Episode 6 Further Back in Time for Dinner

Meet the Robshaws - Brandon, Rochelle,

Miranda, Ros and Fred.

They've been back in time before...

..and experienced the transformation in our diets from the 1950s

to the 1990s.

That is just amazing. Look at them!

But this time they went further back,

to the first half of the 20th century...

..and discovered how changes in the food we ate...

Oh, my good Lord. Is it brains?!

..the way it was served,

and how it was cooked...

Yes, I'm cooking the pudding in the sink.

Why?

..helped to change the course of history.

-Starting in the 1900s...

-Oh, my goodness!

..this Victorian house was their time machine...

What is that? It looks like a giant hand grenade.

..fast-forwarding them through a new year each day.

1941, everyone!

From strict etiquette...

I need to practise my bowing.

..to new fads and flavours.

It's not that bad. Dad!

-From far too much...

-I think I've got the meat sweats.

-..to not enough...

-Doesn't look like a fried egg.

-Argh! No!

-Can you eat that?

-No.

..as they discovered how a revolution in our eating habits

helped create the modern family.

Now, at the end of their time-travelling adventure,

I'll be exploring the impact it's had on the Robshaws...

It's a taste explosion.

..and discovering just how much

their eating experiences of the past...

-Oh, my...

-Wow!

It's bacon, isn't it?

That's disgusting.

..still live on today.

That is really nice.

It's 70 years since we left the Robshaws surviving on rations

in 1949, and the way we live now, eating what we want,

where we want, when we want, feels a lifetime away.

I want to look more closely at the 50 years the family lived through

because I think many of our modern eating habits

actually have their roots in that period,

and the knock-on effects of that time are still being felt

in our kitchens and around our dinner tables today.

I think what's interesting is that the Edwardians ate so much.

I think there was a lot of show involved in what you were eating.

It was so different.

The formality of it, the stiffness of it.

And as time progressed and things kind of relaxed,

it started to feel more like modern family life.

-Oh, my goodness.

-Oh, wow.

I think what was most interesting about going from the massive amounts

of food to rationing was the short amount of time it took place in.

Barely 40 years.

-Tomatoes on toast.

-Yes.

The family have experienced first-hand the transformation

in the way we lived and ate from 1900

to 1949.

-What?!

-This is lovely!

I can't believe it.

'Throughout their 50 years of time travel,

'cookery books and historical surveys

'guided their entire experience...'

I can't help noticing that the potatoes are measured in pecks.

They are going to eat and eat and eat.

'..revealing the dramatic changes to our diets and homes

'through the period.'

Probably the worst can-opening skills ever.

Oh, my goodness me. I don't like the look of that.

Is it an early form of a pressure cooker?

I'm meeting social historian Polly Russell

to chart the change the Robshaws experienced

and see how the legacy of the past

lives on in our kitchens today.

It's amazing to think than when we last saw the Robshaws in the 1940s,

they had nothing in terms of utensils and tools.

It had all been sent off to be melted down

to be turned into munitions.

Here we are, 70 years on,

and the kitchen is now full of stuff.

Yeah, absolutely.

The kitchen now is such a place of convenience and ease.

But I think we shouldn't think that before the war

was a sort of dark ages of cooking in the kitchen.

In fact, what our experiment has shown is that lots of things

that happened in the 1920s and 1930s in particular

have links with what we do now.

This sort of thing is completely new, isn't it?

This whizzing machine for turning kale and cabbage

into a green smoothie?

It's a new piece of technology, certainly,

but the reason it's popular is the same reason that something like

the Easiwork health cooker in the 1930s was popular -

because it was promising to make you more healthy.

Ooh!

As the Robshaws discovered,

our desire to embrace the latest gadgets

and food fads isn't something new.

"Oh, I am a festive chafing dish.

"I foam and froth and bubble.

"I sing the song of meat and fish..."

That's a good song.

"..and I'm a great deal of trouble."

-"Save"!

-"I save a great deal of trouble."

Oh, it's like a magic pot.

It wasn't just about the latest cookery kit.

Eating the right food was another way

for middle-class Edwardian families to show off their status -

and more was always more.

Quail, sir.

The courses just keep coming and coming!

As a family, there is no way that we would think

of consuming the amount that we ate during the Edwardian period.

They couldn't have eaten like this every night, could they?

Blimey.

People would think we'd gone absolutely mad

or we're turning into weightlifters.

Meaty, meat-meat.

It's a meat heavy meal, isn't it? I think I've got the meat sweats.

On average, a middle-class Edwardian

ate a monstrous 3,500 calories every day.

That's way over today's recommended daily allowance.

How would you feel if you had to eat a meal like this every day?

-How would you feel?

-I think I'd feel ill.

There was nothing green.

There was no vegetables, there was no salad.

There's just so much meat. Meat after meat after meat.

Get out of here! What...?

-That is just...

-Is it steak?

-Incredible.

Steak? It's a whole cow!

-Anything else?

-An ambulance, please.

Such a meat-heavy diet meant that the Robshaw women

wholeheartedly welcomed the radical food trend of the 1910s,

when they tried a vegetarian dinner popularised by the suffragettes.

Feels almost like a relief to be cooking something

without any meat in it.

I really enjoyed the vegetarian food.

I don't feel absolutely full.

I don't feel greasy,

like I have done when we've eaten, sort of, six-course meat dinners.

In the 1920s, the Robshaws' Virginia Woolf-inspired dinner party

followed a new, aspirational trend

for exotic dishes and flavours from abroad.

It's an expensive menu.

You've got something like fennel,

there's saffron, which was an expensive spice.

All very sophisticated.

It tastes different.

It doesn't taste like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding today.

We have that same fascination with groups of people who we perceive

as being better than us and have a better lifestyle than us.

Ooh-la-la! What have we got here?

This is a risotto.

-Oh, I say.

-Lovely!

Doesn't that look delicious?

By the 1930s, food fashions had moved on again

and it was all about eating healthily,

with vegetables and salads at the top of the menu.

-It's all sort of very fresh.

-Mmm.

The thing that I was most surprised about was the salads

and the folk tradition of English food in the 1930s,

using fruits in salads.

It's something that you would associate with modern cooking.

I was just surprised that that was something that went so far back.

The nasturtium salad has a dressing with nasturtium pods in it.

This seems like very, sort of, light, sophisticated food.

The '30s did strike me as a very modern decade.

There's an abundance of vegetables,

there was an interest in health and being, sort of, fit.

As the middle classes of the '30s became body conscious...

'Clap, swing, clap, swing, clap, swing.'

..magazines and books promoted new ways of eating,

like the glamorously named Hollywood diet.

-Take one.

-Do I have to?

-Yes, you have to.

I guess it was called the Hollywood diet,

because the idea was that you would emulate

these beautiful stars of Hollywood,

so people were becoming body conscious back in the 1930s.

-Do you not like grapefruit?

-I detest grapefruit.

-Do you?

-Because they are so tart! They are so sour.

Urgh!

It's not that bad. Dad!

It is. I'd rather be fat, to be honest.

We're still surrounded by healthy food fads and fashions today.

But, as in the past, following the latest culinary trend

is a luxury reserved for those who can afford

to buy the right ingredients.

From Atkins to raw food, even the blood group diet,

it seems we're fascinated with finding new ways

to eat ourselves healthier.

We've got Eat Dirt, we've got The Gut Makeover.

Even Gluten Attack.

With so many new food fads to choose from,

I'm sending the Robshaws to find out more about some of the most popular

health trends of today with dietician Laura Clark.

Welcome to the modern kitchen.

So, there are lots of people now who write about nutrition,

tweet about nutrition and everybody has an opinion about nutrition,

because everybody eats.

Today, we're going to look at some popular trends

and you are going to delve into three of them

and see what you make of them.

First up, the girls try out one of Google's most searched-for diets.

So, the Paleo diet is based on what our ancestors would have eaten.

2.5 million years ago, they would have been hunting, fishing,

gathering, foraging for stuff.

So out of the diet comes any processed food,

anything which has got lots of sugar in it.

I think as the decades went on, people became more and more aware

of...what they were putting in their bodies.

I think that's something that carries through to today,

when you see...

When everybody's looking for the next new diet,

the next new fad, the superfood.

On the menu is wild salmon with spinach, broccoli and courgette.

With a modern twist.

-Oh, my God.

-Wow.

Isn't that the best?

The spiralizer is an up-to-the-minute kitchen gadget,

promising to create a version of off-limits pasta

from virtuous vegetables.

I knew that courgetti spaghetti was a thing,

-but I've never had it.

-It's clever, isn't it?

Much of the Paleo's popularity is based on being low in carbohydrate

and high in protein.

So, the tablespoon of avocado oil.

-What side down does it go?

-Skin-side down.

It kind of makes sense to me that you would only eat natural foods.

There's something kind of ironic about the fact

that back in the '40s, we were, sort of, forced to do without

certain foods and had to eat what whatever was there

and now we're in a position where we have so much

that we actually have to restrict ourselves.

-A+ presentation.

-Thanks.

THEY LAUGH

First of all, we want a cup of milk.

Meanwhile, Brandon and Fred investigate fermenting.

A diet that is high in friendly microbes

is said to help develop a healthy gut.

Then we want one teaspoon of this stuff.

First up is kefir, a drink made of milk and live bacterial grains

that originally comes from eastern Europe.

Don't put a lid on, otherwise it will blow up.

Will it actually blow up?

If you put a lid on, there will be a build-up of carbon dioxide

as it ferments and it could cause the jar to burst.

-So is it fizzy?

-Yeah.

-It becomes fizzy?

-Yeah.

-Fizzy milk?

-Yeah. Fizzy milk.

Now we just put that in a cool, dark place.

Leaving the drink to ferment allows bacteria to grow

which are believed to help our bodies absorb nutrients

and break down food more easily.

I suppose we tend to think of dieting

as quite a modern, faddy idea.

In an affluent society, people have too much food to eat,

and therefore they need to go on diets.

But people were already becoming health conscious

and followed specific diets in the 1930s.

Right, kimchi.

Two-and-a-half pounds of cabbage.

Korea's favourite dish is gaining popularity in the UK.

It's fermented cabbage with radish, ginger, spring onions and garlic.

High in fibre, calcium and iron.

It smells good, though, doesn't it?

-Do you just eat it like that?

-Well, that's now got to ferment.

-Go mouldy?

-Well, sort of, yeah.

This seems a bit science-y,

putting things away to have chemical reactions

over a certain period of time,

which is calculated to have a certain kind of chemical effect

upon the bacteria in your gut.

But I think we're lucky -

thanks to the work of the scientists,

we know a lot more than we did and we can benefit from that.

Such a scientific approach isn't a new thing,

as Rochelle found out with her state-of-the-art pressure cooker

in the 1930s.

They look like they're in a laboratory,

working away on some sort of secret...

..sort of, meal.

"Clamp on the lid of the cooker."

Although perhaps not so user-friendly,

it promised to make you healthier

by preserving the nutrients in your food.

I can't remember how it went on.

Ah, that's it.

WHISTLING

It's whistling.

Today's modern health gadget also claims to keep all the goodness

in your food, but this time, in liquid form.

I haven't really juiced much, so I'm...

..assuming you just put it in one at a time.

I think once a fad becomes born,

with the fad comes a gadget.

We saw, in the '30s, there was an abundance of fruit and vegetables

in the middle-class diet.

I can certainly imagine somebody getting their hands on a juicer

and thinking this is a...

This is...an exciting, modern way to, sort of...become healthy.

Experimentation over, it's time to judge the results.

So, shall we start with the kimchi?

Obviously, fermenting is a bit of a long process,

so this is one that we've previously prepared.

Mmm!

-It's really nice.

-So nice.

-It's like pumped-up sauerkraut.

-This is absolutely lovely, I think.

-It's delicious.

-I want to get this in my guts as much as possible.

We better try this kefir now, then.

You're pouring it very...kefir-ly.

LAUGHTER AND GROANING

Tastes like milk.

-Smells like yoghurt.

-It's nice.

So, let's try the Paleo diet.

A caveman wouldn't have had that though, would he?

This is taking principles from our ancestors, but obviously,

courgetti would be absolutely unheard of 2.5 million years ago...

..to say the least!

I think as this market for eating healthily,

sort of, like, gathers force, food becomes something else.

A food isn't just to make you live,

it's to help you live a certain way.

There was little interest in eating healthily

at the start of the experiment and all the food had to be produced

from the Robshaws' very basic Edwardian kitchen.

It's proper old.

Oh, my goodness!

-It is totally wooden.

-Oh, wow.

There's lots of wiry gadgets.

With no electricity and rudimentary equipment,

cooking was a long and labour-intensive process.

Luckily for Rochelle, she didn't have to do any of it.

Like all aspirational middle-class families

set on establishing their status,

the Robshaws had a maid to create the elaborate meals

that demonstrated their impeccable taste.

I've done the aspic jelly, I've done the mayonnaise.

The chicken is in, poaching.

I need to do green butter.

Green beans, boiled potatoes, chicken sauce, roasted quail

and then gravy.

When I started this, I knew that I'd be doing a lot of work,

but I didn't expect it to be so...

I don't know, for them to eat so much food on a normal day.

There's a lot. A lot to do for one person.

However, as a modern family, having a servant took some getting used to.

I don't think that I'm going to miss being in the kitchen.

But when I was introduced to Debbie,

I actually felt a little bit shocked.

I really don't want to ring the bell.

I can't bring myself to ring it.

I just feel uncomfortable sounding a bell to call upon someone.

She expects us to, doesn't she?

Well, I'll ask her if she would like me to ring the bell...

No, no... Don't ask them if you want them to ring the bell.

I suppose I'd always dreamed of having a maid, you know,

in my contemporary life.

It thought that would be really quite nice.

But actually having a physical, living being as your maid,

that was quite an adjustment to make.

-There's your mutton.

-Lovely. Thank you very much.

But when the time came for her to leave in 1915...

You're handing in your notice, Debbie.

..it made a big impact.

Have we got to do the washing up now?

It's not we.

It's me.

It's just the pan... It's just... I know she used a lot of pans...

Servantless, Rochelle was left to find her way around the kitchen

for the very first time.

It's not the right one.

Must be the wrong sort of candle.

Once Debbie left, then, because I cannot cook like Debbie,

the food becomes slowly, slowly more simplified.

They're not quite poaching effectively.

Debbie knows everything, but she's gone.

And she didn't tell me how to poach an egg.

I think they're done.

Poached eggs, I say.

They're not cooked. I can see the white liquid...

You don't have to have that.

Would you like some porridge?

Life without servants left many 1920s housewives

fending for themselves.

But preparing meals was made much more convenient

by one method of preserving food...

Tins.

I think having cans

was an extraordinary time-saving liberation.

But if you have problems opening them,

then it's obviously not so great.

Luckily, I could open the cans.

Before the First World War, tinned food was a luxury.

But as new canning factories opened in the 1920s,

manufacturing techniques made it possible to preserve

almost any food this way at a price that everyone could afford.

It's fairly no-frills.

As many former maids found new work after the war,

this speedy way of cooking became a godsend

for housewives with few culinary skills,

which meant women like Rochelle could prepare a whole meal

without breaking a sweat.

Here you go.

So this is all out of tins? Except the bread, I suppose.

Yes.

Tins was a blessing, much like we have takeaway food here

in our contemporary lives.

It's easy and it's convenient.

And sometimes you wouldn't want to spend

hours and hours and hours in the kitchen.

What do people think about having a meal all out of tins?

It's been quite nice.

But I don't know if the tinned vegetables work quite so well.

Though not the same as fresh produce,

the brilliance of the can was its ability to preserve food

in and out of season,

and this popular '20s convenience food

has been filling up Britain's shelves ever since.

Since the 1940s, we've seen an explosion in convenience food.

We've gone from humble cans to frozen food

to microwaveable ready meals.

Preserving food has never gone out of fashion,

though convenience has developed a bit of a bad name.

But have we forgotten the joys to be found in a simple tin?

To show how they're often unfairly overlooked,

Polly is bringing the Robshaws the ingredients for a modern take

on a canned dinner.

-Hello.

-Hi. Welcome.

I've brought you a bag of food that is going to be quite familiar to you

from the 1920s, which is a bag of cans.

Why do you think they do have quite a low status in the cooking world?

Well, I think in our contemporary times,

anything that's in a can is seen to be not fresh.

We do use tinned tomatoes, we do have baked beans,

we do use tinned pulses,

but I'd rather buy it fresh if I can.

There are some things that you want to have fresh

because they taste nicer.

And I think that fresh food is just perceived as being better quality,

even though canned food is a fantastic way

of preserving the flavour, and also the nutritional quality.

And I think that, to some extent,

we've forgotten how lovely food can be from a can.

I'm going to try and persuade you of that

with some maybe slightly more unusual ingredients.

-There's a recipe in the bag, so have a nice evening.

-Thanks.

-Bye.

OK.

Smoked mussel and tomato spaghetti.

I wouldn't want to smoke a mussel.

I'm trying to give up!

That's easy, isn't it?

For their modern take on the convenience dinner,

the main ingredients are chopped tomatoes and smoked mussels,

both from cans.

And this time, tin opening isn't the challenge it once was.

That is just, like, modern design.

Taken off with no fuss, no stress, no anxiety.

And there they are, just ready to be used.

You know, an idiot could do this.

I do like mussels. I've never seen them in a tin like that before.

No longer limited to Spam, peas and potatoes,

we can now choose from over 1,500 different foods packaged in cans.

PEAR-fect.

For dessert, Miranda is sauteing two cans of pears

with an ingredient that is less often found in a tin - chestnuts.

They look a bit wrinkly and weird.

But I think preparing chestnuts is kind of a fancyish dessert.

It has got interesting flavours. Chestnuts, you don't see very often.

-I think that's going to be nice.

-I think so too.

The latest trend for gourmet canned food like muscles and chestnuts

means that the Robshaws can make an adventurous dinner in minutes,

compared to the hours Debbie spent in their Edwardian kitchen.

This is tinned mussel spaghetti...

-Tinned?!

-I think it looks rather good.

-No, it's really nice.

-Mmm.

-No, I like this.

I think in the '20s, they went overboard on it.

It's like, everything, was tinned.

But here, I think the tins have been used judiciously

with fresh ingredients and it's nice.

So I suppose, really, with a tin, you can make anything, can't you?

Yeah, any time of year.

Mussels have a season. You only eat them when there's an R in the month.

But if they're in a tin, it doesn't matter.

The thing is, now, we want food that is usually quick.

When I come in from work, I don't want to wait three hours for a meal

-and eat at ten o'clock, do I?

-No.

-This is pears and chestnuts.

-Is it?

And that's mascarpone.

-That's a nice desert, isn't it?

-It's so good.

It's all entirely from tins?

The fruit and the chestnuts are, yes.

That is really nice!

There's something about a chestnut in a tin that's acceptable.

-That's posh, isn't it?

-It's a luxury purchase, isn't it?

It's a luxury purchase.

I think if somebody had told me, before this meal,

both courses will come out of tins, I probably would have groaned.

But this started well and it got even better.

# Everybody eats

# When they come to my house. #

In the early part of the experiment,

there was one person for whom there seemed to be very little chance

that things might get better.

Oh, my goodness.

Debbie began as the Robshaws' maid of all work

and there was a lot of it to be done.

This is going to be hard.

Middle-class Britain in 1901

employed a staggering 1.5 million domestic servants,

many of whom found themselves in the same position as Debbie.

It was strange for me to be away from home.

It's the first time I've come so far away.

Wow... Oh, no, what is all this?

For someone actually in that position to leave home

and not know when they're going back,

I can imagine it to be really, really hard.

This is mock turtle soup but using calf's head.

A calf's head?

I'm a bit shocked to see it like that - so, sort of, like...

..heady.

In its head-like way.

Do you think it's going to be tasty, Debbie?

I'm going to try and make it tasty...

You do your best, yeah.

-..with what I've got.

-Yeah.

Debbie and Miranda are the same age.

And yet, you know, the opportunities that were open to Miranda

are so different from those that were open to Debbie,

who obviously loves cooking and is brilliant at it.

I think it's very nice.

Maybe I should ring the bell and tell her it's nice.

-No.

-Shall I ring the bell?

-No, no, no, no, no!

I think I...

-To tell her it's nice?

-Yes, to tell her it's nice, because I want to.

BELL RINGS

Hi. I just wanted to say, it's very, very nice.

-Oh!

-It's delicious.

While you're here, could we get some pepper?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

You just spoilt that.

-Why?

-Because.

A hard first day indeed.

How people did this every day, I don't know.

With extravagant menus to prepare

and little help in the way of kitchen appliances,

the life of an Edwardian servant was tough.

It was really, really shattering, to be honest.

I was on my feet all day.

It was really, really hard

and I was really tired by the end of it.

We were all really surprised when we got a maid.

None of us were suspecting it.

Someone that's staying in your house,

getting up early for you to make your breakfast.

It's warm!

Despite the hard work,

Debbie's skill and talent in the kitchen

meant she was a great success.

-Debbie, come in.

-Debbie!

Are you completely done in?

Erm...yeah.

I think my favourite thing was actually the eight-course meal.

Erm, just the fact that I actually managed to do it.

It was delicious.

Fit for a king.

But things were set to change as workers gained more rights

and the First World War created new opportunities

for working-class women.

"As the war rages on,

"the opportunity has arisen for you to escape the bonds

"of domestic service."

It's going to feel strange not being here

and putting on this attire and cooking for this family.

It was a very shocking moment

when Debbie announced she was going to leave.

I felt very sad actually.

She'd really grown to become...a part of our family.

Working as a land girl in the war brought a change of scenery

for young working women.

But after the war, employers were encouraged to give back jobs

to returning men.

Businessman, book-keeper, mechanic...

..and the need to earn a living meant that the opportunities

for working women were often limited.

-Hello!

-Can I have five large cods and chips, please?

-OK.

-That's it, thanks!

-Do you feel, like, freer now?

-Kind of freer, yeah.

Here, I still get to cook.

Like, before, I was just in your house all the time,

on my own when you guys went out.

In the 1930s, a decade of economic depression

meant jobs were even harder to come by,

and so the prospect of a culinary career for a young working woman

was even further out of reach.

I mean, it would be nice to cook in this kitchen.

Most people like me wouldn't have even had a job.

Like, especially from North Yorkshire,

your family's in poverty,

so for someone like me to actually have a job,

I suppose that's a really good thing,

even if it's just cleaning.

For the 50 years of the experiment,

the possibility of being a professional cook

was virtually non-existent for someone like Debbie.

But today, things have changed, and she's now an aspiring chef.

Today, I've got endless options.

It's nice to know that I can do what I want

and that I'm not just stuck to, sort of, domestic service.

To show her just how well women are doing

in professional kitchens today,

I'm giving her a taste of life in a restaurant kitchen

run by one of London's most successful female chefs.

Cheque on seven top.

Four soups large...

One small kale...

At 29, Sabrina Gidda has won acclaim as a Roux scholarship finalist

after working at the Dorchester and is now head chef

at a modern Italian restaurant in central London.

Sabrina's throwing Debbie right in at the deep end.

Her first task is learning to prepare the hake dish

on today's menu.

So, we'll have a super hot pan on.

So, fish, skin side down, away from you.

We obviously want the skin to crisp up for us.

So we just give it a little push down.

Obviously you get used to the oil burns after a little while.

So we just allow the fish to cook for another 30 seconds or so,

-then we just pop the pan under the salamander.

-OK.

Two minutes and then we finish with a lovely, smooth celeriac puree.

So, very seasonal, very tasty.

It's lovely to work with Sabrina. She's really good. She's helping me.

It's a lot faster being here than when I was in the Edwardian period.

I'm not on my own any more. I've got people to work with.

So it's quite a nice atmosphere.

Away five, please.

Four hake, one tag, large.

Four hake whenever you're ready, Debbie.

Uh, yes, Chef.

With camaraderie and the chances of promotion,

working in a modern professional kitchen

is a world away from the life of a maid.

What I'd love for you to do for me is just to blanche off some kale

and some fine beans.

Little pinch of butter

-and then bring them over to the pass and we can plate together.

-Right.

Lovely.

-Are they OK?

-Oh, excellent. Great.

In the 1920s, my only really high prospect

was to work in a fish and chip shop,

which obviously isn't as skilful as working here.

There's a lot more opportunities for me now

than there would have been back then.

OK, plate them.

As elegantly as you possibly can.

I'll try.

Perfect. Lovely.

So, sea herbs, and we're going to clean over here.

-Just...?

-That is perfect. Just the right amount.

Lovely. That's it.

We are service on two hake.

Nice. Very nice.

Sabrina is such an inspiration.

Obviously, she knows a lot about food.

I'm so grateful that I get to do things like this.

Now I can do pretty much anything. I could even become a head chef.

Trying dishes and flavours from around the world

is part of our everyday life today.

But, as the Robshaws discovered,

Britain's love of foreign food goes back a long way.

It did surprise me that people were eating foreign foods

as early as the 1900.

Having started the last experiment in the 1950s

and the food being quite bland,

I guess I'd assumed that, going back a further 50 years,

the food would be even more bland.

But a lot of it was really delicious.

One up to the Belgians for providing us with this.

-These are your apple fritters.

-Thank you very much.

-Wow!

I think we've got a distorted view of culinary history,

because we tend to think of the 1950s, which was very bland,

and you couldn't get hold of foreign ingredients.

But people tend to forget that for decades before the war,

people had been cooking foreign foods with foreign ingredients.

The first foreign food the Robshaws tasted

came from across the Channel in 1901,

with the introduction of French haute cuisine.

It's lovely. It's like the sort of food that angels would eat.

Everything we've eaten has been brown because it's been meat.

This is just, sort of, pale and sort of pretty.

Oh, my goodness, that looks fantastic.

And our love of French food continues to this day.

We have such a lot to thank the French for.

I think this haute cuisine thing will really catch on.

Do you think we could trust Debbie to have a go at it?

Yes. I have 'igh 'opes for her.

-You've been working on that for a while, haven't you?

-Yes.

But where some cuisines have stayed in fashion,

others have fallen out of favour.

Prost!

That is a serious amount of sausage, isn't it?

Before the First World War,

we enjoyed German bread, meat and beer

brought to us by the 50,000 Germans

living in Britain at that time.

That is good. That is a good sausage.

But as war came, many German restaurants and bakeries

were forced to close for good.

It seems kind of strange to think that German restaurants,

Germans cuisine was so popular

because it seems so remote now, doesn't it?

But that didn't stop our desire to taste other new flavours,

reflected by the opening

of Britain's longest-running Indian restaurant in 1926.

You can imagine that you're in some kind of

gentleman's club in Calcutta, sitting here.

The hotter the curry you can eat,

the more of a man you are, and that is true.

I think that curry must have seemed like a taste

that was completely different for the middle classes

and just this...this...whole taste of the exotic.

-Cheers!

-Thanks a lot.

I think it is a surprise that there was this abundance of...

..different tastes and flavours and interests in food

and so early in the century.

British food has never been simply British.

Each new immigrant community that has settled here

has always brought with it new flavours to embrace...

These are whoppers!

..like the Jewish food the Robshaws enjoyed in the 1930s.

I just remember, as a kid, never being a fan of gefilte fish.

My heart always sank when I saw it on the table.

Especially with its little carrot hat.

This tastes like non-sweet cookie dough.

Nowadays, we're able to enjoy food from all over the world,

and it's something that you scarcely even think about now.

You might go out to a shop and see a falafel wrap

and think, "Oh, I'll have that", and then just take it,

but you don't realise this is Middle Eastern.

I mean, I do think that we're extraordinarily lucky

in that we can go and get food from anywhere...at all in the world

from down our high road.

I do think it means that, in your little corner of England,

you can bring the world in.

With once-exotic foods becoming familiar favourites

in all our meal times,

Britain has developed an ever more adventurous palate,

meaning we're always on the lookout

for something new and foreign to try.

So I've invited Rochelle and Brandon to a new restaurant

to taste the cuisine of a far-flung country.

"Puca picante".

"Itamae".

"Chilaso"..."ocopa"...

There's loads of words on this menu I simply don't know.

We're in a Peruvian restaurant in central London.

The first Peruvian restaurant started in London

two or three years ago and I walked in

and it was so exciting to see things that I'd never seen before.

No question Peruvian food is the newest major cuisine.

Britain's always been more adventurous than we imagined.

We were eating French and German and Indian food.

In the days of empire, we were very quick to embrace

all those kind of cuisines.

Even now, we're just expanding our horizons in terms of food.

-I can't wait to try it.

-What did you think Peruvian food might be?

-No idea.

-Anything you'd have thought?

Paddington Bear? I thought we might get some marmalade sandwiches.

I thought it might be a few tortilla chips

and a guinea pig on a skewer.

It is really exciting because Peru seems a long way away.

It's all very unfamiliar, isn't it? "Cat's claw powder."

It sounds like something from a spell in Harry Potter, doesn't it?

But when we went out for a German,

there were these weisswurst and bratwurst and kartoffelsalat,

which...we wouldn't have known what they were back in the day.

It just looks really exciting.

I'm ordering a range of authentic Peruvian dishes

and first up are aubergine jalea and chilaso.

That's really got a little kind of kick to it, hasn't it?

A little smoky chilli kick.

-It's like a...

-A taste explosion.

-It's a taste explosion.

All such new combinations of flavours.

I just think, "Here I am, eating the food,

"and that's as close as I'm going to get to Peru."

Historically, that's the way you sample foreign cultures, by eating their food.

When you went to your Indian restaurant, you were having to

imagine what it would be like to people in the '20s

to suddenly see a chicken korma.

It was like this.

Next we have Peru's national dish, ceviche -

raw fish, cured in a citrus and chilli dressing,

exotically named "tiger milk."

Have a slurp. It develops this flavour, and a fishy flavour.

You can see why they call it tiger's milk, can't you?

It feels like the sort of thing you might get in a juice bar.

It's got a kick to it. It's like a kind of pickle surprise.

You'd call it pickle surprise?

I don't think that's quite as good a name somehow.

It's not quite as poetic, is it?

I love these glowing colours. It looks like food in a dream.

-Look at that!

-That's weird. That's really blue, isn't it?

That is pork tendon, puffed like pop corn

at a very high temperature.

That's like a cross between a pork scratching and a prawn cracker.

I think we're always seeking for a new taste sensation, aren't we?

-Yeah.

-We always want to try something different.

We get bored easily. We want to try different things

and world cuisine becomes part of our national palate.

But actually, it would be quite a long time

before we'll get fed up with this, I think.

I think this is... I will come back and eat more Peruvian food.

That's what I'm going to do.

In fact, that's my plan for 2017.

The adults weren't the only ones enjoying new flavours

throughout their time travel.

Fred was the lucky recipient of lots of new snacks and treats.

First time I had chocolate, that was really good.

I've got something.

Whoa!

Fantastic!

Actual chocolate!

At the beginning of the experiment, the new Dairy Milk chocolate bar

was all that was on offer in the Edwardian home.

I wonder how long we'll have to wait for Fruit and Nut?

It would be another 20 years before that appeared.

But in the meantime, other treats arrived.

-Can I please have an ice cream?

-You certainly can.

-Thank you.

-Thank you. You enjoying your ice cream?

Mm.

What do you like about it?

I like that it's ice cream.

And as the decades progressed, more new products emerged,

like Smith's famous Salt'n'Shake crisps in the 1920s.

-What have we got?

-Wow!

By the '30s, the brands producing treats and snacks rocketed.

-Look how much chocolate we have!

-Walnut whip!

-Delicious!

Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate. Toblerone.

-Cadbury's...

-I can't carry any more.

-..Milk Tray.

Bournville!

Now for a feast!

Companies like Cadbury were targeting children with taste tests,

keen to find the flavours that they liked best.

"Dear Fred, today, you are a chocolate tester."

That's the best!

There is such a thing as too much chocolate, but it takes a long time.

Ooh!

Which one had the unusually nutty flavour?

The one that Fred scoffed.

Oh, my God, I feel so alive!

I just ate 12 chocolate bars and it's the best feeling of my life!

Since the experiment ended in 1949,

the volume of chocolate on offer has exploded.

The UK now spends a whopping £4 billion on it every year.

Now, definitely the majority of my pocket money

goes into, sort of, sweets and chocolate.

With so much demand, companies are going to greater and greater lengths

to create exciting new flavours to grab everyone's attention -

and not just children.

I'm bringing Fred a 21st-century equivalent of his '30s taste test

so that we can sample the variety of chocolate flavours

that are being developed today.

-Hey, Fred.

-Hi.

-So, what was it like in the '30s to get to try...?

For me, it felt far more special,

because I had new flavours and tastes.

Compared to when you did your taste test,

nowadays, there's limitless...

Hundreds, thousands of flavours to choose from.

So I've got here a selection of all sorts of flavours.

I think we should plough our way through as many of them as we can

and then you have to choose the one that you like best.

-Do you think you can do that?

-Yeah.

-So what's this one?

-Do you know, it looks like tomato?

But it can't be.

What are those, like, berries?

-Oh, goji berry?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

You're quite right. That is the 21st-century chocolate.

And there are some even more unusual combinations in the mix.

You go first. It's chocolate, how horrible could it be?!

This could be rationing.

There could be nothing to eat for a year.

Nothing to eat until the end of the war apart from that chocolate.

-What do you think it tastes like?

-I don't know.

It's a delicious cheese chocolate.

In 2017, we have arrived in a world where there's so much chocolate

that manufacturers have to strive to make the most interesting flavours

that they can, and one of them is cheese.

Let's eat this one.

-It's bacon, isn't it?

-Bacon.

That's disgusting!

I'd rather eat the actual foods.

Right now, I'd rather have a slice of bacon than some bacon chocolate.

I like that one. I mean, that seems...

That one, it looks fairly harmless.

I don't know what that is.

That's garlic. That's black garlic.

Oh, that's just stupid!

I might freshen my mouth up with what, to me,

looks like a kind of chocolate cream.

'If savoury chocolates aren't quite our thing,

'thankfully, some old favourites are still on offer.'

It's just like brushing your teeth in a chocolate.

Why don't we try that one?

Mmm.

-Yeah, that's really nice.

-Is it good? What does it taste of?

It's like raspberry.

So what was your favourite chocolate of them all, then?

I guess I'd say the raspberry one.

It was quite refreshing. It sort of...

It tasted a bit like food,

which some of these other ones didn't.

Definitely we won't be having the cheese one again,

the bacon one, the black garlic one.

I felt like the ones with, sort of, savoury foods in are almost like...

-They're just trying too hard?

-Yeah.

You would never have been able to imagine in the 1930s

that there would be so many?

And now we've probably arrived at a time

where there's just...too much chocolate in the world.

There was one thing the Robshaws never had too much of

in the experiment -

eating together.

And with every decade,

they experienced the changing expectations of family mealtimes.

OK, move these chairs out of the way.

100 years ago, you had to sit around, like, a formal table

with, like, set mealtimes and set cutlery.

There were actually rules, like, everywhere, like in the house,

in the kitchen.

Everything was, like, rigidly constricted.

Life at an Edwardian table meant formality,

with eight-course dinners and high-status guests.

We need something for the oysters.

-An implement.

-A fork - an oyster fork.

He's going to think we're common if we don't have an oyster fork.

-That could be a finger bowl.

-There's only one.

-Why couldn't...?

-You can't have a communal finger bowl.

-Yes, you can!

-No, you can't.

-Ridiculous.

We can't let a finger bowl hold up your rise to the top.

-Hello, good evening.

-This is my wife, Rochelle.

-Mrs Robshaw.

-Rochelle.

Mr Robshaw, do you have a regular supply of oysters

delivered to you or...?

Well, I wish that I did.

Children, however, were neither seen nor heard at the dinner table.

-I want to eat with you.

-You want to eat with us?

-Yeah.

Fred, you can't.

Edwardian children were left to eat simple food

in the kitchen with the maid.

Can I have some food now?

Not so much fun.

I miss not having Fred at the table.

I think he livens things up, actually.

It felt a bit harsh that he was banished to the kitchen.

It did feel strange that we were so strictly bound by a social etiquette

even within our own home

that Fred wasn't allowed to be at the table with us.

Now, eating as a family is very much encouraged.

As middle-class homes lost their servants,

rules relaxed and children joined the table at mealtimes...

What's it like?

Piping hot.

..and the modern family meal together was born.

It always seems like there's a parallel

between the kind of food we were eating

and the family dynamic.

When we were eating these very elaborate meals,

everything was much more formal

and it seems that as the food gets simpler, less elaborate,

our family dynamic also becomes more relaxed and more informal.

The two go hand-in-hand, it seems.

And the importance of a good meal shared with friends or family

was powerfully felt, as many young men left the table

for the Western Front.

I wonder how you'd feel if you were a young man about to go to fight,

eating food like this, and knowing that was the last time

you'd eat like this for a very long time?

Do you think they knew what they were going to expect?

-I don't think they had much idea at all.

-They had no idea.

A further loosening of etiquette allowed the Robshaws to enjoy

Britain's favourite takeaway around their 1920s table.

I can imagine a middle-class family in 1927 having this would have...

They'd think it was a bit of a joke. "Aren't we a little bit bohemian?"

-Really?

-Yeah.

I like fish and chips. I love fish and chips.

Who wants a plate?

And in the 1930s, when the family ate together,

it could even be around a swimming pool with a rug

instead of a table.

What's it called, Ros? What's it called?

It's haricot beans and stuff.

It's kind of like a baked bean sandwich, isn't it?

Your one tastes like the inside of cheese straws.

The inside of a cheese straw?

Know what I mean?

I suppose as, sort of, barriers break down,

there's more movement in society, and I think,

you know, once you start to, sort of, start consuming sandwiches

when you're, sort of, out and about,

then there's no formality whatsoever with that.

It's idyllic, really, isn't it?

It's like a Famous Five-style picnic.

We just need a dog.

But the idyll was not to last

as the Second World War split up the family unit

and children were sent away as evacuees.

I think it must be have been really, really difficult,

and to keep a brave face on it and to smile and to pack their bags

and then not really know where they were going to be going to,

it must have been an extraordinarily heartbreaking decision to have made,

and not to know when you're going to be seeing them again.

With the family separated,

wartime meals were harder to stomach.

-Oh, Miranda, did you lay for five?

-Yeah.

-That's really sad.

-I know.

This hasn't set, so it's just lumps of semolina with meat.

-OK.

-So it's just...

-It's a novelty.

-Yes, it is.

A year ago, we wouldn't have been eating food like this.

Life has changed so drastically.

You would feel so insecure, wouldn't you?

# What a difference a day makes... #

Oh, Fred!

When Fred returned from the countryside,

family mealtimes became something to treasure.

It's so warm!

I think I appreciate more eating with my family now than I did

at the start of this experiment, because you can see how, like,

huge global events like the war, like, split families up

and they weren't able to eat together.

The Edwardian world of strict formality

seems such a long time ago, but the decades that followed

were fundamental in creating the modern family we know today.

From the food we cook and eat to who does the cooking,

we've clung on to a lot of what we learned in that half-century,

most especially our love of sharing special meals together.

To celebrate all they've experienced,

the Robshaws are preparing a special three-course dinner

that reflects the discoveries of their time travels,

and Polly and I have been invited to share the feast.

-This is very bad chopping, isn't it?

-I've seen better.

Having learned about Britain's long-standing love

of foreign flavours,

they're cooking a traditional favourite with a twist -

a spicy shepherd's pie.

It's a shepherd's pie with a bit of a kick.

Now, it's quite common that you would have a range of spices

in your cupboard, so it's much easier to mess about with

a traditional English shepherd's pie -

jazz it up a little bit.

You don't really think about the spices

that you're putting into food any more,

it's just second nature.

That's enough.

For a starter, we're going to do roasted carrots

with goat's cheese and pomegranate.

That is an amazing carrot.

Heritage carrots.

I am making an apple pie with custard.

Nowadays, few of us have the luxury of a live-in maid.

But there are lots of convenient culinary shortcuts available.

Comparing just having, like, really nice pastry

that you can just roll out and it's made

to making pastry,

this is much nicer because you still feel like you're making something,

but it saves a lot of time.

Smells good!

Can I taste a bit?

That's fantastic. It's like a sort of canape, isn't it?

It's the sort of thing you'd get at a posh party.

I don't know what parties you go to!

-Mmm! That's really nice.

-Is it?!

-It's nice.

-Oh, good!

Right, put these out.

And although eating together has become more informal,

we still love to push the boat out for the guests.

I think, obviously, there still goes with cooking

the fact that if you are inviting people round

or you have got people coming, it always feels a bit better

to make a bit more of an effort

rather than just to, sort of, open a packet of Super Noodles.

Beautiful.

Even if it's only me and Polly.

I think we should have a toast to the next hundred years.

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

-This is a lovely, lovely salad.

-It's really delicious.

And we don't, sort of, bat an eye about having a vegetarian starter.

In Edwardian times, if you'd got this,

you'd have been saying, "Where's my chop?"

Yeah, yeah.

It's also...I just got a little taste of cumin in this as well.

So it's quite a spicy salad.

It must've been awful to have lived through the '30s

and tasted so many interesting, different types of vegetables,

and then suddenly, you're faced with the '40s,

when everything went and everything was bland.

You realise how those '30s meals were really quite contemporary,

weren't they?

This is spicy shepherd's pie.

Is it all from scratch or did you get Debbie to come in?

No, Debbie is no longer with us, unfortunately.

I mean, she's not dead!

No. We did actually try to come and get her to do this,

but she couldn't make it.

I think we should have a toast to absent friends,

by whom I mean Debbie, don't you think?

-To Debbie.

-To Debbie.

-Debbie.

-Yeah.

And finally, for dessert, Miranda's apple pie.

So your journey has been centred on food.

I think that is a good way to view the first half of the 20th century.

And I actually think that it shows us how we've changed and how things

have become more relaxed.

And how much time have you spent eating together as a family?

The Edwardian period was always rather stiff and formal.

And we didn't have young Fred at the table.

And then, actually, family eating was interrupted quite a lot.

I think when we had the last hoorah dinner,

sending somebody off to fight.

You don't say to somebody, "Look, I'll go and buy you a coffee."

It has to be round a table and it has to be, you know, a dinner,

rather than anything else.

And that hasn't changed, has it,

the importance of coming together and marking something with food?

And also, as we've understood,

the idea of families being, sort of, separated,

then, post-war, that coming together around a table

becomes really important because it brings together

everything that was fractured in those years.

Yes, that's right.

There is something quite reassuring about it, isn't there?

So, in some senses, whenever you have any kind of meal,

particularly if you've lived through a period like the first 50 years

of the 20th century, you're giving thanks for the fact,

without ostensibly doing it,

thanks for the fact that this is just a normal meal,

and it's not a meal where someone's fighting a war...

And everyone can be together. That we are all here.

I think this idea of sitting round the table and eating together,

that is a deeply significant thing to do.

# I'll never be the same

# Stars have lost their meaning for me... #

Food is a marker of events.

These all become moments that are etched in your mind,

and they are moments that are around a table with food on it.

So food, sort of, holds the memories,

of what that event was.

One of the things taking part in this experiment has made me realise

is how valuable that time is that you spend together,

eating together as a family.

And it's only there for a few short years.

You've got this window in which all the kids are under one roof.

I don't miss, like, Edwardian formality and rigidity,

I think it's really nice being able to live a freer life.

There's definitely an emotional connection with food,

and I think part of the connection that I felt

in living through these decades was that you can kind of see

the roots of certain traditions that are now in our contemporary lives,

like sitting round a table sharing food together.

I think eating together is a bonding experience.

You're being nourished together,

both physically and, kind of, spiritually.

It's easy to think of the first half of the 20th century

as something finished - a distant memory that we've long forgotten.

But what we've learned from the Robshaws' journey

is that it was in that very period that many of the things

we treasure most about family life today were learned.

# Though there's a lot that a smile may hide

# I know down deep inside

# I'll never be the same

# Again. #