Opps …. never get lazy with your history ….. and other revelations

It’s that golden rule of all research which put simply is …. check your facts.

And now the BBC has it’s own "BBC Verify" which searches and challenges a vast range of assertions masquerading as facts.

But we all get lazy and I am no exception.

So, in a story on the origins of apple crumble I wrote “a recipe for it was in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management dated 1896”, and despite not finding a reference in my own copy which had been published thirty-years earlier I went with the comment from an online article.*

I should have dug deeper but accepted the statement, and yesterday someone left the comment “I am looking for early crumble recipes and stumbled across your comment. 

Are you sure Mrs Beeton has a recipe for a crumble in 1865. I can see references to Mrs Beeton crumbles but whenever I research them they all seem to link to a blog post that made that claim erroneously. 

Would be great to be proven wrong but haven't found anything in Beeton this far!! Any hints much appreciated!”

All of which is a tad embarrassing and led me to consider taking down the original story but instead I will amend the copy including the comment and then go looking for later copies of Mrs Beeton.

But it does highlight that temptation to accept what is asserted as the truth.

Now truth and indeed facts are not set in stone, and as we all know new scholarship and chance finds can reverse a fact lead to a fresh interpretation and a new truth.

It is 43 years since the discovery of the Hitler Diaries which have now been proved as forgeries but for a brief period in the early 1980s some scholars, and some newspapers thought they were genuine, expended heaps of money acquiring them only to be disappointed at the discovery that they were made up.

My simple slip up may seem a world away and trivial in comparison to those diaries or the regular stories that the moon landings were fake, that there is a mystery to planes and ships disappearing in an area off Bermuda or countless other conspiracy theories, but of course it’s the same.

And that brings me back to Mrs. Beeton and the recipe for Sweet Macaroni Pudding.

It appears on pages 654 and 655 in the 1863 edition of The Book of Household Management and is further vindication of my oft told account of how as young kids in the 1950s we often ate spaghetti cooked with milk and sugar. 

The overwhelming response to that story is a mix of bewilderment, revulsion and incredulity and I have to say in some cases disbelief.  

And despite my frequent revisits to the story, I know some thought it was either a false memory or just made up.**

But then my friend, fellow writer and blogger Lois Elsden*** sent me Food in War Time - Vegetarian Recipes for 100 Inexpensive Dishes: And Helpful Suggestions for Providing Two Course Dinners for Six People for One Shilling, George W. Hall.

It was published during the Great War and there is boiled Macaroni “with a little sugar and milk [which] makes a very acceptable pudding”.***

It was that moment when I could proudly write “We are not an aberration and nor were alone” to which I can now push back the date when sweet pasta pudding was acceptable.

I don’t suppose its historical lineage well endear it to my sons and friends but there you are wait long enough and your own facts will come along.

Leaving me just to conclude with the observation of others on the importance of facts.

In a conversation with Rudyard Kipling in 1889 Mark Twain said "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please”.  

And while I have yet to verify the following, I think they are worth throwing into the pot.  John Adams: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." 

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

Thomas Huxley: "Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact."

And that is that.

Pictures; The St Michael All Colour Cookery Book, Jeni Wright, 1976, recipe for  Sweet Macaroni Pudding, courtesy of Google Books, 2011, cover of the reprint Food in War Time, 2026,  and pasta to make a pudding from, 2026

*Apple crumble ….. it’s place in history .... and a lesson in doing your homework https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/apple-crumble-its-place-in-history-and.html

** We are not an aberration …… when you are not alone .... spaghetti, milk and sugar, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/07/we-are-not-aberration-when-you-are-not_02011329298.html

***Lois Elsden, Writer, https://loiselsden.com/

**** Food in War Time - Vegetarian Recipes for 100 Inexpensive Dishes: And Helpful Suggestions for Providing Two Course Dinners for Six People for One Shilling, George W. Hall 

A bit of history on Beech Road ……

It’s Sunday and so it’s left over day.

Left over Sunday, 2026

One of the joys of growing old is the sheer reservoir of food memories that sit ready to tumble out and become one of those simple meals using the odd items which sit neglected and in need of some attention.

101 Beech Road, circa 1901-1921

And while I have embraced that now popular mantra of shop daily and use stuff up, Monday is the start of the week and with that comes the main shopping expedition.

I do smile at that now received knowledge that we should shop everyday and avoid food waste.

As if these twin guides to life are new, and were not practised by my parents, grandparents and a whole legion of Simpson’s, Hall’s, and Bux’s back into the distant past.

Online shopping, the power of the supermarket and the fridge and freezer have rather pushed the daily trip to the local shops into the background.

And well with in living memory here on Beech Road there were three butchers, two grocers, a greengrocer and a fresh fish shop.  

These were replicated in some of the side streets right across what became known as old Chorlton or the old village, names which distinguished us it from the newer community which sprang from the 1880s around the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads.

101 Beech Road, circa 1901-1921

119 Beech Road, 1979

Back then when no one possessed a fridge or freezer there was a necessity in buying your food every day.

Now with money tight it makes sense to buy smaller amounts and avoid the two for one offers unless you can use the lot, which is why today I have used up the last of the green beans, cooking them with some olives, and capers in a sauce from the last tomatoes accompanied with pasta.

I have made my own fresh pasta, and fallen back on shop bought fresh pasta, but dried pasta is cheaper, lasts in the store cupboard and doesn’t take much longer to cook.

So that is it, on left over Sunday it is what ever I can find, and for good measure having eaten my way through a heap of fruit what was left was stewed and became that classic 1950s pud.

Left over Sunday, 2026

Location; Left over Sunday

Pictures; 101 Beech Road, circa 1901-1921, courtesy of Ian Collier, and 119 Beech Road, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

“Making do” …… rationing … cooking … and that lost world of 1946

I often return to L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go Between with its story of class, romance and redemption, made more memorable for me by that line from the book, “The past is a different place, they do things differently there”.

The universal and compulsory identity card, 1950

All of which is a lead into a series of reflections on those immediate post war years, when Britain was adjusting to peace but was still surrounded by the effects of those six years of conflict.

It was there in the ruined buildings and bombsites, to the vestiges of wartime control from identity cards, to rationing.

But walking hand in hand with that weariness and the prevailing “make do and mend” there was an optimism which was there in the creation of the Welfare State, The New Look and the Festival of Britain.

And it all seems to come together with a series of information leaflets from the Ministry of Food which were part informative, and part designed to promote heathy eating with the hard realities that food was still in short supply and many necessities as well as luxuries were still rationed.

The leaflets were issued each month during the late 1940s and were compiled into the “’ABC of Cookery’ [which gives] suggestions and methods of cooking and preparing food”.

What's left in the Larder, 1946

They covered every aspect of the sourcing preparing and cooking of meals advocating healthy and nutritious food.  Here could be found “a plan for meals for children”, “Cooking for one” foraging in the countryside and how best to use the fat ration.

At which point there will be those who mutter “nanny state” but it is as well to remember that for many families the war had interrupted family life and in particular the routine of cooking with many civilians eating in office and factory canteens or in subsidised public restaurants while evacuation had ripped many children out of the home.

Hedgerow Harvest, 1946

So, the Ministry of Food’s leaflets aimed to plug the gap of knowledge and in some cases promote what ever food was available.  

One of my favourites was the 1946 “Hedgerow Harvest” issued in the July of that year with the simple message that “there is a wealth of wild foods in our hedgerows and fields for those who are within reach of the countryside [and which] should not be wasted”.

It chimed in with advice from the The British Gas Council with approval of the Ministry of Agriculture focused on “Jam Making & Fruit Bottling”.  Over the years I have done my own experiments in these post war food suggestions including orange curd Pearl Barley Milk Pudding.

And today I have turned to their offer from December 1946 and “What’s left in the Larder” which explored using “Stale Bread” and using up left over fish which could be turned into a curry, using an onion, small carrot, curry powder, and flour to which you added a pint of stock, some vinegar, chutney, two tablespoons of sultanas and the flaked fish.

Using up stuff, 1946

Pearl Barley puddings, 1946

Now whether it was because rice was scare or just a culinary sign of the times, the curry was to be served with mashed potatoes.

But then just under twenty years later and mother regularly made a meat curry with sultanas and served it up with mash.

So looking through the leaflets there is indeed much that echoes that L.P. Hatley observation of the gulf between now then and now.

Of course, the canny cook has never forgotten that there is a place for yesterday’s leftovers in today’s meals, whether it be taking slices of old bread and rubbing them with a mix of garlic, tomatoes and olive oil, or my own teatime fall back which added some end of date salad, the last of the double cream with mushrooms and a newly cooked plate chickpeas, paprika, onions and tomato sauce.

And tonight I will finish off the chickpeas with what ever I can find in the fridge which needs using up.

Location; the kitchen and sometime in the 1940s

Pictures; selections from Ministry of Food leaflets, 1946 and my leftovers, 2026, and an identity card, 1950, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

My left overs, 2026

* "The past is a different place, they do things differently there", The Go Between, L.P. Hatley, 1953

Walking the Greek iskands .... in the company of Gigantes

The art of cooking for one is pretty much the same as cooking for two or for a family.

Keep it simple, use the best ingredients you can source and have an eye on how the leftovers can used for another meal.

Which brings me to two staple and favourites which are Gigantes and green beans.

Both pretty much cook themselves and just require to be cooked in a tomato sauce.

Now my Wikipedia tells me that Gigantes “is a Greek dish of large white beans baked in a tomato sauce and may be served as a main dish or as a meze”.* 

I first came across them in Greece forty years ago and they remain one of my go to choices when ever I am on the islands.

At home I regularly make them using the humble butter bean which are cooked gently with tomatoes, olive oil, onion and some garlic and a mix of herbs.  

And it makes sense to cook them along with that other dish which use green beans which are made in much the same way as the Gigantes.

Both can be served along side each other with bread and a selection of dips.

I prefer them slightly warm, but they are just as nice when cold.

Variations of both can be found in an arc around the Mediterranean and are essentially peasant food.

Today I ate them with some green leaves, salad and fried potatoes which was a variation on the other day when I made some mashed potatoes, onions and peas.

Leaving me to use what was left of the two in a curry or with some pasta.

Perhaps not exactly how a Greek grandmother or Italian nonna would dish up, but well within that tradition of using up what was in the kitchen.

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; from the kitchen to the plate, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Gigantes plaki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantes_plaki

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

Stories from a Greek table and that food advice

 "Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Simple dish, 2026

It’s the sort of advice that could roll off the tongue of any one of a range of TV cooks or from the pages of those glossy recipe books.

And just for good measure the message is accompanied by heaps of pictures of far away places and the odd real story of authentic farmers in remote villages as yet untouched by the modern world.

Put all of that together and some happy suburban chef will not only offer up the meal to stun friends and family but regale them with tales of cooking over a stove in a rural village.

Always it will be from a friend of a friend  who passed through the place  before the young villagers disappeared off to the towns and cities.

Leaving the old, less adventurous and traditionalist to live amongst the abandoned cottages falling into ruin.

Abandoned in Assos, 2019

And that brings me tonight’s pasta dish. 

It took roughly 15 minutes to make and transported me back to a tiny taverna off the beaten track on an adventure across one of the Greek islands.

Ten minutes out from the Piraeus, bound for the islands,1981

Back then the holidays like the food we ate were simple.  

You flew into Athens on a midnight flight, waited around the Piraeus till the ferries started and by degree island hopped.

After which you caught a local bus or splashed out on a taxi.

On one occasion the bus set us down in a small town square, and that was where we came across the restaurant.  

It was small, the menu limited to what had been brought in from the fields and the local wine came to the table in an old recycled juice bottle.

The place to eat, beyond the square by the sea, 2017

And on that day in that taverna  what was on offer was pasta tossed in tomato sauce with a handful of olives.

Simple quick and perfect.

And this evening because l had some tomatoes and olives I replicated that dish.

Pasta, tomatoes, olives, capers and cauliflower, 2026

The tomatoes made a light sauce to which I added the olives a handful of capers and some peas, and a bit of  cauliflower. 

It was essentially just bits waiting to be used up, and probably the next time because the bits will be different the dish will also go off in a new direction.

And so to the pasta.

Our cupboard is full of different types and while I know each should be used for different dishes  I just please myself, and so on a whim, I used my new favourite, a thick long pasta with a hollow centre, called Bucatini.  It has that added attraction that bits of the sauce end up in the hollow tube.

It wasn’t quite that long past Greek meal, but it delivered that mantra “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; scenes from the Piraeus, some Greek islands, and that pasta dish, 1981-2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

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

We are not an aberration …… when you are not alone .... spaghetti, milk and sugar

Growing up in southeast London in the 1950s we ate a heap of different foods.

Pretty much all of them were cooked from scratch at home using whatever ingredients were to hand.

And that meant that some of the meals were a bit of a strange mix, but they followed a basic recipe and drew on what mum and dad had eaten in their youth.

To this could be added the experience of wartime rationing and the limited range of food that was available.  

So, leaving aside the seasonal aspect of what was in the shops this was a time before advent of exotic vegetables and fruit shipped from around the world and ready to buy all year round.

So, strawberries, raspberries, new potatoes and a selection of root veg came and went adding to the slow rhythm of what we ate and I think made for an appreciative anticipation.

Now there was always tinned fruit which usually was saved for Sundays.

It also meant that things like avocados didn’t feature with me until I was well into my 30s.

And then there were the odd dishes which I always thought of as peculiar to our family and a bit of an aberration.

Chief amongst these was spaghetti cooked with milk and sugar.  It was a pudding treat, quick to make and always went down well.

But in those quiet shared conversations with friends’ spaghetti cooked with milk and sugar always drew a blank, in fact more than a blank, the general consensus ranged from disgust to outright derision.  It was a bizarre thing.

And so, I was left to “mutter well we liked it” with that consoling thought that it was the past where we did things differently. 

Leaving me to write a few reflective pieces and ponder how we were an aberration.

But not so, because tucked away in a book from the Great War on vegetarian recipes, I came across cooking boiled Macaroni “with a little sugar and milk [which] makes a very acceptable pudding”.  

I rest my case …. It may not pass muster today but jolly well was up there on the tables of fellow vegetarians in 1918.

The book has been reprinted by Read Books in their collection of Vintage Cook Books.

The publisher’s blurb tells me that it was “Originally published during WWI, this is one of the early vegetarian cook books, issued to help deal with rationing and the meat crisis. 

It contains many recipes and much advice that is still of practical use and interest today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. 

Vintage Cookery Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. 

Contents Include: Hints On Food Soups Vegetable Stock Lentil Dishes Brown Lentils Rice Dishes Haricot Dishes Macaroni Dishes Nut Dishes Cheese Dishes Miscellaneous Dishes Curries Vegetables Sweets Pastry Salads Sauces Porridge Egg Dishes Explanations and Suggestions Menus For A Fortnight”.**

Now Lois my dearest friend and fellow writer and blogger who has followed my journey as a vegetarian for forty years and more sent me a copy yesterday.

I read it in a single sitting.  

Some of the recipes I already cooked, others looked a challenge or just didn’t appeal.

But the historian in me will go back and explore the 100 dishes as backdrop, not only to vegetarianism but also to the Great War.

And that is it.

Pictures; pasta to make a pudding from, 2026, cover of  the reprint Food in War Time, 2026

* Sugar sandwiches …. fruit salad ….. and carnation ……. food for the Gods, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/07/sugar-sandwiches-fruit-salad-and.html

** Food in War Time - Vegetarian Recipes for 100 Inexpensive Dishes: And Helpful Suggestions for Providing Two Course Dinners for Six People for One Shilling, George W. Hall 

***Lois Elsden, Writer, https://loiselsden.com/

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