Saving Stamps

The Co-operative Food reports sales of saving stamps on the increase. I was drawn to the story published in Talking Retail - the hub for grocery retail of 6th March 2013. Like most of print & web media they publish  press releases and this one is by the Co-operative Group.

"The Co-operative Food says sales of saving stamps have soared by a third, following the launch of its new saving stamps trust fund. The retailer said that in the first four weeks following the trust fund launch, the number of saving stamps sold increased by 33%, compared with February 2012."

Basically you buy £1 stamps throughout the year at any of its 2,800 stores across the UK. Saving is a laudable activity and should be encouraged. Far less costly than the misery of debt. Anyone  redeeming a full saving stamps book (with £48 worth of stamps) in store in December will receive an extra £2 bonus, just in time for the big Christmas shop. Which if my arithmetic is correct is a return of 4.1%. Far better than the banks on the high street. Except the pay out is in goods not cash.

Something as simple as saving stamps reminds me of an age maybe 50 plus years ago. But then lots of recent developments in finance outside the tarnished banking sector are redolent of an earlier age. There are now more pawnbrokers, gold buyers, and pay-day loan merchants who charge 4000%. Then there are better and more realistic, newer peer-to-peer lending schemes and the stable credit unions. I expect to see a sign in some shop announcing "join our xmas club today".

Further reading : Saving Nostalgia by Paul Delplanque for the Gazette in Middlesboro. It is a humorous piece with some good photos of divi day and Princess Anne on one shilling national saving stamps (5p was once a lot of money).

Tahini & falafel at the Co-op

Who would have thought that tahini, falafel mix, and harissa would appear on the shelves of the local Co-Op store? Well surprised! If you talk about these foods you usually have to explain what you mean to the majority with a limited palette.

Like the way the hot chilli harissa from north Africa is with items originating from a vast area called the Middle East. It's not the geography it's the ethnicity that comes to mainstream British shopping.

Tahini for me is one of the most versatile and healthy foods ever. You can make a sauce, you can add sugar or better still date syrup to make a dessert. For a local variation add yeast extract like Marmite or even miso to create a savoury cheese like topping.

When the za'atar and sumac spices appear I'll know there is a culinary revolution taking place at home. From the photo below you can see it's a regular on my table. Who needs the sunshine to go with a mezze of delights.

Link : www.alfez.com

99 Tea Retro Offer

The "99 Tea" is one of the remaining own Co-Op brands when once there were once dozens. Personally I usually go for the other remaining blend called "Indian Prince".

But currently in the stores the "99" is on special offer and in what could be called an imaginary retro style package. I say imaginary because the past wasn't like this. A very early "99" is shewn below. Loose tea and with its original name of Prescription Tea No.99.

Original cost in the 1920's was 10 old pence for 4oz net weight, which in modern terms is about 4p for 11gms, and allowing for inflation is around 90p in today's values.

Whether they taste the same is probably something we'll never know unless an old packet is found in an hermetically sealed capsule somewhere. The modern tea is now Fairtrade, something that didn't exist in the age of Empire. Also it was from the Joint CWS & SCWS estates in India and Ceylon and didn't have the stronger East African teas in the mix.

I made an earlier post "Time For Tea" about "99 Tea" about the health connection..... "doctors in assessing vocal fremitus asked the patient to repeat the phrase 'ninety-nine' whilst placing the palm of the hand on the patient's chest. They probably still do."

Lots of foods and drinks claimed how easy it was to digest their wonderful product. Digestive problems, real or imaginary appear to have troubled the country from the days of first patent branded foods up until the 1940's. I'll be making a post on digestive biscuits soon to illustrate this point.

Pic-Nic 1934

There is something charming about the picnic. Been checking out what you would have had back in the 1920's and 1930's. The CWS advert here dates from 1934 and reads like a typical salad dinner you would eat in the summer months.

Not quite the Enid Blyton "Famous Five" (written between 1942 - 1962) who would have had lashings of hard boiled eggs, tomato sandwiches, lemonade, tinned sardines, melt-in-the-mouth shortbread, radishes, Nestlé milk, ginger beer, tins of pineapple chunks, squares of chocolate....

Modern times it could be olives, hummus, fresh peaches and chilled Prosecco from a cooler box. Your mileage may differ. Tupperware boxes of salad or those triangle sandwich packs sold at petrol stations. Maybe the invented traditional of the Ploughman's Lunch.

The advert has a quaint age of innocence. It is old style ready to eat food. If you wished to recreate a 1930's picnic using some of these products then it possible to find current brand equivalents. The fruit squash drink are not yet extinct. Spotted some of those meat paste items at the local co-op. Not a prominent item but still on the shelves. Tinned fruit is a relic when fresh strawberries, albeit not very tasty strawberries, are sold in January.

But the illustration makes it all look spiffing good fun. No wet grass then. Hey, ho we'll all off to scoff  'en plein air', and play some ball games or frisbie afterwards. That's the bit when people think it is pretty smart to do throw and catch.

But the romance of the picnic is still with us, even though the weather hasn't been clement this summer.

The photograph is a colour photograph of a picnic on Stanmore Common in London, taken by R E Owen, 20 May 1929. It's from the National Media Museum which is in Bradford...it looks just how a picnic should with the wicker basket, rugs on the ground and possibly proper glassware...

Further reading : A brief history of the picnic.

Co-Op Breakfasted

Here I was thinking that Baked Beans have got expensive. Leading brands are in the 80p to just over 90p price bracket. They don't want to hit the 99p price point just yet. But in 1930 a 1lb tin of Heinz Baked Beans was advertised at six and a half old pennies - in today's values that's about £1.36.

But can do just as well with an own brand. The factors are the size of the bean and the richness of the sauce. Heinz who have over 100 years of production are the benchmark.

It's the weekend, no rushing to work, have time for a cooked breakfast. What better than baked beans on toasted crumpets. The option is mid-priced Co-op brand baked beans at 49p. But why not jazz up the sauce with some fresh cherry tomatoes, a touch of dried chilli and some black pepper. Warburtons crumpets are nearly always on special offer and work out at 10p each. The complete meal comes in at around 50 pence. It's not a comparison because I already knew what cheaper own brands taste like. But adding your own value with some judious use of other foods and spices takes the dish up a notch.

Hardy Lane Scrapbook does recipes, though you don't need a recipe to rustle up a quick breakfast. More to come with Co-op budget baked beans at a mere 29p. Can they be acceptable at that price?

Sanatogen Story

Late Sunday afternoon, in the Hardy Lane Co-op for some bits and bats shopping and spotted some Sanatogen wine. It had two faces (that's rows of bottles to you but in grocery school they are called faces 'cos they face the customer. Almost certain these are a new addition, albeit it might be a temporary one.

Tonic wines still enjoy some popularity. Buckfast is the most popular these days but mostly bought by those who want a cheap alcohol and caffeine hit. Wincarnis rarely seen in shops, is still available, and is one from the 19th Century. Originally back in 1881 it had meat extracts in it hence the name literally Wine-Carnis (from Latin for meat).

The display advert is from 1939, which makes it over 70 years old. Not the 50 years old as quoted all over the web. However Sanatogen as a powder in a bottle has been on sale since at least 1904. Sold by chemists a nerve tonic and pick-me-up. The active ingredient is Sodium Glycerophosphate - which in small quantities is reported to have health benefits. Mixing it with fortified British Wine (not English Wine) came later. British Wine is made from imported grape must, or grape juice concentrate and fermented here. It attracted less tax that imported wines from wine producing countries. It was thus cheaper, and its taste appealed to a British palate that liked heavy sweet sherries, ports and ginger wine - QC Cream, Enva Cream Sherry (actually the queen of Cyprus Sherry), and VP Cream are some examples.

Anyway passed on the 15% strength Sanatogen for the time being, and went for the Sainte Martha, a very quaffable Languedoc. A French red is more to my taste and the past purchases haven't failed to please.

Factory in Lowestoft

Had a 15 minute wait at the parcel office before I could collect my purchase. It's been around a few years and fortunately it is still in print. Wasn't disappointed. What are we writing about? A book called "Co-operative Pride and Capability Co-operative Wholesale Society - Canning and Preserved Food Factories - Lowestoft".

Crisp colour plates, a short accurate history, interviews with those who worked there, lots of memorabilia and old advertisements. It is a niche history but it is put into context of the national picture of CWS factories. They were ultimately sold on to other companies. Who then closed them down and sold the land off.

Well might have gone to rubble but at least we have this treasure and it is the pictures that make it. Now when you see photographs from the different eras you can usually date them from the black and white tones, and the camera lens used as Edwardian or 1920's, 40's etc. Well you can if you've seen enough archive material. So the 1989 colour views looked dated as well. Those distinctive colours of the film shot on 35mm stock. A better expert than me could probably hazard a guess at which film was used to take the photographs. You can recreate them with digital images and some editing software. Well sort of but not quite.

So after a browse it now sits out on the table for visitors and myself to dip into nostalgia for the Waveney Brand of tinned goods that used to be available in co-operative stores.

All the details are here at Coastal Publications. I purchased it direct from them because it works out a little cheaper than from that well known online bookseller, plus they will keep a bigger share of the money. For we need people to keep publishing niche history, it makes some of us happy.

The East Anglia Film Archive have some short videos available online. It's In The Can made in 1961, colour with sound is a CWS Promotional Film for Waveney tinned foods. Co-Op and Labour Fete 1930, black and white, silent is some great amateur footage captured in Ipswich.

New Tea Warehouse

Follwing on from yesterday's post Teas of Empire II..... Tea was a joint venture by both wholesale societies. The adverts often used a heralding trumpet figure who wears an outfit just stepped out from an Alice in Wonderland story. Better pictures reveal that he has the wheatsheaf symbol on that quartered costume. I bet the image on the dark quarters is the logo of the Scottish CWS.

There is a certain irony in that there is also an illustration of the Cutty Sark. The famous tea clipper, though she spent more years carrying wool from Australia to Britain, has defied all odds and is preserved, and restored after the fire of 2007. It's at Greenwich in London. In 1930 she was anchored in Falmouth harbour having retired from sailing. However the massive tea warehouse in Salford mentioned in the text has not been preserved....it was demolished some years back. As for the SS Makalla she's gone too.

The SS Makalla, 6,677 tons, was built in Port Glasgow in 1918 and sunk in the Moray Firth by German aircraft in August 1940. She was sailing in convoy. Part of the Anchor Brocklebank Line she made regular trips to India and back to North West England ports loaded with tea. Besides cargoes for the E&CWS she carried tea for the rival and well known Mazawatti Tea Company. I love that name Mazawatti. Pioneers in advertising, they refused to sell tea to multiples and co-op societies and only traded with independent grocers.

Capers in the Co-Op

It was the small print in an old advertisement for CWS preserves and pickles that got me thinking. For there in the list of 1926 amidst the chutneys, piccalilli, strawberry jam and etc was CWS capers. The advert is in a earlier post.

Most people in Britain haven't a clue about capers. Is it a fish? For those of you who don't know capers are small, dark green flower buds from Mediterranean countries. They are preserved usually in vinegar, sometimes in olive oil though the best way is in sea salt crystals. The fruit or berries of the caper bush is also available, about the size of an olive, full of tiny seeds and preserved in vinegar.

Yet they have been around since Samuel Pepys was burying his block of Parmesan in the garden to save it from the Great Fire of London. That was on Saturday 4th September 1666 according to his diaries. Those tasty savouries of capers, anchovies and Parmesan were imported for the wealthy to liven up plain fare.

So what why were the CWS supplying capers back in the 1920's? Was caper sauce the favoured accompaniment for fish on the estates of Chorlton? Perhaps people were creating there own tartare sauce too, because capers are one of the ingredients in that.

Somehow I don't think so. Nowadays you can easily obtain capers at several shops in the district. But apparently not at Hardy Lane store nor the other local co-op branches. Piccalilli, olives, picked shallots, gherkins & etc on the shelves. But no capers. They also don't appear very often on a list of extra toppings from the take away pizza shops. Essentially the UK hasn't taken to capers in a big way. None of this answers my question. Why were the CWS supplying capers back in the 1920's? In the meantime you could look up a recipe for spaghetti alla puttanesca and track down some capers to make the sauce.You won't be disappointed.

Prices Down Penny Savings

A style of advertising price cuts that appears puzzling in the modern 2012 age. The year is 1947 and such generic products as margarine and butter have been reduced by a couple of pence. It was an age of counting the pennies when a penny bought something. No mention of the brand or the actual selling price. Notice it is just the basics apart from the absence of tea, coffee and flour. The "Double Savings" is a reference to the "Divi" being the second saving.

Reference : M&S Co-operative Herald monthly magazines from 1947.

Chutney of Empire

A relish from the Raj that made its appearance in Britain at the end of the 18th Century in the upper class households, and was adopted by successive classes to become a national condiment. Now every grocery store, faux farm shop, pseudo farmers market and delicatessan stocks the stuff.

Hobson Jobson, Yule & Burnell's 1886 glossary of Anglo-Indian words, cites chatna from 1813 and chatnee from 1820. From which you get the modern English spelling chutney. If you were wealthy enough you could buy imported chutney, or get cook to rustle up a batch that used apples and onions instead of mangoes and tamarinds. Recipes in Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families ( 1845) or Mrs. Beeton's Household Management (1861).

Moving on a bit prices fell, and production from every pickle and sauce maker increased. Here we have the CWS advert from 1926 which has a Bengal chutney (that's short hand for hot, just like the description Mexican these days), and a mild sweet mango chutney.

Green Label Mango Chutney by Sharwood's become one of the leading brands after WWI and it still is. You'll find in The Co-Operative store and just about everywhere else. Just check out the illustration from the 1920's. It might have been made in a factory in London but you've got a character out of the Arabian Nights giving it authenticity. Heinz made a tomato chutney - tomatoes were their ingredient of choice for ketchup, soup and beans. Crosse & Blackwell were also leading purveyors.

I do like some of the names the evoke the colonial period, still available when you track them down. Major Grey's Mango Chutney was supposedly named after some chap in the Bengal Lancers. The best is Colonel Skinner's Mango Chutney, now he was a real soldier in India with his own horse regiment.

Now I've tried to explain chutney to friends from the other European countries. They look puzzled when I explain it is like a spicy jam and goes particularly well with poppadoms or as an extra filling for a sandwich.

However what was once an exciting new food from the Jewel of the Empire has been adapted to modern tastes. That is sweet and homogenised. Loaded with cheap sugar from beet, and there are brands out there are using high fructose corn syrup, having a texture that is gloppy sticky paste. When you see it in squeezable plastic containers you've hit another nadir in good taste. When you get the watery let down served in restaurants you've been done again. Don't fret there are still good chutneys about.

On the home made chutney front it became the salvation for the glut of fruit and vegetables. Back in WW2 days the Ministry of Food issued information to make Green Tomato Chutney. It had been around for decades because unripe tomatoes are that blessing or curse of English summers. The adoption of a foreign food to become an institution is a fascinating development and we should be pleased it has happened. Why eat plain when there is a jar of chutney in the cupboard.

Links for further reading :
Hobson Jobson : Anglo-Indian dictionary online.
Military memoir of lieut.-col. James Skinner is available at the Internet Archive, but only the Google Books version appears to have all the pages. It's here.
Previous posts in the Foods of Empire series are these.

What Man's Tea?

Couldn't let this one pass. What were they thinking of? Tea is a man's drink. Since when was it not? Maybe there was some old myth that women sat around drinking endless pots of tea and men guzzled beer. Now I've always taken it as read that tea was for all classes and all genders. You put the milk in first, or after was the seperating class factor. I drop it in after the tea is poured - that's habit and logistics of measurement.

The illustration dates from the 1920's. You have a seated man in a suit, tie and moustache being served a brew from the hands of a women. Then you get a paraphrase from Robert Burns "Epistle to Dr. Blacklock" (1789). The real verse reads somewhat different and with a different meaning
 "But to conclude my silly rhyme
(I'm scant o' verse and scant o' time):
To make a happy fireside clime to weans and wife,
That's the true pathos and sublime of human life."
I'll sign off with....."The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Those immortal lines from the Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (1953). This is days of loose tea sold in 4 oz packets (113 gms) in that foreign country.

Illustration from People's Year Book 1926.

Lump Salt

Old style provisions I find a fascinating field of discovery. When soap literally came in long bars and the shop keeper cut off a slice for the customer, and sugar came in a big cone. Those two ways of selling still exist. The soap store chain called Lush sells cut and weighed soap. The loaf sugar I've not seen in the UK but is still available in Germany. Cut cheese at the deli counter is one of the last items that is still sold to a customer from a larger block.

In the days before sliced bread there was also salt sold in lumps. We're back in the years pre-1930. You sometimes see in antique shops tiny spoons referred to as salt spoons. Not that I've ever questioned why there was ever a need for a salt spoon. Apparently it was for distribution of the broken up lump salt at the dining table.

You can see the irreversible trend since the Hardy Lane store opened in 1929. Provisions, both food and non-food, have become sliced, diced, packaged and ready for use. Who is going to crush salt and pass the spoon these days. It has actually gone beyond that. Today you see chopped vegetables in plastic on sale in the chiller cabinet, and frozen roasted potatoes and the Yorkshire puddings to go with them.

Ryvita the original

Ryvita has been on the shelves for as long as anyone can remember. It was first baked in 1927. One of those compound names taking the word rye with an etymology going back to Germanic and Nordic roots, and joining it a Latin or Italian word vita meaning life. Whilst pursueing through old British magazines of the 20th Century looking for anything but Ryvita I've noticed it is often there in print. Old co-op publications, back copies of Punch, and even early Vegetarian monthlies. That advertising budget was being spent to make it a popular brand. It is a dry, very dry but versatile cracker. Used to be promoted as an aid to slimming, at 35 calories a cracker it is true. But some of those toppings in the advert could pile on the weight.



The ingredients are good essentially just rye and water. As it has the royal appointment then the company can justify the Union Jack wrapper to gain some jubilee sales.

 

Royal Biscuit Tins

Whenever you have a royal event then biscuit manufacturers get the tins painted up for the occasion. The Diamond Jubilee follows in this tradition. Advertisement (left) is from this week's glossy leaflet from The Co-operative that arrived with the free newspaper. Sure enough they were on the shelves in the shop. Bit tempted by a McVities. Oh how we like McVities. I wonder if they were made at their factory over in Levenshulme?

Wind the clock back 59 years to the Coronation and you have CWS biscuits manufactured at both their Cardiff or Crumpsall works. A collectors item and that's without you seeing the reverse side with an image of a dashing Duke of Edinburgh.

Royal biscuits date back to at least Queen Victoria with Huntley & Palmer making the Osborne in 1860 named after the big royal house on the Isle of Wight. There may have been Jubilee biscuit tins in her time.

Carr's made "Coronation Biscuits" with a vanilla flavour for Edward VII in 1902, and Huntley & Palmer produced "Royal Sovereign" filled with apricot jam for George V in 1912.

Note the decent interval of a year from the death of the last monarch to baking biscuits for the new one. When it came to Edward VIII the souvenirs for the forthcoming Coronation were in the shops in 1936. As we know it didn't take place, and George VI got the crowning in 1937, and the biscuit tins were in the stores. The CWS got the production lines rolling for commemoratives too.

There was a Silver Jubilee for George V in 1935. Those on unemployment benefit, and there would be many without a job received a little extra shilling, and 2/6d for under 14 dependents to mark the occasion. There has been no mention of a little extra for this year's event. However biscuits featured in the parties. "A gift of 30,500 caskets of biscuits has been made by Sir Alexander Grant for distribution at Jubille celebrations throughout Edinburgh" - Manchester Guardian 20th April 1935.

From the Coronation in 1953 the souvenir bandwagon has increased for each wedding, and now the third jubilee even more....

Now if heritage biscuit tins are for you then may I suggest you check out British Biscuit Tins with a searchable database and colour photographs.

The other good link is the Facebook page of the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising. It is a trove of nostalgia. They have an exhibition ‘Jubilee, Jubilee’ which runs to 31st August 2012. Should you be in Notting Hill, London I recommend a visit, you won't be disappointed seeing the cornucopia of artifacts.

Saturated Fats

This looks like an unhealthy set of rendered and processed fats from a 1930 advertisement. The food your ancestors lived on and purchased weekly at your local co-operative store. All unfashionable these days. However the problem of obesity was not an issue. Now you can quote official figures of one third of the population being seriously overweight....and rising.

The Irlam factory was demolished long ago. It also made soaps because both cooking fats and soap share the same ingredients - fat. Palm oil which was brought up the Manchester Ship Canal to the works or tallow from animal carcass.

Bread in a wrapper

Here we have the M&SE promoting their bread. I like the use of the word propaganda. This is 1929 and before the word became tainted by political and military conflicts of the dictatorships of Europe. But a cart clopping down the street with a pretend extra large loaf is hardly the dark forces of propaganda.

The term wrapped bread is stressed to promote the hygienic production and handling. This was a fairly new way of retailing by putting loaves in grease proof paper. The days of the unwrapped bread would be seen as old fashioned. Though people apparently survived for centuries and centuries by buying loaves not in paper.

However there was a further development just on the horizon. Sliced bread! Invented in the USA and the date usually quoted is 1928. The slicing machines had been developed a lot earlier it was holding the slices together in suitable packaging that was needed.

One of the pioneers in marketing sliced bread in Britain was R.Sharrock & Sons here in Manchester. They had bakeries, or scientific plants as they called them, in Chorlton-on-Medlock and they introduced the "Tip Top" loaf. You got 22 even slices in a 2lb  loaf.  Their display adverts gave instructions. "The Tip Top wrapper opens at the end, the loaf is boxed in a tray, which has been hygienically treated. The tray slides out and you simply take the number of slices required - push the tray back and tuck in the ends." All this for 4½d. The rest you know....it's the best thing since sliced bread.

Credits : M&SE Herald 1929. Display advert Manchester Guardian 29th April 1930

Cost of Living

The free newspaper South Manchester Reporter drops through the door everyweek. There is a bit of news squeezed into it between the advertisements, and then you get more glossy colour leaflets with it too. No wonder people are conditioned to buy food on price alone instead of value and quality.
Notice the current style of pricing at a pound. Not like the old days of 2p or 3p off.

Earlier post : Cost of Living 1948

Garibaldi at the Co-Op

Garibaldi visited England in April 1864. He was world famous before the yacht landed at the Isle of Wight, he was a sensation when he stayed in London. [ Now before you read more can I point out that his name is pronounced Gary-Bal-Dee ]. Everyone wanted to meet him, he drew massive crowds at speaking engagements and received hundreds of invitations.

Manchester wanted him to visit. A Manchester Working Men's Garibaldi Reception Committee was got together and the Free Trade Hall was going to be the venue. However the legendary hero left abruptly, supposedly on ill-health grounds but really under pressure from the British Government. Whilst it had suited British foreign policy to remove the Austrians from the Italian states and have a unified new country it didn't want a radical, inspirational revolutionary touring the industrial provinces. Garibaldi's notions of democracy, emancipation, freedom and women's rights were not on the political agenda of the ruling classes.

So what do we have. Italy has thousands of squares, roads and statues to the great man. Britain has a biscuit originally produced by Peak Freans in 1861. A type of blouse and shirt popular then but not seen now. Also the colours of Nottingham Forest football club who adopted red in honour of the Garibaldi's irregular army of Red Shirts. Arsenal play in red because Forest gifted them a full kit years later.

However disappointed as the people of Manchester were the M&SE Co-Op produced an hagiographic address which they forwarded to our hero.

Family Fare

Acquired an old cookery book last week. Not that I need anymore I've got two big shelves full of them. But this is Family Fare published by the CWS around 1955. It is of its day with a company's products mentioned on every page. For example use four ounces of CWS Silver Seal margarine and 2 ounces of CWS Federation S.R. Flour. The book addresses the woman of the house who wants to produce cakes and savouries for the family. Well women lost their job when they got married in those days and were expected to be little home makers. There are two pages on cooking herrings with a recipe for every month. Some more on Continental Cookery - Croquettes aux Crevettes from Belgium, Chicken Maryland (USA), Mousssaka a la Bos (Greece) for it doesn't have aubergines in it. Well there were no aubergines in Britain for at least another 20 years...

Other sections include jam making, home wine making and toffee. As some one who makes the odd loaf of bread I was puzzled by the CWS Federation flour being used for both making pastry and making bread. These days we have a plain flour and a strong bread flour.

I can't find any information on the famous TV cookery expert in the picture. But around that time the CWS put on exhibitions called Family Fare in cities in England and Wales. You'd have stalls, brass bands, and fashion parades.

Note also the CWS logo from the 1950's. It represents a wheatsheaf but I always think it looked like a thumbprint.