"No Seasoning. Just Salt And Vibes": Brits Share The Horrific Dishes They Grew Up Eating, And My American Tastebuds Are Truly Scandalized
Ah, British cuisine from the second half of the twentieth century. As an American, the first meal that comes to mind is tough beef with mushy cabbage and a dash of post-war austerity. For previous generations, Britain’s food culture was not so much today's trendy and diverse London-based food scene but more the product of garden vegetables and what was lurking in the tin cupboard. Financial constraints kept taste buds grounded, resulting in meals that often made you wonder if the flavor was rationed, too.
Older Brits connected — and commiserated — over shared memories of the everyday meals they once knew all too well when badoopidoo recently asked the r/askuk subreddit: "What did British people eat every day back in the '50s, '60s, and '70s?". The responses offer a healthy dose of nostalgia. Still, they might just make you grateful that your dinner plans will not be in 1975 Birmingham.
1."It's important to remember that post-war rationing had a real impact on our food culture for a generation. I grew up in the 1980s, and boiled potatoes featured very heavily in our diet, along with boiled carrots (or other vegetables) and some sort of meat in gravy."
"Agreed. You had a whole generation who didn’t know how to cook anything outside of what was available through rationing in World War II. And definitely no ‘foreign’ food. It was mainly a small amount of meat, boiled potatoes, and overboiled veg."
2."I was a kid in the '70s, and I always remember my mother's steaks, which were so well done that they were almost ash. I never understood how anyone enjoyed steak until I grew up and was taken to a proper steak restaurant. That was an eye-opener!"
3."Many people thought that if potatoes take 30 minutes to boil, all veg must need at least 30 minutes. Plus, it's so handy to start everything boiling together. These were dark and mushy days!"
4."Tinned pasta on toast."
5."I grew up thinking I hated pasta and rice when I really hated my mum's idea of bolognese and curry."
6."I was born in 1970, and I remember growing up pretty much eating '[insert affordable protein] and chips.' So, meals like 'egg and chips,' 'hotdogs and chips,' 'crispy pancakes and chips.'"
7."When we were very good, we’d get mash instead of boiled potatoes."
8."Boiled potato, boiled peas, pork chop. We must have had that meal twice a week growing up. And then we'd have sausages instead of pork chop for another two days."
9."We still like to remind my mum about when she accidentally made gravy with Nescafé instead of gravy granules. We only realized after all of us (extended family included) poured it over their Sunday roast."
10."I remember making pancakes in home economics exactly how my mum made them and being criticized for doing a terrible job."
11."Boil-in-bag fish in parsley sauce poured over stodgy white rice."
12."I remember my dad telling me in the '80s, he went to his mum's for dinner, and she asked if he wanted spaghetti. He was baffled by the beef sauce and noodles situation she served him because, until that point, spaghetti meant canned, mushy spaghetti in tomato sauce."
13."My family felt so exotic when we had chicken in white sauce over rice."
14."My mum and dad worked on opposite shifts during the '70s. My dad, ex-army, was the most adventurous cook, so on his rota, he would make us the Vesta dehydrated beef or chicken curries at least once a month, or as a special treat, he would make us Buitoni spaghetti bolognese. We thought it was the bee's knees. He also made stuff in the pressure cooker; the worst was his beef sausage casserole; no one would eat it because the sausages came out all pale and yucky, looking like dead men's fingers!"
15."I was born in the early '70s. My mum's idea of spaghetti Bolognese was a tin of minced beef in gravy poured over spaghetti boiled to death and a bit of red Leicester cheese grated on top."
16."We had potato waffles! When I went vegetarian as a teen, my mum would serve me mash, gravy, and carrots."
17."Mash potatoes that came in a tin!"
18."I grew up in the '60s and '70s, and we ate the same thing all the time. Golden Wonder or Kerr's Pink potatoes were boiled with overcooked cabbage, beans, carrots, or peas. The meat was sausage, mince, chicken, and more sausage."
"I remember having garlic for the first time in a salad when I was in my late teens. The first time I had avocado, I was so disappointed because I thought it would be a sweet fruit. We had rice pudding, but never rice with a savory dish.
I love cooking, and my grandmother, my mother's mother, was a good cook. I think wartime rationing messed with my mother's mind—she was a teenager in WW2. My auntie was only a little older than my mother, and she could really cook, though. My aunt used butter, sugar, and quality ingredients, whereas my mother only used margarine, skimped on sugar, and always bought the cheapest food possible."
19."Born in the '90s. My parents used to boil the shit out of everything with no seasoning. They still do it now. Interestingly, their portion control is ridiculous."
20."I love liver and onions. I haven't had it for years though..."
21."Remember going out to dinner in the '80s, didn't matter where: prawn cocktail, steak, and black forest gateaux seemed about the only things available on the menu."
"Steak and the Black Forest gateau are amazing. I’m still not over the fact you can no longer buy Sara Lee chocolate gateau…"
"The other day, I was reminiscing about dining out when the starter choices were soup or prawn cocktail or orange juice or melon!"
22."Wine glasses on doilies on saucers."
23."My lasting memories of pub meals in the '80s feature a lot of scampi, chips, and peas. My parents told me it was the first restaurant meal I ever ate. Someone even came over to compliment them on how well-behaved I was and that I had grown-up tastes. To this day, I still order it with a heavy sense of nostalgia for my childhood."
24."Don't forget duck à l'orange if you were feeling exotic."
"I remember eating that, but it was the lean cuisine. My oldest sister fed us when Dad wasn't home, or we weren't at Nanna's. It was usually toasties with a side portion of crisps and Angel Delight for pudding or whatever lean cuisine we had in the freezer. The orange duck lean cuisine was lovely.
But a neighbor would often bring over a hotpot, casserole, or stovies that needed to be heated in the oven. Just because our mum was a piss-head, otherwise we wouldn't have eaten."
25."My mum used to serve salmon and green beans and boil new potatoes at least once a week. There is no seasoning, no butter — just salt and vibes. I drank about three liters of water with it."
26."Dad used to put the boiled broccoli on when the chicken went in the oven and kept it on 'low' until plating. When I finally ate greens that weren't mushy enough to spread on bread, I realized I liked them!"
"My mum boiled the arse out of vegetables. It wasn't until I tried steamed vegetables that they tasted good."
27."Don't forget homemade pies. Mince and onion or cheese and onion with peas, carrots, and potatoes thoroughly cooked in a pressure cooker."
28."Pressure cooker stew in my family. Onions, taters, carrots, and mince are all bunged in the pot. No seasoning. I can't complain too much; it was hearty food, but it really deserved some herbs and spices."
29."I didn't eat pasta that wasn't tinned spaghetti hoops until 1994. 'Foreign muck,' my nan called it. In 1993, my stepsister and I had a very transgressive chicken korma delivered while our parents were out. There would have been HELL to pay if we'd got caught. We smuggled the takeaway wrappers into a bin 5 streets away like we were disposing of a murder weapon."
"My dad had the same 'foreign muck' retort to pizza. Yet his favourite light meal was a grilled tin of peeled plumb tomatoes with cheese on toast. Go figure!"
30."Decades ago, my mum's dehydrated beef, chewy chicken, lamentable lamb chops, and liver and bacon turned me vegetarian."
"Similar here. I didn’t eat beef for years because I didn’t like the dried out tough as leather beef joints my mum would cook. Turns out I love beef and steak when cooked properly."
31."I remember my granny referring to Italian food as 'newfangled pizza stuff' well into the '90s. I don't remember my grandad ever eating anything more exotic than a Garibaldi biscuit."
32."We mostly had 'if you're hungry, you'll eat it.'"
33."My experience of food in England growing up was hugely variable. My mum (Irish and British) was happily cooking Greek, Malaysian, Indian, Nyonya, etc. food from the 1960s onwards. My husband's mum (also British) cooked very meat-potato-two-veg meals with Yorkshire puddings on a Sunday. She first tried garlic when I cooked for her in the mid-1990s."
34."Some popular foods back in the day that have gone out of fashion a bit are tripe, Liver and Bacon, and Kedgeree."
35."One of my family's favorite meals to this day is cauliflower cheese because cauliflower was about the cheapest vegetable you could get for some of the years when I was growing up, and you can make a decent-tasting cheese sauce for pretty cheap."
"Other than that, gammon and eggs was a pretty common dinner. Egg and chips. And towards the end of the month, just before payday, if things were a bit tight, then a fried egg on a slice of toast would do as dinner."
36."My dad, who was of Italian descent, would not eat pasta! His dad was a chef! We grew up eating Shepard's pie, fish fingers, mash, and peas; fried mince with frozen veg and mash; beans, bangers, and mash. I ate A LOT of mash back then. We also had rabbit stew a few times, it was very nice. Stuffed marrow was probably the worst, next to liver and onions!
"We usually had pudding too, things like Spotted Dick with custard (a suet pudding with raisins/sultanas, very stodgy), bread and butter pudding, rice or tapioca (sometimes semolina) pudding, Artic roll, raspberry ripple ice cream. Oh, and the butterscotch-flavored Angel Delight. Breakfast was Ready Brek with as much sugar as I could get away with; lunch was a jam or chocolate spread sandwich, a golden delicious apple, and a beaker of low cal orange juice."
Cheers to the hearty, humble British dishes of yesteryear. They may not have been gourmet, but they kept the nation going. What weekday meals do you remember eating that have all but vanished from grocery shelves and dinner menus? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously with this form.
