1940's baby menu

As well as the spoonful of blood from the roast we used to have to drink the cabbage water..... And the runny lard from frying the pan was added to the plate when having eggs & bacon.

Just had a look on the web and four years ago you could get its equivalent which is malt and cod liver oil, at Holland and Barretts. Did you have the flat bottles of orange juice and Minidex? How about rose hip syrup?

Goeblers orange juice. Lovely neat.

You can still get codliver oil and malt extract. Think you can still get Virol itself too.

Carbon I still swig down any cabbage/brocolli water that doesn't get used up in the gravy! It tastes ok! Waste not, want not.

Rose hip syrup Seven!! Yes! gave it to DD's. Good source of vit C.

Thankfully I've never tasted Virol. The jars I have must date from around the first two decades of the 20th century if not before and definately state that it is a preparation of Bone Marrow. I can remember my Mum and Nan mentioning Calves Foot Jelly Urrrgh! So perhaps it was something similar to that.

I'm told it is verboten to give children rose hip syrup these days - ditto Ribena!. Daft if you ask me. Supposed to be bad for their teeth. I gave both mine rose hip syrup and malt and cod liver oil (as did my mother with me) and they have lovely teeth. I bought some malt and cod liver oil when my GS was two and he spat it out all over the place! I ended up eating the whole jar myself (not all at once!). Good job I like it! I remember giving both mine Heinz bone and vegetable broth as a starter food. DH loved it and used to finish what they left! I suppose that could be the equivalent of the veal bone soup mentioned in the original post? I believe rusks are also frowned on these days - too much sugar, apparently. Hey ho....

Definitely malt extract Sook it was yummy. Rectangular bottles of orange juice from the clinic. We probably didn't need help with vitamins my family had a very healthy diet, family had a market garden.
The food for invalids was still being taught to nurses when I trained, we had to cook healthy meals for our patients.

Nowadays they probably teach them how to ruin beef burgers.

DD1 ate haggis, neeps and tatties at eight months. She loved it.

DD3 drinks nothing but Ribena and, occasionally, water. She's the only kid in her class with no fillings.

My daughter wolfed down cold (!!!!) shepherd's pie at 7 months and her daughter really love it too

Maybe Virol started as one thing and then was relaunched as another when the notion of feeding bone extract to babies palled.
I think Ribena used to be more syrupy than it is now.
I was surprised to learn that orange juice has as much sugar in it as a fizzy drink (and they have the proverbial 8 teaspoonfuls in a can).
Yakult is even more sugary. I looked it up.
That NHS orange juice concentrate was lush wasn't it.
Do you remember milk tokens. I had them when my DS1 was born in 1971.

Have researched on google. Apparently there were two substances called virol. One in stone jars now available for £10 at an antique dealers, and the other in a brown glass jar which is the one we remember.

I think children got free NHS orange juice and cod liver oil until they were 5. That was to prevent rickets, which is now coming back. At school everybody got 1/3 pint of milk daily. We were healthy children but most of our parents smoked.

kitty, my daughter loved cold stews at that age! And when we were out for the day she quite happily tucked into the Heinz tins of baby food - cold!

Ours loved Virol
I used to make junket as a pudding for the girls when they were little, I'm not sure Angel Delight had been invented. Who remembers that? - DD is so fussed about what littlest fella eats and his healthy eating but she thrived (throve?) on fish fingers, junket, sausages, coddled eggs, and pizza.

The same here with my DD. you'd think we never brought up children. I just zip it and say yes dear,of course dear!

Mine would sell their souls for Angel Delight, but when I thought recently that I might see if my grandson liked it, I read the ingredients list and changed my mind! My daughter would have had my guts for garters. Pity really; I bet he would love it!

I still like junket. Where do you get the rennin from?

Codliver oil and malt mmnnnn yummy and as for that concentrated orange juice , I used to go with my sisters to the clinic where they were given both free.. and I used to steal my nieces and nephews gripe water when I baby sat I'm sure that stuff was addictive.

It was alcoholic!

artygran we used to love butterscotch Angel Delight many years ago, and I thought I would try it again a few months ago, having heard it being discussed so fondly on a TV programme. It's disgusting! I guess palates have changed over the years and we are so much more discerning now about aditives and artificial flavours - it certainly does not taste of butterscotch. I had two spoonsful and chucked the rest away.

jeni I'm sure it was, maybe thats why I became teetotal in my late 20's

Tt still?