From Making Chicken Mash to Cooking for Hundreds

Growing up in rural Ireland during the 1920s and 30s my mother's main tasks around the kitchen were making the mash to feed the hens and saving the water potatoes had been boiled in to get the starch for her grandad's collars. Somehow she was never involved in

cooking the meals for the family. Straining the fresh milk to make sure there were no hairs in it was as near as she came to human food!
When the time came to move out of the family home and earn a living her aunt took her to England to a job as a ward maid in the local hospital in the North East. There she lived in 'digs' and had her meals provided for her. 
In 1940 she met, fell head over heels in love with, and married my father. Mary Ellen Lynch became Mary Ellen Chicken within a few months of their first meeting. Her new life meant a move away from the place she'd come to know down to Teesside where Dad was working. She often said that she'd never even boiled an egg before they married. Luckily she had a wonderful next-door neighbour who told her how to make the meals she needed to prepare and they neither starved nor were poisoned. 
Imagine her amazement when her husband of a few weeks came home from work one day and proudly informed her that he'd got her a job to help the war effort - assistant cook in the works canteen. This was an engineering factory with hundreds of men working from 7.30am to 5pm and needing a hot midday meal, nutritious, affordable and achievable in line with rationing. Typical of Mum, she didn't bat an eyelid, just rolled up her sleeves and got on with it. For someone who always said she wasn't clever, she had a phenomenal ability to pick up skills in the kitchen from being shown once.  The one time she "cheated" was when the head cook delegated to her the cooking of the Christmas cake that would be needed. Claiming that she'd rather do it in her own oven to be sure of the temperature she took the ingredients home with her and promptly enlisted her neighbour to help her make it. The resulting cake ensured it was her job for the next few years!
Of course, in those days it wasn't the done thing to carry on working when pregnant, let alone go back when the baby was a few months old so this wasn't a long-term career. But she never lost those skills and that love of cooking. Putting a meal on the table for her family was one of the joys of her life.

Ask my children what they remember of Grandma and the answer is always the same - Cheese and Onion Flan. It was always just coming out of the oven as we arrived for lunch or tea, but there was never a recipe written down. One day when shopping she went into Marks and Spencer to see if they had anything interesting. She spotted in the chiller compartment something she hadn't seen before - a savoury tart that looked very appetising. Looking at the price she decided very quickly that it was too expensive for her, but she looked at the ingredients and decided she could make it herself.  A few days later the flan was cooked for the first time - a creamy cheesy filling with soft cooked onion and chopped up ham, some herbs and seasoning, an instant family favourite. Years later she'd cook one without ham for the grandchildren who'd decided not to eat meat, and one with for everyone else. 
No-one who met her in later life would believe that she'd come to married life not knowing how to boil an egg!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
A Favourite Photograph This week's prompt came in the same week as the 10th anniversary of my mother's death so it seemed appropriate to share this photograph, one of the nicest ones I have of her. It was taken by one of her nephews who visited from Ireland less than 6 months before she died. It captures perfectly her lovely smile. I know she'd be saying to him "What on earth are you doing with that camera".  He had copies of it made and gave them to my sister and me before the funeral. It now sits on top of the piano near the dining table and her smile is there with us at every meal.  She was an amazing woman, though also very ordinary. Her childhood was spent on a very small farm in Ireland and as a teenager she made the journey to England where her aunt arranged a job in the local hospital as a ward maid - making beds, emptying bed pans, scrubbing floors, all the jobs that are needed to keep a hospital clean and operational but none of them exciting or easy. A ...
Read more

The First Chicken to win a VC

George Bell Chicken was born in March 1833 in Howden Pans, close to Wallsend in Northumberland. His father, George, was a mariner and George Bell followed in his footsteps. It seems he was a natural, as he was certified Competent as Only Mate shortly before his 18th birthday and by the time he was 20 he'd been certified as a Master. His travels as mate took him from his native Tyneside to the West Coast of America, Valparaiso, the Baltic and Copenhagen.  As Captain of the Hastings he travelled to Madras and then to Calcutta. In 1855 he transferred to the East India Company, or the Indian Navy - there is some confusion over the details. Quite what he did for the next couple of years is unclear, but he saw in the Indian Mutiny or Rebellion of 1857-8 an opportunity to win a name for himself. He is said to have declared an intention to win a medal.   The book "The Victoria Cross at Sea" by John Winton, published in 1978 gives this description of his success: "On 27 th  S...
Read more
 Origins Where does the name come from? Many British surnames have an obvious origin: some are related to a trade or craft like Butcher, Baker etc; others are related to a place and others to a physical attribute like red hair or being tall or small. But what am I to read into Chicken as a name? Is it related to being a poultry keeper? Or is it, as some have suggested, related to being as brave (or not!) as a chicken? Or did it arrive in England with the Norman invasion as a corruption of Chicon? I'm no closer to knowing the answer to that question than I was when I started on this family tree research more than 2 decades ago. What I do know is that it is found in much of the English-speaking world though it's still not a very common name. Some of those in other countries are definitely descendants of families that I've traced here in England. Others have no known link at present. The search is endlessly fascinating, and I fully accept that I might never know the answer. #5...
Read more