Using only things you remember making at school , create a three course meal?

[ThisPlumShark]

I will start
Starter fruit salad
Main sausage plait
Dessert mars bar slices

What makes a fish pie a 'Russian fish pie'? Is that adding eggs in ? (Thinking of Russian salad which has potato/eggs/tuna and also a recent thread where posters put eggs into fish pie).

Vegetable soup
Lamb casserole
Strawberry shortcake

You have just transported me back to my exam, I had completely forgotten about it.

I have to say, that although the dishes were pretty dated, the skills it gave me were invaluable. Baking blind, puff pastry, roux, Victoria sponge. I wish all young people had the opportunity to do these classes.

Coulibiac - salmon, rice, boiled eggs and dill in a puff pastry case ( like an envelope) pretty sure we would have made it with tinned salmon as fresh was a dinner party level of treat. My mother made this anyway as a family dish - we didn’t have any Russian heritage, it was just a popular dish then and stretched the fish out. Very tasty. . Happy to have an actual Russian point out any faults !

My husband asked me how I can l look at a dish and reproduce it without a recipe: we learnt so many methods plus all the theory of the chemistry involved ( rising, fermenting, caramelisation, preservation, cuts of meat and their appropriate cooking methods, and effect of heat, effect of salt etc, filleting fish, deboning, food purchase and storage etc etc. ) Writing it down makes me appreciate it even more- at the time I thought of it as a restful break from more academic subjects.

Mushroom Vol Au Vents with handmade "rough" puff pastry
Corned Beef Casserole
Sticky Treacle Gingerbread and Pear cake with custard

Cream of mushroom soup
Sausage rolls/quiche Lorraine
Rock cakes/Swiss Roll

Our cookery teacher was the deputy head and a proper grandma type, so we had a varied list to work through. I can remember cooking something with meat and gravy, may have been mince cobbler, because I sat my lovely basket on my knee on the bus home and the grease went straight through it onto my skirt! No end of trying to get that stain out; it still remained for the rest of term! Huge great big grease patch slap bang in the middle!
I was lucky that my mum and both grans were excellent cooks, so all that combined means I'm never short of ideas for meals! A lot of my "throw togethers" (as my husband likes to call them!) like Indian and Chinese, are just that, thrown together! If you know what works with what and how things react with each other, that's half the battle! All to do with the science!
I did love Home Economics! I remember the fruit salad, I still eat loads of that in summer!

Yes, it set me up with skills for life. Understanding the basic science of cookery helps so much. I picked up 'dinner party' cooking from Nigella and the River Cafe etc as a young adult in the 1990s, but already had a really solid grounding from school.

The fresh fruit salad was to practice knife skills and learn about vitamin C I think, not sure why I put it as a starter. I will replace it with vegetable soup. Home Economics was great and like others I have very fond memories of the lessons.

Many skills were learnt that I use today, one is that if you roll pastry, scrape or brush the flour off the worktop before you wipe it, to avoid making a flour/water glue.

We didn't use a book, I remember lots of printed out Word docs that the teacher must have made up, or inherited from a previous teacher, that we had to put into a display book through the term. Sounds like your school did a reasonable job of teaching food tech though!

Not possible, the only recipes we learned were spaghetti bolognaise and chocolate chips cookies. There was an intensive hand washing module so maybe that counts.

Grilled grapefruit- what???? 🤪
Macaroni cheese
Chocolate eclairs

To @Regrettableteakbutterfly and @Dustyblue , I was probably at school in Oz slightly(ha) before you. We did proper cooking, all the cookery skills and it was a double period so could get loads done. Practical subjects were still sex segregated, so the first term we made aprons(school royal blue with yellow Rick rak braid) then we cooked in the second, then we made tray cloths then cooked.One recipe I have lost though and would love again was a. Cornflake crispy bun, I remember it had egg white and golden syrup in. Was delicious. But my dad liked the rock cakes and raspberry buns better.

I can't remember what I made but it was mostly horrible. However, I did make a good pineapple upside down pudding. I remember that fondly. Haven't made it since.

Cottage pie
Milk jelly

That's all I can remember making, maybe flapjacks too, actually
And being taught to wash up in very hot water, which was a useful tip

Coleslaw
Baked Apple
Apple crumble.

Hated every second and chose technical drawing as an option to get away from it!

My husband asked me how I can l look at a dish and reproduce it without a recipe: we learnt so many methods plus all the theory of the chemistry involved ( rising, fermenting, caramelisation, preservation, cuts of meat and their appropriate cooking methods, and effect of heat, effect of salt etc, filleting fish, deboning, food purchase and storage etc etc. ) Writing it down makes me appreciate it even more- at the time I thought of it as a restful break from more academic subjects.

I completely agree with this @Boutonnière. I loved my Home Economics classes even though I was told that I should have chosen Latin/German/History instead. It taught me so much that I still use today. I would include menu planning, costing ingredients/meals and balancing a meal in those skills.

Fruit salad
Russian fish pie
Crème caramel
(Made this for GCE cookery exam)

So fruit salad really was considered a starter. When was this (I can make a partial guess from GCE)? And was that ever the case out in the wild, or was it a home ec lesson anomaly?

I remember a slice of melon being a common starter, so in theory a fruit salad isn't really any different, but I don't remember ever seeing it served that way.

If I say 'individual fruit tartlets' anyone who went to my school will immediately recognise it!

@Ohwhatfuckeryitistoride Not sure you were that much before me, I finished high school in 1992. Wow you've taken me back!

Same on double period so we could bake things. All girl school.

We HAD to do Home Ec, but we had electives like sewing (never did an apron, I stuffed up my shorts) & others. My Dad liked the food but moaned that we should be learning how to manage a household budget - "Home ECONOMICS- it's in the freaking name"

I loved rock cakes, they're much nicer than they sound. We made cornflake cookies but not crispy buns.. that sounds intriguing!

Welsh rarebit (really cheese on toast)
quiche
mandarin cheesecake

Very 1970s, you could get 'breakfast sets' that had small metal dishes for your grapefruit. Often they also had a toast rack, spoons and maybe egg cups.

Cut the grapefruit in half, sprinkle with brown sugar and put under the grill. Serve with a half glacé cherry on top.

Biscuits
Egg salad

Don't all queue at my door now will you 😂

I did GCSE HE in early nighties and all I remember cooking was cauliflower cheese! Clearly cooked other things but no idea what.

I did loads of cooking at home with my Grandma, thinking about it she must've taught me way more than school.