I used to enjoy the two fat ladies’ cookery programmes – mostly for their clipped vowels and social comments which had their roots in feudal practices long forgotten by normal folk. Unfortunately one behemoth flew too close to the flames and passed on to that Aga-equipped kitchen in the sky, leaving Clarissa bereft of her long-time playmate.
But soft, what light, etc? Clarissa is back, blocking out the sun as effectively as before, but this time pontificating on the origins of our mealtimes – a dangerous topic, if ever there was one. And true to her provenance, she succeeds in omitting (by design or by mistake) the one meal best loved among school-children of my lowly estate and longevity: tea. Whether we stayed at school for ‘dinner’ at mid-day or popped home for it, the next meal was at around five-thirty or six when Dad got home from the office. We called it simply ‘tea’, which did happen to be the beverage served but which bore no further resemblance to ‘afternoon tea’ as served at the Ritz – which is presumably the only version which Clarissa would recognise.
Tea was usually something hot on buttered toast, depending on the availabilty of accompaniments: poached eggs, various tinned fish, welsh rarebit and yes, baked beans; and followed by some kind of homemade cake or pastry filled with a range of jams or stewed fruit. We didn’t grace it with the term ‘high tea’ – because there was, after all, no other. And if you were invited out to ‘tea’ by a mate or a cousin, you expected to be served much the same.
However…..if you’d like to see what Clarissa thinks everybody ate, here it is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20243692. Enjoy your meal!
PS I won’t even venture into the murky territory where ‘supper’ lurks – a mystery to yours truly and also apparently unknown to a lady of her gravitas.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I’m afraid I gave up on that BBC article when I got to the point when it told me that the word “breakfast” meant “to break one’s fast”. Well, fancy that! Then the writer announced that the Romans only had a midday meal, not an evening one. Wot about the orgies then? Afternoon orgies sounds like daytime TV and I’m pretty sure that Nero et al would not have gone without an evening meal. An orgy without larks’ tongues – never!
Janus, good morning.
The lack of any reference to tea by Clarissa is easily explained, She has been fortunate enough to live in Embra for a good few years now. I have often stood in the same Saturday morning queue as her at the local butcher. She seemed very pleasant if slightly forceful. A sort of CO with attitude.
She has clearly lived amongst us long enough to have forgotten about tea. Our collective memory of that meal has atrophied as we never have to make it. Our visitors always seem to have had it before they arrive.
Prior saved from a certain lbw by the Indians refusing to employ DRS. 16 runs.
Generally speaking, I loathe cooking programs…
Some smart a*** chopping herbs and the like at the speed of light, pouring cream, butter and all other kinds of ‘forbidden’ ingredients into a pan and turning out a meal in half-an-hour that would take me at least an hour to make and Bearsy another hour to clean up after… Why do they never show the poor scullery maids in the background?
But I did enjoy ‘Two Fat Ladies’. They were, as you say, a window on a distant past with no pretensions!
I found the article interesting. Did people really go all day with just one meal. Even I, who can easily forget to eat, would find that difficult. Someone ought to tell the author that in medieval times, when kitchens were a great fire hazard and most homes did not have ovens, large towns and cities had ‘take away’ food shops – especially of pies. Bacon, eggs and baked beans might not have been on the menu – but the medieval peasant took his cheese, bread and ale out at dawn to work the fields and ate from the cook-pot in the evening when he returned home…
I’d also like to take the author of the article to task for her comments regarding post-war women. There was a concerted effort in the UK (and here in Oz and probable elsewhere) to get women out of the work-force and back into the kitchen so that the returning soldiers could have jobs… the adverts glorifying women in aprons was part of that propaganda…
Some women may have fallen for the hype – but not all. It would take a post and a half to describe the conflicts that ‘food’ created in my childhood! But, I will say that we never, ever went hungry and we never, ever had ‘tea’ as you describe it Janus!
When I was 13 or so, probably at roughly the same time as you, I went to stay with a school friend for two weeks. Her mother, definitely not of ‘lowly estate’ thought I was terribly ‘deprived’ and said that she would ‘make sure that I ate properly’. ‘Ooh!’ I thought, “That should be interesting… ‘
She is still one of my best friends, and I still haven’t had the courage to tell her that I found the ‘proper food’, ie ‘tea’ , a mind blowing experience! Sandwiches, poached eggs or baked beans on toast, welsh rarebit. jam tarts and cakes were mere snacks in my house – we had real meals – one might have had to get them oneself – but they were, what I still call, ‘proper food’ a la Fat Ladies.!
Boa, the Romans definitely didn’t get by on one meal, even those below the status of Emperor. The army marched on its stomach and picked up pre-packs from Pret à Manger or Sainsbury’s on its way opp narth.
Like Bo I never watch cooking programmes, most of them are total incompetents and could never hold a job in a commercial kitchen. I have always presumed (somewhat vulgarly) that they mostly get the jobs on the TV for having ‘warts on their tongues’! There is one woman that seems to only wave her boobs on TV, she never cooks them! Wonder what braised boob would taste like?
When I was young we always had dinner, ie meat and veg and pudding at 6.30-7.00. Living in the middle of nowhere meant very long travelling times. Beans on toast would have produced a riot if offered as a meal!
My mother was the most abysmal cook ever, her cakes were disaster areas. God knows how she managed to get everything to sink like it, never worked it out. I took over all cake making in the house at the age of twelve or so in total self defence! Taught myself out of Good Housekeeping picture cookery. When I was 13 I lied and got a job in a very good restaurant fairly near us. Deliberately worked in the kitchens and watched like a hawk for years. I worked there for 5 years till Uni. Then other vac jobs in restaurants all over.
Always I tried to get to good places where they had good continental patisserie chefs and proper still rooms, A very effective unofficial apprenticeship. One of the most useful things I have ever done. No chef could ever blackmail me, fire them and step in yourself, too many bosses can’t do it!
As for tea, I note that the American ladies are very fond of ‘English tea’. Trouble is USA cakes go for size not quality, huge wodges of dough of doubtful provenance. No small perfectly produced little gems or bouchees. No one seems to understand the intricacies of a forcing bag! One eats with one’s eyes. It is interesting to note whenever I take a plate of whatevers to any potluck, people actually watch what I put down and that is nearly always the first plate to be emptied, not only does it taste good but more importantly it looks good. So tea is definitely on my entertaining menu.
Another reason to dodge cookery show is they are generally puffs for certain products and not the best quality either! Really good products tend to be produced in small quantities by small firms, they have a very limited market at the price, they can’t afford to waste money advertising on TV, Cooking chocolate is in the fore for this. Most commercial cooking chocolate is totally disgusting. By the time some poor fool has made a cake of this stuff, margarine and crappy cheap tasteless eggs why bother? Excess calories for a filthy taste that generally makes you fart! Thanks but no thanks! Far better to pay more for ingredients and eat less in quantity.
I cannot actually see why any ingredient should be ‘forbidden’, I use lashings of cream and butter but balance it with heaps of fresh organic veg from the garden. What I always avoid is heaps of carbohydrates, quite enough sugars in carrot not to need spuds too, people overdo the wodges of bread, spuds, pasta, rice etc. There is some deep atavistic need in us that finds the mixture of carbs, grease and sugar quite irresistible. I suspect that it comes from when food was not regular and we would gorge when it was available, trouble is then we starved at other times of the year, now we don’t! But the programme is still embedded in our psyche, just look at the obese wobbling disgustingly around our streets. People just eat too much, no-one needs three meals a day unless they are doing hard physical work that very few of us do anymore. But no-one seems to have the sense to cut down and retrain themselves. A pity when you look at them!
My family had its main meal at mid-day because offices and schools closed for long enough to accommodate it.
My mother and her circle of friends regularly entertained at afternoon tea, with particular china and napkins and dainty little sandwiches and cakes. I do enjoy an afternoon tea at a good hotel, but it means no lunch before and no need of dinner afterwards. Goodness only knows how the Edwardians managed all those meals – no wonder they needed corsets!
When I organised a Scottish evening for the association we belong to in France, I used a few of my mother’s recipes and realised what a very unhealthy diet the Scots had, but all the dishes were very well received by the French. Whenever we do a “potluck” there, the question is always “Have you made something Scottish?” Cranachan is particularly popular.
I think having the right china, cutlery and linen is half of it for afternoon tea. Mugs and big plates look plain silly against the food. I have a seriously weird plethora of china both spousal unit and I lost our good cutlery to ex’s but we ended up with the china, that plus inherited stuff we have so many sets it is ridiculous! I rotate them! but jolly useful for parties, no paper plates here! I still have the silver tea forks and little blunt knives, so all very twee for tea. I’m sure that is why the natives here find the meal so attractive, it is a set of utensils and china that you very rarely see these days in its entirety. I think if you play bridge you tend to have all this stuff still, it was always used everywhere when I played in the Thames valley area.
Janus, I am quite sure that commutes etc played and still play a good part in whether people have main meals at various times of the day. When I lived alone and was at business I generally ate at lunchtime out. It always seemed cheaper and more convenient than bothering for one. A bottle of wine and a few nuts did for the evening. When others are around it becomes a different matter, fitting best to all the schedules.
Afternoon tea at the Ritz is worth a try. Such a choice of teas, scones, crustless sarnies and cream cakes.
Cheaper round my house! It was £20 or so a head decades ago, heavens knows what it is now!
But when one adds in the air fare to your house, Christina …
Brown’s Hotel is also good, Janus.
Ah, Brown’s, where head-hunters have assignations. Wanna see my T-shirt? 🙂
Christina:
I think my mother was a ‘good cook’, just a little irregular! She worked (extremely long hours) in catering for many years and had her own restaurant for some time – someone else did the cooking! There was always a great choice of food in the fridge…. but not always from her hands.
Unfortunately, my father came from a family who expected a meal on the table when he, as the Man-of the-House came home – whatever time that might be. I’ve seen the place setting and food put on the doorstep and I am reliably informed that on at least one occasion Mum met Dad at the Underground station with his food on a tray… and I watched our dinner go out of the door on at least one occasion…
Like you, at about 12 /13 I took over the cake making (not that there had been any at all before that!) and the production of Sunday Dinner.
My work in ‘catering’ began, like you, at the age of 14 – but as a waitress in places like the National Liberal Club in London… my mother provided all the staff for that and many similar establishments and she made sure that I got the privileged jobs. I didn’t learn much about cooking- but a great deal about wines! .. I acquired a taste for good food – but realised that cooking was not for me…
Presentation is, as you say, important – one of the delights of Bearsy’s meals is that he puts as much effort into how a meal looks as to how it tastes.
So Boa, maybe your mum or even you served me at the NLC in the Mid/late ‘sixties when I was a member?!
How interesting Bo, small world eh?
I always tried to get the kitchen jobs anywhere rather than waiting. Much preferred the food side of it all at least at first. I like your old ma’s approach to her husband. I wonder how often he wore his dinner rather than ate it!!! Never had to do that myself, by the time any relationship had deteriorated that far I was generally ‘n’ counties away having voted with my feet! Life too short to put up with any kind of crap.
Janus – both Mum and I had moved on to far better things by the late sixties!
Christina – I was only interested in the money side. I could earn more in tips on a Friday and Saturday night than many men earned in a week to keep a whole family! As for Mum, she reorganised her life as soon as i left home at eighteen – and that is one very sound reason that I’ve never, ever thought it is a good idea ‘to stay together for the children’…. 🙂