POST-WAR YEARS
9214 Post War Food
During the war, and through to the 1950s, we were subject to rationing. This meant we had to go without many foods. The paradox is that our diet during this period was the healthiest we ever had! With so little to spare, the ration had to be well-balanced.
The food we ate probably was, however, most constrained by the previous working-class culture. It was not until the 1960s, when people started taking foreign holidays, that new dishes were introduced. It was later still before traditional British dishes were prepared in an appetizing way. Until then the signature of British food was overcooking!
The peak of post-war British cuisine was thus roast beef, pork or lamb always overdone. With this came roast or mashed potatoes and overcooked vegetables; usually cabbage, but possibly cauliflower or carrots or even sprouts. All were cooked for far too long, so that they were mushy and tasteless and too often grey in colour!
In a popular variation, pork and lamb came as chops, to be served with deep-fried chips. Or, more often, there would be pork or beef sausages albeit with little actual meat content. For a treat, the only take-away was fish and chips; from the local chippy (fish and chip shop) wrapped in newspaper.
Despite the shortages, offal apart from liver was shunned. All in all, it was a filling diet, and even nutritious to a degree. But, as we now realize, it was unimaginative and boring. But, at the time, we knew no better; and looked forward to the occasional luxury of a roast chicken.
School was supposed to be worse, but the cooks at my school turned out some decent meals albeit in the popular tradition. They did use offal, at least in the form of liver, but they braised it. Best of all, they served us delicious stews and meat pies, full of juicy beef. Sausages, when they came, were chipolatas unusual for the time and, cooked in the oven, were delicious. Even the fish, again roast in the oven, was tasty where most other fish apart from that from the chippy was bland, served with lumpy white sauce.
With these, though, we had mashed or boiled potatoes only occasionally baked ones and of course the usual overcooked green vegetables. The only real problems, however, came when there were shortages; and the potatoes, for example, were replaced with (desert) rice!
The one thing we all hated was salad, since this was inevitably replete with a selection of insects!
Of course, for sweet we had all the traditional stodge of the public school; spotted dick, jam roly-poly, rhubarb crumble, bread & butter pudding all with thick custard. We loved them all. As traditional dishes they have never been bettered.
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