'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

Dads mum was always Saturday tea and was leaves of round lettuce, slices of cucumber, quarters of tomato, slices of butchers ham, celery sticks in a jug with the leaves still on them and salad cream

Mums mum was cucumber & onion slices in brown vinegar, red salmon sandwiches and tinned fruit with evaporated milk and bread & butter to dip in

This was 60s/70s. Mayonnaise wasn't a thing until later than this.

Heinz coleslaw and potato salad in tins was a luxury (and I think the Russian salad came in a tin as well and was more "piquant" than potato salad)

I still eat cold mashed potatoes with salad cream

I loved onions in malt vinegar

She made round lettuce, tomatoes, I think cucumber but cant be sure, really big spring onions, hard boiled egg and either tongue or something I think was called haslet?

Oh Galtee cheese, I am whisked back to childhood holidays in Ireland. We loved that stuff. Does it still exist?

Yes Haslet is like a corned beef but is grey taste nicer than it sounds

Yes Haslet is like a corned beef but is grey taste nicer than it sounds

Yes it was .

It came from the butchers and I think it was quite popular, like pressed tongue. It was in slices, like from a small loaf, and looked a bit like stuffing

Yes i think its pork, yes tastes like stuffing Dh buys it occasionally.

It wasn't the only food related trauma on my first day at school @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

We were allowed to bring a biscuit to eat with our milk before playtime. The boys were sent to get their bags with their snacks from the cloakroom while the girls got their milk. My new friend, David, and I were both excited to find that we both had the same orange and black satchel AND we both had the same McVities chocolate digestive that came in a blue and silver wrapper for our snack. It was an omen that our friendship was predestined! We were snack twins! Then when it was the girls turn to get their bags, my bag was missing...

By the time the teacher had searched the cloakroom for my bag, David had eaten my biscuit. Cue tears from me and tears from a remorseful David. He offered me his snack but when the teacher checked his bag, there wasn't one.

Luckily I loved everything else about my first day at school and my mum sewed an embroidered fish on my satchel so it was identifiable to both non-readers and readers, and no one ever ate my snack again. I still think salad cream is an abomination though.

GaspOdeTheWOnderDOg Florida salad from M & S was a special treat at my aunties house - she used to put everything out in little bowls so you could have a pick n mix salad

Forgotten one thing, always had the silverskin pickled onions, the tiny ones. Had a special gadget like a spear and you pushed it down at the top and the spear would grab the onion. Of course we didn't try stabbing each other with the speary thing....

Great to know a 'Nan salad' is something other people encounter.

My MIL's cooking is still stuck in the 70s, and she has a deep distrust of pretty much any fruit and veg/herbs/spices so a 'salad' at her house consists of:

• 1 small lettuce leaf, 1 small slice of cucumber (skin removed) &1 thin slice of salad per person (neatly arranged on top of eachother on a plate so each person takes one section)
• sausage rolls
• odd looking meat (I'm vegetarian so haven't ever tried it but it reminds me of things friends had in the 70s)
• salad cream
• pickled beetroot
• cheese and onion crisps (the flavour is important- it could be plain at a push but never anything else)
• halved bread rolls very thickly spread with butter

We often have it if we call on her on a Saturday tea time. There frequently Vienetta for 'afters' or tinned fruit cocktail if she's not been shopping. There is also 1 After 8 mint per person neatly displayed on a doilied plate. It's like stepping back in time!

I loved a 'granny' salad, still do and still do one every now and again. Add coleslaw now but usually make it myself, ditto potato salad. AND salad cream is lovely!!!

I love Russian salad. I live in Eastern Europe and often buy a tub for lunch.

@orangenasturtium Poor little you, and poor little David!

I'm really enjoying this thread. We had a pickled onion spear thing like that! I wonder if my Mum still has it.

This thread has inspired me to make a cheese savoury salad wrap. Lovely. Going hard boil some eggs tomorrow too

Ice berg lettuce, well shredded, tomatoes, quartered, boiled egg, ditto, spring onions, finely sliced, and salad dressing made with condensed milk, malt vinegar, and a pinch of mustard powder.

Oh, and finely sliced cucumber!

Our standard salad was lettuce leaves (whole, from a round lettuce, well washed to get rid of all the grit), slices of cucumber, slices or quarters or eighths of hothouse tomatoes, latterly slices of red and/or green pepper, all presented in a cut glass salad bowl that was a wedding present to my parents, and we had to use the stainless steel salad servers to help ourselves to salad. We had it with quiche (M&S), or pork pie, or cold meat, or tinned salmon. There would be a jar of pickled beetroot on the table, but it would have to be on a little saucer to make it more genteel, and probably also a jar of pickled onions, ditto. I can't remember now if Mum decanted the salad cream to a little dish. I wouldn't put it past her.

I think the round letttuce that wasn't an Iceberg was called a Webb lettuce, and the long leaved one was London lettuce.
We always used to have Mustard and Cress, and cucumber in vinegar but I don't know why it was put into vinegar. It was awful.
This was in the 50s

@30daysoflight we called them shibbwns! Also South Wales so must be the same root

Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, blocks of cheese, pork pie.

@woodhill

Yes, always salad cream - yuck.

Cold meat, mashed potatoes and salad with beetroot and spring onion, peeled cucumber

Add in a lot more pickles and you have just described Boxing Day dinner.

I used to love Salad Cream so much that I would have salad cream sandwiches on white bread when i came home from school.

Thanks @TommyShelby
My nan was a Welsh speaker so probably the word was mangled over the years.

Back in the mid 80s I had a graduate training scheme job where we were regularly sent on training courses in a hall attached to a synagogue. We had no shortage of places nearby to get lunch, but the fallback was that the caretaker's wife made a few trays of basic sandwiches.The one I really loved and always bought if I could was slices of hard-boiled egg on Sunblest type sliced white bread smeared with Heinz sandwich spread. As I understand it, HSS is finely choppped veg mixed with salad cream.

I tried it again 20+ years later and sadly didn't rate it at all.