The Good Old Days?

EATING IN THE FIFTIES

• Curry was a surname.
• A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
• A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
• All potato chips were plain; the only choice we had was
whether to put the salt on or not.
• Rice was only eaten as a milk pudding.
• Calamari was called squid and we used it for fish bait.
• A big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
• Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
• Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking.
• Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never
green.
• Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was
regarded as being white gold. Cubed sugar was regarded
as posh.
• Fish didn't have fingers in those days.
• Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
• None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
• Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
• People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
• Indian restaurants were only found in India.
• Cooking outside was called camping.
• Seaweed was not a recognized food.
• "Kebab" was not even a word, never mind a food.
• Prunes were medicinal.
• Surprisingly, muesli was readily available; it was called
cattle feed.
• Water came out of the tap If someone had suggested
bottling it and charging more than petrol for it, they would
have become a laughing stock!!
• Two things that were never ever on our tables in the fifties:
Elbows or Phones.

EATING IN THE FIFTIES

• Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never
green.

They forgot to mention that the leaves always came in small bags. And it always came from Ceylon, except for the tea served at Chinese restaurants.

-Paul W.

Somewhat related to this topic: whatever happened to Sanka? It used to be the only widely available brand of decaffeinated coffee in the US.

I don't remember if it was Saturday Night Live, but someone did a parody commercial for "decoffinated caffeine"--all the benefits of caffeine without that awful coffee taste.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

The Sanka brand was sold to Coca Cola who planned to make a carbonated sugar-free coffee beverage out of it in partnership with Weight Watchers. They already had a big success with Fresca and imagined a whole line of two-syllable diet sodas all ending in the letter 'a'.

The Sanka brand was sold to Coca Cola who planned to make a carbonated sugar-free coffee beverage out of it in partnership with Weight Watchers. They already had a big success with Fresca and imagined a whole line of two-syllable diet sodas all ending in the letter 'a'.

I find no evidence for this statement. As far as I can tell, Sanka ownership flowed into Kraft when they bought General Foods (the original trademark holder in the US). It was subsequently rebranded as a Maxwell House product and has largely languished because it's pretty much expected nowadays that coffee companies will produce a decaf version of their flagship products so there's no room for a decaf-only product.
Sanka's orange product packaging lives on, around the world, in that an orange-rimmed carafe always indicates the decaf brew.
My best source: https://www.brandlandusa.com/2021/02/14 ... nge-again/

Olive oil was kept in the medicine cabinet. And so was the brandy.
Spaghetti came in tins.

[Jenise]

I find no evidence for this statement. As far as I can tell, Sanka ownership flowed into Kraft when they bought General Foods

And yesterday was April 1st. Gotcha!

On the river cruise I just came off they served spare ribs one lunchtime. In the '50s butchers gave them away to people who asked for them to feed their dogs

That didn't just happen to spare ribs. Some other meat cuts that used to be practically (or actually) given away:

o Chicken wings. When supermarkets first started marketing packages of chicken pieces, nobody wanted the wings. Then came the Buffalo Wing craze. Now they're very expensive.

o Flank steak and skirt steak. Both used to be dirt cheap because they're tough when grilled or sauteed whole as a steak. Chinese cooks love them because the grain is so uniform that it's easy to get chopstick friendly slices. They used to be the cheapest cuts of beef of all. Then along came the fajita fad. Now they're ultra-expensive, especially skirt steak.

o Pork bellies (aka fresh bacon). You never saw these except at specialty butcher shops or ethnic markets. Everyone had heard of them because the price of pork bellies was always part of the nightly financial news report for the commodity exchange. The pork belly commodity exchange price was reported along with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Then somehow pork belly dishes became trendy and now just about every supermarket carries it--at a much higher price than it used to be, of course.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul, add lamb shanks to your list.

And if you want to go back a century or so, people could not even give away lobster. It was fed to prisoners, who would periodically riot in revulsion.

I used to tell same story, but alas no real evidence
https://www.islandinstitute.org/working ... hats-true/
https://seagrant.mit.edu/wp-content/upl ... _Print.pdf

Certainly by Gilded Age was considered a appropriate food for the rich.
In NYC oysters were more commonly food for the poor I think

Peter, in several of the Goon Show radio programmes there is a man with an elderly voice who mutters, "Whatever happened to that crispy bacon we had before the war, eh?" and rhapsodizes about its virtues for a minute or so. Did the nature of UK bacon change post-WW-II?

I know there's a big difference between US bacon and the bacon in many (most? all?) Commonwealth countries. Bacon in Australia is very much leaner than what we have over here. Our bacon is cured and smoked pork from the side belly and very fatty. In Britain I'm told it's called streaky bacon or side bacon. In the US back bacon (cured pork loin) is called Canadian bacon.

-Paul W.

In the US back bacon (cured pork loin) is called Canadian bacon.
-Paul W.

And in Canada, it's always called back bacon, or, somewhat confusingly, peameal bacon if it's coated with cornmeal.

I used to tell same story, but alas no real evidence
https://www.islandinstitute.org/working ... hats-true/
https://seagrant.mit.edu/wp-content/upl ... _Print.pdf

Certainly by Gilded Age was considered a appropriate food for the rich.
In NYC oysters were more commonly food for the poor I think

Urban legends die hard.

Here are more references in the debunking vein (though I will note that the Grand pooh-Bah of naysayers is always the same person, Sandy Oliver): https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodlobster.html

Peter, in several of the Goon Show radio programmes there is a man with an elderly voice who mutters, "Whatever happened to that crispy bacon we had before the war, eh?" and rhapsodizes about its virtues for a minute or so. Did the nature of UK bacon change post-WW-II?

I know there's a big difference between US bacon and the bacon in many (most? all?) Commonwealth countries. Bacon in Australia is very much leaner than what we have over here. Our bacon is cured and smoked pork from the side belly and very fatty. In Britain I'm told it's called streaky bacon or side bacon. In the US back bacon (cured pork loin) is called Canadian bacon.

-Paul W.

I don't know if it changed, I was born after the war and those I knew who lived before are gone.

I read somewhere that the US FDA allow the term 'bacon' to only apply to those strips one get at breakfast time cooked very brittle.

Over here that kind of bacon is called 'streaky bacon' because of the bands of fat running along its length. It's a cheap type of bacon and we never bought it, preferring 'back bacon'. I like river cruises and often go with Viking who have a majority of guests from the USA . Until recently the bacon available at breakfast was American - streaky cooked to a crisp, but they've now introduced back bacon along side it. Problem is it's barely cooked; the bacon should be cooked so the fat is no longer white.

There's also a choice in preparation. Dry cured bacon is more expensive but is cured without nitrates.

US law requires that bacon and other smoked (but not thoroughly cooked) meat products be cured with nitrates or nitrites. This is to prevent botulism. But there is a quirk in the labeling laws. Bacon, etc. must be labeled "cured" if there is directly added nitrate or nitrite. But if the nitrate/nitrite level is achieved by adding celery or beets--both high in nitrite--then the product can be labeled "uncured". So-called uncured bacon in the US has as much nitrite as cured bacon. Most of the natural food types who buy "uncured" bacon don't realize this. I only found out about it recently.

The US also has regulations concerning the content of food items labeled "sausage", including a minimum on the amount of meat and maxima for fat, meat by-products, and fillers and extenders. It turns out that the traditional British banger doesn't meet the criteria to be called "sausage" in the US--too much bread filler. North Country Smokehouse, our local New Hampshire bacon, ham, and sausage producer, markets genuine British-style bangers, but calls them "bangers". They do not use the S-word.

-Paul W.

Dry cured bacon is more expensive but is cured without nitrates.

At the start of the Goon movie Down among the Z-men Neddie Seagoon is a shop proprietor. There is a slab of bacon sitting unrefrigerated on the counter. That would be dry-cured bacon, I suppose. All the bacon I've ever seen in the US is moist and requires refrigeration. Traditional Southern-style cured hams don't require refrigeration, though.

-Paul W.

And Southern-style cured hams are way, way salty.

[Jenise]

Most of the natural food types who buy "uncured" bacon don't realize this.

Hand in the air, waving.

US law requires that bacon and other smoked (but not thoroughly cooked) meat products be cured with nitrates or nitrites. This is to prevent botulism. But there is a quirk in the labeling laws. Bacon, etc. must be labeled "cured" if there is directly added nitrate or nitrite. But if the nitrate/nitrite level is achieved by adding celery or beets--both high in nitrite--then the product can be labeled "uncured". So-called uncured bacon in the US has as much nitrite as cured bacon. Most of the natural food types who buy "uncured" bacon don't realize this. I only found out about it recently. -Paul W.

You're correct. I've pontificated about this several times on this forum. But more accurately, all such meat must be cured. The definition of cured meat in the U.S. is meat cured with the chemical versions of nitrites/nitrates. So, if such meat uses celery extracts (which contains nitrates/nitrites), it's really cured, but by definition it can't be called "cured." That's why they're called "uncured," even though they are. It's crazy, but it's the way it is.

Potassium nitrate (saltpeter) used to be mined and used both for gunpowder and curing, so that might be why the definition of cured is so narrow.