School cooking lessons

We made all the usual. like Rock Cakes, Scones, Christmas Pudding and Christmas Cake. I don't remember cooking anything that was remotely 'healthy'.

I always thought it was most unfair that we couldn't have woodwork lessons. Only boys did this and metalwork. Girls were only allowed Domestic Science and Needlework. Thankfully this is outdated now.

I did ‘DS’ which was Domestic Science to ‘O’ level and often feel it taught me valuable cooking skills that I still use today and I am sure otherwise I would not have. How to make pastry correctly, including flaky for example, and a cheese sauce for example. In the exam we had a question like ‘prepare a selection of food for a buffet party’ and had a couple of hours to write down word for word, including ingredients, what we would cook, and in what order, showing as much skill as possible - eg, choose to make scotch eggs from scratch, or sausage rolls. The following week we had to make it all under exam conditions. No books allowed. It was very challenging, but I enjoyed it. I remember at the end we had to wash our tea towel in the sink and hang it up on a string line. These lessons and the exam were fantastic teaching of cooking disciplines.

Our domestic science lessons taught us to prepare good, plain food as well as how to launder clothes and clean the home, plus the dreaded needlework!

I think our food was very healthy, based on meat or fish, and two veg. We did not have today’s habit of ‘snacks’ throughout the day either. It was very rare to see anyone overweight.

As said already, we did not eat processed food and portion sizes were much smaller than today’s super-sized meals. I can remember mum phoning in her order to the butcher and ‘a pound and a half of mince’ was always on the list and that was to feed four of us!

Our first lesson was "cocoa and toast". At the age of 11 I had been making them for ages! I remember my sister bringing home her treacle toffee in a jam jar - still liquid.

I started DS at age 11 when I went to Grammar school and took it for 5 years, actually doing an O level.I still love cooking 71 years later.
We did theory as well as cookery so I assume, because I can't remember, that nutrition played a part.
This was in 1948 so not many luxury ingredients about.
Those of us who were keen (and proficient) catered for lots of school parties and other functions under the instructions of the DS teacher.
It was a very happy time.

I was at grammar school from 1953, and also remember having to make an apron before any cookery lessons.
Christmas cake was made in October, and I once had to transport a Hungarian Goulash, home on my bike!
One recipe was Cheese, Tomato and Potato pie, which I quite liked, but haven't made since I was married.
I also had a prized gondola basket, but never used it for school.

I liked DS lessons, I can remember most of what we cooked starting with blancmange, then in order : rice pudding, semolina pudding, rock cakes,baked apples stuffed with mincemeat,brown stew, butterfly cakes, Welsh cakes, corned beef pie. I can't remember much else, but we had exercise books where we had to write down the recipe and the method.
I had a gondola basket too KatyK I had no idea they were called that, but I knew exactly what you meant.
There was no mention of healthy eating in the lessons, but I do remember 'economical' and ' nutritious' being banded about. I do think that pupils ( dare I say and many mothers) need to be taught how to cook a meal using cheaper cuts of meat which can be eeked out with veg ( frozen is ok) and fish. I add mushrooms to a lot of meals, notably with pasta in tomato sauce, bought sauce is fine.
I learned to cook by watching my mother and from Delia's Cookery Range when I got married and still using 42 years later.

I suspect "healthy" wasn't mentioned because there wasn't much opportunity to eat unhealthily! Most ingredients were unprocessed, rationing was still a memory for many and the huge supermarkets with endless unnecessary choice had yet to be foisted on us.

I have some of my mum's plates and bowls from the 50's and they are truly tiny by comparison with today's. Portions were smaller, treats were rare and people were skinnier!

We started by making a cookery apron, which we tie dyed, mine went around me about five times!

The first lesson we made a cup of tea, over the years I remember making soup, mousse, and not being able to cut the head off a fish! I gave it up as soon as I could!

When one of my daughters did it for GCSE it was called food and nutrition, and was all about healthy eating

We had cookery lessons but healthy was never mentioned. I can remember being taught to make a sandwich. We cooked things like baked apples. When we made cakes, all the boys would be waiting outside the cookery room hoping to get some. I loved taking my ingredients to school in my gondola basket.

I remember making scones for the first lesson and mine turned out well, so I enjoyed cookery for the rest of the year. Sadly, the same could not be said for sewing, or science.

Years later I took a City and Guilds course (all four years of it) for my own enjoyment, and there was a great deal of focus on nutrition, rather than healthy eating.

Of course, fast food and ready made meals were not an issue then (1970s) and shops closed at 5.30 pm.

I can’t remember making salad, but the first hot dish we made learned to make was white stew ?, and then brown stew. I remember my mother being mightily unimpressed with both offerings. We also made puff pastry which then became Russian fish pie, which I have loved ever since, but it now usually translates into salmon en croute, and some thing with layers of sausage meat, fried onions and sliced tomatoes, topped with mashed potato and cooked in the oven! My DS teacher and I had a lasting mutual dislike of each other. She said she hoped I would never get married as my poor husband would die of starvation. I wish she could meet him now!

We had to learn to iron a lace hanky! And as for the so-called Irish stew: when I got it home, even the dog wouldn't touch it. I learnt to cook at home - was often responsible for Saturday lunch - beef stew made in the pressure cooker. As I was in the A stream, I stopped DS lessons after two years, much, I assume, to the relief of the teacher, who failed me on my Guides Laundress badge twice.

beechnut how very dare you suggest such a thing!
Glammanana, I’d forgotten the apron making bit, no hat at my school!
But now I come to think of I did have make a “handkerchief sachet” and a “lap bag” in primary school what was that about? as well as a bookmark! I still can’t sew lost cause, me! , but I can cook!

A lot of my D S. lessons seemed to be how to iron a T-towel or pillowcase or wire wool the baking tins !
When we did cook it was cottage pie, rock cakes, scones or Victoria sponge.
Nothing healthy there

Oh I remember the first thing we ever 'made', the salad, I also remember cutting the tomatoes into fancy shapes.

we made sausage rolls , cheese straws (both turned out badly) rice pudding, fish pie and sausage meat pie, rock buns, scones, apple crumble - I ruined that one, stuffed onions - yuck, it was true to say I didn't particularly enjoy any Domestic Science lessons.

grannyqueenie I dare you to untie your apron strings and walk anti-clockwise ?

Cookery lessons at my school focused on cakes, cheese on toast and how to clean an oven.
Nothing about healthy eating cooking

We had cookery lessons in our first year at Secondary School but we had to make our own pinnies and hat in Needlework before we could take part.
My first recipe was for Rock Cakes a very apt title as they where the brunt of family jokes for years to come.
I am a self taught cook when it comes to family and I have raised 3 x ACs to enjoy meals made from scratch which have always been healthy.

And radish roses!!
I remember we made macaroni cheese in one domestic science class, had to take a dish from home to put it in. Said dish containing tasty macaroni was wrapped carefully in newspaper to carry home, but at the bus stop it slid from its wrapping and smashed on the pavement - Mum not best pleased!!

All I can remember from domestic science, as it was called in my school, is that you must always walk round the kitchen in a clockwise direction. I can’t say that’s helped me much in life!

I had no cookery lessons at all at school after the first year. All I can remember is making an omelette and baking fairy cakes.
So far I have managed to feed my family reasonably successfully.