What Did People Eat In The 1950's

Justamum

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

It was more common than you would believe to see people walking around bandy-legged after having developed rickets in childhood. No free school milk!

There was free school milk from the 1944 Education Act for all school children. In 1968 it was removed from secondary schools. I think there was always more rickets in cities which had a more smoggy atmosphere as they didn't get as much sunlight filtering down. I wouldn't be surprised if rickets didn't make a come-back with children spending all their time inside on the computers, and when they do go out, being smothered in sun block!

My mum had free school milk, but was excused from drinking it, and got hot Bovril instead as the milk made her sick! I remember having to drink the disgusting, warm white stuff when I was at school too

Boodle wrote: »

I always thought it was a regional thing. Reason we call the meals the names we do: we have four meals a day, the third being a smaller meal at tea time, therefore we have to say lunch at noon and dinner in the evening. If we used dinner for noontime, what would we call the evening meal if it isn't late enough for supper?

We always called the meals breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. My DH was brought up in 'foreign parts' (OK then Swaziland :rotfl:) and for him 'tea' is a drink :rotfl:

Justamum

JackieO wrote: »

Tuesdays: spam fritters (sliced spam dipped in batter and fried with HM chips and peas

Spam fritters - we had those at my first secondary school, once a week for school dinners. Like oil slicks they were. Revolting!

JackieO wrote: »

We also had tinned prunes and custard as a pud now and again

Junior school puddings! I never liked them because I didn't like the way the syrup from the prunes separated the custard. I love prunes now, but the dried ones in packets.

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My dad used to have a slice of bread and butter with every meal - even roast dinners - when we were growing up. I don't know when he stopped, but I think I'd left home by then (in my 20s). There was always a big tub of dripping in the fridge too, and my dad would often have that on his bread. I tried it once but didn't like it.

Our meals in the 60s and 70s were always home-cooked from scratch. From about the age of 10 my mum would have to take it in turns on a Sunday to stay back from church and cook a roast dinner for the whole family, so she was a good cook. I didn't always like what we had, but we had to eat it as there wasn't much money coming in.

We had things like stew (wasn't keen), sausage and beans (I've never liked very fatty food, and sausages were no exception. Pork also never agreed with me, and I would end up with the most excruciating stomach pains after eating it, but I didn't realise what caused it until many years later. Didn't like baked beans either, but don't mind them on rare occasions now), meat and potato pie, which was really potato pie with a bit of meat thrown in to stretch it out. Steak and kidney (kidneys _pale_ ), finnan haddock, cooked in milk with a poached egg on top (not a fish lover ). Even if I didn't like what I was given, we had to eat it or go hungry.

For puddings we would have banana custard - bananas chopped up into custard - she'd make a huge bowl of it and every last scrap would be eaten. Rice pudding - I've never been any good at making it unfortunately as I've always loved it. Lemon meringue pies sometimes on a Sunday, which were always nice (I love lemon anything), apple pies or crumbles. Does anyone else remember Rice Creamola? I think it was just ground rice which you cooked with milk, but it had an added flavour. It was very nice though.

Justamum

WeegieWumman wrote: »

OMG! I'd completely forgotten about 'Camp Coffee' which was a liquid in a bottle.

I'm sure you can still get that. It's mainly chicory I think, with not much actual coffee in it (a bit like the instant coffee you can buy in South Africa which is mainly chicory but in granule form)

Farway

HeatherintheHills wrote: »

My mum was a terrible cook so my memories of 50's food are mostly very, very bad!

But I have some good memories too.

I did not grow up in a pit village, very much soft southerner in the 1940s / 50s . But my mum was also an awful cook, and when fish fingers and tinned tomatoes arrived this was her & our salvation

Luckily my Nan was a good cook [from being "in service" as a cook in a "big house"] so tasty stews with dumplings were available in the school summer holidays

Camp coffee was a treat round my Nan's, made with milk. How about dandelion coffee? Awful bitter stuff but I guess it was cheap & not rationed

Breakfast was cereal or porridge with a blob of marmalade

Bread & dripping, raw rhubarb dipped in sugar all were fed to me

Fish & chips, very rare, no chippy near us, maybe 3 penn'orth of chips whilst waiting for the bus home from Nan's, and possibly a "Beechnut" chewing gum from the machine nearby

Despite my mother's best efforts I do mainly cook using basic fresh ingredients

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

You can indeed still buy Camp Coffee. I have some in the cupboard at the moment and either make it hot for a treat with some cake, or cold, whizzed up with crushed ice for what Starbuck's or Costa would bung some squirty cream on the top and flog for about a fiver as a frappucino.


Never did like normal instant coffee much, only really like proper coffee or the stuff with chicory.

vodkawitch1

I think a lot depended on the family income. We had porridge for breakfast, school dinners at lunch time and even throughout school holidays. Tea was something with potatoes, spam or brawn usually or a stew. Homemade cake or rice pudding at weekends. I grew up in inner city Liverpool and we didn`t have a garden. This was late fifties throughout early 60`s I

Sunday tea was homemade cakes, jellies and sandwiches and fruit. We walked everywhere though and I think that kept us all fit. Not everyone seemed well fed in our school.

oldtractor

bearcub wrote: »

Oo, yes, bread and dripping! Beef dripping, with that rich jelly at the bottom of the basin. Oh how wonderful was that!

:j:j:j I love dripping butties :j:j:j:j:j
we've just had a "tea"; must have been this thread............
big pot of tea HM scones and HM jam ;honey; cucumber sandwiches and cheese sandwiches [ triangles, crusts removed ] ;and boiled eggs.
Also a bottle of cherry aid and gingerbeer. Heavenly.:D

grandma247

What an interesting thread. I was born at the end of 55 and my main memories are tomatoes grown by my grandfather,cakes and fruit pies baked by my grandma in an oven at the side of the fire as well as pobs which have already been mentioned and Andrews liver salts

My father signed up as a regular soldier at some stage in the 50's after he had done his national service and we spent almost the rest of my childhood abroad with just short stays here between postings. I learned to love rice, curries and Chinese food and we always had lots of salads and other veg as well as exotic fruits. Home made cakes were always available for tea times. Sunday was always roast with all the trimmings with bread pudding for afters, cold roast sandwiches, salad and birds trifle and cakes for Sunday tea.
Tangerines were only ever seen at Christmas and I still feel strange seeing them at other times.

All the forces schools I went to had fab lunches.It was a bit of a letdown when I came back here for my last year of school. Horrible wet cabbage, white frothy stuff they called custard, yeuch!

monnagran

I guess those of us born before the war and brought up in the forties greeted the fifties and the gradual end of rationing with relief. When stuff started coming into the shops that we had only heard about and never tasted it was exciting. I can still remember what I thought ice cream was going to taste like. Mum had described it but for some reason I hadn't realised that it was going to be wet and had imagined it dry and powdery but cold.

Mum was a good cook and enjoyed experimenting as new products arrived in the shops. Fortunately we had a fair sized garden so all fruit and veg, salad stuff etc was home grown. And we had chickens so plenty of eggs.
Meals followed a pattern. A roast at the weekend which was stretched to cold with fried potatoes and pickle the next day, then stew, followed by mince, so one joint lasted us 4 days. The other 3 days were fish and chips, sausages, liver, bacon and eggs, spam and salad, or one of Mum's concoctions. And always, always a pudding, rice, a fruit pie, fruit pudding, crumbles, suet pudding, treacle sponge, jam tart.............and custard, of course. On roast dinner days Mum made extra yorkshire pudding that we had after dinner with golden syrup. Tea was bread and butter with HM jam, paste, tomatoes, cheese, (anyone remember 'sunny spread'?) and HM cake.
Tea was my favourite meal as I wasn't a lover of meat and would still live on cheese sandwiches if I could.

I went off to college in the fifties and mass catering was a shock. Everything seemed to taste the same and there wasn't much of it. Breakfast consisted of half a slice of toast with scrambled egg or baked beans or one slice of bacon on half a slice of fried bread. Lunches were horrible. I remember one meal that was completely white, boiled fish, parsley sauce, butter beans and mashed potato, followed by rice pudding. I wonder whose imaginative idea that was.
I used to dream of Mum's home cooking which was always tasty - she was one of the only people I knew who used herbs in her food.

Anyway, we all survived and having been brought up that way I still cook from scratch and have always been suspicious of food produced in a factory. Both my sons learned to cook from watching and helping me and have both carried on cooking for their families - much to the relief of their wives.

And I still love ice cream, even though it's wet!

Miss_Havisham

Mum's menus never changed from week to week:

Sunday lunch - roast beef, lamb or pork (chickens were expensive and seasonal)

Monday dinner - cold meat left over from Sun roast, boiled potatos and fresh veg (quick dinner because Monday was laundry day !)

Tues dinner - shepherds pie made from scratch, with veg - my favourite as Mum always bought good quality mince (or sometimes she minced beef using a Spong mincer)

Weds - lamb stew. I didn't like stewed meat so I just had the gravy and veg

Thurs - "mixed grill" bacon, egg, sausage and mushroom with fried potatoes

Fri - cod and chips. Mum made both from scratch and I was always jealous of friends whose mums bought from the fish and chip shop.

Puds: apple pie, jam tarts, rice pudding (all home-made), tinned pears, tinned peaches or tinned fruit salad (little bits of pear/peach/grapes with the odd bit of glace cherry which all 3 of us kids used to fight over !) Summer treat was fresh strawberries with Carnation evaporated milk. The strawbs were grown locally, ripened in the sun and really sweet. They were in season for only a few weeks.

Soup - only ever Heinz Cream of Tomato or Knorr Chicken Noodle

Treats were mainly biscuits from Woolworths - my faves were pink wafers, and for birthday parties we were allowed iced gens - tiny bikkies topped with hard icing.

I have vivid memories of our food and Mum's cooking in the 1950's and 60's. I don't know if today's youngsters will have similar memories in 50 years time ?