Okay, so a while back I picked up a link from MetaFilter comments

[conuly]

Back in Time for Dinner, which is a series of hour-long episodes featuring an English family eating their way to the present from the 1950s, one year a day.

It's worth watching.

Things I noticed:

1. The 1950s kitchen appears to have a measuring cup! From all the talk talk talk about how annoying it is to convert American recipes I assumed measuring cups had fallen out of favor in England a lot earlier than 1950.

2. This is how you use that style can opener. I looked at it and went "Nope", but - unlike my counterparts in the 1950s - I can google that sort of thing.

3. The mom in this family really got a raw deal. The kids and dad could leave the house every day to go to school and work, and her 1950s counterpart would have had other housewives to talk to, but she was really stuck.

4. Loving the clothes, though, especially that purple apron. Also, I noticed around when the girls switched from pigtails to ponytails, the kids' clothing seemed to modernize a lot faster than the grown-up clothing. Which of course makes sense - your kids can't wear what they wore 10 years ago, but you can, and even if you make careful use of hand-me-downs the clothes children wear doesn't actually last forever.

5. Is it okay in England to use the flag as a tablecloth? Was it okay in the 50s? In the US it's definitely a violation of the Flag Code, and even I think it's a little tacky (and I definitely don't revere the flag or anything like that!)

6. What's with the shelf between the burners and the oven on her stove?

7. For all her talk about how if she'd married a GI and been a war bride she'd at least have an electric mixer, she may be wrong. I grew up with a rotary eggbeater as our only way to beat anything - actually, we have one now. Both our electric beaters broke, and we were tired of using a spoon or a whisk.

Comments

[st_aurafina]

That looks great - like the Supersizers only with an actual family.

From all the talk talk talk about how annoying it is to convert American recipes

Oh, we use measuring cups, but US cups are smaller than the rest of the world. Hence the difficulty translating US recipes. Our cups are 250ml, yours are 236.

6. What's with the shelf between the burners and the oven on her stove?

I haven't seen it yet, but could it be the grill/broiler?

[conuly]

Oh, we use measuring cups, but US cups are smaller than the rest of the world. Hence the difficulty translating US recipes. Our cups are 250ml, yours are 236.

That shouldn't be a problem, though, so long as the proportions are correct. One tablespoon is 1/16 of a cup, one teaspoon is 1/3 of a tablespoon, right?

[st_aurafina]

Well, we have four teaspoons to the tablespoon, one teaspoon is 5ml, so not really. And most US recipes are a mix of volume (usually the wet ingredients) and cups, so the proportions don't hold. I can use a density calculation to get to the grams of the dry materials, (and I know by now that a stick of butter is 113g) but I usually only bother doing that if I can't find a comparative recipe from an Australian or British site.

[conuly]

I see.

One note - cups ARE a volume measurement.

[ironed_orchid]

I've noticed that a lot of modern UK and Australian recipes use grams for everything, presumably to improve accuracy, but I find it frustrating because I learned to cook using volume measurements, and I have measuring cups and spoons (both metric), but no scales.

[conuly]

Conversion is a nuisance either way. A simple scale isn't that pricey, I guess.

[ironed_orchid]

6. What's with the shelf between the burners and the oven on her stove?

That's the grill (broiler?). Most older stoves here in Australia have them, but many newer models integrate it into the top of the oven, so there isn't a separate section.

[conuly]

That's what everybody says, so it must be! Gas ovens here have the broiler under the oven, usually.

[janewilliams20]

The problem with the cups is that they're a liquid measure, and far too often are used to measure something that isn't a liquid, and can't be a liquid without wrecking it.
A cup of butter? What am I supposed to do, melt it?
A cup of chopped onion? I can get twice as much in the cup if I chop it more finely.
A cup of long thin slices of courgette? Are you serious?

If something really is a liquid, I don't care whether you use ml, fluid ounces, cups, pints, whatever. I can do sums. But if it isn't a liquid, and can't be a liquid, then I can't measure it as one, can I? Weights, please.

[conuly]

Cup of butter? Well, aside from the fact that sticks of butter in the US have the tablespoons marked, it's not that hard. Add two cups of water to a quart measuring cup. Put in your butter. When the water level has risen to 3 cups, stop adding butter. Drain the water.

Onion? The recipe should direct you as to how to cut your vegetables, and whether you should chop "finely" or "coarsely" or "in one inch cubes".

Squash? Guesstimate. Or use the water displacement method, like with butter.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Is it okay in England to use the flag as a tablecloth?

I suspect it would normally be considered tacky, but for a special event like the coronation (or, more recently, The Royal Wedding) it'd be OK. Brits are a lot more self-ironic in that respect. It'd probably not be OK if the Prime Minister did it, since he represents the country, but a private family would probably get away with quite a bit of Flag Code violation, as long as they don't use the flag (a real proper flag; the emblem printed on tissue paper would probably be acceptable, albeit bad taste) to shine their shoes or wipe their arses.

The mom did get a raw deal, but I also think she's annoyingly whiny a lot of the time. (Not just in the 50s.) I guess it's part of the plan of the series in order to highlight the plight of women, but at the same time I could never help thinking "It's just ONE week! Stop being such a baby!" I know, I know! It's about the big picture!

[conuly]

It wasn't just a week, though - she was looking ahead to several weeks of drudgery until she got to the good stuff.

(And of course, if she's a teacher in real life, why not "get a job" at her regular job? I guess that wouldn't've left the kids alone at the end of the day, but still.)

Of course, I did give up when she was upset at her husband being happy to get back in the kitchen (effortlessly whipping up the sort of meals she clearly has no capacity for....) You wanted out, now you're out! You can both stick to your skillsets.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but it was getting a bit better each week. Or worse, depending on how you see it, because of course each fancy application also raised expectations.

(I suppose because that was the reality of the 50s: You worked in your job until you married, unless your husband "allowed you" to continue working, but aside from the problem of childcare, that also carried a social stigma ("he can't make ends meet on his own"). And teaching in particular was probably an unmarried women sort of thing. It's no coincidence that in ye olde books, the great majority of teachers are called Miss Something-or-other...)

Haha, exactly!

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Also they'll have filmed it over the summer when there was no school for her to go and teach at ;0)

They were casting recently for a second series, Back in Time for the Weekend, which is looking at leisure.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that, but then I remembered that they'd shown the kids at Fred's school getting a 1950s school lunch! So at least at some point during the filming, there must have been school going on. Unless that was a special holiday event for the kids, I guess.

Oooh, sounds like fun!

[conuly]

And in the last few episodes, it looked like the kids were wearing school uniforms.

So what I think must have happened is this. They started filming the last week of school, kept it up through the summer - which is a minimum of 50 days, assuming no breaks as they redo the kitchen - and finished right as school started up again. Except the only way that *really* works is if they did take breaks, or else the schedule is too tight.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

They must have taken at least one, more likely two days to refurbish the kitchen and living-room. In the series, it looks like everything is happening back-to-back, but that isn't really feasible. (Well, perhaps they did the redecorating while the family was doing the picnic/trip to a restaurant/whatever? But it's a huge amount of work, I doubt it would be doable within a few hours.)

[conuly]

So now we're moving from 50 days (seven weeks) to 60 days (nearly nine weeks), which is more than enough time for it to have started and then ended while the kids were in school.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yup!

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Fair point. School holidays are only 6 weeks long, so it could easily have straddled them.

I didn't see the first episode so I didn't know about the party at school.

Either way I think it is certainly true that in that era it was still common for women to stop working when they married, or especially when they had children. I'm sure the programme did go into the intertwined rise of the fridge/freezer and the entry of women into the workforce.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

It's a great series isn't it.

Another BBC programme a couple of years ago, Electric Dreams, sent a family 'back in time' to look at how lifestyles changed due to technological development. through the 70s, 80s and 90s. Oh, and there was Turn Back Time: The High Street. You can probably predict the theme there. (What can I say, when you find a format that works...)

I'd also highly recommend you look for a series called 'The Supersizers...' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Supersizers...). It's very funny, and interesting.

In response to your points:

1) It's been a while since I saw the series, but was the measuring cup a Tala Cook's Measure (https://www.talacooking.com/articles/the_tala_dry_cooks_measure.htm). They're kind of iconic. I don't know when it fell out of fashion generally - I thiiink I can recall Nella Last measuring in volume sometimes, though don't hold me to that. I own my grandma's recipe book and I'm pretty certain that's all in weight, I'll try to remember to check.

2) I had to use that style of tin opener when I lived in Finland. It's about as much fun as it looks. (It is more satisfying though, I suppose. Feels like you've exerted some effort.)

5) We don't have any formal 'flag code' and we find the American reverence of the flag very, very odd indeed. We're far too busy getting het up over whether you should call it the Union Flag or the Union Jack. (I'm assuming that was the flag in question rather than the England flag.)

6) Without being able to see the stove in question, I would hazard a guess it's probably the grill?

[conuly]

1. Oooh, it might have been.

3 and 4 - did you skip these?

5. Yeah, but as a tablecloth? I mean, you're going to spill food all over it, aren't you? (Especially if your gelatin mold never sets....)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

I didn't really have any response to 3 and 4. (Or 7.)

Using an actual, literal flag as a tablecloth would be a bit weird. Using something flag-patterned wouldn't be. Can't speak for the 1950s of course. Would be interesting to see if any were draped on tables for the VE Day street parties.

[conuly]

That makes sense :) I just saw your numbering, forgot I'd numbered it in my entry, and got confused, hoping you hadn't actually forgotten how to count.

Would be interesting to see if any were draped on tables for the VE Day street parties.

Yes, it would.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Just saw a trail - there's Back in Time for Christmas coming soon.

[conuly]

Yay.