Old-fashioned food

Toast and dripping. Filled you up after school.

Mum used to make tripe and onions in the postwar days. I actually enjoyed it although I've never made it as an adult. Tripe is often served as a regional dish in Italy. - the one they do in rome is lovely and not a bit like our tripe and onions.
We often had junket, blancmange and jelly with evaporated milk.

I love boiled ham, I am quite obsessed about the fact I cannot throw away the stock, so I either make peas soup with yelow split peas, or peas pudding

We've just had a few days in Riga and a lot of these foods are alive and well and very popular out there - sprats, haslet, rollmops, eels and more eels. Actually, some of the eels on sale at the central market were still alive and well... There was a nasty looking live pike wriggling about at the front of one stall and I stepped well back in case it lunged at me.

Oh, and pigs' snouts - have they ever been popular here? My mother used to boil a pig's head up for the dog occasionally. They smelled absolutely foul.

I love black pudding and used to be able tobuy a gf one but it can't find it any more

Where we live in rural Switzerland and nearby France, offal is still very popular, but not for the young. I have mixed feelings about this, as ever since I was a child, I refused to eat offal, tripe, heart, brains, kidneys, liver,, etc, etc - and this is more and more the case with youngsters.

However, it is crazy from the environmental and animal welfare point of view- that increasingly only a small part of animals slaughtered for food are only used for the best bits, and the rest just ending up in sausages and cat or dog food!!! When you think of the amount of cereal and fodder + water required to produce meat- it is just nonsensical.

There should be a real campaign by the likes of Jamie Oliver and other famous chefs, to bring back 'lower cuts' of meat back on our tables, explaining the environmental factors at the same time.

Oh no, granjura! I can certainly see the case for wasting nothing. But in practice the thought that I might one day be called upon to prepare and cook giblets and offal for the GC, because of a Jamie campaign, makes my blood run cold. I prefer to eat just a small amount of free range meat, best bits only.

which is what I do too- and yet, can fully understand how wasteful and non-sensical that is.

When I was first married forty years ago I often used to cook liver and bacon, devilled kidneys, pigs trotter soup and yes, junket which I loved. I wonder if you can still buy rennet to make it with?!

DH and I still eat liver. DC would never touch it. We have it with thick onion gravy, that's how mum used to make it.

...forty years ago I often used to cook liver and bacon...

I still often cook liver and bacon, one of our favourite dishes! But it has to be liver from the local farm shop as the stuff that passes for lambs liver in the supermarkets is a revolting, crumbly mess.

Anyone remember Foster Clarks soups? They came in square solid blocks that you had to crumble and mix with water. There were only very limited flavours - I can remember only oxtail and tomato but there were others.

WE have a local cafe that cooks tradition dinners at lunch time, liver & Bacon, ox tail, steak & kidney pud etc, love it, especially in winter. They also do old style school puds that stick to the sides.

I love liver and bacon and had forgotten all about it. Next trip to the butchers and liver will be on the list!

My granny used to make what she called 'cow heel', it was a sort of casserole. I assume it was cows feet or trotters or something. Anyone heard of it. We also had grey peas, jellied beetroot and herring baked which I assume is a variation of roll ups.

Roll ups? I thought those were DIY cigarettes!

Aren't rollmops pickled herrings?

Im confused now, I meant roll mops not roll ups but are they not the same as baked herring. I love them but don't like their bones.

Ooh! Liver and bacon - thanks for the reminder! Must have some... soon...

liver yuk. I cant look at it raw never mind eat it cooked.

I do remember enjoying an omelette with brains (lamb's presumably).
What happened to sweetbreads? They were very popular in the post-war years, I remember...

We have liver and bacon with onion gravy fairly regularly and love it. I remember those soups that came in a block they were very tasty and I always used the oxtail in mince gave it a fab flavour but now you cannot buy any dried oxtail soup at least I've not been able to find any for years.

I still use all those things, not haslet. It's not something I have ever tasted. I make stuffed hearts, liver and bacon, I make liver stroganoff rather than steak, kidney and bacon pilaff, chicken liver pate, I boil up pigs trotters, then roast them. My mother makes brawn, delicious as long as it has enough herbs and seasoning, I buy jellied eels in the local market, and make rollmops, which I suppose are semi-pickled herrings. I remember my mother making two dozen one night, for the next night, but my father came home from a night out and fancied a snack - he ate a dozen of them and she didn't talk to him for a week! I have always loved them, but prefer the gentler home-made ones.

I hate junket and blancmange and tapioca, but I make our rice pudding in the winter. We like cods roe, and sprats - and fried whitebait. I haven't had tripe for a while, but I do make a very nice blanquette of veal substitute with it, I could never bear tripe and onions again after having made it that way. We have oxtail stew every winter. The kids have always loved it. I can buy a whole tail from my butcher for £4.

Quite a few "unmentionable" bits disappeared during the BSE scare/crisis and have been slow to reappear. My butcher kept a book "under the counter" for his regular customers so that we could have beef on the bone for Christmas!
I am sure I have bored all my friends to death with how one DD celebrated her 30th at a well known pork restaurant in Spitalfields, with a " sucking pig banquet", I think she had 2 or even 3 whole piglets (vegetarians and the tender-hearted look away now) even I as a carnivore prefer food not to look like what it was in life, if you see what I mean.
Anyway at the end of the meal her future MIL and I went to ask if we could have doggy bags as they have 2 dogs, we have one, and there were certain bits (ears, tail, trotters etc) left over. We got so much that even giving a tail, ears and trotter to the dog, we had a reheated roast dinner for the next 3 days!

Haslet is too high fat. He is rarely allowed it. And it's a long time since I bought him any cods' roe.

We used to have puddings of semolina, ground rice, and flaked rice. Lovely with stewed apple. But, sadly fattening. So it stopped.

I'm going to make a bread and butter pudding today. Got some lovely soft white bread to use up.

In one of my very old books (probably about 250-300 years old) there is a sucking pig recipe, which begins "first stick your pig above the breastbone but make sure your knife is sharp..." And continues from there, with letting the blood run but being careful to save it etc. Back to basics!

I remember all the foods mentioned here - what meat heavy diets we had then. And I also remember gagging at the smell of tripe and fish cooking. Still hate the smell of fish round the house.