'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

Lettuce drizzled with a little olive oil
Cucumber sprinkled with salt
Tomatoes sprinkled with salt and sugar
Spring onion
Pickled beetroot
Sliced boiled egg
Sliced ham/corned beef/roast chicken or salmon

@Gancanny blast from the past. My Grandad used to love Pek. Tried to make us eat it, didn't work it was grim!

Oh my god I’d totally forgotten about that dreadful abomination my Nan used to serve up called Russian salad. It’s was pure 🤮 I’m sure it has nothing to do with Russia - or salad She served it like it was some exotic delicacy!

She also used to serve tongue salad which used to be a bad bad day. I seem to remember the slices had something weird in them, kind of like small pieces of grey green boiled egg or pickle? Maybe it’s best I never knew what they were!

I loved my Nan, her main meals were scary but she made up for it with her amazing baking. We used to scoff the meal down as fast as possible and then wallow in her delicious cakes and desserts

Lettuce soaked in white vinegar, water and sugar.
Cucumber in white vinegar, water, salt and paprika.
Sauerkraut.
Tomatoes were eaten raw.
That was about it for ‘salad’.
My dp were from Eastern Europe.

Not my family, but when I worked in community care I used to go to a very obese lady who would have a “salad” every day for lunch as her Dr had told her she needed to eat more healthily.

Her “salad” consisted of a pork pie, potato salad, coleslaw, grated cheese, pasta salad & sometimes a scotch egg on top.

Nans party salad was rice moulded in a ring with bits in.

My Nan’s was the same as yours OP but with boiled potatoes. Oh, and spring onions were called scallions (she was Irish.)

I still make salad this way! Lettuce, cucumber, spring onion, rolled up ham and new potatoes. Salad cream too. I love the stuff.

No one has mentioned beetroot cubes in jelly, stuffed chine or haslet yet. Followed by apple pie with evaporated milk.

Olive oil was something you got in small bottles from the chemist to soften the wax in your ears. Never on a salad.

Have I missed something?
These sound like fairly standard main course salads?

What is the updated version?

These are my favourite kind of threads!
Lol at "a nan salad"

"Olive oil was something you got in small bottles from the chemist to soften the wax in your ears. Never on a salad."

This, nobody actually ate something that was poured into your ears.

I still have '1970s salad' whenever I make a quiche -

iceberg lettuce
spring onions
radishes
cucumber
underripe tomatoes
salad cream
beetroot

One of my favourite teas as a kid was the above salad with warm new potatoes, cold meats, hard boiled eggs, crisps and cheese triangles.

Lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, cold meat (generally the left over meat from the day before). Generously salted. I don't remember salad cream, but this was London - maybe salad cream was more of a northern thing.

My grandma recently discovered avocado so her update to the retro salad is halved avocado with thousand island dressing filled to the top of each hole, with a hard boiled egg on the side of course.

My nan use to soak onion rings in vinegar with sugar. Delicious. She'd also serve cold belly pork slices that were 90% fat. As we lived near cockle sheds often our salad tea included cockles, winkles and whelks with piles of buttered bread.

Mine used to shred lettuce and dress it with sugar and vinegar

My mum's salads (70s and 80s)

A hard boiled egg
some sliced beetroot
a large buttered bread roll
cold baked beans
a handful of crisps (nearly always salt n vinegar)
some slices of cheese or ham (maybe both, or even corned beef)

we LOVED it

I hated these as a child, stinking egg, wet,farty ham, tomatoes , that weird soft lettuce, salad cream , cold baked beans WTF.
I only used to eat the roast chicken, new potato and celery.

It was a joyful day when my Mum brought olives and salad dressing into our lives. I remember making a Delia Smith salad when I was about 11 it had a lemon and mint dressing and bits of toasted pita bread in it, actual flavour!

Baked beans??????????????????????????????????????????????????!

My mum used to refer to salad cream as "mayonnaise" - I didn't realise it wasn't actually the same thing until I left home and discovered the proper stuff!

Lots of hatred towards salad cream here. You can't beat a cheese and cucumber sandwich with salad cream and lots of black pepper. My not so guilty pleasure, especially with salt and vinegar crisps.

Sunday tea salad was tinned red salmon with lots of malt vinegar and white pepper, round lettuce, sliced cucumber, radish, sliced beetroot in malt vinegar, spring onions and quartered tomatoes, very occasionally hot boiled new potatoes and quartered hard boiled egg, served with a plate of whole rounds of white bread generously buttered. Christmas or party salads also included sliced cucumber and white onions steeped in vinegar (god I want some now!) with ham "off the bone"? or tinned corned beef, celery sticks, cubes of cheese and pork pie. Still white bread and butter but cut into triangles.

70’s salads, mum not grandmother.

Iceberg lettuce
Sliced pickled beetroot
Cucumber
Rock hard tasteless tomato
Salad cream
Crisps
Hard boiled eggs.