If It Wasn't Meat, What Did They Eat?

westcoastscot

We didn't have dinner at home - we had school dinners which were plentiful and nutritious. For tea we had bread and jam, dripping sandwiches with salt, boiled egg. We had a sunday roast, but that meal was started with a huge helping of yorkshire pudding and gravy, there was very little meat. We had cheese occasionally (I recall shopping each weekend for a £1 piece of cheese that got smaller and smaller) and we occasionally had sliced cold ham, a real treat, but as kids we only had a sliver - I recall drooling over it on the pantry shelf!

Meadows

Patchwork_Quilt wrote: »

I was reading recently that we all eat too much meat and that back in the Olden Days meat was such a luxury that families could only afford a chicken on Sundays. It set me wondering what people ate instead. What was the daily menu? Would it be any good going back to it?

I grew up in the late 1960s, early 1970s and meat was definitely on the menu in our family. We had toast and cereal in the morning, a school lunch containing some sort of meat pie or casserole and then a cooked tea in the evening. This revolved around mince, mostly, with ghastly smoked haddock on Friday. Even on Saturday we seemed to have corned beef hash or bacon.

Has anyone else got memories going further back that do confirm people only ate meat once or twice a week or is this some sort of guilt trip arising from the questions that have been asked about the quality and price of meat recently?

Really depends on how far you want to go back, during the war meat would have been scarce and the diet would have been mostly vegetables flavoured with bones if you were lucky.
They also ate more offal than we do today including things like Tripe , sheep's heads, pigs trotters and things only a few eat these days.
The less attractive, cheaper (today) cuts of meat would have been used and slowly boiled or roasted over a low heat, but these cuts are actually far better tasting and far cheaper on the pocket today.

We have over the years demanded and ate more meat than we should for a healthy diet, this is why we have water injected meat to make it look bigger.
We demand more so we get less (in quality), we have stopped being frugal and over the generations forgetting how to cook and rely on ready meals and junk food which leads us to where we are today with Horse and Donkey being dressed as Beef.

We are told that fats are bad for us, yes they are but all in moderation, better to eat butter and cook with lard than to eat Trans Fats.

If we go right back in time we were more likely to have eaten grains and then eventually moved on to meat this is why many have issues with the stomach and the bowel as we are not really that suited to the things we eat but have learned to tolerate them.

[Deleted User]

Morning, I was born in 1948 and can just remember rationing, going to the shop for 1oz of sweeties with my Mum. We certainly ate differently to the way we do now, for a start the portions were much smaller and what we did eat was locally grown in the main and seasonal. We had a joint every Sunday mostly Topside of beef and leg of lamb and the remains of that formed the bulk of the meals we had for the week. Shepherds Pie with a tin of baked beans to make it go further or Pastry Meat Pie or Pasties, Irish Stew with leftover lamb, Curry using either with rice and made with curry powder as individual spices were unheard of. Then stewing up the bone with veg for bone broth. We kept chickens so Egg and Chips was frequent, and Cheese Pie came often too,as did leftovers in a casserole/stew with dumplings. Puddings were home grown/ local fruit in a pie or crumble or rice pudding or steamed pudding all with custard or sterilized cream in a tin. Breakfast was mostly porridge or bread and jam and suppers were egg on toast or beans on toast and the weekly treat was on Saturday when we had cakes from the bakery and occasionally fish and chips from the local chippy. Sunday tea was usually cold meat and salad with bread and butter followed by tinned fruit and jelly with evaporated milk and I don't remember having soft drinks, we drank tea as children along with the grown ups, coffee was for well off folks and I didn't taste it until well into my teens!

[Deleted User]

Well I was born in the 1940s, so Mum had a war and rationing to cope with, but cope she did and thinking back I am amazed at how well we actually ate really .She seemed to conjour up meals out of almost anything, and I can't ever remember going hungry.True chicken was at Christmas (we usually killed one of our own as we kept chickens as many folk did) but on a Saturday afternoon Mum would go to the butchers to get the joint for Sunday if she had enough coupons.
It was a case of you had what he could offer at the time, and being registered with the same butcher meant that regular customers became his trade
She would always call him Mr Chalk and he would always call her
Mrs Bearn . Conversation would go like this
"Good afternoon Mr Chalk, what have you got thats good this week"
"Good afternoon Mrs Bearn,well the brisket isn't bad but I may be able to find you some pork if you want a change ,how many coupons do you have to spend "
So the majority of food was bought by the amount of coupons available in your ration book.But bless him he was a very nice chap and extremely conscious of the hardships that housewives were going through at the time.Mum would get the joint or whatever it was and 9 times out of 10 he would throw in a few sausages as an extra to make up the weight if it was a small joint.That joint would be cooked on Sunday, and streetched to Monday, and if possible Tuesday with the sausages added to it.Wednesday it would be possibly a stew of some sort if she could get hold of any stewing steak, but padded out with kidney and veggies to stretch it a bit more
Thursday was sometimes corned beef hash and veg.
Friday was always fish and Saturday it was whatever she could find at the market, although I remember a lot of liver and bacon with more liver than bacon, but very thick and gloopy.

I hated Woolton Pie with a passion, but had to eat it or go hungry, as fussy kids were not allowed in those days
We had a large garden which was half cultivated to vegatables, potatoe,carrots,onions,cabbage,tomatoes, swede, brussels and anything my Mum could get to grow.I never tasted any vegatable from a tin until I was 19

We would either have a soup starter followed by dinner or a dinner followed by a pudding ,never the both.it was a way of making the meal fill you up more.
The puds were usually rice,tapioca or semolina or apple or rhuebarb pies with custard.I came home to lunch from school as my village school in Blackheath was not great for school dinners, and I'd rather walk a mile and a half each way home at lunchtime than eat the grey unidentifiable meat and slop they dished up.I would have a sandwich at lunchtime with my Mum, and if she had been baking sometimes a cake or scone.Breakfast was porridge in the winter and cornflakes in the summer or a slice or two of toast with marmalade
Mum was a good manager, like most women of her generation she had to be, and in actual fact it was in the post war period when food seemed to be shorter.But my two brothers and I never went hungry I think Mum would have loved the availabilty of food that's around today and the fact that you can buy herbs and spices would have made her day.

In her day she had in the cupboard a large tub of soda bicarb which was used in baking and some cinnamon in a tin along with some ground ginger that my aunt had sent her from the U.S. After the war when Aunt Edie sent us parcels she would always try to send some thing different that we hadn't had before.Then Mum would trundle off to the library to see what she could use it in .But chicken was definitely only at Christmas, and once the clucker was killed (usually by my Dad) Mum would pluck and draw it and go over the stubble with a small candle burning off the bits and my brother and I would spend the morning making sure it was feather and stubble free.You wouldn't believe how many feathers a blooming chicken has. Mum would have loved the ready-for-the-oven ones of today :):)
Tripe was another food I hated, but daren't turn my nose up at.We also had a horrible fish called snoek which was awful but Mum would stand over the table saying in her stern voice "Eat up bairns, good men died to get the food to this table "
She had the greatest regard for the Merchant seamen who risked their lives to get food to the UK even after the war she still said the same thing :):)
I think without a doubt the women of this country did a fantastic job feeding their children with so many hardships, for not just through the war, but for the 9 years after it when we still had rationing.
There was no waste at all that I can remember ,at least not in our house if it didn't go into the kids, it ended up in the dog, but never ever the bin

It was called the dustbin as that's what was put in there, the left over dust from the raked out fire in the morning certainly never food .If the jam was a little hairy, or the cheese a bit furry it was scraped or cut of and you ate what was underneath No sell-by date nonsence then, and we all survived without too much harm :):)

anniemf2508

I was a child of the 80's, and i can't really remember meals without meat/fish.....sunday was always a roast, monday left overs, then other days pork chops, sausages, crispy pancakes, turkey drummers. Saturday lunch was a fry up and dinner a fish supper.
I think we were lucky tho as my Dad was a pig farmer so we'd get half a pig every 6 months for cost price, so there was always plenty of pork to eat.

From talking to my mum, she was a child of the 50's, her and her 2 sisters ate well, my grandad had an allotment so there was a lot of veg and he bred new zealand white rabbits, so rabbit was on the menu a fair bit.

Shropshirelass

I was born in 1947. We lived with my grandma til I was 6, there was a shortage of housing which took time to replace after bombing - can remember her buying 'a nice bit of tripe' which she cooked with onions for her and granddad's dinner (midday). They always had tea&toast for breakfast, and she always served bread and butter at tea - she used to cut the bread holding it on her left hip, buttered the bread first then cut paper thin slices.

After getting the roast out of the oven (i presume on a sunday) she would call me to eat a slice of bread dipped in the meat juices. They kept hens in the back garden, my brother and I often had a boiled egg with soldiers for tea. I can remember the fuss over slaughtering a chicken, which was done in the wash-house - no-one wanted to do it, everyone was upset.

We had stew, sausge, liver and onions, cold joint lasted a few days. As Catholics we had fish on fridays, always home cooked, didnt have fish shop fish till in my teens. Good Friday we had a treat - tinned salmon, with egg sauce, tinned peas and mashed potato.

We only had cooked pudding on sundays, suet sponge with custard or rice pud, otherwise tinned fruit or a slice of hm cake after tea.

We moved to a council house dad had first choice because he had been in the Army. When I started school about a mile away, the lucky kids would have a slice of cold toast wrapped in bread paper at playtime. I went home for dinner every day, I usually skipped all the way (with my skipping rope), dad also came home for dinner, 2 miles each way on his bike. I can remember being very hungry before meals, but we never missed a meal. Never had processed food, unless you count tinned fish or corned beef.

suki1964

60's child here

I remember chicken being very expensive, roast was usually beef or pork, and it sliced so thin you could read a book through it. My auntie used yo make the smallest of joints feed 6 of us three days, roast on Sunday, cold with bubble on Tuesday and minced and turned into plate pies Wednesday

Other meals that were regular in our house, sausages, liver and bacon, heart casserole, scotch eggs, egg, ham and tomato pie, fish and chips, corned beef pasties, shepherds pie, and stew and dumplings

All meals had a heap of veg and potatoes served with them, nothing exotic, cabbage, swede, Brussels ,carrots, - whatever was in season, all bought covered in mud and slugs from the market

Fruit was seasonal as well

Cooked breakfast at the weekends, bacon with the bread fried in the fat, fried sausage, egg, black pudding. Toast and jam

Sunday tea was cockles and winkles if dad had made the fish van before closing time Sunday lunch ( was parked outside the pub and closed same time as the pub -2pm) or if not sardines on toast

Summer salads were ham and egg (always, no variation) with lettuce, toms, celery, radish and cold peas and carrots and potato mixed with salad cream ( no one ate mayo ) and jersey royals when in season

Pudding was the norm, tapioca, semolina , rice pudding, baked apples, apple tart, rhubarb crumble , jelly, tinned fruit and carnation milk and as a special treat angel delight

Mum was never a good cook. But she could bake. Saturday afternoon out came the kenwood and we had buns and cakes all week. She made all our birthday and Christmas cakes, as well as for others

Breakfast during the winter was porridge, summer was cereal or toast

Pack lunch was a sandwich with egg or cheese or a cold sausage. Piece of fruit and a bun or biscuit. You had water to drink and your free milk at first break.

We weren't allowed to be fussy about food. What was put on the plate in front of you, you had to eat. If you didn't eat it, that was all you were getting so you went hungry. There was no stacks of crisps or biscuits in the house to fill up on

trulymadlydeeply_indebt!

What a wonderful, insightful post JackieO - I loved reading all about it.

I'd forgotten about Cheese Pie - Mum's was lovely. She also used to buy tripe from time to time and liver (eugh!).

Very occasionally she would buy racks of bacon ribs from the butchers, and boil them up and served with cabbage. I can remember sucking at the bones to get every last scrap off and it's still a dish that I occasionally make for my lot here and the feelings of nostalgia come flooding back.

I also remember toad in the hole with a lot less sausage than I put in mine today so we were filled up with pudding batter, all bulked out with tinned veg.

When I got to my teens, Mum became "very experimental" and started doing pork chops with a jar of Uncle Ben's Sweet and Sour Sauce, or chicken drumsticks with a tin of Homepride Curry Sauce, the sweet one with sultanas in. :rotfl: We thought we were very well travelled :rotfl:

Mojisola

lindseykim13 wrote: »

My wartime recipe book has listed in 'main meals' beef hash, devilled fish, roast hearts, tripe and onions, corned beef rissoles, fillets of pork, mince slices, savoury meat role, American mince, liver and bacon with rice, smothered sausages, beef a la mode,tripe casserole.
Looks like a lot of meat to me.

Remember there was rationing during the war. There might be a lot of meat recipes but that didn't mean meat was being eaten every day.

https://www.primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/war/rationing2.html

dibuzz

I dont remember what we had most days but I do know I had never tasted turkey until I was in my 20's at my ex MIL's, as there were only 3 of us my mum always ordered a capon from the butcher. I can remember queuing up in the butchers on a Saturday morning but not what we used to get.
Sunday tea was tinned ham butties (we werent posh enough for sandwiches :rotfl:) followed by tinned fruit and carnation milk or home made meringues filled with cream my mum used to make in some sort of jug with a handle she had to pump.
My mum always claimed to be too busy for cooking so as soon as convenience foods became popular that's what we had such as instant mash, those awful filled crispy pancake things, tinned meatballs and those frozen lumps of reformed meat (lamb grills, bacon grills and I think there might have been a beef one too)
No wonder I'm a rubbish cook, I only learned to make gravy after I got married and had a constant battle to stop my mum throwing away the meat juices if she was here when I was cooking a roast