spuds happened regularly in the winter as accompaniment to stew which also only happened in winter cos that was when you could get to root veg to go in it.  Always cooked in the oven, in a crock stew jar, so might as well let the spuds cook while the oven was on anyway.

My mums stew always had pearl barley in it, yuk, yuk and thrice yuk!  LOL


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