What did people actually eat in the past?

[BuffaloCauliflower]

Inspired by the finding of some crockery that belonged to my Granny (born 1917) and
conversations with my DM about feeding families, I’ve been wondering a lot about how and what people ate in the past on just normal days, not fancy dinner party stuff. My Granny was an older mum, 43 when she had my DM in 1960, and DM remembers mostly simple meat and two veg type dishes. Cottage pie, casseroles, roast dinners. What was a quick easy dinner, did such a thing exist before 1970?! Egg and chips? Memories of childhood reading conjures up bread and dripp

If you were around in the 50s/60s in the U.K., what did normal family meals look like? Or even earlier maybe, pre war. What sort of things were normal prior

@BertieBotts I feel like I’ve caught a bit of one of these, I’ll have a look 🙂

Bread, meat and cheese, pies, kippers, soup, stews.

Food my parents have mentioned (they’d have grown up mainly in the 50s / early 60s):

Stuffed heart
Steak & kidney pudding (not pie!)
Roast pork or beef on a Sunday, leftovers with mash on the Monday, made into a stew on Tuesday
Something related to pressing a sheep’s or pig’s head (can’t remember which) under a heavy iron
Corned beef hash
Bread and cheese for lunch
Boiled vegetables - they grew their own in the back garden
Toast done in front of the open fire
Bread and dripping

My mum, aged 82 was a teenager in the 50s. She tells me her diet would sometimes consist of a piece of toast on the run in the morning. Not every day. Lunch would be 2 slices of bread and butter with a slice or 2 of ham and a tomato. Occasionally she would have a pennorth of chips instead. Tea would be something home cooked like potatoes and mince or hotpot. My mum went dancing for hours most nighst and was unsurprisingly tiny. However, she says she was never hungry and most people ate similarly. She remembers sweets still being rationed after the war and a bag would last a week or more. As a child, she would ask her mum if she could please have a sweet and one would be duly given, not the bag. I think post war people were a lot slimmer and generally healthier.

Tinned sardines on toast for a quick supper, with tomatoes on the side.

I remember my dad bringing home a pigs head and chomping away 🤮
This was early 1980s.

My Nan used to make me sausage pie.
Sausage meat from the butcher topped with thinly sliced potatoes and onions and served with baked beans.

Also jacket potato but she'd take the potato out of the skin mash it with a huge amount of butter and salt and then put back in the skin. Delicious.

My mum was always making liver and bacon, I hated it.

Bread and dripping is delicious! I treat myself to a small tub every Xmas. It’s perfect on soft white bread with loads of salt and pepper. Takes me right back!

My Mum's treat which she had as a child (post war it was a huge treat) was bread toasted under the grill and then spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar, then put back under the grill to melt.

Also bacon grill (from a tin).

I'm 50, and my Grandparents both worked in factories in the North of England. Porridge for breakfast - milk and dugar. For their packed lunches they each brought a sandwich - 2 slices of white Wharburtons with butter and meat paste. A little jar of Shipmans meat paste would do both their sandwiches, Monday to Thursday, and then a cheese sandwich on a Friday. For dinners, it was roast on a Sunday, bubble and squeak on Monday, hotpot Tuesday and Wednesday, chops on Thursday and either egg and chips or fish and chips on a Friday. Usually gets pies on Saturday. My Grandma grew up in rural Ireland in the 30's and all their cooking would have been on the hearth and she left home at 15 so wasn't a great cook. My Grandad had been in the Navy and he did all the cooking. Both tiny little slim people. Unlike myself who probably eats more in a day than they would all week 😭.

Chops potatoes and veg was a staple, casseroles, shepherd's pie, Friday would be chip pan night so sausage and chips was my preference, mum always had eggs and chips, do t remember what my brothers ate, dad always came home late (worked late) and had a Vesta meal!

Spag Bol was a bit of a treat, perhaps monthly, spaghetti was really long then! This is 70's.

Stir fries and pizza crept in 80's

We had a lot of steamed suet puddings, both sweet and savoury and stew and dumplings

Even back then nations all over the world (including Europe) had extravagant tasty colourful cuisines.

Why did our ancestors settle for stodgy beige bland crap?

Oh, and sugar sandwiches

God yes the bread and butter on the table! My grandparents did it, didn't happen at home but remember the first Chinese takeaway I had with my now very distant ex and he asked if I wanted bread and butter.

My grandad (91) hasn't changed his eating habits much. Meat, potatoes and veg, sausage/fish/chops or whatever with chips (the latter was when he still had his own teeth)

If we can get it he loves tripe with bread and butter. Yet will physically shudder if we mention we've been for a curry/pizza/Chinese meal

The other day I told him I was going for tapas (no detail just the word tapas) He looked at me blankly and said 'sounds disgusting'

I love him more than anything but he's a funny one bless him.

Cost of importing ingredients I assume

The yellow family of vegetables are all non green more or less. Red orange and yellow peppers, turnips, beets, carrots, corn, yellow beans. Strangly she never bought any squash, I never tasted it until I was living on my own.

My Grandma (I’m 43) used to make/eat Corned Beef Hash, Brazing Steak, Chops, Meat and Potato Pie (lamb, carrots and potatoes with pastry on top) and Lancashire Hot Pot. Sometimes Liver and Onions. Often accompanied with mash and carrots (mashed together) Rarely chicken. Some of her cooking was amazing! I don’t remember her ever making pasta. Was it even a thing?

I read a lot of mid-century fiction, and a lot of chop grilling goes on.

One chop, with a tomato.

I’d starve.

Dad had an allotment so whatever veg was in season. Salad in the summer. Don't think mum ever bought veg or salad

Casseroles, pork chops, fish and chips, sausages, roast dinners

Also had fruit trees so lots of crumbles and fruit pies, with custard.

Breakfast was toast and jam (that mum had made) or weetabix

Lunch was ham or cheese sandwich and homemade cake.

Never ever had crisps, any shop bought snacks or cakes.

I'm only an eighties child but my parents refused to eat "foreign food" so most of the things on here, we ate. Liver & onions, tripe, beef dripping sandwiches the day after a roast, boil in the bag fish and sauce, sausages and veg. I didn't even try pasta until I left home!

Born in 1965

Bacon ribs (boiled)
Stuffed hearts on Sunday (chicken very expensive so a treat)
Mince and potatoes with peas
Scouse
Tripe and pigs trotters - grandads Saturday treat
Liver and bacon
Heinz soups - beef broth, oxtail, chicken
Fray bentos pies
Vesta sliced beef in gravy
Spam
Corned beef
Dripping - grandad again
Sausage, beans and chips
Egg and chips
Mackerel and plaice from the fishmonger
Cockles
Pork or lamb chops occasionally
Breast of lamb

Kentucky Fried Chicken - a huge treat - a couple of times a year
Pasta and rice non existent apart from spaghetti hoops in the tin

My nan(I'm early 60s) always had bread and butter with her tinned fruit and carnation milk.

My mum went to cookery classes in 1972 (I have her cook book she wrote the recipes in) and she did one meal using an avocado. God knows where she got it from - we lived on a military base miles from any decent town. I didn't see an avocado in a shop until I was in my 40s!!!

Favourites were liver and onions, sausages, home made pies, (if it was a special occasion we would have a Birds Eye Chicken Pie each 😱)

I do recall a packet of Angel Delight doing 4 of us for pudding. I think the packs must have shrunk cos I can eat a packet to myself with no trouble nowadays!!

My dad was a v bland eater (he is still picky but branched out a bit!)
Said it was mostly very traditional
Porridge
Toast
Meat/veg
Stews
Salads with ham, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, sometimes cheese or egg
Eggs
Puddings/custard/biscuits

Mums side was similar, but never touched rice (my grandad was a POW in Burma and refused to ever have it again)

I was a 60s child and my Mum was very progressive with our meals
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Curry
Stir fry mince ,mushrooms,onion,garlic,tomatoes with soya sauce
Rissoles
Home made crisps😳
Burgers in bun
Irish Stew
My Father had all the gross food,liver,stuffed hearts,steak and kidney 🤢

Stew and dunplings
sausage and mash
cottage pie
sugar sandwiches
cheese on toast
egg and chips

bananas and custard
rice pudding