I remember reading the book "The Man Who Saved Britain" [0] (a history of Bond novels & movies) and the author was describing some of the exotic foods, such as an avocado, being something the readers were unlikely to experience in a world of currency controls and import restrictions. One thing that pops up in that book is why the package tour industry was invented and how it applied to Goldfinger.
My suspicion is that some of those "exotics" appeared only in novels and the cookbook authors never expected their readers to ever be able to make the items.
When I was a kid in my rural Canadian town, many things taken for granted today were just not in grocery stores. Primarily I don't recall seeing cantaloupes ever, and I would be surprised if avocados were there. Heck I recall there only being one or two types of onion, typically, and lots of things were only available in season.
I imagine stores in the "big city" might have had some of these things, or maybe only specialty stores? Yet even today if I buy apples "out of season", they taste dry and tasteless. Makes sense considering how they arrived from South America or whatever.
As a test I've bought apples from the local farmer at perfect ripeness, stored them in a cold room, and they taste far better than apples, out of season, in the grocery store. So not stocking apples from South America historically made sense, especially in a rural area, where every family I knew bought a bushel or two of apples in season, and put them in a cold room.
It's so weird. People are quite concerned about environmental concerns, then don't buy and store things when in season. Then they buy those same things from 1/2 the planet away, and wonder why all the shipping happens.
And on top of all this, a bushel of apples is far cheaper at the farmer, than buying them piecemeal at the grocery store.
My suspicion is that some of those "exotics" appeared only in novels and the cookbook authors never expected their readers to ever be able to make the items.
0 - https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Saved-Britain-Disturbing/dp/0...