I was used to a brisket-a-cheap; nutritious cut of beef taken from the chest. It was a comforting shade of brown, veined with darker brown and warmly creamy fat...
Joan Fordham
My name is Joan Stella Fordham, 78 years old, now living in lovely, laughing, leafy Leeds. I was brought up in Rawsmarsh, Rotherham, but an eagerly frequent visitor of Leeds.
My earliest memory was of a visit to the British Restaurant in Leeds Town Hall Crypt in the late 1940s. For the moderate price of nine old pence (240 to the pound) you could buy a hot meal without even using your precious ration book coupons. These British Restaurants were a project of the earnest Lord Woolton, promoter of a worthy vegetable pie, much denigrated by a hungry nation unconverted to the virtues of vegetarianism.
Deservedly popular, the queues were long and good natured. No one swore in front of women or children although many were too hungry or listless to engage in lively conversation. As a small child I mostly remember a forest of legs invariably dressed in old, drab, serviceable cloth or sporting gravy browning and hand drawn seams in an unconvincing attempt at imitation stockings. Legs bare of adornment evidently belonging to the reprehensibly slatternly or those mysteriously designated ‘no better than she should be.’
On this particular day we were to be given potato, swede, carrot and brisket. I was used to a brisket-a-cheap; nutritious cut of beef taken from the chest. It was a comforting shade of brown, veined with darker brown and warmly creamy fat deboned and firmly pressed in a pudding basin by a small pyramid of weights. Thinly sliced, it was delicious.
After a long wait amongst the legs of Leeds, we were given our meal – potato, turnip, swede and brisket which was a definite shade of pink.
‘Why is the brisket pink, Dad?’
‘It’s just the saltpetre’, he replied.
Saltpetre, saltpetre, saltpetre; a new word redolent with magic. I rolled it round and round my mouth, tasting it. The word tasted better than the meat with its strange tannic taste. Only hunger could add relish to pink brisket.
Leeds is now a vibrant, busy city with restaurants from every far-flung part of the world, offering every dish of which you have heard – other than pink brisket!