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Spaghetti in the UK!

B

BTC3

pfm Member
This article caught my eye today. It has chicken escalopes and spaghetti… I’d always associated the arrival of spaghetti in the U.K. - or at least being popular, with Elizabeth David in the 1950s. Does anyone know whether there was a lot of it on offer (and whether it was accepted) nearly 50 years before that?
 
In the early 60s Richard Dimbleby made a short TV documentary about the Italian spaghetti harvest. It showed a field with dry long spaghetti sticking out of the soil and was aired on 1 April. Excellent as Elizabeth David was, for Dimbleby’s spoof to work, both David and spaghetti must still have been niche well after the 50s.
I was born in 1954 and only recall spaghetti canned in a tomato sauce. I think I started to notice the long blue paper packs of spaghetti in Sainsbury’s when I started to shop for myself.
 
mjw said:
It showed a field with dry long spaghetti sticking out of the soil
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As I recall it was wet/flexible and hung from bushes.

Anyway, spaghetti has always been available so far as I know, just not commonly eaten. I remember that it was, at least seemingly, only available in about 50cm (probably longer?) lengths, and came wrapped in a dark blue paper with intricate labels. Even one of our local shops, way out in the suburbs of Colchester, stocked it.
Macaroni pudding has been around for ever, macaroni cheese similarly so, so I don't see why spaghetti would be any different. I also don't remember tinned spaghetti being anything new, and back in the 60's at least, tinned spaghetti bolognese was available - it was far more meat sauce than spahetti and we ate it with chips as you would a meat pie or sausages or whatever.

ed. - just checked Heinz spaghetti was introduced in 1926. I remember hoops being launched and that was 1969. I also remember the launch of alphabetti spaghetti

Food-Info.net> History of Italian-type pasta.

When did pasta become common in the UK? - Quora
 
mjw said:
In the early 60s Richard Dimbleby made a short TV documentary about the Italian spaghetti harvest. It showed a field with dry long spaghetti sticking out of the soil and was aired on 1 April. Excellent as Elizabeth David was, for Dimbleby’s spoof to work, both David and spaghetti must still have been niche well after the 50s.
I was born in 1954 and only recall spaghetti canned in a tomato sauce. I think I started to notice the long blue paper packs of spaghetti in Sainsbury’s when I started to shop for myself.
Click to expand...
It was the most successful BBC April Fool joke ever. The spaghetti was hanging from trees, it was annual spaghetti harvest and this year there was a problem of some kind that risked the harvest. The switchboard was busy with calls asking how we could help the poor Italian farmers.
 
I could take or leave the canned stuff but dad loved his wheat-fix of canned spaghetti on toast.

I think there was a time in the 80s or 90s when the long dried stuff made way for the shorter dried stuff seen now in every supermarket. I have a very tall spaghetti jar that hasn’t seen use for 20 years. I guess it can still be found in the specialist grocers that I rarely frequent in That London and other cities.

We’re lucky enough to have a proper pig and chicken farm nearby and I occasionally ask Paula to cure me a pig cheek so that I can make a proper carbonara as per Gennaro Contaldo - guanciale, eggs, cheese and pasta, as carried and cooked by the Roman charcoal workers back in the day. Did one Friday but had no pecorino (nor any other sheep cheese) so used grana padano.

 
mjw said:
I could take or leave the canned stuff but dad loved his wheat-fix of canned spaghetti on toast.
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Don't tell me he forgot the cheese? Cheese on toast, toasted long enough to brown the cheese, with tinned spaghetti............mmmm
It is a bit oddball, as you say - not much different to a plate of just potatoes and rice.
 
The extent of dad’s cosmopolitan leanings was one of those Vesta chow meins where you crisped the dried noodles in the chip pan. I think he also once sprinkled curry powder over his beans on toast.
 
Vinny said:
a plate of just potatoes and rice
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When I went to university one of a group I was socialising with suggested a Chinese take away after a beery evening. Embarrassingly (when I look back on it) I had no experience of such things and ordered noodles and rice to fit in. It soaked up the beer pretty well but I still cringe at the looks I received from the others.
 
BTC3 said:
This article caught my eye today. It has chicken escalopes and spaghetti… I’d always associated the arrival of spaghetti in the U.K. - or at least being popular, with Elizabeth David in the 1950s. Does anyone know whether there was a lot of it on offer (and whether it was accepted) nearly 50 years before that?
Click to expand...

Staggering isn't it? Must have been the nature of Liverpool as an important port and their catering for broader tastes that would have been associated with that, together with the availability of ingerdients. Did the Romans eat/bring pasta - they certainly had pasta sheets by then but they fried them. Maybe the grains here weren't suitable, I've no idea. I'm sure the Elizabethans would have travelled widely in Italy, and certainly the Victorians did, so the rich would have had a very varied diet, sampled from all over. It's hard to get a feel for the prices on the old menu, as the poor would have been relatively much poorer back then.
 
mjw said:
I had no experience of such things and ordered noodles and rice to fit in. It soaked up the beer pretty well but I still cringe at the looks I received from the others.
Click to expand...

If it makes you feel any better... when I worked in Tokyo my Chinese colleague would sometimes have noodles for lunch with a side order of rice.
 
I have just asked my 96yo Grampa, and he says dry Spaghetti (the long sort) was available in the UK when he moved here in 1947, but you had to go to Sheffield to buy it as the locals in Barnsley didn't want any of that foreign muck (which is pretty much the same way most of them thought about him!) He had, however, been in Italy prior to that since the end of the War so would have been looking for something he knew, I'm fairly certain a lot of people wouldn't have known it existed. I'll ask my Welsh Gran when she can first recall seeing it!
 
We used to eat my mum’s spaghetti dish in the 60s.
Long spaghetti bought in a paper wrapper. Boiled and served in a mound with her tomato sauce spooned on top, that topped with mince and a sprinkling of grated cheddar.
 
mjw said:
The extent of dad’s cosmopolitan leanings was one of those Vesta chow meins...
Click to expand...
I remember Vesta dried curries from the sixties - especially the overpowering scent of ground fenugreek. And the raisins as an extra exotic touch.
 
And the Manchester Guardian's price on launch in 1821 was 7d for a weekly paper.
Expensive!
 
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