When fast food predated the 20th century …..instant meals for the workers on our Victorian streets

We take for granted that breakfast was and still is for many something you have at home but this has not always been the case.  

Throughout history people and it does tend to be the poor have eaten out, often from fast food vendors and not I suspect always out of choice.

You can pick any one of a number of reasons, which usually come down to the early start of their day or the simple fact that the means to cook much in a shared room was limited.

Street food was available in Pompeii before it vanished under the ash of Vesuvius, and similar shops and stalls can be found across the Roman Empire, while Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851 devoted eighty-eight pages to the purveyors of almost every imaginable fast food, from fruit, fried fish, coffee and “green stuff”.”*

And tomorrow I will explore those London street sellers courtesy of Mr. Mayhew, but today I am revisiting The Victorian City, Everyday Life in Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders. **

I came across it back in 2012 and it is a prefect companion to that older survey of the capital’s eating habits.

Today eating out can be expensive and a life choice, but back in the early 19th century it was pretty much of a necessity.  Most of the working-class lived-in rooms of shared houses with just a fire place for rudimentary cooking extending to boiling a kettle or a pot of something, and anyway lighting a fire was a costly affair which would then continue to burn long after everyone had left for work.  

Added to which Likewise water was not always readily available and might only be obtained from a street pump and then not all the time.

By contrast on the way to work there were  coffee stalls which had the added bonus that in cold weather the mugs would warm the hands as well.

Some stalls were just simply a board laid over a pair of sawhorses and a can of coffee kept warm by a charcoal burner and others elaborate tent like structures.  A cup of coffee and “two thin” – two pieces of bread and butter might cost half a penny.

Nor was this way of life restricted to London.  Across Manchester and indeed all our cities and towns could be found similar fast food sellers

Picture;  Hot food on sale on the streets, the pictures date from the 1890s which takes them a little out of the time frame of the book, The Infirmary Corner at the top of Market Street, The Rovers Return, Shudehill, and Angel Meadow, by H.E. Tidmarsh from the book Manchester Old & New, Arthur William Shaw 1894

*Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

**Flanders, Judith, The Victorian City Everyday Life in Dickens’ 2012

Stories from a century and a bit of making what we eat ….....…

 The story of what we eat and what we are sold to eat over the last 126 years has seen regular fads and fashions dominated by diets, “healthy living” options along with the not so healthy, and increasingly dominated by processed foods, global trade and the power of advertising.

Instant food, The Golden Egg, 1966

It is a topic I keep returning to. *

And at 76 I guess like many of my generation I have seen the lot.  From the end of war time rationing and seasonal food, to the abundance and variety on offer, which brings with it a reliance on the quick ready meal and the quest for the new and different.

No more the excitement of the first strawberries or new potatoes of the year, nor the easy and familiar foods of my childhood and that of my parents.

And in the process, we seem ever more distanced from the field and the fun of taking raw ingredients and turning them into something we enjoy and above all knowing exactly what went into the meal.

Green beans slowly cooking in tomato sauce, 2026

At which point it is important to introduce the caveat that this is against the backdrop that we live in a part of the developed world, where famine and food shortages are not at present a reality. 

But some processed foods do creep into my kitchen whether it be cheese or ready-made pastry.  The first in all its rich diversity is something I would miss, while I confess shop bought pastry does make life easier.  But there I think I draw the line.

Yesterday I wrote about “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available”. **

And today I want to develop that theme and in particular the starting point of what is available.

Spicey vegetables, cracked wheat and mint, 2026

It was the TV chef Keith Floyd that happy and at times irreverent man of food who brought it home to me that you don’t start with the cookbook but instead focus on what you see on the market stall or in the supermarket.

Now back in the 1980s I was just beginning to be serious about cooking and on the night before the next meal I would pour over a heap of cookbooks make a choice and carefully record the ingredients dismissing Keith Floyd’s advice.

But the following day I would find that some of those vital parts were not available and others were decidedly sad looking.

By contrast the Floyd approach not only meant you came away with the best that was fresh, but it offered up the challenge of what can I do with a pile of white beans, the freshest of the fresh green beans and the newly arrived on offer Greek halloumi?

And while all the books can offer up well tested ideas there remains no substitute for a big chunk of experimentation guided by that simple of all advice, what if I mix this with that?

Gigantes, with feata cheese, 2026

The Greeks do gigantes which is just white beans cooked slowly in a rich tomato sauce to which I add a bit of paprika dribble with olive oil and eat warm or cold. 

And along the same lines using those freshest of fresh green beans I add a heap of slowly cooking tomatoes with plenty of healthy-looking basil leaves.

Fried halloumi, and salad, 2026

Both can be starters or when combined with some fried halloumi, a portion of rice or cracked wheat you have a wonderful main dish.

And then there is the humble potato which I have been known to cook adding some avocado to create a plate of green mash which will go nicely with salad and spicy roasted cauliflower.

None of them take long to prepare and make.  In the process you know what has got into them and if you do want to add salt, sugar or anything else it’s down to you to judge the quantity.

But I draw the line at tofu and polenta, both of which I have cooked, cooked again and cooked again and despite variations in the method and what I add to the stuff I remain unconvinced.

What all of these meals from gigantes, avocada mash, and green beans have in common is that they don’t take long to make, and you are the arbiter of the quantities of addiatives.  

Added to which most of them cost little to buy, combine and cook.

Pictures; The Golden Egg menu, Andy Robertson, 1966, and stuff I cook and eat, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Avocado and potato mash, peas cucumber, sliced tomato and peas, 2026

*Food History, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Food%20History

**Stories from a Greek table and that food advice, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/07/stories-from-greek-table-and-that-food.html

Ignoring Eric ….

It does seem pretty much a given that any conversation about vegetarian food draws down a torrent of unsolicited, banal, and even hostile comments.

As if the very act of eschewing meat and fish is a threat to civilization and a direct affront to bacon lovers everywhere.

At its mildest it focuses on flatulence but ascends though the assertion that “it isn’t natural”, to visions of Armageddon with the end of all cows, pigs, and chickens from the face of the earth, and the collapse of  the entire world economy .

Nor does this wail of abuse have to be precipitated by the debate.  

It is enough on a slow news day for someone to launch into a diatribe, usually at the end of a day cataloguing their dried worm collection.

Now do they feel threatened, embarrassed or just have not thought much beyond their plate of meat and two veg?

On my part I don’t evangelise I just prefer not to eat something that had a face, and so if Eric wants to enjoy a steak, preceded by a prawn cocktail with a little side dish of fried sweet bread and black pudding that’s his choice.  Trouble is Eric and his pals won’t leave me to make my own choice.

And here I have to say this isn’t a crusade, it’s just another history post, and with that in mind it is worth remembering that all through history humanity has not eaten that much meat, which in most cases was not by choice, but was restrained by lack of money and the cost of meat.  Afterall then and now it takes a considerable amount of grass, and cereal to feed an animal.

So while aristocrats might employ chefs to come up with ever more sophisticated plates of meat and fish, the men and women who grew the food in the fields ate variations of porridge, and veg.

Always remember while the Norman overlords ate pork, their English serfs raised pig.

As a result, most of the world’s cuisines were heavily orientated toward meatless dishes and reflected a more imaginative approach to what makes a meal.

Yesterday with some fine-looking tomatoes and green beans which had to be used up I cooked a simple starter.

And varied the meal the following day by leaving out the green beans but adding olives, capers and bit of garlic to a plate of linguine.  Pretty much made in the time it took the pasta to cook.

Simple and quick.

And so, starts a series on historic meals without meat.

Pictures;  Dishes to brass off Eric, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Sugar sandwiches …. fruit salad ….. and carnation ……. food for the Gods

Well, while the young me thought I was in very heaven with sugar sandwiches I have to admit I never served them to my three when they were growing up.

The National Loaf, 1944

Nor do I think a bowl of tinned fruit with the obligatory splash of carnation milk would have been appreciated by any of them, but they were the backdrop to living in southeast London in the early 1950s.

To be fair I have yet to come across anyone else who ate sugar sandwiches.  The most common alternative I am told by friends was apple or banana sandwiches and I must admit apple did feature as alternative to sugar for me and my sisters.

They were quick to make, offered up that mix of sweetness and energy but even then, there was the drawback that the sugar granules crunched against your teeth and got lodged in the gaps created by the dentist.  I have still got those gaps from being an adolescent when Mr Guppy judged that as a boy, I would never be bothered about the appearance of my mouth.

But mercifully for my teeth there were also the savoury sandwiches, made with Pecks fish and meat paste and those magnificent dripping sandwiches.

In retrospect dripping sandwiches must have been a heart attack in waiting.  As veggie for over 40 years I shudder, but there was something magic on that mix of fat and salt and if you were lucky the dark brown liquid which lurked at the bottom of the pot.

But this is not a cry against what some would see as poor parenting or an attempt to outdo Eric down the road for the most deprived up bringing it was just part of our diet, and vied with healthy and nourishing soups, roasts and stews. 

I guess it was a throw back to mum’s childhood in the early 1930s when with granddad part of the millions of unemployed they were forced to apply for the Means Test which judged an application for help against what in the house could be sold to raise funds.

Fruit cocktail, 2025

The post war prosperity made that dark time a distant memory, but which always sat just below the surface and would occasionally surface.

Leaving aside the poverty aspect it was also a matter of “we did things differently back then”.

I never thought it odd that we would be served a pudding of spaghetti cooked with milk and sugar or that a delicacy in our house was chunks of corned beef dipped in batter and deep fried.

They were just what we ate and even now when me and my sisters get together we smile at the deep-fried corned beef which we nicknamed Dr Who’s because of the outlandish shapes the batter formed which reminded us of the monsters he confronted.

And then there was olive oil, bought in small bottles from the chemist and used on ear wax, or rubbing into the hair when mum had to use the knit comb.

Carnation, 2025

That said in the early 1950s the solution for me and my friends was that brutal haircut which left you looking like a recruit in a boot camp.

I must have other food memories but they as yet haven't tumbled out.

Against this since my mid 20s I have embraced cooking, leaving the procesed stuff behind and mastering a heap of dishes including the humble pasty.

But what is fascinating is just how quickly, the sugar and apple sandwiches and the medicinal application of olive oil vanished under the growing prosperity and commercialism of the late 1950s.  

So, in a few short years traditional puddings were replaced by such offerings as Angel Delight, and Arctic Roll, and baked fish by fish fingers and that staple which was Birds Eye burgers. And coming up fast there were those boil in the bag Vesta curries and Chow Mien.

And somewhere along the way we lost the Sunday treat of tinned fruit and carnation.

Me own efforts, 2026

Location; somewhere in the 1950s

Pictures, The Co-op National Loaf, 1944, Manchester & Salford Co-operative Herald, 1944, the alternative, the home made pasty, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and fruit salad and Carnation courtesy of Morrisons

When the larder is your history book ……..

History comes in many shapes and sizes, and I have been thinking of many of those recipes I have picked up over the years which offer stories from the past.

Italian pie, 2025

And here I don’t mean those elegant, sophisticated offerings from swish, shiny and very expensive cookbooks, but the simple ones which are best just described as “leftovers”.

A device for mincing, 2020

We all have them, passed down from parents and grandparents when prosperity was what someone else enjoyed

They were the leftovers made from the Sunday roast and repurposed for another day.  Or bits left in the larder which got overlooked but were perfectly OK to eat.

If you are of a certain age, you will remember the metal mincer which attached to the kitchen table and was used to grind remanets of the meat joint to make mince, rissoles or the forerunner of the burger.

In our house could be added “the soup”.  

It had no other name, was always just the soup and might on any occasion consist of cooked or raw vegetables mixed with pearl barley or lentils and flavoured with whatever stock was to hand with the option of a dollop of some kind of meat.  It was the dustbin meal and on occasion was even bulked out with the odd few Yorkshire puddings.

"The soup", 2024

Today many of these meals have had a makeover and in the hands of distinguished and not so distinguished chefs have become elaborate presentations.  

So, that humble dish of cooked cabbage and potato fried in the pan gains a posh name and a heap of posh ingredients, but for me will always just be bubble and squeak. 

What most of the original dishes have in common is their simplicity, and of course the leftovers.  

One of my favourites is what we call Italian pie. 

I guess because two of the ingredients are home made tomato sauce and mozzarella to which you add potatoes. 

The potatoes don’t have to be leftovers but will usually be the few that are have been overlooked in the larder.  

And all you do is cook, slice and layer the potatoes with the cheese, and top with the sauce and leave in the oven till it looks golden and the inside is a gooey mass of flavour.

The curry that began as something else, 2026

Most of these leftover dishes are impromptu and because you may never have the exact same bunch of combined ingredients, the offering is unique and more so because if you are like me, may well have forgotten what you added to it.

Mushroom creamed curry, 2026

In our house we often had mince with onions, potaoes and peas.  

But the final dish depended on which of our parents made it.  

So, in the hands of dad the meat was cooked in a thck cornflour sauce, which sat on the plate almost challenging you to cut into it, while mum's was lighter and came with gravy sauce.

Many of them will date back deep into the past and reflect what most of us would have eaten, long before processed food, the freezer, or the fridge and long before the use of canned food.

Now I fully accept that none of this is much of an original idea, but I think it still stands and might encourage people to look at what they been handed down and just how far back into the past those dishes go and indeed how far they have crossed frontiers.

For now, I will close with that Sunday meal of curry which began life as mushrooms gently cooked with cream and served with pasta.

Or the last of the green beans, a handful of tomatoes and some linguine which became a shared meal on Tuesday night.

Beans, tomatos, linguine,and fetta cheese

Location; our house

Pictures, left overs I have known, 2026,from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Chris Payne’s mincer, 2020

Porridge …. a bit of history …. and a riposte to a chum

Now I have to say over the decades porridge has never really shaken my tree.

Today I had porridge, 2026

Like our dad my go to breakfast was and is toast left to cool and eaten with lashings of butter and ginger marmalade*.

During the 1970s I flirted with muesli bought from The Eighth Day on Oxford Road and enlivened with various nuts and dried fruit.

But I am a child of the 1950s and this wonder dish was supplanted by a return to toast which has remained breakfast for the last five decades, opening me up to that accusation of being far too adventurous.

Lately I have broken out, eaten avocado on toast with salad and last month started on porridge which was less out of a preference and more because there was a heap of oats left over and I was always brought up not to waste food.

And so began the adventure.

Father always maintained you ate it with salt not sugar, a harp back to our Scottish past where they do things differently.

That was never going to happen; however much the spirits of our ancestors from the east Highlands might stir and rage.

 I cook it in water with the addition of sugar, bananas and blueberries with a dash of cream at the end, making it a tad fattening, outrageously indulgent and fully acceptable for a man heading towards his 77th birthday. 

Historically the oats version has been eaten for at least 5,000 years as evidenced from the bodies of long dead Neolithic bog bodies found in Central Europe and Scandinavia.  So, am I not arguing with them, although I doubt they put all the sweet stuff in.

Yesterday I had ginger marmalade, 2026

But Dad with his buttered toast flew in the face of this collective, cultural and gastronomic history and I must confess that porridge remains just one of the breakfasts I dip into, sitting beside the said toast, as well as croissants and those super healthy avocados.

Of course there are other breakfasts available.

Sugar Puffs, 1958

Over the years I have done a multitude of veggie breakfsts, but long ago went off eggs and have now moved away from pretend sausages, which makes the veggie breakfast limited.

Those of us born in the first half the last century might sill embrace those sugary cereals but alas they no longer come with the occasional free gift.

Surgar Puffs variously went for the detective set which vied with small coloured racing cars, and those divers which with the addition of a small quanity of baking powder could be dropped into a fish bowl and sent out bubbles replcating the oxygen bubbles of a real diver.

But we didn't have a fish bowl and when the diver was dropped into the sink he never consented to blow bubbles.

Back in the 1940s the Ministry of Food was keen on advocating a substantial breakfast.  

In 1946 in their leaflet number 33 on Suggestions for Breakfast along with porridge were ideas using "National or Wholemeal Bread for potato puffs, cheese and vegetable cutlets, fried cheese sandwiches, potato fadge with fried bacon, fried herrings and poached kippers". 

Everday breakfasts, 1946

Leaving me just to reflect its all a rather silly indulgent post prompted really by a Facebook chum who had also tried a bowl of porridge with bananas and blue berries.

Pilchards, grilled, pilchards fried ... but always pilchards, 1946

He wasn’t impressed but perhaps it was all in the mix.  

After painful failures I discovered the best combination was one-part oats to two parts water, slow cooking, heaps of stirring and that dash of cream.

And I rather think I will stick with it after the bag of oats is finished.

So, porridge …. a bit of history …. and a riposte to a chum.

And if the chum is online and has read the story maybe he will pass judgement on Fried Pilcards on Fried Bread.

We shall see.

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; a bowl of Andrew’s porridge, an empty jar of Ginger Preserve, 2026, and a box of Sugar Puffs, 1958, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Suggestions for Breakfast, Leaflet 33, the ABC of Cooking, issued by the Ministry of Food, 1946

*And yes it was never ginger maramalde but ginger preserve, but back then that was what we called it, oblivious to the fact that marmlade "is a sweet, tangy fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits boiled with sugar and water". Marmalade, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmalade

When me and Leonardo da Vinci walked the same way

Yep ….. it is a little-known fact that me and that Italian master of all things were vegetarians. *

Roast peppers

That said some clever traveller of obscure knowledge will correct me with arguing he merely advocated it.

Either way it got me reflecting on my choice which I took over four decades ago.

There wasn’t one burning reason for giving up meat it just happened and I have never missed meat or fish nor regretted the decision.

And in so doing I have discovered those great meatless cuisines of the world which have their roots in an abhorrence to eating living things and the more basic one that in most peasant communities’ meat was a very expensive item, and almost out of reach of many.

I can’t say I have been a vociferous advocate but when challenged I have stepped up to the mark.

And of challenges there have been many.  Most are cheap jibes thrown out in expectation that they are witty and clever comments but are in fact banal uttered by people who would be better employed cataloguing their collection of dried worms.

Moreover, they miss the rich variety of dishes that are out there.

Pasta, garlic and chilli

My favourites are invariably those from southern Italy an area which as late as the 1960s was far poorer than the northern regions of the country.

Pasta and beans

Roasted peppers, aubergines cooked in a heap of different ways and those old staples of pasta, beans and chickpeas.

Of all these my go to choice is simply pasta and olive oil with perhaps a bit of garlic and chilli thrown in and sometimes some homemade tomato sauce.

And what I find amusing is that it is often the deriding meat eaters who fall on these dishes.  Which takes me back to an event many years ago.  

We were in the Sangam in Didsbury and sharing our table were a mix of meat eaters and vegetarians, and by bad luck the vegetarian starters came first, which everyone fell upon and all pronounced excellent.  

Sadly, the arrival of the meat starters left some of us with nothing more to eat and reduced to watching.  The added insult was the comment from one meat eater that she was finding it difficult to finish her starters because of the number of our dishes she had already consumed.

                                                             Green beans

At which point I should really launch into a description of the history of vegetarianism but it is out there for all to read.*

Instead, I will venture into that dark area of convenience foods and share my own non animal convenience.  I don’t eat many but will when lazy fall on those alternative sausage and burgers.  It’s not that I am wanting pretend meat it’s just simply that they are quick.

It was as George who ran Sunflowers on Beech Road once said to me, “why should meat eaters have all the convenience foods”.

Tivall convenience

Location; where ever there are vegetarians

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*History of vegetarianism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism

English Olive Oil .....The Food Programme ...... on the wireless .... today

I belong to that generation whose first experience of olive oil came from a small bottle bought at the chemist and used to moisten a nit comb used to search for the dreaded "things" alive in my hair.  

That said a friend confided that her mother used it as sun tan lotion.

Either way olive oil was not something to be spread on salads or as part of cooking in our house.

I came late to this wonder green/amber oil and embraced it with the enthusiasm a drowning man grabs a lump of wood in storm tossed sea.

All of which is an introduction to English Olive Oil, The Food Programme, BBC Radio 4 today.*

"With the price of olive oil soaring in the shops after drought disrupted production in Spain, Leyla Kazim looks into the English farms planting olive groves in the hope of bottling their own oil. 

She meets a farmer in Essex who explains that English growing conditions are more suitable than you might think and discovers a producer in Cornwall who has already started pressing his own extra virgin olive oil. So will olive oil from Essex or Cornwall become the new English sparkling wine?

Dan Saladino reports from Sicily where hotter conditions due to climate change are presenting new challenges for growers. 

Food historian Dr Annie Gray debunks some of the myths around olive oil consumption in England and Leyla learns the correct way to approach an oil-tasting from one of the country’s biggest suppliers.

Produced by Robin Markwell for BBC Audio in Bristol".

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; One from Italy, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*English Olive Oil, The Food Programme, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002f00z

Birthdays, cook books and a television series .............. watching the years go by in Lausanne Road

Toys I knew ........... the Dinky petrol tanker, 1956

Today was  my birthday, not that there is anything particularly remarkable about that, after all they come round every year and at 75 there are fewer ahead of me than behind.

But surrounded by the cards and the texts and other electronic messages I got to thinking about birthdays I have known.

The first thing to say is that we didn't go in for parties back in the 1950s in Lausanne Road although I am not quite sure why.

Hornby Doublo railway carriages, 1958

My very earliest birthdays would have been during the last stages of rationing after the war.

So while bread and flour came off ration in 1948 followed by canned and dried fruit, chocolate, biscuits, treacle, syrup jellies and mincemeat the year after it would be 1953 before sugar was de-rationed.

But I suspect the truth is we just didn’t do birthday parties.

Instead you got your cards a few presents and that was it.  They were still magical and the run up to the day was exciting but there was none of the hype that surrounded the birthdays of my kids.

Toy boxes I received, 1958-60

They and their friends had themed parties which might have been football, swimming or an adventure playground followed by the meal which became more sophisticated as they grew older, until parties were something they did in a pub with friends usually after we had gone to bed.

In Lausanne Road the parties we did have were strictly family affairs and I can think of only one which involved having some friends around and that points up the simple fact that we rarely had anyone who wasn’t family in the house.

I am not sure how typical that was but I can’t remember my parents ever entertaining.

The St Michael All Colour Cookery Book, 1972

Meals were family affairs and if someone did call they never outstayed their welcome, restricting themselves to no more than two cups of tea and would be gone long before Dad came home from work.

The dinner party and the more casual impromptu fry up after a night in the pub would not come for me until I was in my twenties, married and a long way from home.

By then the height of a sophisticated evening would be the prawn cocktail, followed by the cheese fondue and black forest gateau accompanied by a bottle of Blue Nun or Black Tower.

And there was nothing wrong with that, they were fun evenings some of which were quite memorable and all the more because they were the first stab at being grown up.

I still have a few of the old cook books which have stayed the course and can still be guaranteed to offer up something interesting.

That said my copy of the Galloping Gourmet was lost a long time ago but by then it was much stained with food, had lost vital pages and was as much a history book as any of the comic annuals I got for my birthday.

The Complete Galloping Gourmet Cookbook, 1972

So much so that I have tracked a copy down and ordered it up from Texas.

Its arrival was a reminder of the disastrous baked salmon dish from 1974 which stands in my memory alongside the Dinky petrol tanker that I got as a present on the birth of my twin sisters.

I had just had my ninth birthday party and it seemed a pretty neat way of celebrating their arrival.

Nothing as momentous came my way today but I did call up some old clips of the Galloping Gourmet  demonstrating that cooking can be fun.

Pictures; Dinky petrol tanker and train carriages, courtesy of Ken Jaggers, http://www.jaggers-heritage.com/ cover of the St Michael All colour Cookery Book Jeni Wright, 1974 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and The complete galloping gourmet cookbook, Graham Kerr 1972 soon to arrive from Texas

Apple crumble ….. it’s place in history .... and a lesson in doing your homework

For decades I was in awe of anyone who made apple crumble, until of course I made one, and discovered that it is one of the easiest puddings to make.

The crumble topping is just a matter of mixing flour, sugar and butter, which in my case has relegated pastry making to the bottom of pudding league table. 

And as such it made sense that it should have been invented during the last world war to save on flour.

Or so I thought.

At this stage I must admit I didn’t delve deep into the assertion that it was a war saving recipe, and never bothered to compare the quantities needed for pastry compared to crumble.

Had I done so I might just have questioned  that it sat beside Woolton Pie and National Bread as one of those wartime meals.

And here I have to thank Christianna, who commented “Apple crumble was popular during WWII but is is known as Apple Crisp in America and the first recipe in America was published in 1924 well before WWII.

However a recipe for it was in Mrs Beeton dated 1896.

In America the earliest reference to apple crisp in print occurs in 1924, with a recipe in the Everybody's Cook Book: A Comprehensive Manual of Home Cookery, Isabel Ely Lord [Harcout Brace and Company: New York] 1924 (p. 239). 

In 1924, apple crisp also makes an appearance in a newspaper article in the Appleton Post Crescent on Tuesday, December 9, 1924 (Appleton, Wisconsin). 

Its popularity further spread during World War II, when food rationing limited access to pastry ingredients used for making apple pies”.

Armed with this information I looked again at a variety of recipes for pastry and crumble, and pastry does indeed win out in the contest of which is more economical in its use of flour and fat.

Leaving me just to comment that my crumble recipe comes from the delightful “The St Michael All Colour Cookery Book”, which was published in 1976 and compiled by Jeni Wright.

And long before I discovered Claudia Roden, and the other greats of cookery, this book took me through my first faltering steps in cooking.

Like many of my generation born in the first half of the last century I had the job of cooking for my sisters when mum and dad were out, but as you do as I passed into adolescence and onto adulthood I lost the knack, only wanted to regain the skill in my mid 20s.

So that is it. 

Thank you to Christianna for helping redress my historical mistake and to Marks and Spencer’s who I don’t think will mind me reproducing their book published 45 years ago.

Pictures; The St Michael All Colour Cookery Book, Jeni Wright, 1976 

The milk crate ….. the Lambeth saw mill ……and a bottle of sterilized milk from Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Now you will have to be of a certain age to remember and perhaps drunk sterilized milk.

Sterilized milk, date unknown

It was and remained the favoured choice of Dad, and despite trying it a few times I could never say I liked it.  And so, it ranked with Camp Coffee which always intrigued me, but was always a disappointment.

But Dad was born in 1908 and grew up in Gateshead at a time when the quality and safety of milk was still an issue, and sterilized milk delivered a certainty that what you drank was safe.

There were plenty of small dairies and creameries in the heart of all our big towns and cities supplied by cows which lived beside the business.

In 1911 there were 462 dairymen listed in the city of Manchester.  Some were very small concerns while others like Burgess of Gartside Street between New Quay Street and Bridge Street spread over four properties with another branch in Hampson Street Salford

Pure milk from Harold Morris, in Eltham, circa 1920s 

The development of railways made it possible to bring milk in from the surrounding countryside and so while the dairies remained the city cows vanished from the scene.

But there were many at the beginning of the 20th century who felt unease at the milk we drank.

In 1907 one correspondent to the Manchester Guardian had asked that simple question “Can the present system of milk supply be improved?”* 

It was an issue of public safety for what was wanted “is milk which is clean and free from pathogenic germs and which is rich in fat.”

But given the often poor level of scrutiny on the farm and during transportation there was no guarantee of its purity for “milk is a mysterious fluid which tells no tales of its manipulation.”  

Moreover it was also at the mercy of “crowds of filthy shops in which milk is exposed side by side with firewood and candles.”

At every stage there was the danger of contamination.

“The difficulty on the farm is to secure cleanliness in the milker, the atmosphere, the cooling plant and the churn.  The difficulty in the town dairy is largely in the dust laden atmosphere, which alone shows the need of bottling.  The difficulties in the home are dirty jugs and other vessels in which the milk is exposed until it is required.”

And so not for the first time there had been a call for the involvement of the municipal authorities in the production, supply and provision of milk.

Sterilized milk in Chorlton, 1959

This was after all a period when in the interests of public health local government was getting more and more involved in everything from transport and education to housing, sanitation along with clean drinking water, gas and electric supplies.

All of which is a rambling introduction to a wooden milk crate, sterilized milk and a delivery lorry from the Cheshire Milk Company trundling through Chorlton-cum-Hardy in the April of 1959.

The picture is a familiar one and was reposted from the City archive recently, and its reappearance prompted my old “posty” friend David Harrop to send over photographs of two wooden milk crates.

I do remember them along with those used to transport pop and beer bottles, and looking carefully at the Chorlton picture it does look like the crates were of wood.

Yonder Hill Saw Mills, date unknown

What drew me further into the story was that the crates were made at the Yoland Hill Saw Mills in Lambeth, which is not so far away from where I was born and spent my early years.

A search for the business has revealed only pictures, but I am convinced that in the fulness of time I will find out more.

Yonder Hill Saw Mills, 1966

As it is this is the closest I have come which is courtesy of the London Borough of Lambeth, Lambeth Archives and was kindly shared by their archivist, Zoe Darani.**

It was still there when I was living in Peckham, but has now gone.  

The notes accompanying the image record that “The Yonder Hills Sawmills at 64 Wandsworth Road, South Lambeth, Vauxhall. 

The site became a Sainsbury's supermarket, before an extensive residential redevelopment c.2015-17. From the former British Railways Board, dated 31st March 1966”.

The present Sainsbury’s replaced a more modest store which had been built sometime before 2008, and was swept away in 2014 for the huge new development which occupies the site.

All of which may seem a long way from a bottle of sterilized milk but not so.  I was surprised to see that you can still get the stuff but have never made the effort to see if it tastes the same.

Today it comes in a standard looking bottle or carton, and not like the long thin bottles I remember with the metal tops.

I wonder if it still looks that vey dark cream colour.

An ordinary milk bottle, circa 1930s

David has promised to share his “steri” bottles with me which I think will be another story, but for now that is it, other than to say I have written about the story of milk several times, of which  "Memories of when the milk arrived by horse, of dye cast toys and much more" is but one,* and found an old ordinary milk bottle from the 1930s.

Location, Lambeth, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Cheshire

Pictures; Harold Morris delivering milk in Eltham, circa, 1920s, from the collection of Jean Gammons, wooden milk crates, date unknown from the collection of David Harrop, The Yonder Hills Sawmills at 64 Wandsworth Road, South Lambeth, 1966, reference 13971, identifier 2001/1/F5026, by kind permission of London Borough of Lambeth, Lambeth Archives, https://boroughphotos.org/lambeth/yonder-hills-sawmills-wandsworth-rd-south-lambeth/ and milk delivery lorry in Chorlton, 1959, A.H. Downes, m17478, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and milk bottle from the collection of Ann Love , circa 1930s

*James Long, Municipal Milk, Manchester Guardian, November 20th, 1907

** Memories of when the milk arrived by horse, of dye cast toys and much more, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2013/05/memories-of-when-milk-arrived-by-horse.html

A scurry of squirrels …. two restaurants ……. and the story from my friend Tony .... part 1

Now, this was a fine story in the making and one that challenges that simple observation that there is always a place for originality.

Arno's restaurants, undated

So, in April 2023, the restaurant Street Urchin opened at 72 Gt Ancoats Street, and one of its specials was “English Grey Squirrel”.

At the time I thought that was novel, but then I suspect that squirrels turn up on menus across the country and but Tony may just have come up with a squirrel restaurant that predates Street Urchin by 94 years and just a mile away on Brazennose Street. 

Brazennose Street, 1961

At which point as Tony did the research based on some family memories, I will just hand over to him.

“Hi Andrew, whilst reading the book, ‘Manchester Memories’ the author mentioned that he recalls a squirrel restaurant in Manchester, run by Arno Rolls, have you heard of it at all?  I looked on your site and there is no mention.  

The reason I was so interested was that after my dad left the army, where he qualified as a chef, he worked at the Roll’s Restaurant in Manchester, on Brazennose Street, until it closed around 1962/3. 

He then went into partnership with my uncle (my mum’s brother) and they bought a café in Rusholme on Wilmslow Road, called the Rusholme Snack Bar.  It seemed too much of a coincidence for it not to have been the same place, but my dad never mentioned cooking squirrels.  

I did some investigating and all I could find on Google was an advertising poster for "Roll’s Squirrel Restaurants" (no date) which had two eateries, one on Oxford Street and the other on Brazennose Street, so it was the same place.  

A quick thumb through my directories and I found that in 1929, the restaurant at 29-31 Oxford Street was listed as ‘Roll’s Squirrel Restaurant’, but the one on 46 Brazennose Street was just listed as ‘A Roll, Restaurant’.  

So presumably, by this time he certainly limited his squirrel dishes just at Oxford Street.  By 1954 (when my dad was employed there) he had no restaurant listed on Oxford Street and the Brazennose Street eatery had moved to 44, where it remained until closure, around 1962.  

I have one photo, taken from the Manchester Council image site, that shows the Roll’s in 1961.  

Chorlton squirrels, 2022

I don’t know too much about his time there, other than when it closed, they sold off a lot of catering equipment and dad brought home cutlery, and various kitchenware, some of it, quite fancy such as a silver-plated soup urn.  

He once took my sister to Manchester centre and called into the restaurant and from what she remembered, it was quite up market, catering for Town Hall staff.  

Would you be interested in adding this tale to your site?  I have attached the image site picture, the advert from Google and the cuttings from my directories.  

I also have about six photos from the inside of the restaurant with my dad and a few of the staff”.  

And of course I leapt at the opportunity to tell the story and am looking forward to those pictures. 

Leaving me just to thank Tony for the idea and the research and reiterate no squirrels ended up in a pie or a casserole in this story

Location; Brazennose Street and Oxford Road,

Pictures; advert courtesy of Tony, Brazenose Street south side, H. Milligan, 1961, 00455, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and two squirrels not in a restaurant, 2022, from the collection of Balzano