What Did People Eat In The 1950's

hermum

Thought of something else, mostly our biscuits were broken ones & bought by the pound, sometimes we'd be really lucky & have some cream ones in there.
One evening a week a chip van used to stop in our road & we'd have chips for supper wrapped in newspaper.
Pasty plate pie, nan called top & bottom, she also did an egg & bacon top & bottom.
Did everyone else just have a bath & hair wash on a Sunday? We always had our nails cut every Sunday as well, which could be quite painful as they hasn't really recovered from being hacked at the previous week.

Mojisola

In the summer we sometimes had ice cream for pudding after Sunday dinner. We didn't have a fridge so, while the plates were cleared away, one of us would run down to the corner shop with a bag and a newspaper. The block of ice cream was wrapped in the newspaper to keep it cold and we rushed home with great anticipation where everyone else was waiting round the table.

Kiwisaver_2

I don't think much changed in British culinary / eating habits from through the 50s / 60s and a good bit of the 70s. I'm a child of the mid sixties and we ate most of the things already mentioned.

We were a breakfast, dinner, tea and supper family. Dinner for us kids was usually at school and never any argument that it was 'dinner'; you were given dinner money on a Monday to buy five dinner tickets for the week.

Tea was usually between 5 and 6pm and meant sandwiches, soup, salad or something on toast, followed by pudding or cake of some kind. My father worked shifts so not unusual that he had a different meal to us or we had to wait until after six for him to come home. Friends and family only ever came round for 'tea' and never would have been invited to come for dinner.

Supper would depend upon father's 'demands' :eek: if he was hungry then there might occasionally be cheese on toast, a buttered crumpet or somesuch offered with a milky drink before bedtime.

Sunday 'dinner' was a roast at about 2pm and then this would be later followed by Sunday tea, Sunday tea was usually something with bread, butter and salad, perhaps some shellfish or shrimps, or tinned meat. My dad was quite the fisherman and used to go to the beach to get shellfish, such as cockles and mussels or he'd quite often bring home a crab. When I think back though to portion sizes: one tin of fruit and one tin of evap or a titchy tin of sterilised cream was shared between five people.

Things did change though later on when my mum started to go to work in mid 70s. School dinners were ditched in favour of either lunch at home or a packed lunch and the family meal was a dinner in the evening (although I am sure we still called it tea). I would be left instructions to start the tea for her at 5pm, which usually meant switching on the gas under the pan of potatoes or whatever she had set out on the stove.

Personally I never thought in terms of breakfast, lunch and dinner until I myself stared work in the early eighties. Later on when we emigrated to NZ, it seemed we went back in time 30 years to a place where people often refer to their main evening meal as 'tea'.

Generally though people here eat their evening meals at a much earlier time than what I consider proper for 'dinner' so it seems fitting when they say 'we're going out for tea' at 6pm. :rotfl:

unclebryn_2

Does anyone remember some sort of freeze dried peas in late 60s/early 70's? i've got the feeling they were Smedleys and as I recall you just boiled them to rehydrate, so they were more like fresh peas rather than dried peas. I can remember being fascinated by these wrinkley little bullets, but have no recollection how they tasted.
Also, as a special special treat Lyon's Maid Peach Melba ice-cream?? Raspberry ripple with a big blob of peach in the middle. mmmmmmmmm. only remember having it a couple of times but can still taste that!


As other posters have said it wasn't all joy and bliss and bad things did go on, but it's good through this thread to remember innocent pleasures.

Evie74_2

I am loving this thread! I'm a child of the 70s but reading through these has brought back memories of my grandparents and the time I spent with them as a child.

They grew all their own fruit and veg and I can remember sitting on their back step shelling peas for Sunday dinner, and helping dig potatoes and carrots in the garden. I learnt to make jam and preserves from them as they would always seem to have far too much fruit which they would then bottle or make into jam to see them through the winter.

My grandma's storecupboard was a sight to behold - they lived in a very remote area and would get cut off for weeks in bad weather, so she always had plenty of supplies at the ready. The wardrobe in "my" bedroom was always filled to the brim with tins and dried pulses and there was a huge box on the top which was full of jams and pickles.

Looking back, they lived very simply, but always seemed to be very content. I loved going to visit them, and they taught me so much - I'm very much in their debt.

Evie xx

mardatha

We can all try our hardest to recreate that mindset Evie

WelshWoofer

I was born in 1971 but my parents and grandparents lived very close to each other and I spent a lot of time with grandparents too.
Perhaps its a Welsh thing but we still have Breakfast, Dinner and Tea and I've never had Supper in my life! In our house, you had your tea when dad got home from work and it was a proper cooked meal (you could tell what day it was by what we had for tea - helpful if you'd woken up from a coma I suppose!).

My mum baked every Sunday morning (and still does) when the meat was in for dinner and made scones, a fruit cake, a jam sponge and some little cakes for packed lunches like fairy cakes or jam tarts using up the leftover stuff from the "big" cakes or tarts.

Just a quick question - was anyone a vegetarian in the 50s and 60s? I stopped eating meat at 16 (around 1987 ish) and was thought of as a teenage radical in the valley that I grew up in:rotfl:! 25 years later I'm still a veggie and its much easier to eat these days but what did veggies eat then?

thriftwizard

Evie74 wrote: »

I'm a child of the 70s but reading through these has brought back memories of my grandparents and the time I spent with them as a child.

They grew all their own fruit and veg and I can remember sitting on their back step shelling peas for Sunday dinner, and helping dig potatoes and carrots in the garden. I learnt to make jam and preserves from them as they would always seem to have far too much fruit which they would then bottle or make into jam to see them through the winter.

My grandma's storecupboard was a sight to behold - they lived in a very remote area and would get cut off for weeks in bad weather, so she always had plenty of supplies at the ready. The wardrobe in "my" bedroom was always filled to the brim with tins and dried pulses and there was a huge box on the top which was full of jams and pickles.

Looking back, they lived very simply, but always seemed to be very content. I loved going to visit them, and they taught me so much - I'm very much in their debt.

Evie xx

I was born in the late 50s and have similar memories; we lived on the edge of Dartmoor and thanks to my Dad's hard work in our big garden as well as his "day" job, I think we actually ate very well although we weren't well-off. When the "big snow" came on Boxing Day '62, our remote village was cut off for several weeks; there was still a giant snowball slowly melting on the edge of our lawn on Easter Day. But - no-one starved, no-one died of the cold - in houses with no double-glazing or central heating, no fridges, no hot water even. People had larders & lots of preserves, and checked up on their neighbours & shared. Our scullery (food prep area, separate from the rest of the kitchen where the actual cooking was done) was full of pregnant & lambing sheep & the shepherd - an almost-completely-silent man with an enormous smile that made his face look as if the sun had suddenly come out - slept in one of the outhouses for the duration. We had been snowed in with 3 guests who were unable to get home to Cornwall for several weeks, and the village shop had no supplies, but my mother coped (with a 3 month old baby & no heating) magnificently & we didn't go hungry - though we did get fed up with porridge! Our eggs & "spare" cockerels (always raised for the butcher anyway, & bartered for other meats) were amongst the locally-produced supplies that fed the entire village.

However, my Mum actually hated living in the country, preserving & cooking, and did her level best to ensure I'd never "have" to do the same - but there's a fair bit of my Dad in me too, so I learnt anyway, enjoy both cooking & preserving & would kill for a bigger garden...

When I look back to my schooldays, especially once we'd moved into Devonport, there clearly were a few kids who weren't being well-fed or cared for; maybe the easy availability of sugary cereals, chicken nuggets & burgers nowadays is a step forward for kids who would otherwise probably not get anything at all. But they still don't taste anything like "real food to me...

mardatha

I live in a village like that now TW, and I love it. But thankfully no lambing ewes in the back kitchen - although I have been in houses that did have, and one with a basket of day old chicks in front of the Aga

Chris25

HeatherintheHills wrote: »

Oooh! yes Did you get sticks of rhubarb with a paper twist of sugar to dip it in? That was our sweeties :rotfl:

.

On sunny days (and the summer was always hot then, wasn't it )I used to lounge on a deckchair beside the rhubarb patch, sugar bowl in hand & just pick & dip - lovely!

There was lots of butter, milk and eggs; brown eggs were always the best ones to go for - they were thought to be much better for you And usually there were two, with cosies if they were boiled! And whenever we had a salad, the boiled egg had to be sliced not quartered!

Usually only had milk or water to drink (as a luxury, freshly squeezed tangerines at Christmas), occasionally orange squash.

For some weird reason, I've just remembered that my mum used to boil the potatoes unpeeled & then when cooked, they were heaped into a bowl in the middle of the table & we peeled them onto our side plates.