School Dinner Recipes: Classic School Dinner Recipes from the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's

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Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Using a round-bladed knife mix together the dry ingredients. Adding a little water at a time bring together the mixture to form a soft dough. Use your hands to lift the mixture from the bowl and shape gently into a ball. Roll or pat out the dough until it is a rectangle about 8 inches by 12 inches or 20 by 30cm. On an average day, the dinner ladies would dish up the likes of meat pie, vegetables and mashed potato, followed by some kind of sponge pudding and custard.

So if you want to get very authentic with this recipe then make up some blancmange for a traditional school pink custard hit. Chocolate Custard What a pudding jam roly-poly was: it was as capable of keeping you warm as a balaclava helmet and mittens on strings. Volcanically hot jam tempered by the soft suet crust and the ever-present custard. Occasionally the syrup sponge roll would make an appearance just in case we began to feel our sugar levels drop. Spam was invented in 1937 and became popular as a canned food during world war 11. It’s made from pork and ham, salt, water, modified starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite – a preservative. It’s believed that it gets its name from Spiced H am or Specially Processed American Meat. In the 1970s the Monty Python team did a sketch eating in a greasy spoon cafe where the menu was ‘Spam, spam, spam, a boiled egg, spam’ a bit like my school dinners.

Iceland’s food company Bakkavör, did a survey on what meals are called – based on a sample of 1,000 Britons, it found that 53 per cent called the main evening meal dinner, 39 per cent called it tea and just 8 per cent called it supper. In northern England, 68 per cent of those questioned called the main evening meal tea, but in London, only 5 per cent followed the same custom. Mix together the cornflour and sugar, add some of the milk a tablespoon at a time until a paste has formed. Warm the remaining milk in a saucepan and add the paste. Bring to the boil, continuously stirring. I haven't made the crunch version yet but I imagine the golden syrup alters the texture making it slightly different to chocolate concrete. If you'd like the recipe for the crunch, do let me know. Chocolate Concrete Cake Our aim is to gather together as many of these classic school dinners as possible, all under one roof, to make us the most complete source of school dinner recipes aviailable. Although many retro favourites such as turkey Twizzlers and turkey dinosaurs became popular during this time, ‘the 80s were not the prime time for health and wellbeing’ states Xander. According to the nationwide study, commissioned by Vue cinemas, eight per cent of study participants ranked turkey dinosaurs as one of the nation’s top 40 nostalgic foods.

This is lovely eaten cold or at room temperature in the garden on a sunny evening. Please feel free to ignore the previous serving suggestion of tinned toms and mash. I prefer a watercress salad and glass of cold white wine, and so may you! Jam roly-poly Place the sausage meat into a large bowl. If you are using sausages split the skins and ease out the sausage meat into a bowl. Season well with salt and pepper; add the mustard powder and tomato puree. Add in the diced red peppers, cooled onion and mushrooms. Using your hands mix together well and place lengthways in the middle of the pastry rectangle. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. In a frying pan heat the oil and add the diced onion. Cook until the onion is softened and has begun to turn golden. Add the mushrooms and cook for a further 5 minutes. Leave to cool for a few moments. Roll out a 25cm by 20cm rectangle of pastry. Put this on to a baking sheet. Puddings were the saving grace of school dinners. Sponge puddings were served with hot custard, usually yellow in colour but not always; sometimes there was green custard or pink. The school dinner ladies must have made gallons of custard; if not homemade (and invariably lumpy) it was made from Bird’s custard powder mixed with milk.

Children sat at tables, usually in the school hall that doubled as the gym. Often there was an adult on each table who would coach the children in table manners, ‘please pass the salt’ etc. as well as encouraging them to eat the less delicious but still nutritious dishes on the menu. If no adult, then often a prefect or older child would be ‘head of table’. What makes it hard? This isn't a wet mixture and it doesn't have a raising agent so it's naturally going to end up thin and not at all cake-like. Using your hands to press the mixture really well into the baking tin will give it the crunchy and hard texture - just like the one you had at school.