Are we getting too nostalgic?

Posted: 4/07/2011 2:03:48 p.m.

I’ve noticed over the past year or two that there’s been a real trend towards nostalgia in food. Restaurants are serving once-forgotten cuts of meat like lamb shanks and various types of offal; recipe books full of ‘just like grandma used to make’ recipes abound. We seem to have quite an idealised backward view of how our grandparents used to eat. We think of it as a golden age when everything was pure and natural and healthy and made from scratch.

For a long time I’ve been collecting recipe books from the 60s and 70s. It started innocently enough with a couple of titles picked up at the school gala, but over the years my collection has grown to occupy many shelves. I find these books fascinating. They are full of the recipes just like my own Nana used to make. Some recipes I remember from my childhood. And I have to say, a lot of them are pretty awful. Bland, flavourless savoury dishes; fatty grey meat; veges with the life boiled out of them. Not to mention the many and varied ways with kidneys and aspic (sometimes in the same dish).

It’s perhaps not surprising that few of these recipes appeal to modern palates. Back in the 60s and earlier, the range of ingredients available was limited by today’s standards. Garlic was a rarity; olive oil was a pharmaceutical product; even broccoli was exotic. Looking through the books, the most exciting spice available seems to have been cayenne pepper, or if you were really adventurous, curry powder. If you were to serve ‘steak and pineapple casserole’ or ‘baked fish loaf’ today, you could well have a dinnertime mutiny on your hands. And we’d be wise to avoid some of Gran’s recipes on health grounds; one recipe in my collection for ‘chow mein’ has us frying 500g beef mince in 250g butter. I suspect butter would be the main flavour in that dish.

The other thing that’s really noticeable - and a little surprising - is the liberal use of packet ingredients: cans of mushroom soup and creamed corn, sachets of gravy powder and chicken noodle soup. It makes sense if you think of the lack of fresh herbs and interesting spices; they were making the most of what they had. But it’s not the pure and natural goodness we may remember.

It’s not all bad, though. The best of Gran’s recipes, the ones which have stood the test of time, tend to be the baking. Many of us will have baking recipes we use often that have been passed down through generations and are truly precious.

I know that my Nana and her generation had lots of wisdom and skill to pass down to my generation. I think the trick with all this nostalgia is to take the best from the past and adapt it for modern tastes and ingredients. A recent great example of this is Gran’s Family Table by Natalie Oldfield, containing recipes ‘inspired’ by her grandmother. They have the essence of the original, but a modern twist. Which is what we try to do with our HFG recipes, too. Taking a classic dish like fish pie, for example, and giving it not only a more interesting flavour, but also a health boost. Gran might not have thought to add veges into her pie, but I think she would probably like the idea.