• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

Old style food still going strong

Status
Not open for further replies.
As a lad I used to enjoy a "crisp sandwich", just plain crisps between two slices of white bread and marge. Guess what I had yesterday for my lunch yesterday? Just as tasty as I remembered although nowadays it's wholemeal bread and low fat spread:yum
 
jmadone said:
As a lad I used to enjoy a "crisp sandwich", just plain crisps between two slices of white bread and marge. Guess what I had yesterday for my lunch yesterday? Just as tasty as I remembered although nowadays it's wholemeal bread and low fat spread:yum
Click to expand...
I still enjoy the occasional crisp sandwich. Fresh white sliced with butter and tomato ketchup. It doesn't taste the same in a healthy eating version, although I do use low fat butter and weightwatchers crisps if I can get them.
 
Mom used to tell us that as a treat when she was little they had sugar sandwiches, 2 slices of buttered bread with sprinkled sugar as the filling.
 
We used to have an open sauce sandwich. Slice of white sliced bread, Butter, Brown Sauce = heaven.

Just wondering what brown sauce is made from?
 
Mort,

Here's the list of ingredientas from my bottle of Daddies Sauce obtained through the British Shop here in Crete:-
Spirit vinegar, Water, Molasses, Glucose-Fructoce Syrup, Malt Vinegar (from barley), Modified Cornflour, Sugar, Dates, Rye Flour, Salt, Spices, Flavourings. This is made in Poland for HP Foods, London SE1 9SG.

Looking at the Nutrition Analysis, for every 100 grams, it has 109 kcal of energy, 24 grams of carbohydrates of which 17 grams are sugar, 1.2 grams of salt and neglibible amounts of fat and protein. Of course, we can't say this was the same when you were a lad. It doesn't say how they modified the cornflower! From the taste, I would say that there is an awful lot of black pepper in those spices.

Maurice :cool:
 
Just enjoyed my Saturday Fry up, Sausage, bacon, Spaghetti, Fried bread and fried tomato. Now 89 not about to change !!! Can vouch for the Yorkshire folk having cheese with Christmas cake. Couldn't believe it when living there and my future mother in law wanted me to do likewise. Still remember father in law telling one of the girls to go and get a quarter of 'spice'.
Thought he was mad until I learnt that he was referring to sweets. Every Saturday evening for them it was tripe and onions. Now you know why I moved bach to Brum after we were married.
 
Maurice
We will never know as it is only relatively recently that they have had to put an ingredients list on the bottles, but I seem to remember hearing somewhere that tamarind was originally an ingredient. "The Road to Aston Cross" by Louise white states that they intended to buy the spice direct from the county of origin -ginger, pepper, cloves, coriander, tamarind...... Now others could be included in "spices#", but personally I would not have called tamarind a spice
 
mikejee said:
Maurice
We will never know as it is only relatively recently that they have had to put an ingredients list on the bottles, but I seem to remember hearing somewhere that tamarind was originally an ingredient. "The Road to Aston Cross" by Louise white states that they intended to buy the spice direct from the county of origin -ginger, pepper, cloves, coriander, tamarind...... Now others could be included in "spices#", but personally I would not have called tamarind a spice
Click to expand...
Perhaps Tamarind is similar to Cinnamon, Mace and Nutmeg ?
 
As I understand it, it is a vegetable pulp, and remember seeing some in an indian shop, which looked like a brown goo. To me that is not a spice
 
Mike, that’s the ingredient I was trying to recall, tamarind. Looks like you need a chemistry set to make it now.
 
Is just because of cost that the ingredients in some old, familiar products are changed ? I doubt it’s for improvements in taste, as more often than not, they aren’t better tasting products. Viv.
 
Vivienne14 said:
Is just because of cost that the ingredients in some old, familiar products are changed ? I doubt it’s for improvements in taste, as more often than not, they aren’t better tasting products. Viv.
Click to expand...
Viv, its also about availability, storage, shelf life etc. there is a company near where I used to live in NJ called IFF, International Flavors and Fragrances. They ship globally and I am sure there are others like them that can make any flavors or perfume. As Mike J said its only recently that the contents have been put on the label so we will really never know!
 
Usually cost, though occasionally the recipe is altered because of changing production conditions. There is also the damn health lobby, pushing their yearning for "healthy" products. These often need extra ingredients and are virtually always either tasteless or just not half as good.
 
Mike,

Re: your post #202, I totally agree, but we must also remember the secrecy of recipes. One brown sauce maker was not going to disclose his ingredients to another, though with the various analytical tools we have today, it is possible to derive the main contents of a recipe. My other half used to work in a laboratory producing synthetic flavours and she said that, for instance, strawberry flavouring had never been near a strawberry at any time! That doesn't surprise me in the least.

Maurice :cool:
 
Many artificial flavours are necessary. for example, I don't think any sort of strawberry flavour could be given to a product which was processed using natural strawberries. One can see that in a way in strawberry jam , which can be high in strawberries but does not really taste like fresh ones. I think nowadays they try , as much as possible to use nature -identical chemicals. Of course you have to be careful, as , even using chemicals which are identical to those in nature , you could get unpleasant results. For example (and I speak from experience as many years ago I worked in a lab where someone was doing a lot of work on this) one of the most important impact compounds of blackcurrants smells similar to blackcurrants when very dilute, but at higher concentrations you would think that cats had been peeing all over the room
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top