To say that some things about old fashioned school dinners tasted nice?

[malificent7]

Ok..so admittedly they are mostly puddings but i will start with australian crunch and that cornflake, jam treacle flan thingy. I want the recipie!

[ScrommidgeClaryAndSpunt]

Sponge and custard.
Apple crumble and custard.
Chocolate sponge and chocolate custard.
Anything involving custard, really.
Semolina and jam YES I LIKED IT SOMEBODY HAD TO
Fish and chips on Fridays.
Roast on Wednesdays.
Sausages at breakfast. No doubt all lips, ears and arseholes but they tasted good.

[Isitweekendyet]

Chocolate cake and mint custard.

Pizza.

The semolina and jam.

All of it... if they did a 90's meals on wheels I'd be down.

But I can still feel the pain of jacket potato and yoghurt day.

[LadyMonicaBaddingham]

The head cook from my primary school came to my wedding! I still cook things she used to make; the most amazing sausage plait bring chief among them. We also used to have the most amazing pud called Vicarage pudding, which was basically a bread pudding with sweet white sauce, but I've never been able to get it right, even with her help... The school sadly no longer has a kitchen and is packed lunch only 😔

[PlatypusPie]

I remember a weird meat pie, served with salad, that was really a tart ie open, with pastry on the top, made of beef mince with a cheese topping. I can’t think quite how it was made, because it was neither too sloppy nor hard but was absolutely delicious. The head cook was a brilliant pastry maker.

My father was a headmaster and moved to a new school. He came home raving about the wonderful cook who ran the kitchen - very high quality, adventurous cooking and yet she kept within budget. Turned out later that she had lots of contacts in the poaching world and the school was feasting on pheasant and salmon on a regular basis!

And the only thing I ever disliked about school lunches was Butterscotch Tart - made me shudder, unlike all the PP fans earlier in the thread.

[unexpectedgifts]

My best middle school memories were the food!

It was late 1970's and a new school was built in the area, huge kitchen and super school cook.

Everyone who could ate her food, all the teachers too. We queued up for seconds and thirds if there was any left.

The school before this had dreadful food and the school after was poor. But this cook was truly amazing.

[mrscee]

Concrete tart was like a shortbread with sugar on the top and it had glacé cherries in it

[chickensaresafehere]

I went to an all girls private school in the early 80's - think St Trinians.
We used to have school dinners in either the posh upstairs dining room or the 'below stairs' mess hall - with really long tables & benches & dead animal heads on the walls. There were still the row of bells labelled with different parts of the house (it was an old stately home) which could be rung to summon the servants!!
Friday was fish finger & smash day. A prefect would stand at the top of the table & dish out 2 fish fingers on each plate, & send them down the table,because Fridays err our favourite we would put a plate on our knees (under the table) & one in front of us,so we had 4 fish fingers instead of 2!!!
We also had 'splodge' which was a type of angel delight,but made with water instead of milk.
We only had corn flake cake on special occasions!!
Oh & we had named pigeon holes that we kept our own personal napkins in,that we had to take to dinner with us every day.

[VeryQuaintIrene]

Arctic roll! Which after 35 years, I now get to have again when I visit my mum in her care home.

[mrscee]

Caramel tart was amazing and cornflake tart and there was another one with jam and dedicated coconut on it. Also mandarin cheese cake which was yummy and a dinner lady dropped a whole one on the floor and my friends table didn't get any.

[pinktrenchcoat]

I used to love those little biscuits dusted in icing sugar but I can't seem to recreate them.
Does anyone know what sort of biscuits they were?

[Blompitude]

Devonshire splits!

[twosoups1972]

Great thread.

I was at primary school in London in the late 70s/early 80s. Loved school dinners!

My favourite was roast dinner which was always on Wednesdays. We had swimming in the morning and we came back to school to smell it cooking which was great as we were starving. Lovely thick gravy served with it.

I also liked meat pie served as a small square from a huge metal tin. Served with either carrots or cabbage (and gravy!).

Puddings - favourite was chocolate sponge with chocolate custard. And I'm not sure which one it was from reading above, either Gypsy Tart or Butterscotch tart.....but it had a shallow pastry base topped with a sweet topping and a blob of fake cream on top. I can still taste it!

Oh....and 'salad'. Initially I wasn't keen on this as I wasn't a big salad eater. You had to have one protein (I had grated cheese), one salad (I had grated carrot)....and they used to serve chips! I used to mix my grated cheese and carrot which tasted very nice to me. I used to ask my mum to recreate this at home!

[speakout]

Maybe it depended on the quality of food served at home.

Shool dinners were wonderful, the boiled cabbage, the swede, the steak pie, the sausages, the ravioloi,all delightful.

[separatebeds]

I also recall that amazing mashed potato/cheese pie. Was it a sort of homity pie?
Macaroni cheese
Australian crunch
plain sponge with jam on top and dessicated coconut
treacle sponge
chocolate sponge with chocolate custard
Chewey Cornflake/jam tart thing

[Waspnest]

A lot of primary school meals were vile, put me off stuff like rice and ravioli for years and put me off things like mashed swede, boiled cabbage and liver for life. I did like the puddings like butterscotch tart and some kind of pink mousse with cornflakes on top. We had to eat everything on our plates - I can remember one boy having to take his bowl of pudding into class with him - we perfected the art of waiting until no staff were looking and then just quickly going and scraping.

Secondary was bliss, you just paid for what you wanted and all the bread was freshly baked so I basically lived off rolls, hot dogs, apples and milkshakes for 4 years.

[Pinkbells]

Oops not dauphinoise - duchesse potatoes

[Pinkbells]

Oh yes, dauphinoise potatoes, I loved those!!

[mydogisthebest]

MIL was a school cook and her cooking was awful. Her meals used to make me feel ill. For me, that said it all as school dinners were the worst food I have ever tasted in my life. She wasn't a cook at my school

[Armi]

I went to school in Scotland and would rejoice when it was cockaleekie soup and a morning roll followed by haggis. Bloody lovely.

[Pinkbells]

I used to love Beef Cobbler, and they did jam sponge with coconut on top with green or pink custard, disgusting as it sounds I loved it! Oh, and Gypsy Tart with half an apple. The thing I hated was blancmange with big squares of coloured jelly in it. I like the jelly but it took forever to scrape the snot blancmange off it.

[mydogisthebest]

My school dinners were absolutely vile. No nice meals at all. It was school dinners that put me off rice pudding.

Lumpy mashed potato, lumpy custard YUK

[OhTheRoses]

60's child here. Except for the puddings my memories are more: grey liver and onions with boiled out cabbage and lumpy mash with the eyes mashed in.

Another favourite was salad! A single lettuce leaf holding a slice of tomato, a slice of cucumber and a slice of egg - with it you could have a spoonful of mousetrap, sardines in tom sauce or a hard boiled egg. It came with the obligatory lumpy eyefilled mash.

Thankfully from 11 we could take sandwiches!

[MrsDrudge]

Has to be chocolate shortbread with green (peppermint) custard - weird but delicious

[pineapplebryanbrown]

I hated the fact you had to clear your plate of everything. I couldn't and still can't eat fish or eat or drink dairy. Therefore the morning bottle of milk and all the disgusting sardines were pure torture. I used to do my best to pass things off onto more hungry children.

[callmekitten]

I grew up in the U.S. - upper midwest. And like a PP, I have been googling all the favorites mentioned that I have never heard of. So many fabulous looking tarts!

I went to a very small rural school and the school lunches were prepared by the local lady's church group. Most of the food was really good, family type cooking. Meatloaf, roast chicken, various casseroles. Every meal came with some type of potato and vegetable. And there was always buttered bread and peanut butter bread to fill you up in case you didn't like what was being served or needed more to eat.