What Did People Eat In The 1950's

westcoastscot

I still love syrup sandwiches! Do you remember blancmange? I still make this every couple of days here. I make yoghurt for those of us that eat dairy, blancmange for the dairy free.

As some of you know I lived on one of the scottish islands for many years prior to living on the mainland - it used to make us laugh when we saw programmes "about the old days" -cooking on a range, all home grown and home - made, milking the goat each morning for milk for breakfast - it very much described our lives. We don't live like that now - we came to the mainland in 2004, but did until then. Now I'm still enamoured by reliable electricity, plenty of clean running water and street lights, but apart from that we live very simply compared to most - eating seasonally and home grown where possible - we purchase milk now so have stopped making cheese and toffee spread:-) (no surplus) We heat the house with a wood stove and can cook in and under it if need be - we have a cast iron toastie-maker, and make our toast over the flames.
It's a lovely way to live - we look forward to the seasons - rhubarb, fresh peas, soft fruits, winter soups, venison, lamb, fresh eggs, plain cakes year around but "special" cakes for birthdays and at christmas. We do this in a terraced house. Not much difference to how I grew up really - we've embraced new technology where it will enhance our lives, and i've mostly chosen to ignore the rest although my children seem to be able to combine the modern and traditional well.

Its a really interesting thread OP - loving hearing about how other people live and grew up

WCS

mardatha

If you can live without gadgets then you don't have any fear of not being able to afford them, or panic or what to do when they break.
So why did everybody stop calling dinner dinner and call it lunch instead? It always makes me fall about and think of Edwina and Patsy in AbFab
I have never had bread and dripping either but my mum did frying steak and onions in it and it was brown and lovely. Next door to us we had an Irish family of 6 kids, and they lived on it plus "sugar pieces".
Sorry, I seem to have wandered OT!

BitterAndTwisted

Before people were crammed into high-rise flats most people had a garden. The back one was mostly devoted to growing veg. Buying it from the shops was expensive and meant lugging it back home. Ordinary working people had no access to fruit and veg out of season.

To my knowledge no-one ever used vegetable oil in cooking, it was all lard. The only olive oil I ever saw was in tiny vials in the chemist. I have no idea what people did with it.

No snacks. We only ever had access to bread and butter outside meal-times and if Mum was feeling generous we might have a smear of jam on it.

Everyone seemed to drink cups of tea with their meals, even the children.

Orange juice was available on the NHS for babies and young children, such was the rarity of citrus fruits in winter-time. Rose-hip cordial was popular for the same reason.

Chicken was a one-a-year-ish treat as it was so expensive.

You could buy one or two rashers of bacon at a time, or a sausage or two from the butchers and no-one raised and eyebrow. The butcher often made the bacon and sausages themselves from animals they had also sourced from local farmers they knew by name and slaughtered themselves out in the back.

Potatoes were bought by the stone and used at every meal bar breakfast. Most people had never heard of pasta and wouldn't have wanted to eat it if they had. Hence the April Fools Day clip on the telly about furriners harvesting spaghetti from trees. Which an enormous number of people fell for.

A "ham salad" meant a slice of ham, two or three lettuce leaves, a slice or two of tomato and the same of cucumber. If you were lucky, some radishises from the garden. No vinaigrette or mayonniase but always salad-cream (Yuk! Not in our house, as my mother was foreign so didn't know what it was, so wouldn't buy it. Same for Marmite which I didn't taste till I was in my teens and Oxo-cubes).

Biscuits could be bought losoe from the grocer's out of metal boxes with glass lids all stacked up. You could buy an ounce or a pound, whatever you wanted. Sugar was bought loose as well.

Sweets or crisps were either a once-a-week treat, or had even more infrequently. Same for ice-creams and fizzy-drinks.

Kids were given cod liver-oil and malt in the winter-time to ward off vitamin-deficiencies and diseases. Of which there were rather a lot. Who has known someone with Scarlet Fever, Rheumatic Fever or Diphtheria lately?

It was very common to see children or adults in calipers after having survived Polio. There were several children in my class at primary school who had to wear them.

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!

Some parts of those Good Old Days were only good if you were quite well-off.

BitterAndTwisted

mardatha wrote: »

So why did everybody stop calling dinner dinner and call it lunch instead? It always makes me fall about and think of Edwina and Patsy in AbFab

They stopped doing it when they all became middle-class, of course. No-one wants to be thought of as Non-U in a U world.

Just watch the eye-brows shoot skywards when someone makes mention of a serviette when they're talking about a dinner-napkin.

Boodle

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

They stopped doing it when they all became middle-class, of course. No-one wants to be thought of as Non-U in a U world.

Just watch the eye-brows shoot skywards when someone makes mention of a serviette when they're talking about a dinner-napkin.

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? No pretence to be middle class... was just a bit of common sense so we didn't get confused I imagine a lot of families are the same when they want to give the children something quite substantial after school to keep them going until the family meal when the second parent arrives home.

Boodle

kittie wrote: »

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

And Kittie and Jojo, your lists made me think of my own childhood in the 80s, early 90s! Mine and my sister's bacon sandwiches were two slices of bread that had been dunked in the frying pan juices and sprinkled with a few bits of crumbled rind. First time I was given a bacon sandwich at a friend's house, I spluttered out in surpise "but it's go bacon in it!" I remember my nanna visiting once a week so the three adults and two children had a tin of mince stretched by loosening with water, 2 tins of marrowfats and milk-loosened mash, plus dad always got a couple sliceds of bread and butter. If my dad served anything up, which he did a bit later on when I was coming home 7pm from 12 hours out at work at age 16 and had made something for himself (mother also out at work), it rarely crossed his mind to offer me any of it and the first evening he did, I gratefully accepted, smelling the tomatoes and frying mushrooms and garlic. He finally came in with his own plate piled high plus masses of bread and butter, and my own few measly pieces in a dessert bowl!

Byatt

My mother was from Tiger Bay, and her father was a great cook...we had pasta (called it macaroni) often, my mother made the most amazing sauce to go with it. Absolutely gorgeous. I can occasionally match it, but it's taken me years.

She also made a Yorkshire pudding which was nothing like a pudding and more like a cake, but I've never been able to make it. It was fab though.

Beans on toast was a proper meal, treats were condensed milk or syrup. The shout of "who wants bacon fat over their potatoes" meant we all said yes please! Mopping up the bacon fat with bread was another joy.

Dripping can be bought in butchers and most supermarkets. I got mine from Mr T.

Sweet rationing ended in 1953 the year I was born.

Oh and toffee apples were sold by housewives from their back door to us eager children with a penny or two (old money) in our grubby hands. I was once mugged for my toffee apple.

Lots of offal, chitterlings (my father loved them), ox tail soup, stews, roasts...usually bread and butter with dinner/tea. Small portions compared to today and no snacking at all. Saturday was treat night when we had bought cake.

westcoastscot

mardatha wrote: »

So why did everybody stop calling dinner dinner and call it lunch instead? It always makes me fall about and think of Edwina and Patsy in AbFab

For me it was when my kids started school - no school dinners - there were only seven kids in the school including my three, so we needed a proper meal at night. Seems to have stuck with us!

Love dripping sandwiches, but haven't had dripping since we stopped having our own meat.

McKneff

My dad used to put a galley pan on the fire and make sheep's head broth.

I had 3 younger brothers and when the fish man came around in his van mum used to buy a pair of kippers, no word of a lie we used to have one eye each to eat. Disgusting I know but that;s the way thngs were. Sometime one of the eyes was missing and me being the oldest had to do without.

Dad used to eat tripe and cow heels.

My Auntie used to make pan hacklety and rice pudding in the oven next to the fire. We had the rice pudding sliced and cold next day.

Skint_yet_Again

Many fond memories of my childhood here ..... in the late 60's / early 70's (!!!) in Yorkshire

Things my gran/mum ate in the 50's were also fed to us as kids

Brawn - made from boiling pigs head
Bread and dripping
Bread and dip - bread dipped in hot bacon fat with ketchup - couldnt afford for us all to have bacon
Bread Pobs - warm milk with bread floating in it sprinkled with sugar
Condensed milk sandwiches
Pigs trotters
Offal - tripe, liver, kidney
Steamed pudding - stodge filler
Yorkshire pudding with jam
Yorkshire pudding with soup
Boiled eggs
Bread and butter - as a meal rather than on the side !!
Rabbit stew - grandad bred rabbits for the pot
Corned beef hash
Pikelets (crumpets)

Things were cheap and filling. All main meals were supplimented with veg from the allotment - potatoes, carrots, cabbage - basic veg.