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!

[longwayoff]

Well, live and learn. Thanks for that, I've never encountered it before and was finding it difficult to imagine. Doesn't look as bad as I thought it would. Do people make it at home or is it only the tinned variety?

[jay55]

Chilli con carne day was the best because it came with french bread.
I hate mash and mixed veg which were on the menu 3 days a week, so Chilli day was such a relief.

Hated all the puddings except shortbread, if I could get to it before it was covered in pink custard boak

[Natsku]

Not even lingonberries can make liver casserole edible. Thankfully they don't have it that often at DD's school, maybe once a term. Her favourite lunch is spinach pancakes, another classic I think, that do go wonderfully with lingonberries.

[starkid]

Dripping-with-oil potato waffles, turkey twizzlers (of course), lovely soft choc chip cookies.

However from year 8 I had a lunchbox every day!

[Angel75]

School food was yummy. Iced buns and pizza from the tuck shop at break then onto mac cheese, served in these little glass bowls, with chips and gravy for dinner. Loved it.

[TowerRavenSeven]

Depending on the circumstances you might be able to get in touch with the school and they might have the recipe or know who the dinner lady was. My grandmother was a lunch lady for 30 years and everything was made by scratch back then and she kept all her recipes.

She had adults twenty years later call her up for recipes and delighted isn’t a strong enough word to say how she felt! And of course she gave them the recipe if she had it.

[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.

[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.

[MrsDrudge]

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

[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!

[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

[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.

[Armi]

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

[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

[Pinkbells]

Oh yes, dauphinoise potatoes, I loved those!!

[Pinkbells]

Oops not dauphinoise - duchesse potatoes

[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.

[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

[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.

[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!

[Blompitude]

Devonshire splits!

[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?

[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.

[VeryQuaintIrene]

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

[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.