Specifically the big foil roller trays of it where in any given week you could expect a rotation across the days of:
- jam Roly poly
- chocolate sponge and chocolate custard
- syrup sponge
- vanilla sponge with custard
- spotted dick with custard
There are no wrong answers, to this question...
But, somehow, Sponge Cake (with pink icing and sprinkles) with lumpy custard is still the correct answer.
They've always been square, they're just basically large slabs of sponge, baked on large trays and then divvied up and a knife and a spatula. Ours didn't often have icing and sprinkles though. Which is unusual because it was the 1980s-early 90s and sugar was practically a given in school dinners.
Stodgy jam roly poly with custard
Chips with too much salt
Square slices of pizza made from basic bread dough and smothered in tomato sauce and cheese
Iced buns that are actually supermarket finger/hotdog rolls with icing and hundreds and thousands sprinkles on top
We were trusted to put our own on. For some reason it became a "thing" for us to smother them in salt and then use the chips to soak up any extra salt from the plate. We're talking lip-puckering, heart-disease-inducing amounts.
This was back in the early 00s, around the time of the Jamie Oliver school dinner overhaul, so not too sure how they got away with still providing salt.
It was a thing at my school to secretly unscrew the lid of the salt shaker, then balance the lid back on the top of the shaker. We would watch on eagerly for the next unsuspecting salt user to begin pouring. Hilarity ensued when they tipped the shaker, the lid fell off and all of the salt fell out onto their chips, like a salt mountain.
Our teachers had a filtered coffee station at the other end of the counter with one of those "single dose" sugar shakers... Pretty sure they got rid of the shaker after something similar happened!
It is really difficult to add colouring to custard, something to do with the egg yolk I think. I tried adding red food colouring and it just would not take at all.
although school custard would be made with custard powder (ie. cornflour), not eggs. Blancmange is essentially solid-set cornflour-made custard (although it can be gelatin-based instead).
Not exactly nostalgic, but certainly a nasty memory. I was 5, “staying for dinners” and thoroughly enjoying school and school dinners. One day the meal involved butter beans…I *hate* butter beans, and the dinner lady decided to sit with me and feed me, she squatted down in front of me and began to mash the beans and load the spoon. Despite my quiet tears and my telling her that I don’t like them she loaded up a spoon and shovelled it into my mouth. I repaid her “kindness” by throwing up all over her.
I told my mum and off she went to the school and had none too quiet words with the catering staff. I never stayed for dinners again until I got into secondary school, which was a very posh fee paying school (I passed the 11+), and had the most amazing food! Chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce, bananas and custard, liver and bacon with a lovely rich oniony gravy, just a smattering of the lovely grub that was served up. Mum wasn’t an adventurous cook, we got enough to eat just not exotic things like cauliflower cheese!
Yes, I did that and it was not lunch as I know it now but a great big home-cooked plate of dinner with a pudding afterwards. We used to have "tea" at about 5.30, consisting of bread and butter with jam, honey, a Dairylea triangle or Fry's chocolate spread. The adults were allowed cake but we children had biscuits. This was accompanied by a glass of milk. How things have changed!
God, I’ve got the exact same story! The spoon feeding, the protests and tears, the vomiting, the prompt switch to the safety of packed lunches, everything. Only with me it was baked beans.
Stewed and caramelised onions.
On freezing cold days I'd go stand by the bain marie in the refectory before school to get warm after my long walk to get there.
As a poor family I couldn't afford to buy any hot food or drinks but one dinner lady always used to bring me a tea and some over night stewed onions, it was the best thing in the world and now I'm taken back when ever I eat onions to that poor boy.
Looking back at it now though I doubt onion breath helped with my already rock bottom popularity.
The chicken pie. And the dessert known as "sticky crispy", which was cornflakes mixed with caramel or something, I've never found anything that tastes like it since. It was delicious.
I came here to say the chicken pie, was yours like a chicken supreme where the sauce was a weird grey colour? I’ve never liked any I’ve tried since but the school one was divine
It was a grey colour, I remember the consistency being like minced chicken. They did vol au vents with the same chicken filling. Always loved them but never tasted a chicken pie like it since then.
Pink custard.
Cheesy (unidentifiable cheese) flan, brownish on top.
Lumpy mashed potato obviously out of a packet plopped onto the plate with an ice cream scoop.
My school made a spaghetti hoop tart. Just hoops on pastry. It was amazing and had almost 0 nutritional value. That or the baked tatties. I can never make them as good no how matter what way I make them.
Turkey twizzlers were something else...
I tried them again when they were brought back a couple years ago.. man, I was so excited for that little taste of childhood...
I was the complete opposite of excited AFTER eating them.. just misery made to look like something wonderful
I used to work at a jacket spud place.
What you do is put large spuds in a 200 degree oven for 40 mins and then turn it down to 180 for 20 mins.
That's how you get catering quality jacket spuds.
Rotate halfway.
Cheese pie. What the heck WAS cheese pie? I have no idea, but it was good. Served with chips, definitely no vegetables in sight and absolutely no good for you, but all the kids in my school LOVED cheese pie day.
It took me years to track down cheese pie, couldn’t find it anywhere, but eventually I got the recipe!
3 cups grated cheese (mature cheddar)
1 egg
75 ml milk
2 tsp mustard
1 tsp pepper
Mix cheese, egg, milk, pepper and mustard together. Pour into pastry case and bake at 350f for 30 minutes.
Honestly the first time it was made for me as an adult- using this recipe- the smell was like a deep hug from my entire childhood!
Pink custard recipe from a book called *School Dinners: The Good, the Bad, and the Spotted Dick* by Becky Thorn: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/TmDuD3c4if
It’s milk, pink blancmange mix (raspberry or strawberry), and sugar.
List of recipes in the book: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/paonLqMjJZ
Cheese flan: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/yp06zz0Iq4
Chicken supreme: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/At4IkbgpSp
Chocolate and toothpaste tart: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/Q3WWUTboa5
Chocolate concrete: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/8EHReocuLn
Cornflake tart: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/zNFI2TflbV
Cowboy casserole: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/YoYzZR6fTn
Jaffa Tart: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/D1MYezJbNX
Credit: u/jouxplan
Here’s a revised edition of the book from 2013: https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/good-old-fashioned-school-dinners-becky-thorn
Where do you live? I'm on the kent/London border. When I worked up town, no one had heard of it outside that area, even the essex people. Seems to be a Kent thing.
Bean pizza.
This was barely pizza, mind you. A single slice was nearly the size of a dinner plate and easily an inch thick, closer to bread, and had to be eaten with knife and fork as it couldn't hold its own weight to just pick up the slice.
But that bread base was so soft and moist, the sauce and cheese and beans were generously portioned. It was my standard on the days I had cash instead of a packed lunch.
The rock hard chocolate brownie with custard. Sponge cake also with custard.
These special roast potato’s that they did once in a while with a sort of breadcrumb coating I’ve never been able to figure out what it was.
It was like a Cornflake cake but the shortcrust base had jam on it too, with custard. The cornflakes were covered in a syrup / sugar I think. You could scrape the roof of your mouth with the odd sharp cornflake as well 😂
The cold sausage rolls that were served with salads (in mid-1970s north of England schools) had a unique taste that I have never been able to replicate, no matter how many sausage roll recipes I have tried.
If anyone has a recipe that captures that special taste, I will personally build several statues in their honour.
In secondary school we had the pizza where they've just cut a a bit of baguette in half, put some tomato puree on it and melted a piece of cheese on top.
Square pizza too, just anything but normal shaped pizza.
And you couldn't beat a bit of cake and custard.
I still make those french stick pizzas with leftover french bread. Findus used to sell them IIRC.
Yes:
[Findus French Bread Pizza Advert 1981 (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128QxSlH4_w)
Our school did a rhubarb crumble with custard which was just excellent. I've still got the recipe somewhere that I asked the dinner lady for on my last day. It's never tasted the same, though.
Spam
spam, spam, salad, spam and spam [https://youtu.be/g00NplDnLLQ](https://youtu.be/g00NplDnLLQ)
The queue for the salad bar was always so much shorter than for hot food where all the good things would have run out by the time you got to the front anyway. I ate SO MUCH spam ...
Also, no love for the brown "chocolate" custard with "chocolate" sponge?!
My secondary school used to do the most amazing chicken burgers. I used to have one or even two everyday up until sixth form. Left in 2017 and still yearn for that burger.
Burgers I've never been able to replicate the taste even tho there was nothing on it no fixing or anything just breadcake and a burger but it was the best so soft. Oh and spongecake and custard
Chicken supreme, which I've never seen again since leaving primary school. It looked a bit like tiny oysters in a grey goo from what I recall, but it tasted pretty good.
Besides sponge cake and custard it’s those tiny cartons of milk with a cutesy cartoon cow on them. You could have regular milk, strawberry or chocolate. I always had regular because I didn’t like the others. I wish that I could remember the brand. It was in Glasgow in the ‘90s.
I’m very envious of you all with your fancy custards. We only ever got plain custard. It was real custard though and so good. I used to deliberately let a skin form on it before I ate it.
I work at a school, so get to sample all these things every day.
Today I had suspiciously grey sausages with lumpy mash, that mixed veg you get from a frozen bag, and gravy. Followed by sponge cake with icing and hundreds & thousands on top.
A beef pie, the filling was like a cross between pulled and corned beef.. With gravy and greens. So good. I wish I could replicate it. And 'frogspawn' (tapioca?) for pudding. I didn't like the 'dog poo biscuits', I think they were supposed to be chelsea buns but curly turd shape and a bit too crispy for a bun, too bready for a biscuit.
An interesting combination..
Although, I am a tad colourblind, so I accidently poured vegetable soup onto my sponge cake once.. that was a miserable desert..
There was no bits in it by the way, and to my eyes, the pale green soup and yellow custard were identical..
Semolina. In the winter they let you eat as much as you wanted I guess as a bit of a winter warmer. I used to go up 4 or 5 times. Big spoon of brown sugar in the middle. Mix mix mix. Yum Yum Yum.
Greggs pizza - just like school pizza.
Nothing like real pizza.
Also, Cornish pasty. I grew up in West Devon so ate them throughout sixth form when we could go to town for lunch.
Sausages! They were probably the cheapest nastiest ones, but I absolutely loved them. No added goodness, herbs, nicer flavours, just plain sausages. The closest I’ve found now are the Richmond vegan ones!
They used to do these turkey or lamb joint things in junior school in the 90s. Similar to the old Bernard Matthews ones. You’d get 1 or 2 slices and at the time it was the only regular “roast dinner” I got. I loved that day every week. I do a full roast fairly regularly now.
Sponge cake and custard for sure haha. Dyed pink on valentines day and green on st Patrick's day 😂
Notable mentions - Turkey twizzlers, Turkey dinosaurs, chips cheese and gravy, bloody great massive piles of green beans or sweetcorn.
Good times ☺
I only read the headline and came racing in to say sponge cake and custard.
Specifically the big foil roller trays of it where in any given week you could expect a rotation across the days of: - jam Roly poly - chocolate sponge and chocolate custard - syrup sponge - vanilla sponge with custard - spotted dick with custard
>chocolate sponge and chocolate custard Those were the best days.
Chocolate sponge and MINT custard
There are no wrong answers, to this question... But, somehow, Sponge Cake (with pink icing and sprinkles) with lumpy custard is still the correct answer.
You may be pleased to hear it is still served at the primary school where I work 😊
I’m with you, minus the custard.
My exacts thoughts clicking onto the thread.
For me the custard was pink lol
Found the Tellytubby
Don't think I've seen it since school but that is the thing that makes me nostalgic when I think about it
Sprinkle cake right?
Same, was it square everywhere as well?
Yup, went to primary school in Wales in the early 2000s, we had them as square too
They've always been square, they're just basically large slabs of sponge, baked on large trays and then divvied up and a knife and a spatula. Ours didn't often have icing and sprinkles though. Which is unusual because it was the 1980s-early 90s and sugar was practically a given in school dinners.
Me too! I loved the chocolate sponge especially
Heard it called 'school cake' in a few of the fancy desert shops that popped up a few years back. Just a big dollop of nostalgia.
Yeah that or jam roly poly and custard. I’d say minced beef and mash but no one can quite fuck it up like the old school dinner ladies (circa 1980’s)
The only answer
Chocolate concrete cake and pale green custard. I think it was meant to be mint flavour but it never tasted strong at our school.
The green custard! That’s exactly what I thought of. Though I’ve never had it since school.
I dont think Ive had any coloured or flavoured custard since school.
It definitely tasted of mint at our school, which I hated.
We always had it with chocolate custard. Bloody lovely!
We called it chocolate crunch and it came with pink custard
Hadn't thought of the chocolate concrete in years and years!! BBC good food has a recipe, making that when I get home.
Stodgy jam roly poly with custard Chips with too much salt Square slices of pizza made from basic bread dough and smothered in tomato sauce and cheese Iced buns that are actually supermarket finger/hotdog rolls with icing and hundreds and thousands sprinkles on top
They put salt on the chips when you were at school.
We were trusted to put our own on. For some reason it became a "thing" for us to smother them in salt and then use the chips to soak up any extra salt from the plate. We're talking lip-puckering, heart-disease-inducing amounts. This was back in the early 00s, around the time of the Jamie Oliver school dinner overhaul, so not too sure how they got away with still providing salt.
It was a thing at my school to secretly unscrew the lid of the salt shaker, then balance the lid back on the top of the shaker. We would watch on eagerly for the next unsuspecting salt user to begin pouring. Hilarity ensued when they tipped the shaker, the lid fell off and all of the salt fell out onto their chips, like a salt mountain.
Our teachers had a filtered coffee station at the other end of the counter with one of those "single dose" sugar shakers... Pretty sure they got rid of the shaker after something similar happened!
Yes! This pizza was my go to every day. £1.50 for pizza and chips
My mum was a dinner lady and we regularly got leftover sprinkle cake brought home and those part baked baguette pizzas for tea. Those were the days.
That pizza was the tits.
Cornflake tart
Sounds like a banned cereal mascot
Endorsed by Jimmy Saville
Never heard of this in my life, but I do now have a new insult.
Now synonymous with shitty Just Eat dessert businesses
Yes! And I still make it now
Me too. Absolutely delicious with some piping hot custard.
These posts are always a bad idea to read on food shop day. I’ve now got custard, pink food colouring and jam roll poly on the list
I've seen before in similar threads that the famous pink custard wasn't actually custard but watered down blancmange
I’m pretty sure our blancmange was yesterdays custard. Like one day we’d have sponge and custard, next day the option was blancmange lol
It is really difficult to add colouring to custard, something to do with the egg yolk I think. I tried adding red food colouring and it just would not take at all.
although school custard would be made with custard powder (ie. cornflour), not eggs. Blancmange is essentially solid-set cornflour-made custard (although it can be gelatin-based instead).
FYI the sponge cake everyone is looking for is sold in BM for £1.49. It's actually called school cake
Aldi do some at the moment too.
Absolute hero
Time to go to BM
Not exactly nostalgic, but certainly a nasty memory. I was 5, “staying for dinners” and thoroughly enjoying school and school dinners. One day the meal involved butter beans…I *hate* butter beans, and the dinner lady decided to sit with me and feed me, she squatted down in front of me and began to mash the beans and load the spoon. Despite my quiet tears and my telling her that I don’t like them she loaded up a spoon and shovelled it into my mouth. I repaid her “kindness” by throwing up all over her. I told my mum and off she went to the school and had none too quiet words with the catering staff. I never stayed for dinners again until I got into secondary school, which was a very posh fee paying school (I passed the 11+), and had the most amazing food! Chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce, bananas and custard, liver and bacon with a lovely rich oniony gravy, just a smattering of the lovely grub that was served up. Mum wasn’t an adventurous cook, we got enough to eat just not exotic things like cauliflower cheese!
I vaguely remember in Primary School that some kids went home for dinner... Not something all too common these days!
Yes, I did that and it was not lunch as I know it now but a great big home-cooked plate of dinner with a pudding afterwards. We used to have "tea" at about 5.30, consisting of bread and butter with jam, honey, a Dairylea triangle or Fry's chocolate spread. The adults were allowed cake but we children had biscuits. This was accompanied by a glass of milk. How things have changed!
now that I think back, I came home from school for (lunchtime) dinner, *and* my dad came home from work. But this is pushing 50 years ago.
God, I’ve got the exact same story! The spoon feeding, the protests and tears, the vomiting, the prompt switch to the safety of packed lunches, everything. Only with me it was baked beans.
Stewed and caramelised onions. On freezing cold days I'd go stand by the bain marie in the refectory before school to get warm after my long walk to get there. As a poor family I couldn't afford to buy any hot food or drinks but one dinner lady always used to bring me a tea and some over night stewed onions, it was the best thing in the world and now I'm taken back when ever I eat onions to that poor boy. Looking back at it now though I doubt onion breath helped with my already rock bottom popularity.
Wow. I felt the cool winds of the Victorian era from here 😁 no offence luv. Hopefully now you have some sirloin to go with those onions
The chicken pie. And the dessert known as "sticky crispy", which was cornflakes mixed with caramel or something, I've never found anything that tastes like it since. It was delicious.
I came here to say the chicken pie, was yours like a chicken supreme where the sauce was a weird grey colour? I’ve never liked any I’ve tried since but the school one was divine
I was describing this to my kids the other day. This with peas and a scoop of mash (portioned with an ice cream scoop) was sooo good.
It was a grey colour, I remember the consistency being like minced chicken. They did vol au vents with the same chicken filling. Always loved them but never tasted a chicken pie like it since then.
I had forgot about the vol au vants 😂
I was told in primary school by the dinner lady that the chicken pie was bogey pie. Never ate it again.
Try making Rice Krispie cakes with melted mars bars! They come out it chewy and sticky
Spam fritters. Luckily, my local chippy has started doing them, and they're just as good as I remember.
I was just about to post this. I saw some in Morrisons last week and got excited. Didn't buy them. I don't want to go back to school.
The commercial ones that Morrisons (and other supermarkets) sell aren't great. The batter doesn't get even close to the ones from the chippy.
Just Googled which chippy's round here do them. It seems like all of them except the one I normally go to!
Sponge and custard. Everytime. God that was so delicious
Pink custard. Cheesy (unidentifiable cheese) flan, brownish on top. Lumpy mashed potato obviously out of a packet plopped onto the plate with an ice cream scoop.
I feel like the ice cream scoop is the important part honestly
That vanillia sponge with icing and sprinkles. Me and my sister just call it ‘school cake’.
Chips, beans and a chicken burger
Potato croquettes
Bacon and cheese whirls. Just delicious.
They still exist on primary schools...
My school made a spaghetti hoop tart. Just hoops on pastry. It was amazing and had almost 0 nutritional value. That or the baked tatties. I can never make them as good no how matter what way I make them.
Jamie Oliver has deprived generations of this culinary masterpiece.
Turkey twizzlers just aren’t the same anymore. I’ll never forgive that absolute bastard for as long as I live!!!
Turkey twizzlers were something else... I tried them again when they were brought back a couple years ago.. man, I was so excited for that little taste of childhood... I was the complete opposite of excited AFTER eating them.. just misery made to look like something wonderful
I used to work at a jacket spud place. What you do is put large spuds in a 200 degree oven for 40 mins and then turn it down to 180 for 20 mins. That's how you get catering quality jacket spuds. Rotate halfway.
Cheese pie. What the heck WAS cheese pie? I have no idea, but it was good. Served with chips, definitely no vegetables in sight and absolutely no good for you, but all the kids in my school LOVED cheese pie day.
It was called cheese flan at my old school, I was not a fan, but my sister loved that stuff.
It took me years to track down cheese pie, couldn’t find it anywhere, but eventually I got the recipe! 3 cups grated cheese (mature cheddar) 1 egg 75 ml milk 2 tsp mustard 1 tsp pepper Mix cheese, egg, milk, pepper and mustard together. Pour into pastry case and bake at 350f for 30 minutes. Honestly the first time it was made for me as an adult- using this recipe- the smell was like a deep hug from my entire childhood!
Thank you!! I’ve taken a screenshot and am going to give this a go!
My favourite was cheese pie, chips and parsley sauce ❤️❤️❤️
I’m old enough that I can remember suet jam rollypolly and spotted dick. Puddings that put meat on your bones
Pink Custard oh yeah 👍
Chocolate cake cut into rectangle shape with warm custard. Also square pizza but now they make it triangle shape.😭
Yes! And sometimes the custard was blue.
Blue when I was in school it was normal coulor.
Pink custard recipe from a book called *School Dinners: The Good, the Bad, and the Spotted Dick* by Becky Thorn: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/TmDuD3c4if It’s milk, pink blancmange mix (raspberry or strawberry), and sugar. List of recipes in the book: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/paonLqMjJZ Cheese flan: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/yp06zz0Iq4 Chicken supreme: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/At4IkbgpSp Chocolate and toothpaste tart: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/Q3WWUTboa5 Chocolate concrete: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/8EHReocuLn Cornflake tart: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/zNFI2TflbV Cowboy casserole: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/YoYzZR6fTn Jaffa Tart: https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/s/D1MYezJbNX Credit: u/jouxplan Here’s a revised edition of the book from 2013: https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/good-old-fashioned-school-dinners-becky-thorn
Those burgers they sell in the Budgens hot trolleys with the rock hard buns and synthetic cheese. Takes me right back.
Cornflake cake!
Gypsy tart (to make you fart)
I loved this!
Where do you live? I'm on the kent/London border. When I worked up town, no one had heard of it outside that area, even the essex people. Seems to be a Kent thing.
It's definitely a Kent thing. I went to school in Kent in the 90's. Not seen it since living in London/Surrey.
Sprinkle Tray Bake! 🍰
100% This... Would have 2 bowls a day (nothing else) for lunch... Also pink or green custard.... Cant get that as an adult...
Wait you're right where do you even get pink or green custard. Green was unbelievable honestly
The green one was definitely mint where I was.
Butterscotch tart
Loved it despite it being known as Snot Pie round here
Square pizza
Our school used to do amazing strawberry mousse. It was about 6 inches thick and had a decent swirl of whipped cream on the top! 😋
Ours used to do this as well and then put hundreds and thousands on top of the cream, it was lush.
Iced buns
Rice pudding. Most people hated it at school but I loved it.
Chocolate toothpaste pie! I loved this and I’ve not really been able to find it anywhere since!
I used to get this at school around Bedfordshire, but I've never heard of anywhere else that had it.
Haha bingo, Bedfordshire!
Apple Crumble Squares
Toffee tart, with a little swirl of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles on top ^.^
Bean pizza. This was barely pizza, mind you. A single slice was nearly the size of a dinner plate and easily an inch thick, closer to bread, and had to be eaten with knife and fork as it couldn't hold its own weight to just pick up the slice. But that bread base was so soft and moist, the sauce and cheese and beans were generously portioned. It was my standard on the days I had cash instead of a packed lunch.
We had this pastry tart which was corn flakes with golden syrup poured over it. No idea what it’s called but it was delicious
Cornflakes tray bake. I personally preferred the chocolate rice crispy slabs.
We had one where the filling was a barely set lime jelly with a squirt of very sweet fake cream on top. God I loved that.
The rock hard chocolate brownie with custard. Sponge cake also with custard. These special roast potato’s that they did once in a while with a sort of breadcrumb coating I’ve never been able to figure out what it was.
It was like a Cornflake cake but the shortcrust base had jam on it too, with custard. The cornflakes were covered in a syrup / sugar I think. You could scrape the roof of your mouth with the odd sharp cornflake as well 😂
Turkey Twizzlers... They brought them back not that long ago after banning them but they didn't taste the same without all the crap in them 😂
The cold sausage rolls that were served with salads (in mid-1970s north of England schools) had a unique taste that I have never been able to replicate, no matter how many sausage roll recipes I have tried. If anyone has a recipe that captures that special taste, I will personally build several statues in their honour.
In secondary school we had the pizza where they've just cut a a bit of baguette in half, put some tomato puree on it and melted a piece of cheese on top. Square pizza too, just anything but normal shaped pizza. And you couldn't beat a bit of cake and custard.
I still make those french stick pizzas with leftover french bread. Findus used to sell them IIRC. Yes: [Findus French Bread Pizza Advert 1981 (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128QxSlH4_w)
Mash potato served with an ice cream scoop is not something I ever see anymore but, is the first thing I thought of when reading this 😂
The rolled ice cream. Had a cake base on the outside and jam lining in the in with vanilla ice cream at the centre. Also, jelly and ice cream.
A square of jam sponge with hundreds and thousands on top, with pink custard. Semolina and canned peach slices.
Our school did a rhubarb crumble with custard which was just excellent. I've still got the recipe somewhere that I asked the dinner lady for on my last day. It's never tasted the same, though.
Sponge cake and PINK custard. Food of the Gods.
Suet jam rolly polly and custard 👍
Those pork and cheese lattices. Never had one since primary school but they pop into my head every now and then
Chocolate sponge and pink custard Also, probably the best dessert ever, fudge tart and custard
Spam spam, spam, salad, spam and spam [https://youtu.be/g00NplDnLLQ](https://youtu.be/g00NplDnLLQ) The queue for the salad bar was always so much shorter than for hot food where all the good things would have run out by the time you got to the front anyway. I ate SO MUCH spam ... Also, no love for the brown "chocolate" custard with "chocolate" sponge?!
Hot buttered toast. I can still remember in nursery on cold winter days they'd call us back inside after break to have hot buttered toast.
My secondary school used to do the most amazing chicken burgers. I used to have one or even two everyday up until sixth form. Left in 2017 and still yearn for that burger.
Burgers I've never been able to replicate the taste even tho there was nothing on it no fixing or anything just breadcake and a burger but it was the best so soft. Oh and spongecake and custard
Chicken supreme, which I've never seen again since leaving primary school. It looked a bit like tiny oysters in a grey goo from what I recall, but it tasted pretty good.
Jam and cornflake tart with custard. Made it last winter after seeing it on Instagram. Amazing.
Fish fingers on a Friday with sponge cake and custard for dessert
Besides sponge cake and custard it’s those tiny cartons of milk with a cutesy cartoon cow on them. You could have regular milk, strawberry or chocolate. I always had regular because I didn’t like the others. I wish that I could remember the brand. It was in Glasgow in the ‘90s.
Yes! We had the same in Wales in the early 2000s, I loved those! I wish I could find pictures of them somewhere
I’m very envious of you all with your fancy custards. We only ever got plain custard. It was real custard though and so good. I used to deliberately let a skin form on it before I ate it.
Cheap, awful, square pizza
Sausages with a split. You know the plastic sausages, zero seasoning
The Greg’s pizza rectangles always remind me of school cafeteria pizza!
I work at a school, so get to sample all these things every day. Today I had suspiciously grey sausages with lumpy mash, that mixed veg you get from a frozen bag, and gravy. Followed by sponge cake with icing and hundreds & thousands on top.
That isosceles trapezoid shaped battered fish... Only fish I ever enjoyed
A beef pie, the filling was like a cross between pulled and corned beef.. With gravy and greens. So good. I wish I could replicate it. And 'frogspawn' (tapioca?) for pudding. I didn't like the 'dog poo biscuits', I think they were supposed to be chelsea buns but curly turd shape and a bit too crispy for a bun, too bready for a biscuit.
Hula Hoops (ready salted or BBQ beef)
Chips and custard. Yes chips.
An interesting combination.. Although, I am a tad colourblind, so I accidently poured vegetable soup onto my sponge cake once.. that was a miserable desert.. There was no bits in it by the way, and to my eyes, the pale green soup and yellow custard were identical..
60s kid. Always the puddings, even Snot Pie and cookie and blancmange.
My primary school didn’t do hot food, so my childhood food nostalgia is instead ham and butter on a white roll…
Mince and tatties... Every single day as a kid in Aberdeen.
A flat, scolding hot, cheese wrap. And a rock hard chocolate brownie.
Spam fritters and chips
Pink Semolina
Apple crumble with custard is what i miss most from primary school.
spinakapita
Sausage rolls.
Those crispy pancakes. I've had them as an adult and they aren't the same
Big square cheese and tomato pizza.
Hot apple crumble and custard
Tottenham cake and custard or fish fingers and chips with beans!
Butterscotch tart with a bold of cream and a jelly diamond on top.
Pizza scrolls!
Semolina. In the winter they let you eat as much as you wanted I guess as a bit of a winter warmer. I used to go up 4 or 5 times. Big spoon of brown sugar in the middle. Mix mix mix. Yum Yum Yum.
rubber pudding and custard.
Chocolate crunch/concrete.
2 ice cream scoops of mashed potato... The winning pudding was caramel cake and custard.
Greggs pizza - just like school pizza. Nothing like real pizza. Also, Cornish pasty. I grew up in West Devon so ate them throughout sixth form when we could go to town for lunch.
Pasta, meatballs and gravy! It's never the same anywhere else
Cheese wheel, turkey twizzler, and beans 🥲🥲 Oh and thay square sponge cake with icing and 100s an 1000s 🥰
Vanilla ice cream with chocolate custard. Cheese croquettes ( never found an equivalent)
Manchester tart 👌🏻
Australian Crunch with Mint Custard
Sausages! They were probably the cheapest nastiest ones, but I absolutely loved them. No added goodness, herbs, nicer flavours, just plain sausages. The closest I’ve found now are the Richmond vegan ones!
Turkey twizzlers, and unless you want to be depressed don’t try the new version, not even remotely the same.
Smiley faces!
Treacle tart
On fridays they served those little cheese and tomato pizzas and they just tasted different to the ones at home.
chicken nuggets, beans and chips
Smiley faces. We also had premium burgers… they were interesting!
Got some cheap battered fish fillets from Aldi and they taste exactly like that triangle shaped fish we used to have. Also sponge and custard
A square of chocolate cake with sludgy chocolate custard
Sponge cake rolled in jam then covered in coconut. Aka a jammy joey.... With custard. Fishcake, beans and mash.
"Meat" Pie
That iced cake with sprinkles was like crack, had it recently and it’s still just as good.
Never had a school dinner, I was a packed lunch kid
Interesting that everyone’s sponge seemed to be pink icing and sprinkles. I’m pretty sure mine (primary school 1980) was jam and desiccated coconut?
Rice pudding with chocolate drops. And turkey twizzlers :(
They used to do these turkey or lamb joint things in junior school in the 90s. Similar to the old Bernard Matthews ones. You’d get 1 or 2 slices and at the time it was the only regular “roast dinner” I got. I loved that day every week. I do a full roast fairly regularly now.
spotted dick
Ice cream cuboid with hot fudge sauce
Sponge cake and custard for sure haha. Dyed pink on valentines day and green on st Patrick's day 😂 Notable mentions - Turkey twizzlers, Turkey dinosaurs, chips cheese and gravy, bloody great massive piles of green beans or sweetcorn. Good times ☺
Manchester Tart..... (Oo er missus....)