Food memory can be a shifty beast, often determined by our own experiences in adult life and what we remember from childhood. Michael Mackenzie and Cathy Pryor ask whether Australian cuisine was really all bland meat and soft boiled vegies until the post-war migration of the 1950s.

Andrew Junor, a Melbourne based academic believes Australian cuisine prior to the 1950s wasn’t limited to meat and three veg. He is working on a thesis called Backward, British and Bland? in which he argues our food choices before WWII were more diverse, regional and even multicultural than subsequent generations have given credit for.

Junor, who is undertaking his PhD at Monash University, has been researching the past 70 years of our food identity and has uncovered some surprising results. He says despite popular perceptions, Australian food in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s was not simply restricted to meat and three veg and Australians showed enormous creativity and ingenuity with the limited ingredients of the time.

Housewives were being implored to raise the standard of their cookery, whether it was to try more Mediterranean dishes, learn how to cook risotto or being told that you can make do with cheaper ingredients and zuzsh it up—you don’t need the best cuts of meat. Andrew Junor, historian, Monash University

Although the White Australia policy created the semblance of an Anglo monoculture, Chinese restaurants were a feature of many small towns, a result of Chinese migration during the gold rushes of the previous century. A wave of Italian migration in the 1920s had already exposed some Australians to Mediterranean cuisine well before the post-war years and pockets of ethnic food, such as Kings Cross in Sydney and Carlton in Melbourne, existed in many Australian cities.

Although these restaurants and delis were mostly frequented by the ethnic minorities they catered for, they were also visited by the bohemian set—writers and artists who yearned for a different experience. In fact the term ‘delicatessen wife’ became common parlance in the 1920s and ‘30s, a stock joke to denigrate a woman who popped into the deli to pick up a pre-made meal instead of making a ‘proper’ meal at home over her hot stove.

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Even within the majority Anglo-Australian population, Junor says there is clear evidence that food during this period was more diverse than many might think.

‘In the early ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s [people] really did express a lot of creativity and ingenuity with the material they had,’ he says.

‘In the interwar period, I found a lot of material that suggested that Australians of British and Irish descent saw food in ethnic terms. They were looking at dishes like Yorkshire pudding, curd tarts or Cornish pasties.’

‘There was a lot of discussion in the women’s pages: “I am really after an authentic recipe for this particular regional British dish”, or “I am from Yorkshire so, here I will give you a good tip”.’

‘Much like the post-Second World War migration stories where migrants tried to get authentic ingredients into Australia ... all Australians had that ethnic adaption story in common I think.’

As well as drawing on the discussions that ensued in the women’s pages of newspapers and magazines of the time, Junor has also delved into our official government history and responses to food.

During the Depression years, the Australian government, like others around the world, was prompted to think of nutrition as a matter of national health. A nutritional inquiry was established in 1936 that tried to ascertain what Australians were eating and how it could be improved.

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Food companies such as Kraft also jumped on board, creating commercials that implored people not to boil the nutrients out of their vegetables or add soda to their peas to keep them green. Steaming vegetables was the best way to preserve their nutrients and vitamins, and off cuts such as vegetable peel and carrot ends could be tossed into stock to increase its goodness and flavour.

‘There was a real sense that Australians had to move beyond their colonial past,’ Junor says.

‘Housewives were being implored to raise the standard of their cookery, whether it was to try more Mediterranean dishes, learn how to cook risotto or being told that you can make do with cheaper ingredients and zuzsh it up—you don’t need the best cuts of meat.’

Backward, British and bland? Saturday 9 August 2014 Find out more by listening to this episode of RN First Bite. More This [series episode segment] has image,

Information about our food during this period also came from unexpected sources including the diaries written by prisoners of war during WWII. In an environment where deprivation of liberty also meant deprivation of food, it was meals from home that featured prominently in their yearning for freedom.

‘I found there was a lot of affection for regional seafood dishes, for steak, for that sort of thing, but there is also a lot of local desserts, sweets, regional tropical fruits,’ Junor says.

‘Melbourne has the best beer, Cairns has the best beer. In Melbourne there is this little cafe that does American style pies whereas up in NSW we have the best Chinese restaurants in Parramatta.’

‘It is interesting because there is a great regional diversity, and there is a lot of parochial pride.’

Listen to the follow up to this story, You speak out against bland! Take your place at the table and enjoy a First Bite of the cultural, social, scientific, historical and sensual world of food.



