Whatever happened to Sunday lunch?
The thought occurred to me when my wife Maria said last Sunday: “What shall we eat today?”
A decade or so ago the choice might have been between beef, chicken or lamb with the unspoken understanding that it would come with veg, roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings.
That was the Sunday tradition. But not any more.
My earliest memories are of my grandma, mother and Auntie Doris spending hours cooking in sauna conditions, sweat running off them and the windows, and Raise A Laugh or Family Favourites playing on the Light Programme.
To remain hydrated they would share share a bottle or two of Tetley’s Family Ale that were kept on the cellar steps to stay cool and, if I was lucky, I’d get a shandy.
Pubs closed at 2pm on Sundays and my father and uncles would have gone for a drink with the warning: “The Yorkshires will be on the table at twenty past.”
No-one ever wanted to miss my Grandma’s Yorkshires. No-one was ever late home.
The smells coming from the oven had my nose raised like a Bisto kid and the meal was the highlight of the week because the whole family would sit down to eat.
A roast beef dinner has been synonymous with the British for centuries.
The French nicknamed Brits rosbifs and the Yeoman of the Guard have been known as beefeaters since 1485 (or thereabouts).
The tradition may have started in medieval times. One theory is that serfs, who had served their masters the rest of the week, would practice their military skills after church and be rewarded with with ale and meat roasted on a spit.
Frenchman Henri Misson wrote of his experiences of London in the 17th century: “It is a common practice, even among people of good substance, to have a huge piece of roast beef on Sundays of which they stuff until they can swallow no more, and eat the rest cold, without any other victuals, the other six days of the week.”
Nothing wrong with that. If we had a roast joint on a Sunday, the leftover meat was always eaten cold on Mondays, usually with chips and gravy.
Dining habits started changing in the 1960s and 70s.
People had more money in their pockets and it was a novelty to eat out. Pubs opened restaurants and served meals. Berni Inns became a dining experience and clubs wanting a late night license offered chicken in a basket.
Today, every town has an amazing choice of restaurants and food from around the world.
But a few years ago, the best the High Street had to offer would be a Wimpy Bar or a fish and chip shop.
Wimpy was established 30 years before the UK saw McDonald’s and when it first opened in Manchester, where I grew up, in the late 1950s the queues went around the block. It was a harbinger of what was to come.
Society has changed. Wives are no longer prepared to stay at home cooking while menfolk go to the pub.
There is greater choice, meals need not take hours to prepare and pubs, that can now stay open all day, offer the traditional Sunday roast, not just on Sundays, but at carveries across the country most days of the week.
The practice of a roast dinner died out at our house because my wife eats very little meat and, usually, there are just the two of us.
Last Sunday, I had steak and my wife had prawns for lunch. But we still do, on occasions, cook the full monte with all the trimmings, even though it’s only me that gets stuck into the joint of salmon cut beef.
The cold cut that’s left can last me for days.
It’s a dying tradition that’s my guilty pleasure.
