Flour, Oats, and Food Oils - how were they transported by rail in pre-grouping times?

[Alex TM]

On 11/01/2024 at 16:26, doilum said:

A great question. It might get even more response in the Prototype Question section.

Hi,

 

I had thought of that at first but since my interest is in the pre-groouping era I thought I may find a more focussed level of knowledge and response here.

 

Thanks,

 

Alex.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

On 11/01/2024 at 16:52, Nearholmer said:

When I was a kid, we had no supermarket in our small town until I was maybe 10yo, and the grocers used to roast coffee and bag it, bag tea from big boxes, cut cheese, butter, margarine, lard, and corned beef from big blocks, and I think a few old-time places were still doing  dried fruit, flour, and other “dry goods” from drums.  And, nobody would have dreamed of buying fruit and veg pre-packed - you went to the greengrocer and they either put it direct into your shopping basket or into a paper bag.

Much the same when I first got a Saturday job on the greengrocery counter and then 'worked up' to holiday relief, while still in secondary ed.. Traditional shipping methods still much in use, the most remarkable the nuts for Christmas, huge coarse weave sacks with notionally 150 lbs in, which were checked on a steelyard balance for the purchase price by weight. The thought that I was accustomed to swinging these up on my shoulders to carry them from stall to the store truck...

[Deeps]

When I first saw the title of this thread I thought it was for a new recipe for track ballast!

[Metropolitan H]

On 11/01/2024 at 22:55, Nearholmer said:

I’ve just noticed that that flour van is for Wantage Road. There was a big flour mill at Wantage, one of the main sources of traffic on the Wantage Tramway, which this van must have trundled up and down. Last time I was there it was still going, but having just checked it seems that it finally closed in 2022.

 

I’ve also been looking through Mrs Beeton’s Dictionary of Everyday Cookery, probably on the kitchen shelf of every ‘respectable’ homein the land pre-WW1, and I haven’t found a single mention of any vegetable oil in it so far. Vast amounts of butter, plenty of suet, some goose-fat, a bit of lard here and there, but no vegetable oil. And, no margarine either - it was thought of as very inferior stuff (and, I think at the time it was made from animal fat anyway).

 

 

You must remember that until post WW2, Rape Seed oil was used for lubricating fine mechanisms, not for cooking, and that Olive oil - for them that needed it would have been bought at the chemists (most people didn't know what a pharmacy was till 1960 on! Also very few people - mainly in the upper echelons of society would know what to do with an olive (except for plumbers who used them in compression pipe fittings!).

 

Post WW2 there were two or three major drivers to the development of the more international tastes and cooking styles in Britain:

- Immigration from the Indies - East and West.

- Ex Italian POWs who realised they were better off in Britain than in rural Italy - so went home to fetch their families and came straight back to work hard in brickwaorks and other jobs that most Britons didn't want - plus opening pizza restaurants and ice cream parlours etc.

- The growth in foreign travel to Europe through the 1950s / 60s, exposing many more Britons to tasty Mediterranean cooking.

- The development of supermarket chains with bigger buying power than most shops.

 

And most importantly the publication of Elizabeth David's "French Provincial Cooking" in 1962 and similar accessible cookery books. Before that there were Escoffier and various Cordon Bleu recipe books - but they were not really accessible to the mass market - otherwise it was all Mrs. Beaton, Fanny Craddock and their like.

 

By the end of the 1960s you could also get serial part works on Cordon Bleu cookery in WH Smith etal. - this sparked a greater interest in cooking in the likes of my late father-in-law, who became quite proficient. Also there was a growth in the range of television cookery programmes, with greater emphasis on Oriental / European and other genres.

 

At the same time you had a significant rise in the student population going away to study - and having to learn to fend for themselves on a budget. As a first year 6th former at Ranelagh School (Bracknell) I like all the other boys had to do Domestic Science (but I never learnt ironning) - while the girls had to do woodwork and/or metalwork.

 

Interesting times.

 

Regards

Chris H

 

Edited January 13 by Metropolitan H

[Nearholmer]

The other sets of recipes that seemed to be around when I was little were things issued by the Ministry of Food during and after the war, the best ones of which my grandmother had hung on to for the intervening fifteen odd years (fruit crumbles were a thing the MoF promoted apparently, and they were good on economical jam making), and things provided by firms likeTate & Lyle, the local dairy etc. No vegetable oil in any of them either! 
 

Chips were fried in vegetable oil at home by the 1960s though - corn oil IIRC, and my father, who was apprenticed to a baker before joining-up in the war, had a fantastic recipe for very light and fast sponge cake, which used a batter made with vegetable oil - it was something professional bakers made for sale because it cooked very quickly in a bread oven when still very hot after baking the bread.

 

 

Edited January 13 by Nearholmer

[Dungrange]

6 hours ago, Alex TM said:

Hi,

 

I had thought of that at first but since my interest is in the pre-groouping era I thought I may find a more focussed level of knowledge and response here.

 

Thanks,

 

Alex.

 There is a special section for pre-grouping questions (prototype and modelling). 

[Siberian Snooper]

On 11/01/2024 at 18:00, Harlequin said:

Huntley & Palmers?

 

 

Biscuits!

 

[Fat Controller]

Google 'Robert Opie' and have a look at some of the early packaging on there.

[Welchester]

On 13/01/2024 at 12:07, Metropolitan H said:

You must remember that until post WW2, Rape Seed oil was used for lubricating fine mechanisms, not for cooking, and that Olive oil - for them that needed it would have been bought at the chemists (most people didn't know what a pharmacy was till 1960 on! Also very few people - mainly in the upper echelons of society would know what to do with an olive (except for plumbers who used them in compression pipe fittings!).

 

Post WW2 there were two or three major drivers to the development of the more international tastes and cooking styles in Britain:

- Immigration from the Indies - East and West.

- Ex Italian POWs who realised they were better off in Britain than in rural Italy - so went home to fetch their families and came straight back to work hard in brickwaorks and other jobs that most Britons didn't want - plus opening pizza restaurants and ice cream parlours etc.

- The growth in foreign travel to Europe through the 1950s / 60s, exposing many more Britons to tasty Mediterranean cooking.

- The development of supermarket chains with bigger buying power than most shops.

 

And most importantly the publication of Elizabeth David's "French Provincial Cooking" in 1962 and similar accessible cookery books. Before that there were Escoffier and various Cordon Bleu recipe books - but they were not really accessible to the mass market - otherwise it was all Mrs. Beaton, Fanny Craddock and their like.

 

By the end of the 1960s you could also get serial part works on Cordon Bleu cookery in WH Smith etal. - this sparked a greater interest in cooking in the likes of my late father-in-law, who became quite proficient. Also there was a growth in the range of television cookery programmes, with greater emphasis on Oriental / European and other genres.

 

At the same time you had a significant rise in the student population going away to study - and having to learn to fend for themselves on a budget. As a first year 6th former at Ranelagh School (Bracknell) I like all the other boys had to do Domestic Science (but I never learnt ironning) - while the girls had to do woodwork and/or metalwork.

 

Interesting times.

 

Regards

Chris H

 

 

Not to forget Britain's entry into the EEC, which brought about such delights as this. Be afraid, be very afraid!

[Alex TM]

On 14/01/2024 at 16:32, Welchester said:

 

Not to forget Britain's entry into the EEC, which brought about such delights as this. Be afraid, be very afraid!

I am old enough to remember her, and her husband.  I am afraid ... !

[Alex TM]

On 14/01/2024 at 15:32, Fat Controller said:

Google 'Robert Opie' and have a look at some of the early packaging on there.

This is completely new to me, so many thanks for the suggestion.  Some of the later stuff in the 'scrapbooks' are familiar to me but some of the older material is really quite something else.  I wonder how much of it wouldn't pass today's scrutiny.