'salads' your nan used to make...

[trashcanjunkie]

Mine used to do this for my grandad once a week - it would consist of a boiled egg, halved, a massive spring onion or two, some pickled beetroot maybe.... (not entirely sure....) and two slices of corn beef with salad cream on the side.....

DH says his lot also used to have 'salads' like these - he reckons it's 1970's northern thing....

I wish I could remember all of the elements... Did anyone else's family eat these? I bet there are variations on the theme

My MILs salads are like this.

If we're at MILs and she says she'll do salad for dinner then you know really it's a buffet of:

Crisps
French bread (with butter)
Various cheeses
Pickled onion
Boiled eggs
A quiche
Ham
Some lettuce and tomato
Hot new potatoes.

If my mum says it's salad for dinner then it would be a singular bowl of various cold salad veg.

My great grandma was eating olive oil in the 1960's. And we had mayo and mixed salads in the 90's. But my grandma (DIL of olive oil loving great grandma) served the kind of salad talked about here for Sunday tea, with leftovers from dinner - meat, potatoes and veg all included. Always bread and marg. Then a plate of Mr Kipling type cakes and finally jelly. With a big pot of tea on the table for refills throughout the meal, I never knew my grandparents drink water. Maybe a glass of squash on a very hot day.

@QueenOllie

This is what I would think of as modern vs my Nan (not an insult BTW, I would eat both!)

So a 'modern salad' exactly the same constituents as a 'Nan salad' except it uses smaller tomatoes and a different variety of lettuce?

Yes my Granny did these- sometimes with chicken in aspic or slices of tongue 😱

I'm not sure the salads we have now are much different to those my mum served up or those I gave to my DC in the 80s/90s.

The main difference was that salad cream was a big thing back then. As children we had it as sandwich spread on its own. And it was always part of a plated salad.

Now we use (and grow) a much greater variety of salads. Different lettuce leaves, and all shapes, colours and sizes of tomato. In the past a tomato was just round and red and was sliced for a sandwich or segmented on a plate. Grandma used to make tomato flowers for Sunday tea. Sliced cucumber and onion soaked in vinegar was also a key part of grandma's salad tea. The meat was either ham and tongue, pork pie and boilded egg, or tinned red salmon. We always had to eat bread and butter with it.

We had salad for infant school dinners back in the 60s. DC sat at a long table with a teacher at the head. Everyone had to eat everything they were given. No allowance for special diets or fussy eaters. On salad days it was boiled potatoes and pork luncheon meat or a pilchard in tomato sauce. The salad was a very colourful tray of, shredded lettuce, boiled eggs, cucumber, tomato, grated beetroot, grated carrot, raisins, and celery. There was also a small jug of salad cream but it was something concocted by the dinner ladies not Heinze. There was always lots of celery on the floor but there was no way of avoiding the tinned pilchard.

If you're from Ireland there'd be a lump of coleslaw on the side too

@Butterer

We had lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes as standard, usually with quartered boiled eggs, plus slices of ham, corned beef or chicken.

Pickled onions/silverskins, and beetroot- straight sliced, never crinkle cut.

Sometimes chunks of orange cheddar and always lots of salad cream. This was in the 80's/90's and Up North.

Sounds nice! What's wrong with all these salads?

Yes coleslaw was always included with my salads but not with grandma's. It contains cabbage which grandma always made sure was boiled to a mush.

I didn't know about coleslaw until I was about 15! I can't get enough of it these days, especially an artisan coleslaw.

I'm not sure the salads we have now are much different to those my mum served up or those I gave to my DC in the 80s/90s.

Love your description of my school sardine salad, with ingredients m
mainly grown by the nuns.

I think it’s hugely diff now. - particularly if my daughters WFH lunches are anything to go by. Shaved fennel, avocado, limes for the dressing, quinoa, roasted cauliflower and squash, red onions, peppers aplenty. Mint, coriander, siracha mayonnaise.

My mum used to do similar in 1980s Northern Ireland. She used salad veg and fruit interchangeably though so your plate might have rolled up ham, lettuce, grated carrot, coleslaw and chopped up banana. Sometimes also chips. Also the NI thing of jelly salad so perhaps orange jelly with grated carrot in it or blackcurrant jelly with beetroot.

Yes there is much more variety and I love to try different dressings.

Not the avocado though! that would have been on the floor with the celery. I'm trying with coriander but it still tastes like soil to me. I will keep giving it a go. I love olives now and I thought they were awful once.

I think it’s hugely diff now. - particularly if my daughters WFH lunches are anything to go by. Shaved fennel, avocado, limes for the dressing, quinoa, roasted cauliflower and squash, red onions, peppers aplenty. Mint, coriander, siracha mayonnaise.

But it’s not like people ever stopped having more basic/homegrown type salads like the ones described here as ‘retro’, just as times have changed we have a wider variety of other ingredients easily available as well. Posters on this thread seem to be acting as if they’d forgotten what standard salad ingredients are and finding things like lettuce and tomatoes nostalgic! It’s bizarre, these are everyday things that I reckon the majority of people eat really regularly and never stopped.

Those pictures that were posted of retro vs modern look virtually identical to me, just with added feta!

I'm quite intrigued by the Russian salad people are talking about. I don't remember that from when I was a child but I recently got a recipe for Olive Salad from a Ukranian friend. It's potatoes, pickles, peas, carrots, spring onions and boiled eggs all chopped up and mixed with mayo and sour cream. Is that 'russian salad'?

We always had 'salad for tea on a Sunday evening in my childhood (early 80's)

Lettuce, cucumber, sliced tomato, radish, spring onions, buttered bread and either ham, corned beef, or (if we were treating ourselves) tinned salmon.

Sometimes instead of salad we would have egg mayo sandwiches, but made with salad cream instead of mayo. Lush, especially when the eggs were still warm from being boiled. 🤤🤤

profyaffle that's the proper recipe.

When i had it as a kid it was more potato salad with peas, carrots and onions added to it. 🤣

Russian salad/Olivier salad was a recipe invented in Moscow in the 1860s apparently
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_salad

@ProfYaffle

I'm quite intrigued by the Russian salad people are talking about. I don't remember that from when I was a child but I recently got a recipe for Olive Salad from a Ukranian friend. It's potatoes, pickles, peas, carrots, spring onions and boiled eggs all chopped up and mixed with mayo and sour cream. Is that 'russian salad'?

Sounds very like Russian salad. No pickles in ours though. New potatoes chopped into cubes with peas, scallions and carrots folded into mayonnaise. Sliced hard boiled egg on top.

Old fashioned salads?

Not seeing it. Most of these just sound like normal salads to me.

That's interesting, thanks all. Makes me think of Heinz tinned salad!

Oh the heinz salad was weird had peas in it

It was considered expensive by my Nan, she only had it occasionally as a 'treat', usually alongside tinned salmon (mashed with vinegar)

Every Sunday at my grandparents in the 70’s- after the roast at lunchtime
Tinned pilchards cold , lettuce, cucumber, tomato, spring onion and pickled beetroot. I still don’t like pilchards from a tin🤣
Not a northern only thing- this was Kent.
Was it a post war thing though- my grandparents were parents during the war

My grandad was Russian. My grandparents never made Russian salad!

Much is about availability though and in the 60s and even 70s there wasn't much in the way of salad vegetables available and when they were they were expensive hence greater reliance on things like Chinese leaves and one tomato in a salad or orange and chicory and single item salads like beetroot or cold potatoes. Thankfully due to having European antecedents we swerved the salad cream.

Over winter there was a much greater reliance on pickles and chutney with salad as a garnish. I still hate cold meat, mash and pickles which was a regular on a Monday night. My gran used to serve a lot of things that would make blood run cold now: pressed tongue, brawn, often with pickles and a lettuce leaf and bread and butter. Also things like liver and onions and stuffed hearts which were delish. And pies all sorts of pies: meat, (rarely chicken it was too good then for pie), rabbit, apple, plum, rhubarb, etc. Lots of root veg and things in season. I don't remember broccoli except for purple sprouting and home grown ever as a child.

yes tins of heinz was definitely a treat, im sure there was also a coleslaw?