Favourite school food

I hated school dinners so much I was allowed to take a pacled lunch! So, no favourites here.

Gypsy Tart, my favourite.
Lemon Meringue Pie made in a large rectangular tray and each portion had its own blob of meringue.
Meat and Potato pie.
Roast on the rare occasions we had it.
Hated and still do custard especially with skin. I can remember sitting and gagging on it and being made to eat every mouthful. I feel the same about blancmange!

Our school dinners (in the 60's) were pretty standard meat and two veg stuff (sometimes with lumpy mashed potato) which we had to eat or got shouted at by the dinner ladies. But I LOVED the puddings - jam roly poly, chocolate steamed pudding, spotted dick, all with thick custard. Didn't much care for the prunes and custard except that we could eat the prunes and spit out the stones around the edge of the dish and then play "tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief" (almost made up for the taste of the prunes).

Caramel tart or I think some called it butterscotch tart???. I have tried to reproduce it with no luck.
I Have no memorable savoury courses, except chicken supreme which was disgusting.
We never had any fried food even Fridays it was usually a sad bit of poached white fish with boiled potatoes..

My mum worked in the dining hall at my school, but always gave a packed lunch. I wonder why lol...

Our school lunches were excellent, i particularly liked the macaroni cheese on fridays. The one exception was what we called 'locust pie' a syrup tart with cornflakes in that you couldn't get your cutlery into!!

We only had school dinners when Fords factory was on strike in the 60s. We lived across the road from primary school. Braised steak with veg and potato sponge pudding for dessert. We had a mixed salad with ham aand egg with a lovely peppery salad cream. We always had lemon meringue pie after the salad.

My school dinners were lovely - probably because my mum was the dinner lady, and it was a small country school.

Secondary school dinners were not too bad, and I loved tapioca pudding. Also chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce.

Lashings of chocolate custard on our "afters". Yum.

My mum made 'fly pie' - raisins, currants, sultanas etc with brown sugar, and sometimes a little mixed spice, between two sheets of pastry. I'd forgotten about this family favourite until I read this thread.

Cheese and onion pie, served on alternate Fridays. Jam rolypoly, all the milk puddings. I still make them now, mmmm.
I didn’t like school meat So Friday was the only day I got to play -the rest of the days meant sitting in front of things I wouldn’t eat, then gobbling pudding in the last 5 minutes. In 1986 I was asked if I wanted a school dinner at a school I was visiting. I chose fish pie, only to discover that meant a slab of mash on top of pilchards-still with the bones on!???

My schools, in 50s/60s cooked on the premises and served up really lovely meals. I mainly remember puddings, butterscotch tart, Manchester tart, rice pud with jam and shortbread biscuit.
They must have been good because the teachers ate them too !

Loved most of the stodgy puddings: spotted dick, various sponges, all served with custard. Even loved all the milk puddings, sago was called frog spawn. Then there was pink slop and chocolate slop - kind of hot runny blancmange. Would still eat them today if the waistline allowed.

Fly Cemetery..haha..that's what we called it if a teacher could hear. Otherwise it was Spotted Dick, which is the correct name I think, but not the way we said it in our repressed all-girls' grammar school

Purplepoppies

No, we also had macaroni pudding at home, and we aren’t Scottish!

TrendyNannie6: I had a Scottish grandfather, but the fly cemetery was a school nickname, and the school was in Cheshire. That was at senior school.

I went to a small private infant school, and we were taken by bus to a shop in the village for lunch. It must have been a baker’s, I think. We took over an upper room. The only thing I remember about the lunch was the horrible jelly. It was very brightly coloured and very firm, almost hard, and not sweet. Served with very fake cream. Well, it was just post-war, so we didn’t expect much.

Oh how I wanted to have school dinners!!
I lived 2 mins away from my primary school so went home for lunch every day. I was so jealous of all the others staying for dinner & getting a long play time. Even if Mum was out for the day I had to pass my grandparent's house to get home so Nanny gave me lunch.
The only time I got to stay was Wimbledon weeks when Mum & Nanny went to the tennis every day.
When I went to Grammar school I had to stay as it was miles away & the food wasn't great- except the chocolate pudding!!

Cheese pie was lovely!!

Meat and potato pie with suet pastry top followed by ginger sponge pudding and custard has my mouth watering as I write

I went to school in England for a few years and I tried the school dinners, but they were awful- watery mince, overcooked vegetables and various lumpy white puddings. I soon started going home for lunch!
Do you remember the school milk, a third of a pint, warm in summer but had ice in it in the winter, & it was compulsory!

H1954, thank you for starting this thread. I loved the chips, and most of the puddings ....... but most of all I loved the fake frothy cream. Does anyone know how to make it? I have been told it was whipped evaporated milk. However, was it whipped from room temperature or chilled, was anything added, and was it really evaporated milk? I’d love to recreate it and see if I still like it!

Chocolate tart, I think you can still get the recipe on line..yum yum!

Hated tapioca or sago always lumpy....!

Fish and chips and ice cream every Thursday. Trouble was, it was always after we’d been swimming, we were invariably starving and there were never nearly enough chips.

It was a pretty dreadful (junior) school, I was there for only 2 years.

At senior school the only really nice thing I recall was something called Chocolate Crackolate, which appeared once a term if we were lucky. A bit like chocolate Rice Krispie cakes, only squashed down so much more solid.

I did quite like the school rice pudding, too.

One of my most vivid memories of Primary School in Nottingham was crying because parsley sauce had been poured all over my dinner - still hate it. I also hated stew with the fat and grissley meat. I. Pulling a face while I’m writing this at just the thought. I loved the rice pudding. Have lived in Kent for many years and every local talks very fondly about Gypsy Tart being served in their schools. Is this a regional thing?

Spam fritters and baked beans followed by rhubarb stodge with custard ... my dream school meal!