Soup and pudding was the worst dinner ever, I hated soup and pudding days.
Don’t know if this was common or not but we had 1970s soup-meals designed around a volcano built from mashed potatoes! They were amazing. Oxtail soup poured into a mash volcano.
Then a Heinz pud for pudding. Horses for courses.
Then, at the end of the decade and with the advent of Smash (instant mash) our ‘soup volcano‘ treat literally dissolved before our eyes. Why, mom? Why? Smash wasn’t cheaper than potatoes. It was just crappier and easier.
Proper mash holds up, even covered in soup. Even better if lumpy. It combines the awesome tastes of good solid potato mash with the taste of the (still mostly liquid) soup. Like a meal!
Instant mash does not hold up. It dissolves quickly, making the soup thicker yet somehow more tasteless.
It was with this disappointment that I first began to suspect much of ‘progress’.
As the 80s were gearing up to deliver such robotic blandness, luck saw a curry-craze on the horizon. Mr Daves? Yo Min Li? Some of you will know 😉