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!

[thebabessavedme]

70s kid here, I remember devonshire splits, delicious buns, cut in half filled with 'dream topping' and jam, yummy we were also given a cup of coffee after lunch

[Sunonthepatio]

@Shabbyabby, I was the same about that gruel thin custard 😩

[mumwon]

loved semolina & red jam - hated braised liver!

[Yabbers]

Square fish. Chocolate cracknel and custard.

[sueelleker]

We got cakes for pudding once at primary school-the dinners used to be sent in, in large metal churns. One time the custard had ants in, and they sent out for cakes instead.

[MitziK]

Gipsy Tart, the once a term block of mostly melted icecream, tinned peaches and the once a term roast potatoes.

Everything else was pretty much disgusting (the stew with beans in was vaguely palatable, even though, according to my mother, who was a dinnerlady at one point, it was largely soya mince,tinned carrot, tinned beans and gravy with lard melted in), but food at home wasn't much better (except for the salads) and probably contributed to my being pathetically underweight and malnourished for much of my childhood.

I do remember being very upset that a Muslim girl was given a big pile of grated cheese on a plate because there was usually pork or lard hidden somewhere in every recipe and I wasn't allowed to have the same because 'cheese is only for people whose religion says they can't eat meat'. Many lunchtimes were spent patiently waiting for the furious harridan that would smash spoons onto tables and scream for silence and smack ten year olds when nobody was looking to stop yelling at me about the Poor Starving Children in Africa and I was being given this food for free, so should be grateful for it - ironically, we weren't allowed to eat whilst a dinner lady was speaking to you, so it was in your interests to wind them up enough that she went on a long rant. That finally stopped around the time a new teacher started coming into the hall and saying I was needed for something and had to come immediately whether I had finished my lunch or not.

The best thing that happened in food terms for me was going to high school, as they made jacket potatoes and, if you were on free school meals, because they knew you weren't allowed to spend enough to get a potato, topping, salad and a 'pudding' (I seem to remember it being 76p a day at one point - potato (30p), topping (15p), salad (15p) sweet item (20p)), they would sneak a flapjack, apple or yoghurt to you underneath the tray.


Whilst you couldn't force me as a child, you couldn't pay me to eat today's school dinners - most of them provide part baked rolls with fillings, but don't actually bother to bake the rolls a second time before sticking a smear of tuna inside. And the 'chicken' drumsticks or wings don't look like any bird I've ever butchered.

On INSET days, it's compulsory to eat what is supplied as a unit and I have sat there for the entire time drinking water, even when being told I'm not demonstrating a team mindset. I don't give a flying fricassee, I'm not eating that shit even though you're forbidden to leave the premises to get something identifiable. I just scarf down something from home whilst ostensibly tidying/hiding in a large cupboard

[WillGymForPizza]

The first thing I thought of when reading this thread was the hard block of chocolate cake with icing and hundreds and thousands, and steaming hot chocoalte custard poured over it.

[AdaColeman]

Gypsy tart was a favourite at my school. They also did great liver and onions with thick gravy, and a good roast pork dinner too.
The Christmas dinner was always a huge hit, with singing dinner ladies and cheers & applause for any pregnant teachers!

[BoswellsBollocks]

I loved school dinners!

Pies that always had perfect pastry and cheese and potato pie to die for. In seniors we’d put cheese and gravy over everything but it was bloody delicious.

I loved the dessert offering of a giant shortcake biscuit with a mini bottle of milk with a thin straw.

We could also get Jamborees at break time for 20p. A deep fried jam sandwich covered in sugar wrapped up in a green paper towel. They were amazing!

[TheSassyAssassin]

@DippyAvocado I liked spam fritters too! Treacle tart and custard was a fave, as well as the huge bowl of pink yogurt with home-made biscuits to dunk in it. Wasn't too keen on the stews though which always seemed to be a mix of dried meat and slimey gristle or the semolina. Occasionally got cheese and biscuits for pud and used to enjoy those. Then it would be out to the tuckshop for crisps and chocolate. Happy days

[maddiemookins16mum]

Our School roast dinner was lovely, as were the sausages.
We always had fish on fridays, proper fish in batter with proper chips (this was the 70’s).
Oh and the puddings were all great (except the tapioca).

[Poppy43]

I loved the semolina. The pies were lovely at the school I went to.
In comp all of the food was delicious especially the hot dogs and the steamed treacle pudding. I've actually searched online to see who supplies the school with food but given the fact I left school at the late 90s they may have changed suppliers by now. I've tried to replicate cornflake cake, and some other cakes but they are just not the same.

[areyoubeingserviced]

It was the done thing to complain about how awful school dinners were, but I loved them

[SheWoreBlueVelvet]

Small rural primary in the 1970’s, The best thing ever was cinnamon rolls. Bloody amazing, as mostly you ever had cinnamon at Christmas or maybe in apple pie at home. Massive doughy buns were a rarity in the world of custard,semolina type puds.

[Soontobe60]

Yum yum! I loved rice pudding with burned skin, hot pot with suet crust, shepherds pie and red cabbage, cheese pie, sausage and mash, semolina, chicken curry (with pineapple and sultanas in it!)

Hated lamb stew because it had pearl barley, the only food that makes me gag, hated Manchester tart with its cold, wobbly, thick custard, hated jelly.

My school had about 50% Jewish pupils and when we had bacon hot pot, there was a bacon free option for them. My grandma was an assistant in the kitchens and told me once thatbthey used to make a huge pot of the hot pot, then split it in 2 serving trays and remove the bacon from one for the Jewish girls 😱😱😱 (this was in the 70s, and when a Ugandan Asian refugee started in my class she asked me if the girl had a tail!!!)

[Serin]

Cheese pie and baked beans.
Blooming lovely.

[marvellousnightforamooncup]

Fuzzy orange milk jelly with chocolate garnish or chocolate crunch and custard.

[Bluesheep8]

School child of the 80s here. My favourites were:
Minced beef cobbler
Meat and potato Pie
Fish pie
Macaroni cheese
Cheddar butteries
Quiche
Vegetable pie
ALL the puddings and coloured custard. Our school food was ACE.

[BadlyAgedMemes]

We had generally very nice food, especially in our tiny countryside primary, where food was made on site (by a lady who knew my mother, so I had to be on my best behaviour), and any leftovers went to the pigs on a nearby farm. Secondary school food is more of a blur, as we self-served, and I tended to only ever have salad and bread.

Not in the UK, so different kinds of foods to what others are writing about. (I love these threads, though. They always set me off googling bits of British cuisine I'd never come across before!) Favourites with my class always seemed to be the hot dog and potato casserole, mince and potato casserole, and a chicken dish similar to a very mild curry, but not actually called a curry, with rice. We hardly ever had pudding, but when we did, I only remember it being pancake and jam, or an ice cream cone.

The only food we all detested was "dill meat", though. Some kind of red meat, stewed, with a weirdly glutinous, white and green sauce, served with boiled potatoes. I swear it put a few generations off dill altogether. (I wonder if the pigs liked it...)

[sharksonmyswimsuit]

Did someone say cornflake tart?? It's a much requested favourite in this house and gets hoovered up mainly by me

[TheSilveryHildaOgden]

At primary: Chocolate semolina. Suet pudding with golden syrup.And some Fridays we had sausages and chips, and could have seconds On the down side, watery cubed spinach, gristly meat, lumpy potatoes, pease pudding mostly consisting of undercooked yellow split peas like bullets.And the worst was trifle, I sat through playtime in tears, refusing to eat it.

At secondary. Excellent meat pie. But horrible gooseberry pie. Our 6th form review had to take the following song out of the show as teaching staff thought the kitchen staff might be offended.

"Gooseberry pie, gooseberry pie,
All we ever get is gooseberry pie.
Well it may be light and airy,
But it's also green and hairy,
Gooseberry pie, gooseberry pie!

[TheSilveryHildaOgden]

Swede, not spinach - stupid tablet

[muminmanchester]

I've never found a Manchester Tart as good as the one we had at school.

Also those big trays of cake with sickly sweet icing, you'd get a square of that cake with custard and it was incredible.

I suspect the reason they tasted so good was that they were made with nothing but sugar!!

[kaitlinktm]

Did anyone else have chocolate pudding/cake with a minty green custard? We had this in the 60s and my son also did in the 90s but I have never been able to replicate it.

I loved nearly all the dinners we had in the 60s. Wasn't keen on tapioca but liked rice and semolina puds. We weren't allowed to have a tuck shop in our all girls secondary school.

[Craftycorvid]

I’m feeling quite jealous of some of the school dinners here! Mine (mostly 1970s) were pretty grim: cabbage that had been over-boiled and not washed beforehand, consequently full of insect life! 🤢. The very cheapest cuts of meat boiled to death - think heart and liver. Reckon it’s what made me a veggie as an adult. The few decent bits were actually semolina pud with the obligatory blob of jam (I’d dither then stir), a reasonable steak and kidney pie and, in high school, a bizarre but quite pleasant ‘curry’ that was essentially mince and curry powder, and bread rolls that were, er, greenish because they had also had curry powder mixed in - genuinely nicer than it looked or probably sounds!