Now its all international stuff- or rather aprroximate replicas -where are the old flavours?

My butcher no longer makes pork brawn, the store has no Lincoln biscuits, large fluffy merangues  no longer made - now the say creme eggs   taste different. What does any one else miss?

Proper boiling hens that made chicken soup that tasted of chicken.

National Health orange juice

and these
                                                             

Yes to all four. Have combed sweet shops for fry's bars must google up and see about the company.
Even a local farms culls the chickens too soon = but subcontinent ones on pensions before the chop, boiled up a treat.

New potatoes.

Despite the fact that the words are still used in conjunction with small, tasteless specimens of the species that are seemingly available all year round (so what "new" means anymore is anyone's guess) the phrase once genuinely meant what it described; the first spuds plucked from that year's crop. They were small. They were succulent. They tasted unique (the first taste of summer). They were eaten by eager scalded hand with much hopping between left and right straight from the pot after having been dipped directly into the butter dish (real butter of course) and they are sorely missed ...

Bacon rashers.

Whether smoked or green ... back, streaky or middle cut, but proper bacon rashers sliced to order, and that are dry enough to sear quickly and then cook rapidly in a hot pan, without exuding copious amounts of white, subaceous, chemical gunk, while shrinking to half the size. And no bacon rinds now either ... they were always the yummy bonus.

I'm afraid I blame the Danes for all those loathsome modern sizzling euro-chem bacon products:

  .... bleurrh!  

Oh yes, Ayrshire new potatoes, tiny ones with thin, papery skin weighed out in a quarter of a stone from a proper sack. A big plateful, dripping with butter and maybe a Lanark tomato, the taste of early summer.

Whatever happened to the different cures of bacon? Belfast for mixing with beef in a meat loaf, steamed in its special pottery cylinder, and Wiltshire for breakfast. We can still get Ayrshire but I prefer thinly sliced pancetta these days.

Different cuts of meat too. Pope's eye, nine holes and so on, I assume they're still around but I've no idea what they are called now. Dripping with a little jelly at the bottom of the greaseproof packet - is that still on sale?

Mutton.

Walnut whips with a walnut in the bottom as well as one on top.

Round, flat allsorts that actually had liquorice, not some weird jelly, in the centre.

Kayli!

Give up - what's kayli?

Bit like sherbet crossed with lemon crystals. Eaten by dipping a lolly / spanish juice stick / finger in it then sucking.

Ah, you mean a sherbet dab. Not a favourite of mine though. I'd prefer a packet of Spangles or a bar of 5 Boys.

P, our version of brawn was pottit heid, made from beef rather than pork, it must have required an enormous pot to bile the heid. I haven't seen it for years either but we can still get potted hough from quite a few butchers.

No, not - emphatically not - a sherbet dab, it was crystals, not powder and was sort of between



and
Which sort of Spangles? I used to like the "Old English" ones - except one, can't remember what it was called!

So was that the stuff that came in a bag, sometimes with a lolly?

This might help jog your spangled memory. I didn't like those, only the ordinary fruit ones.

                                                                 

Those are the ones. Must have been the mint humbug. I can't raise any enthusiasm for "Snickers" nor "Starburst". Somehow they just aren't Marathon or "Opal Fruits - made to make your mouth water". Can one still obtain liquorice root? I know Spanish juice (a hard, not very sweet, concentrated liquorice) seems to have vanished.

We used to buy "sweet cigarettes" for one of the horses at the local racing stables - he didn't like the polo mints the others adored. I'm going to the Building Society tomorrow morning, and there's an "old fashioned" sweet shop next door. Must drop in & see what they do (and do not) sell.

I remember Spangles and didn't actually know they are now a thing of the past. Mind you, I'd never noticed they were double-wrapped either.

Crisps - several have come and gone that I have preferred at the time but none as yet have ever even approached the Irish Perri Crisps in their first incarnation. At a time in Northern Ireland when wholesalers were loathe to stock any product manufactured in the Republic and when the British Smiths crisps still came with the salt sachet you had to sprinkle manually to get any notion of flavour from them (salt), Perri's Cheese & Onion smashed all political, religious and snack-based sectarian taboos. A factory fire was all it took to put them out of business in those straitened times. The brand was re-launched many years later but the original taste could not be reproduced.

Even the mighty Google cannot locate an image of the original Northern Ireland Cheese & Onion Flavoured Peace Initiative packets, only the pathetic imitations from more recent times.

Can you still get 'tablet' in Glasgow and Edinborough - the only places I've ever seen it sold?

These lads?



They're definitely available north of the Irish border at any rate - I ate some in Derry not too long ago.

Honestly, here's me diligently swotting up on Francis I's foreign policy and the Habsburg-Valois-Ottoman wars, 1494-1559, and you lot are all talking about sweets and crisps.

 





Sweets and crisps are jolly interesting though.

I never understood people's passion for Rowntree's Fruit Gums. They were horrible, especially the green ones (lime?).

You most certainly can, MM, just about everywhere in the country from the largest supermarket to the tiniest corner shop, and no fair, fete or sale of work could possibly go ahead without several home made varieties on offer.
My preference though is the Scottish version of fudge which is like a fudge/tablet hybrid, harder and more crystalline than smooth fudge but softer than tablet.

Something that seems to have gone, and I'm happy about that since I hated it, is carvi, caraway seeds in a coating of sugar like miniature sugared almonds. Those horrible aniseed balls seem to have gone as well.

EDIT: I have abandoned Suleiman the Magnificent and have been researching fruit gums. Rowntree's Fruit Gums are still available, but they are not the same since the British company was "acquired" by Nestle:


Rowntree's Fruit Gums are circular sweets formerly made by Rowntree's, who were later acquired by Nestlé. They appear in different colours, each with a different flavour: strawberry, orange, lemon, blackcurrant and lime. The sweets were first introduced in 1893, and originally marketed as Rowntree's Clear Gums - "The nation's favourite sweet" - and were available in twopenny tubes and sixpenny packets.[1] They are primarily composed of glucose syrup and fruit juices and are as a result similar to wine gums. In addition to the traditional roll packaging, they come in a larger volume box, that contains the sweets in the shape of the fruit or part of the fruit that the flavour represents. Originally the purple fruit gums were 'blusterberry', but this changed to blackcurrant in the 1990s after a failed advertising campaign.

An advertising campaign for the gums that ran for three years from 1958 to 1961 included the slogan "Don't Forget The Fruit Gums, Mum" invented by the copywriter Roger Musgrave (1929-2007).

I have it on very good authority that the postmodern gum is no longer as fruity as the original British version. The quality of an old product so often declines when companies are taken over. The abomination which now masquerades as a Cadbury's Crème Egg s a similar case: Cadbury's have been owned by Kraft Foods for several years now, and Hershey's make the choccy egg-shell - except that it is not proper choccy anymore. And the eggs keep shrinking.

I have a terrible confession to make. In a previous life, when I was responsible for a) sort of controlling and b) sort of educating the offspring of the proletariat in Manchester, I once confiscated a bag of Cadbury's Mini Eggs (with the lovely crunchy shells). It was unopened, I hasten to add. I told the lad (a rather rebellious fifteen-year-old) to come and collect his sweets at 4.00pm.

When he arrived, I sheepishly had to admit that I had succumbed to temptation and had eaten the whole bag. I said I was sorry and promised to bring him a replacement the next day. Fortunately, he did have a sense of humour and the story was greeted with glee by the whole of his Year.

They bought me quite a lot of Mini-Eggs as a leaving present.

I'd never get away with such a thing now - I'd be plastered all over the Daily Mail.

You can still get pretty good new potato flavours if you grow your own.  I have got very suspicious of what are called 'gourmet potatoes' here.  They are small and look like new potatoes but don't taste like them, and I actively avoid them on restaurant menus now. 

I recall thinking when I was about 30 that ice-cream didn't have the same flavour as when I was a child, but I don't know if that was just nostalgic mis-rememberings.  Now all ice-cream we get is in branded two-litre containers and I don't recall how it used to taste. 

Lots of fruits don't taste as good as when we were kids because they have to be kept chilled etc for travelling.  A few years ago I was visiting a friend who grew strawberries commercially.  Picked straight from the orchard, as we did, they were fabulous, but when we took some home in a chiller, the superb taste has quite dissipated, and they were just like ordinary shop ones.

My problem isn't always with the availability of foods from earlier times, but with the prices.  Thirty years ago there would always be a time when tamarillos could be bought for 10c a kilo; now they never go below about $16, and are a real luxury food.  People blame globalisation and exporting, but kiwifruit can always be found cheap - we get the leftover ones.  Why can't we get leftover tamarillos?  And I remember asking the butcher a while ago why tripe had gone from giveaway prices to the price of a decent steak; he told me it was the Japanese market keeping up prices. 

NZ is still better than Britain at seasonal foods - asparagus is only available here for about two months, and thus seems special.  Ditto stone fruit and berry fruit. A particularly nice variety of apricots has become much rarer here because it doesn't look as pretty as the others, which have far less flavour, and which the export market prefers.

Yes, growing your own vegetables would indeed be a solution. I have ordered a new window box.

Aniseed balls, ferval, brought me back to my childhood and the weekly purchase of sweets on a Sunday morning by a fair proportion of the local pre-adolescent population who received their pocket money that day, on the understanding that it immediately be converted into confectionery after everyone's religious observances were complete. Aniseed balls, considered good value for money by people dealing in ha'pennies and farthings, were a mainstay of this trade and one local dog (modern day political correctness precludes me from giving his name, which began with N") was an essential part of the ritual for many years. His unerring ability to deduce the sabbath was admirable, knowing as he did that it meant an hour or two of miniature humans reeking of anise streaming out of the shop between 11am and 1pm approximately. His addiction to the substance was such that he also became supremely proficient at quite agile and relentless dogrobatics in an attempt to breath in the exhalations of the aniseed-permeated juveniles to be found on Main Street, a skill which he was also of course encouraged to perfect by the exhalers. I think it was Bull Conner who got him to perform his most impressive anti-gravitational stunt when he (Bull) positioned himself astride the top of the ten foot high wall of the parish priest's house and dangled a half-sucked aniseed ball in the air over N on the pavement below. It drew appreciative and raucous applause, I remember, from the passengers of a passing 32B.

If anise was the smell of Sunday services where you were, over here it was the aroma of mint imperials and pan drops. The start of the sermon was greeted by surreptitious fumbles and then the discreet transfer of said sweetie into the mouth. Genteel sooking was socially acceptable and not considered disrespectful it seemed, but crunching the last remaining centre was definitely not.
If these were ever eaten at any other time, apart from on the way home from the pub by clandestine drinkers, I wasn't aware of it.

Oh no, the confectionery was strictly post-worship in our parts, and only the most corrupt heathen with absolutely no care for the welfare of his immortal soul would chance a suck in situ.

Which also brings to mind the sermon being delivered once by a particularly nasty blood'n'thunder god-merchant we suffered in our parish bemoaning the youth of the day whose transistor radios tuned in to pirates adrift in pagan Doggerland, winklepickers, collar-smudging greasy hair of unnatural length and ability to pronounce the word "sex" spelled doom for civilisation as we knew it (I resisted the urge to cheer, myself). Unfortunately one of the McCann boys (winklepickled, dangerously long haired and probably with a dreaded trannie in his pocket too, if not a sex-trannie) chose exactly that moment to begin choking on a peanut he had been surreptitiously eating in the interim. In the days before anyone knew of Heimlich we were therefore all rather free to improvise cures for choking as we saw fit so there then followed three or four frantic minutes where various adults took turns in walloping McCann's back, punching his stomach, lifting him upside down by the ankles, throwing him against the wall etc until at last the offending peanut chose a route in which to progress.

It was the first time I had ever heard the term "mass excommunication" and naively reckoned it was an excommunication delivered during mass. In fact both definitions, the correct one and the mistaken one, applied that day.

Is bubblegum still around? when first  it came our way it had a really chemical strawberry flavour and colour. Not only that but by the time I had learned to get a decent bubble it was long out of playground fashion ----- and I was probably about 30 by then, anyway.

So many things mentioned here bring back memories especially sherbet dabs and fountains = and rough sherbet lemons that scoured the mouth before stinging - no one needed self-harming in tjose days , we used to buy in. Our town used to have its own named rock sticks - posh kids though bought quarters of chunks of Edinburgh rock - like pastel shaded charcoal. as I recall. But our locally made coconut ice was to die for - and probably from. I have just found a site that sells sweet  tobacco - anyone else remember that?

I do indeed remember sweet tobacco - always carefully packaged to look just like real rolling tobacco, with a name like "Old Jamaica Blend" or such like .... it's long been banned from regular shops I'm sure. But then I also remember once getting for Christmas from some distant aunt & uncle, a 'Junior Smokers Kit' complete with a chocolate pipe, sweet cigarettes and sweet matches (all appropriately packaged), and again a pack of sweet tobacco with edible rice-paper rizlas. My parents were never smokers (Dad did smoke during tha war but stopped as soon as the price went up in 1945) but even so I still don't think anyone saw anything particularly strange in giving fake tobacco products to children. Oh how things have changed.

I used to love Dandelion and Burdock fizzy drink when I was a child. According to Wiki, it is still available, but not the real stuff. It's now just a carbonated chemical concoction. I've never seen it down here. Apparently real dandelion and burdock is a very ancient drink and has been consumed  in the British Isles since the Middle Ages.

It was very good for soothing upset stomachs and/or disordered bowels - better than Lucozade.

The "dandelion and burdock" drink for sale in many retail outlets rarely contains either plant. The retail drink is often carbonated, containing artificial sweeteners and flavourings. Some supermarkets sell the drink with "real plant extracts" with a more faithful flavour than the ones made with artificial flavourings

Fentimans, a beverage company based in the United Kingdom offers a faithful recreation of the naturally brewed dandelion and burdock drink, containing true extracts of both plants (although its main ingredients are sugar and pear juice concentrate).

AG Barr, famous for Scottish soft drink Irn Bru, produce a version of Dandelion and Burdock under the name D'n'B and the slogan "Tall, dark and drinksome".

The last of the UK's original Temperance Bars, Fitzpatrick's in Rawtenstall, which opened in 1890, still produces its dandelion and burdock to an original recipe brought over from Ireland at the end of the 19th century.

Perhaps I should make my own dandelion & burdock cordial ...  they both grown in profusion here and while I do use young dandelion leaves in salads, the burdocks only seem to serve as unwelcome producers of irritating burrs that constantly get matted into the dog's coat. I've also been told that burdock root is very good for treating gout ... and I could certainly do with that as I slightly over did it on Christmas day and only now, over three weeks later, has the pain finally subsided.

PS: "Tall, dark and drinksome" .... mmmm, I like the sound of that....

I had no idea that dandelion and burdock - especially burdock - could be used as a herbal medicine. It's not just good for gout, but for all sorts of other conditions. I just thought it was a nice fizzy drink. Seems we have lost not just a flavour here, but all sort of health benefits:


◾Burdock roots, young shoots, peeled stalks, and dried seeds contain numerous compounds that are known to have been anti-oxidant, disease preventing, and health promoting properties.


◾The root is very low in calories; provide about 72 calories per 100 g. Burdock is a good source of non-starch polysaccharides such as inulin, glucoside-lappin, mucilage, etc., that help act as a laxative. Additionally, inulin acts as prebiotic and helps reduce blood-sugar level, body-weight, and cholesterol levels in the blood.


◾Burdock root is especially containing good amounts of electrolyte potassium (308 mg or 6.5% of daily-required levels per 100 g root) and low in sodium. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps control heart rate and blood pressure.


◾This herb root contains small quantities of many vital vitamins, including folic acid, riboflavin, pyridoxine, niacin, vitamin-E, and vitamin-C that is essential for optimum health. Both vitamin C and E are powerful natural antioxidants help the human body stave off infections, cancer and neurologic conditions.


◾Furthermore, it also contains some valuable minerals such as iron, manganese, magnesium; and small amounts of zinc, calcium, selenium, and phosphorus.



Medicinal uses

◾Just like its fellow Asterceae family member dandelion, almost all the parts of burdock herb too found a place in various traditional as well modern medicines.


◾Burdock has been used in many folk remedies as one of the best blood purifiers. It contains certain diuretic principles, which help expel toxic products from the blood through urine.


◾The herb is employed in the treatment of skin problems such as eczema (dermatitis), psoriasis, skin dryness, etc. The plant parts have been used as an herbal remedy for liver and gall bladder complaints.


◾Effusion of burdock seeds has been used for throat and chest ailments.


◾Burdock leaves and stems, in addition to their use as a vegetable, have appetite stimulant and are a good remedy for gas and indigestion (dyspeptic) complaints.

There was a report earlier today on Radio 4 that suggested potassium is a preventative for osteoporosis, so real d&b could perhaps go on prescription?

In the days when family meals always included 'puddings' such as spotted-dick, suet pud', bread-n-butter pudding etc, Birds Instant Custard was almost a staple in our family. But the old formulation did require a certain dexterity in catching the milk just as it started to boil and rapidly whisking it into the custard powder, if the whole concoction was to thicken lump-free and not just separate out . And if left to cool it did form an impressively tough leather-like skin .... although I actually rather liked that. A 100% success rate only came about in the 1970's with the introduction of ready canned custard (just open and warm), but I seem to remember that the early versions had a rather odd, slightly greenish tinge. It did however have a wonderfully distinctive flavour, not completely unlike proper custard, but noticeably different ... I loved it and would just spoon it down cold straight from the tin. But inevitably the food scientists soon managed to 'improve' it and it lost the green tinge as well as the slightly chemical taste, and to my mind a lot of its appeal.

Another product from the early 70s that reflected our family's slowly increasing affluence was instant cheese-cake mix, and in particular that made by the local factory, Greens of Brighton. Again the earlier version had a distinctive sharp/sour taste, which has since been improved upon so much that I find the current formulation almost nauseatingly sweet.

I remember that cheesecake, MM, tasted not too bad but a weird texture. Greens also bought over another iconic product, Royal lemon meringue pie filling. Basically sugar and cornflour, it contained a capsule of lemon oil and it was made up with the yolk from the egg utilised for the meringue. I loved that.

One product I didn't enjoy though was Creamola Foam, crystals which when added to water foamed up, a bit like a sweeter Epsom Salts. What has stuck in my mind however is the advertising picture and the jingle. Oh great, now I've got an earworm, "Creamola foamee, Cremola for me........,

                                               

The Custard Factory, Birmingham.

Not as Fox News reported, a no-go area for non-Muslims, but now an arts centre and home to many "creative industry" businesses.

The original Bird's Custard was a substitute for the real thing - Mrs Bird being reportedly allergic to the eggs used to thicken real custard, so the tinned and "add hot water" varieties are second-order ersatz products.

Licorice and aniseed were mentioned earlier.  I remember lots of black lollies (sweets) that had a real black licorice flavour; there were small black figures that had such flavour, and jubes that were properly black.  Now everything is purple and just has the same flavour as all the other colours.  (Though I do believe black jelly beans still taste good and proper.)

We never had Bird's Custard in NZ, but Edmond's Custard Powder is still the brand to buy, and I don't most NZers actually know there is such as thing as egg-made custard. Certainly I have only made it about twice in my life - and then people preferred the bought branded stuff.

Speaking of lemon meringue and not in the least historically, a disaster happened here on New Year's Day.  Most of us went out swimming happily and my son was at home making a lemon meringue pie.  When we arrived it was sitting on the bench awaiting its meringue and we asked how it was going. "Not at all well. Your range has the element switches the wrong way round and I turned one on and the dish with the lemon meringue pie was on it and broke."  We had only bought said dish about two weeks before.  The dish hadn't fully broken though was too cracked to be useable.  So the pie was put into a new dish, still awaiting its meringue.  I was working on the roast pork for firsts, and my other son was doing something else in the kitchen.  Somehow or other I then turned on an element wrongly and after a while my son said, "The pie's burning on the bottom.  Quickly put it somewhere cool." The son who had made it then quickly put it into the sink which had cold water in it; the arcorac dish broke (exploded really) and that was the end of the lemon meringue pie.  Much drama, but I suppose as disasters go it could have been worse. A waste of a dozen lemons, courtesy of my brother-in-law whose tree has an endless stream of lemons, as opposed to ours which manages to get a couple of buds on which immediately fall off.