What Did People Eat In The 1950's

debbiedebt

We didnt have sweets, crisps or any snacks. Homemade jam tarts, biscuits or cake with a cup of milky tea, milk or squash.

We also had "elevenses" at 11 in the morning adults would have a milky cup of camp coffee and us children would have milk and biscuits.

All meals were planned there was no grazing or eating on the run like we do now. I am trying to recreate this lifestyle.

I used to take my Mums list to the village shop and the grocer would pack it up and deliver to the house in the afternoon, we also had baker who delivered fresh bread and would give the kids a currant bun. He carried a large flat basket over his arm and nothing was wrapped. How times have changed! I would also be sent to the butchers to buy a couple of sausages or faggots - this would be daily as we didn't have a fridge until I was about 12.

This is really taking me back to the late 50's - I was born in 1953.

cyclingyorkie

Mrs_Arcanum wrote: »

My Dad always had leftover Yorkshire pud with golden syrup.

This nostalgia has got me rummaging through my Mums Cordon Bleu cookery course from the end of the 60's when people were still having trouble buying fresh garlic & the only pasta you could buy was spaghetti. :eek:

We always had a huge yorkshire pudding - it would be served as a starter ( to fill you up so you didn't eat much meat!) and any left was available as a pudding with sugar and lemon juice....

I remember as a child ( 60's not 50's) that our standard Sunday lunch was beef or lamb ( dad was allergic to chicken!) and that if we had a pudding it was a Heinz tinned one - treacle being the family favourite..... but golly I loved the ginger ones.....

My kids still love the treacle sponge for a treat...

hermum

What a wonderful thread.
I was born in 61 but we lived with my Grandparents for a fair bit of my childhood.
Sundays we always had roast at 1.30pm, Grandad would go out for a couple of pints, his weekly treat. The peas would have been soaked overnight, we'd have swede, cabbage, carrotts, loads of roast potatoes & baked suet pudding.
Sunday tea would then be tinned fruit cocktail & either evaporated milk or clotted cream, bread & butter, usually hovis for Sunday. My Nan used to pick raspberries from the garden in season, still warm from the sun, sprinkle with sugar & crush lightly with a fork as "jam", delicious. Home made cake.
Monday was always cold meat from the roast & bubble & squeak with pickle.
Home made pies were made with a pound of meat & fed 9 of us, we were never hungry but God knows how she used to make it stretch. Potatoes bought by the stone, with the mud on.
Cabbage was eaten at most meals.
Macoroni was always made with the chicken carcass.
Stew & dumplings.
Spam fritters & home made chips.
Friday we always had home made fish, the next door neighbour used to go into the fish market & buy from the boats & bring the fish home wrapped in newspaper for the street.
Saturday was always salad in season, cheese or cold meat, tongue we had a lot, as it was cheap & boiled potatoes.
We had a lot of rabbit, pigeon & offal. Roast stuffed hearts were usually cooked at the same time as breast of lamb, delicious.
All meat juices were poured into the dripping bowl & we would have bread & dripping.
If you were ill you had hot milk with bread & sugar, revolting.
You would never ever eat in the street.
A friend who lived up the road & came from a huge family, about 14 kids used to be allowed to sit on the doorstep & eat her bread & jam after school, I so much wanted to be allowed to do that but food was always ate at the table.
Our meals were probably quite high in saturated fat but we were all active, I didn't know anyone who was driven to school, I only knew a couple of people with cars.
There was no grazing, sweets were a treat, bought with 6d pocket money on a Friday.
I bet we enjoyed those sweets far more than kids do today.
The smell of oranges always make me think of Xmas as that was the only time when we generally had them.
The cuts of meat were always the cheaper tastier ones.
Food tasted better.
Sorry for going on so long.
I now feel all warm & fuzzy inside.
Our butcher sells beef dripping, for whoever was asking if you can still buy it.

Byatt

I thought I had forgotten most of the things from the 50's but this thread makes me go, Oh yes, I remember that, or Yes! we ate that...really, really nostalgic. I have no-one to talk over my past with ...So this is lovely.

patchwork_cat

One must remember of course that just like today there were variations in food eaten. There seems to be a bit of bucolic memories going on here, we were poor, but happy!

What about those mums that went to the dock road pubs on a friday begging their husband not to drink all the money for next weeks food etc. Despite apperances here this was not rare hence why family allowance is paid to mothers.

However people who talk about no one drinking coffee and camp being all that was available - percolators were readily available an iconic 50's item.

unclebryn_2

Thank you Chirpy Chick for starting this post. It's brought back loads of memories. Like HerMum I was born in 1961 and also lived with grandparents. Mine were "in business" in a Welsh mining village, so I guess by comparison, we were fairly well off. Sunday dinner was usually lamb, pork or chicken, and I remember putting the Leo's peas to soak on a Saturday night in what looked to me like a hairnet with two big tablets of bicarb. That would always be eaten at about 1:00pm usually with mash, cabbage or cauliflour and of course the dried peas. There would usually be something like custard tart or a fruit tart afterwards, occasionally as a special treat ice-cream from the local italian cafe.

Tea would be tinned fruit, tinned cream or evaporated milk and bread and butter, and then supper was "fry-up", bubble and squeak, left over peas and gravy and cold meat. (I'd never sleep after that load now!) I could cook a sunday dinner on my own by the time I was 9.

As there were 4 small infant schools in the village, everyone went either home or to grans or aunties for lunch (dinner). Our main meal was usually then with my grandparents as they'd close over "dinner hour", with my mother cooking again for my dad when he came home from work about 4:30. It would always be cooked,liver and bacon, stew, chops, mince and gravy, always with potatoes, with cake for afterwards.

Tea would be usually something on toast, maybe sausage rolls, unless we had visitors when it would be Sunday tea.

My mother used to make a traybake type sponge, half covered with jam and coconut, the other half with chocolate icing as her stock cake tin cake, which she would supplement with welshcakes or with rock cakes during the weeek. She'd also make plain cake (madeira) or seed cake.

We used to get a turkey from a local farm at Christmas which would be delivered in greasproof paper with a brown luggage tag tied to its leg (came with head and legs still attached and I can still remember playing with the feet). Eggs and chickens came from the same source and while we didn't have a large garden my dad would grow salad stuff and we always had fresh home grown veg from people in the village who would sell or swap their surplus. There were two bakers who called everyday, and a fish man who came on a Friday. There's only one Sp*r type shop in that village now, but I hardly ever recall going to to town to shop. I used to love doing my mother's shopping with her list in the holidays, and she'd then pay everyone on a Friday.


One of my nan's staple dishes was called plate pasty (her family came from Cornwall) which was mince, carrot and potatoes in pastry cooked like a tart. My father and grandfather's favourite dish was roast cheese and bacon, cooked on a tin plate in the oven.
I know not everyone was as lucky. (My FIL used to call jam sandwiches "colliers' ham". ) but while I recall children who wore wellies or "daps" (canvas plimsoles) to school all year round, and wondering how some younger children always had the same clothes as I'd grown out of (things were done discreetly) very few people appeared to go hungry.

I'd never eaten fish from a fish-shop until I left home, and while we'd had curry at home, neither had I had a chinese or indian take-away. Pasta was tinned spaghetti or macaroni cheese, and as other posters have said olive oil was kept in the bathroom cabinet for earache.

I'll stop rambling now, and keep on reading.

[Deleted User]

debbiedebt wrote: »

Can anyone remember the "Corona man" who delivered fizzy pop in the 50's. !

Better still was the small bottles of orange squash that the milkman had on his cart.They were about the size of the bottled milk that you got at school and had a green foil top to them It was a treat to get one of those as my Mum didn't think that squash was good for your teeth, yet we had 'connyonny' sandwiches which were condensed milk on bread which must have been full of sugar.If you were poorly you would get hot Robinsons lemon barley water to drink and I still drink it today if I have a bad throat.Friday nights getting dosed up with syup of figs ugh I hated the taste of that
But toast made in front of the kitchen range on the end of a fork had a taste of its own.I always asked for the 'outside' or end bit of the bread as I thought it seemed to hold more of the butter in it.

Saturday nights was my Mum knitting or sewing my brothers clothes they seemed to be always falling out of trees or growing out of their school jumpers.My Dad would sit in his armchair (you were only allowed to sit in it if you were feeling poorly )He would puff away on his pipe and read the Evening Standard or The Star newspaper and read out bits to Mum and the rest of us (it often went right over my head really) My eldest brother Johnny would be making an aeroplane with balsa wood and tissue paper and the smell of the 'dope' glue I can still remember today over 60 years later.My middle brother Davy would be taking something to bits (normally his crystal set, or his pocket watch ) to see how it worked He was very mechanically minded and grew up to become a mechanic.I would be perched on the top of an old wicker laundry basket knitting my dolls clothes from any wool my Mum let me have.Her big brown radio went on for the six o'clock news which was listened to every night.Then there was a programme called In Town Tonight and a man would shout out 'Halt' and the announcer would say 'Once again we stop the mighty roar of Londons traffic to bring you who was 'in town tonight' and I honestly thought that all the traffic in London had to halt and at the end of the programme he would shout out 'Carry on London' and you could hear the traffic start up againThen later on there would be Vic Olivers variety show on the radio followed eventually by Saturday Night Theatre.If it was a detective story we all had to guess who done it and who ever was right got the first bit of toast for supper.I always used to think that it was someone who came on in the first 10 minutes and 9 times out of 10 I was right.So with a chunk of toast and a cup of cocoa that was Saturday night taken care of It was the only night we were allowed to stay up late because of school.Before going to bed I had to make sure that my clothes were ready for church in the morning and my shoes were spotless My Mum would say 'God is watching to make sure you are clean and tidy in his house ' and I was convinced as a little girl this very old man with a white beard was looking down to make sure my white buckskin sandles or shoes were spotless and if they wern't then he would wreak fire and brimstone down on my head :)
Life couldn't have been easy for women in those days but as children we were never allowed to know anything we were seen and not heard and no one ever asked a child their opinion about anything Mostly we would dissappear as soon as we were fed and not reappear until the next meal was due.I had a normal childhood like most of my friends ,there was always one or two children who had more toys than the rest of us but it never bothered me as most of my friends were in the same boat as the rest of us.Food sometimes probably was a bit boring but I never really noticed it I wonder what my Mum would think of the choice that todays folk have in the shops .her only choice was take or leave it and very few fancy foods came our way unless my Aunt, who lived in New Jersey sent us a big parcel then that was so exciting as she wrapped things in newspapers that had cartoon in them unseen in the UK they were greatly przed by us children and would be taken to school and shown off to your friends.I can remember her sending my brothers Superman comics Worth a fortune today no doubt.

mardatha

I grew up in a pit village in the 50s, and remember some of the bad stuff. A couple of mums who "did away with themselves" because of an unwanted baby, lots of kids covered in gentian violet for impetigo, styes and knock knees. But I honestly think it was nothing like as bad as the drugs and child abuse there is now.
I try hard to still eat the same things now - after a lifetime of working shifts, always being knackered, and eating rubbish, I have come full circle

WeegieWumman

patchwork_cat wrote: »

However people who talk about no one drinking coffee and camp being all that was available - perolators were readily available an iconic 50's item.

OMG! I'd completely forgotten about 'Camp Coffee' which was a liquid in a bottle. (I never tasted it) The only only instant I had remembered was 'Nescafe'.
Sunday fried breakfast was bacon, sausage, egg, potato scone and included either fried 'soda farrel' (Ulster favourite) or fried sweet pancake (I've only had this in west of Scotland) Ooops! I almost forgot the seasonal fried tomato.

HeatherintheHills

mardatha wrote: »

I grew up in a pit village in the 50s, and remember some of the bad stuff. A couple of mums who "did away with themselves" because of an unwanted baby, lots of kids covered in gentian violet for impetigo, styes and knock knees. But I honestly think it was nothing like as bad as the drugs and child abuse there is now.
I try hard to still eat the same things now - after a lifetime of working shifts, always being knackered, and eating rubbish, I have come full circle

I spent my earlier years in a pit village too. I remember the shock that went through the village if the pit hooter blew when it wasn't time for a shift change. It meant there had been an accident and everyone would make their way to the pit head. I remember being picked out of my bed, wrapped in a blanket and carried to the pit head in the middle of the night (my grandad worked the night shift) and it is one of my eeriest memories.

Yes there was neglect and malnutrition, mothers who couldn't cope, fathers who didn't care. Lots of alcoholism! Drug use was mostly among the older men who had fought in WW1, especially in North Africa, where many of them were introduced to cannabis. Drug use came home with a few of them. People don't change that much really. As with all things there was good and bad.

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.