ALL IN GOOD TASTE? Influential TV chefs Marguerite Patten (below) and Fanny Cradock (far right) led the way in helping home cooks keep up with the culinary trends, questionable though they may sometimes have been
The contemporary food scene isn’t immune to culinary bad taste (you can add chai lattes and cronuts to the list opposite) but a quick flick through my old recipe cards or back issues of magazines reveals decades of much more embarrassing ingredient combinations, lurid food colourings, florid garnishes and other fashion disasters we lived through.
I mean, did we really eat that? My grandmother’s favourite treat for me was Spam fritters served with instant mashed potato, fresh from a packet. We were country folk, so real produce from the farms next door was just too mundane. Boil-inthe- bag rice with sultana-rich curry was a schoolday treat. Imagine my surprise when, as an adult, I lived in India yet didn’t encounter a sultana once. Yet the dodgy convenience food of the 1970s was considered modern and worldly at the time. Every decade had its trends that are now faux pas, and they’re not just confined to flares or shoulder pads.
Here are some that you might just recall – with fondness or otherwise:
1950S OEUFS EN GELÉE AND MEAT IN A TIN
Wartime food rationing ended in 1954 after more than a decade of dried eggs, milk powder and tinned meats had done their damage to a demob-happy population: the British had grown to like such ersatz foods. A generation regarded tinned goods as the apogee of convenience and safety. Cookbooks of the time made much of ‘home economy’, with the wonderful Marguerite Patten (the first TV chef) championing new and nutritious recipes for the ‘housewife’ to try. It was thanks to Patten that most modern homes acquired a pressure cooker.
Other enduring culinary fashions predated the war years. Jellies were still in vogue for savoury dishes, a trend popularised by the legendary French food writer and chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935) – dishes ‘en gelée’ were still the height of fine dining chic.