School Dinners in the 1960's

Mock cream was made with milk, margarine and cornflour according to one site; it must have had sugar in it too, as it was very sweet.

Love mock cream doughnuts

Mock cream in our family was made with milk, butter and cornflour with a dash of custard powder. Can't remember whether there was icing sugar or caster sugar in it.

I also remember the little bottles of milk (1/3 of a pint) which the milk monitors brought into the classroom at 9 am. They sat in the crate next to a central heating radiator most of the morning and the milk was lukewarm when we had to drink it with straws. I also remember a fellow pupil sucking up a beetle from one of these bottles....YUCK!

Our milk used to sit outside on the verandah in the winter at infant school, and, as I was a milk monitor I used to have to try to push the paper straws through the ice which had risen up out of the bottles!
I was also bell monitor at one time - just before playtime, dinner time and home time I had to fetch the bell and run around all four corners of the junior school, ringing the bell!
There was no end to my talents

Jalima were you on the school payroll?

Loved mock cream. Never realised that was how it was made though. And this from a Cornish maid brought up on clotted cream

I hated most of the meals, but we used to have a very tasty meat (beef?) pie once a week and the treacle tart was yummy. We weren't a salad eating family so the school salad with beetroot and raw cabbage had me completely flummoxed.

Linsco, I had a similar experience with school milk, it had been warmed up because the weather was cold, and something came up my straw and wriggled in my mouth! I screamed and spat it out, whatever it was was about an inch long. I haven`t touched milk since, and that was around 1950.
My favourite school dinner, the only decent one, was meat and potato pie with shredded beetroot, lovely. The salads always had greenfly crawling all over them, and the stewed apricots we called stewed ants, because there were always loads floating on the top! This was in the late 50s though, not the 60s, I left school in 1959.

The milk at my junior school was also placed beside a radiator, warming up. It was so disgusting that I was nearly vomiting and we had to drink this daily. Occasionally I would tip mine out of the window but as it was concrete outside I was soon found out. I also only have a little milk in coffee now- I cannot touch cold milk.

I'm sure the school authorities in the 50s/60s didn't appreciate the phobias and trauma they caused. It was just a case of...what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!

Every week without fail summer or winter we had a salad always chopped cabbage never lettuce,grated carrots and beetroot served with hot mashed potatoes. And to accompany it grated cheese.your heart would sink when you saw it,it was all the childrens least favourite meal.Oh and don't get me started on school salad cream disgusting.

I'm glad to say that no-one forced me to drink school milk. I think there was always someone who was pleased to have my share. I've never liked milk except in disguise - custard, hot chocolate etc. My Dad and many of his side of the family have all been the same - no milk in our tea, for example. He used to say 'milk is the natural food of baby cows'.

Jalima were you on the school payroll? I think I should have been!

My dear sister and I were brought up in poverty so we LOVED the dinners we had at primary school. We think they were freshly cooked on the premises, meat or fish, pots and veg and always a yummy pud.
At grammar school we had decent meals too. It was more regimented; 8 to a table, filed in in silence. I recall a hard chocolate tray bake with green sauce. You had to be careful not to send it shooting across the table.

Am I the only one who liked mashed potato and beetroot? It makes a very pretty pink on the plate.

I didn't have school dinners until I went to grammar school in 1954. Before that most all of us in my primary class went home at lunch time as most mothers did not work .
We had lovely dinners at grammar school. We lived near watercress beds , so in summer had wonderful salads with fresh watercress. First time I had ever eaten it. Also a strange ,very hard shortbread , which we called concrete.
There was a prefect on each table and good manners were actively encouraged. I remember getting 100 lines for spitting out some very sour rhubarb.

I seem to remember semolina, tapioca or rice pudding in a wide variety of colours.

Also suet in many , many forms.....meat, treacle ,sultanas, jam rolly polly, Apple.........the list goes on. Master chief? Indeed.

I did eventually take a packed lunch and don't think I have had suet since, except in Christmas pudding.

Since my schooldays I have not been able to eat rice, semolina, tapioca, custard, jam roly poly, milk the list goes on- each of which would make me sick now as we were forced to eat them.

I was also forced at home to eat what was served. My mother said that there were starving children in Africa and my retort was they could have my portions.

I grew up in the same area as you Newquay though not in poverty or in the slums.
I had dinners for the last two years at junior school and like yours they were cooked on the premises and were excellent. The cost was 3/9, 9d a day for all that deliciousness.
Grammar school dinners were awful and such a shock after the previous experience. I took sandwiches in the end, the cost had gone up to 5/- by then and mum thought it was money wasted as I did nothing but complain.
I can still remember my friend picking out all the currents from the sponge cake and getting severely reprimanded for it. I must ask her if she can eat a current now or if she still picks them out.?

I don't remember the dinners as much as the puddings. On the down side, rice pudding, tapioca and semolina. Just awful. The mere sight of them now is enough to make me gag. The ones I loved were gypsy tart, very common in Kent, jam role poly, chocolate sponge pudding and spotted dick.

I hated school meals with a vengeance. They weren't cooked on the premises but brought into school on aluminium containers/trays.

The only thing I loved was chocolate cement. After I got married I tracked down the recipe from an old school cook and my children and now the grandchildren love it. Only trouble is I had to pack a lot of things away when DD and her family moved in with us. Can't wait until the extension is done so I can find my recipe files again.

I went home for lunch, but kept begging for school lunch ( more time to play!)
When at last my mother relented, I got cottage pie and grated carrot, followed by cornflakes and figs. I never asked again.

When I worked in a school, I loved the spaghetti pie, but ours was a puff pastry base topped with tinned spaghetti and grated cheese. I tried to make it once or twice, but it wasn't the same.

I must have been lucky at both primary school and grammar school as school lunches were fine. My especial favourite was spam fritters, mashed potato and peas. Favourite pudding was rhubarb tart and custard.

Milk puddings, cod in parsley sauce yuk!