What Did People Eat In The 1950's

bearcub

What a wonderful topic! I was a 50s child, too. My parents had very little money, so Dad got fed first as the wage-earner, then us two kids, then Mum. As a result, Mum has ongoing problems with her bones now. I can remember porridge and /or toast for breakfast, always school dinners, and a high tea - which would have been something like bacon or sausage and egg, baked beans on toast, egg on toast. As we got older, we'd have stews (yuk!), or something with homemade chips or jacket potatoes. As my dislike (to the point that I'd heave) of stewed lamb or beef increased, poor Mum part-cooked the meat, then put some of it in to the stewpot with the veg for her and my sister, while Dad and I got some of the meat with separately cooked veg. Only now do I realise what a pain it must have been for her.

At weekends, there would always be a roast, with roasted potatoes, and two types of veg. And, there was always a filling pud afterwards - something like apple pie and custard, or a stewmed pudding. I remember always wanting more pud, but never had enough room after the roast! When we had visitors for Sunday tea, we'd have salad, bread and butter (or probably margarine) with the special treat of shrimps (couldn't afford prawns) and winkles, which had to be taken out of their shells with a pin.

HeatherintheHills

Oooh! yes manchestermargo, I forgot about bread and dripping and sugar butties. Did you get sticks of rhubarb with a paper twist of sugar to dip it in? That was our sweeties :rotfl:

It wasn't that healthy a diet, but there was little or no between meals snacking. I remember being ravenous when I got out of school, even though I'd been home for a proper dinner at lunchtime.

manchestermargo

Certainly do remember raw rhubarb dipped in sugar Heatherinthehills, usually got our rhubarb straight from the farmers field:o

bearcub

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

Itismehonest

bearcub wrote: »

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

Shhhhhh! You're making my mouth water! :rotfl:
Dunking bread in the pan juices was always one of my childhood failings.
It was the savoury toothed equivalent of licking the bowl during cake making.

chirpychick

Itismehonest wrote: »

Shhhhhh! You're making my mouth water! :rotfl:
Dunking bread in the pan juices was always one of my childhood failings.
It was the savoury toothed equivalent of licking the bowl during cake making.

LOL that sounds so disgusting to me!! :rotfl:

miss_emmajane

I am really enjoying reading this, I am a child of the 80s but my Mum did all our cooking from scratch as we weren't a well of family - I am doing the same now

mardatha

Can you still get dripping?

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

You should also bear in mind that, just as now, not everybody had a mum that lavished her time and attention upon preparing wonderful fresh foods for all the family - whilst the husband (and mum) might have dined upon meat, pies, savoury suet puddings and vegetables, the kids may have been fed on a slice of bread, a blob of margarine (butter being too good for children) and jam almost every day of the week. Having had a slice of toast for breakfast already.

Milk was also expensive and the children may not have been allowed to waste it by drinking it, and the only vegetables they may have got were tinned marrowfat peas, tinned carrots and if lucky, fresh potatoes.

Sunday dinner, when everybody was there would be, for many kids, the only day of the week where they got the same as the parents and elder (working) sons. Most likely chicken, the youngest getting the wings, then going up the ages until the working males got the breasts. This would also be the only day that they got a pudding and they would be permitted a sandwich at teatime if they were lucky.

A baked cake would be for a birthday or Christmas, not any other time, in the same way that crisps and sweets were rarely seen treats.

Obviously this wasn't everybody's parents that did that kind of thing. Not everybody thought that the working male deserved to be fed healthily but that the children didn't need anything much - and often, the man didn't even realise that the children weren't getting fed as well as he was.



But enough did that school meals were thought to be an absolute necessity, perhaps partly because women did not have access to safe, reliable contraception and therefore tended to have much larger families at a much younger age, and could be somewhat overwhelmed, may have resented them, and may not have been able to feed both husband and children with the one wagepacket.

So when you hear of the carefully prepared and super healthy (and quite high calorie) meals, they were the best of the times. There were still the types who would nowdays halfheartedly chuck a Basics nugget or two at a child to stop them keeling over from starvation.



The prospect of peeling spuds, spending whole days shopping, green potatoes, having to grow stuff, not being able to store everything easily - that led to the supermarkets being wholeheartedly embraced, as not everyone was the domestic paragon suggested in the media.

[Deleted User]

hot gravy and bread
warm milk with bread and sugar
bacon offcuts, well fried and allowed to cool and spread on bread, lovely.
sugar sandwiches
potatoes with sour milk (natural, like yoghurt)
stampot (mashed carrots, onions and potatoes)
bacon and egg was a highlight
brawn made from half a pigs head
stews
I remember when I had my first slice of toast cooked under a grill when a neighbour invited me in, before that we had toast done with a fork over a gas ring

going out with a dolls pram to help my mum carry food every single day. We didn`t have a garden so could grow nothing

I never tasted a roast joint until I went to college in 1966 and suddenly I had 4 meals a day and my waste expanded from 22". Cooked breakfast, 2 course lunch, jam sandwiches and cake for tea and high tea of 3 courses. I didn`t know I was born but I was far far healthier before.

I learnt to cook very early and could cook a stew in a pressure cooker at 10 and I was a very good cake maker too, scouring for recipes that only used up to one egg

At the same time, I used to run errands for the lady over the road who bought a lot of best cod for her cats