'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

Mine also used to make a kind of green jelly with cottage cheese and cucumber

^^

FIL does this awful prawn and celery aspic - I just can't, I really can't. It's pink

@Itshissister

Cucumber slices in vinegar.

My nan used to do that. Hilarious!!

I lived in Warsaw in the 1980s. My Mum visited and was very excited at the thought of being able to buy Pek (as it’s Polish). Had to break the news to her that a) it was all exported and not available locally and b) meat was rationed and I wasn’t going to be using up my rations on that stuff.

We used to have an English salad, which was lettuce, tomato (hard, tasteless and underripe) and a spring onion. Cucumber salad was called “Mizeria” (yes, misery!) with sour cream and dill. We also used to have potato salad with onions, chopped onions, gherkins and hard boiled eggs.

Iceberg Lettuce, couple of slices of tomato, couple of slices of cucumber, salad cream, beetroot, boiled egg, cold meat (sometimes from a can) and homemade chips. Salad dressing was unheard of.

Staple diet during summer months in 1970s.

In the 1980s mum got posh and we had it with potato croquettes instead 🤣

I love cucumber and onion in vinegar. The only time I have it is on Christmas Eve, when I make a tiny bowl of it for nostalgic reasons. Nobody else will eat it.

Ah, love this nostalgic thread
My family is Greek, so we had slightly different offerings growing up in the 80s. My best friend from school thought my mum's salad was the bee's knees as it was dressed with lemon and olive oil. I loved going to hers, where I ate lots of the plain salads you've described, with salad cream (I love salad cream, and mayonnaise!). Her mum always had a cup of tea with dinner, which surprised me.

Typical nana salad was:

Green lettuce (wet)
Hard tomatoes quartered
Cucumber
Scallions
Doused in sarsons malt vinegar
No salad cream or mayonnaise (both deemed “common”)
White pepper & salt
Served with either tinned salmon (with all the bones 🤢) or flan. Or M&S Yorkshire ham (if special occasion, like New Years Day)
Washed down with a cup of tea.

I had vinegar and sugar dressed floppy lettuce and spring onion salad with the Yorkshire puddings and gravy served before the roast at my MILs on Sunday. It was bloody delicious, and I am the kind of fop who reads an Ottolenghi recipe and thinks ooh, I’ve got all the stuff for that.

Radishes, with salt.

In the 70s/80s my mum did a salad once a week in summer. Talk about rustic. Nothing was cut up, except the egg because she got to use her fancy egg slicer. Everything else.was just bunged on the plate whole - a ripped off lettuce leaf, a tomato, a chunk of cucumber, a couple of scallions and some ham or corned beef. To be fair the ham was from the local butcher and delicious, but overall it was my least favourite meal. I did quite like eating my tomato like an apple, sprinkling salt on as I ate it. No salad cream because my mum didn't like the look of it. And I only discovered coleslaw when we made it in Domestic Science at school.

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.

Just to be clear - I like them both! I find salad cream goes very nicely with hot new potatoes and the taste takes me right back to those ...excuse the pun... salad days of the 70s. But these days I prefer mayonnaise as a general dressing for green salads, cold new potatoes, etc.

"No salad cream because my mum didn't like the look of it". That line is crying out for a Victoria Wood/Julie Walters sketch 😂

@GlassInEachHand I can't believe that's the first time someone on this thread has used that!!

I think the difference between modern and not is small
So
Whole round lettuce vs bags of mixed leaves/rocket etc
Big tomatoes sliced vs cherry or mini plum ones
Cucumber - er same but I cube it rather than slice
Salad cream vs balsamic or Caesar/blue cheese etc
Ham/eggs vs feta/quinoa/halloumi
Beetroot not often seen in "modern" salad

Presentation is usually different too I think

Sunday's or very special occasions was tinned salmon. Red salmon was really posh and expensive so we had pink

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

I love an 80s salad with salad cream, I might have one for breakfast tomorrow!

Always a lettuce that was the floppy one dont know the name.

DM would never cook on Saturday evening as she was knackered. Mainly because her and dad had 2 jobs each and still couldn't make ends meet

So Saturday tea was always salad. A few lettuce leaves from a round lettuce. Never cut up - just in a bowl. Tomato - but not for me cos I hated them. Boiled beetroot sometimes.
Slice of ham or boiled egg. Crackerbarrel cheese for grownups- we had Dairylea triangles. Radish or spring onion - with salt to dip it in. Salad cream. Bread and butter. Bag of crisps (only time we had them) . Cup of tea.

I think the difference these days is presentation. DH makes a fab salad with not dissimilar ingredients and its all sliced /shredded and beautifully arranged. Mums was...utilitarian.

My mum wouldnt let us have salad cream because she thinks it is common

And a piece of bread n butter. I became veggie as a teen. Nan asked me if I wanted ham (tinned) with my salad. When I reminded here I was a vegetarian, she said, "Oh yes, how about a bit of corned beef then?".

I wish I still had grandparents. 💞

NotSo, baked-beans-in-the-salad fellow-traveller! I thought it must be normal but I'm sensing we were outliers

Weird thing is, my mum was from an area famed throughout the UK for its profusion of salad (and other) vegetables - but our salads barely saw a sniff of them

My mum spent hours of her young life bunching spring onions and shelling peas - but no sign at all of them in our salads! Asparagus was the most famous premium crop of all - but I never ate one single stalk until I was an adult

My mum always used to put ready salted Seabrook crisps on our salad 🤨

Other than that it would be lettuce, tomato, cucumber, cress.

Bread for butty making purposes and either ham or these little Chinese chicken wings she used to get ready cooked off our meat market. They were a huge treat.

She did have a trifle / salad dish. A lovely crystal one. But because a goldfish we'd won on the summer fair ended up living and dying in it nobody would use it and it became the annual fish bowl 😂😂😂 we were proper, bones of the arse poor. My mum couldn't afford the rides on the summer fair but we used to go to watch the free shows and dancing and we always got one go on the hook a duck each.

70s, 80s mum, we had cold mash with bits of spring onion in. Plain crisps, salad cream. Meat some sort, cold brisket a favourite. Occasionally substituted with tinned salmon. Served with bread and butter. Occasionally a bit of pork pie on side.

@tortoiseshell1985
Is your mum Irish or of Irish heritage? Because mash with bits of spring onion is champ, albeit warm, not cold! Was it left over from the day before, or did she specifically make cold champ?!! (I like cold champ BTW, but I'm weird!)