Add a Comment. Comment on what we've already got. If you think there's a better way of doing it, or adding your own twist, comment on our existing recipes. brains and that anything green and mushy had to be made from snot or bogeys. So many rumours in fact that every playground had their own version of the following rhyme:

Everyone knows you can't eat this sort of thing without custard and this part of the recipe could be up for debate. 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. 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’. Cooked from scratch on the premises, these dinners were planned to give children a hot, nutritious meal in the middle of the day. In the 1950s and 1960s many a child lived in poverty and a hot meal was often not possible. School milk had also been introduced to improve the poor diet of many children.

This is a really cheap recipe to make and uses only 4 ingredients. In fact, you've probably got them in already. You will need plain flour, granulated sugar, melted butter and cocoa powder. My meals during the school day have become grabbed snatches of food from the store cupboard and there’s rarely time for a sit down school dinner. Now that I’m living alone, funds are getting short and I’m paying for the ingredients I use in my demonstrations. Spread the dough with the jam. Dampen the edges with water or milk. Roll the dough into a log shape and place in a lightly buttered baking tin. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until risen and golden. Serve with lashings of custard and extra warmed jam if so desired.

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. In the summer there might be ham salad, consisting of a slice of ham, round lettuce, cucumber and half a tomato, served with boiled potatoes.This would have caused a riot in my day when a daily menu of high-fat, high-salt and high-sugar school dinners was the norm. Step One: Add the flour, sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl and mix together until uniform in colour. The balance is truly present during this era; vegetables, potatoes and plenty of protein for a growing child," reports nutritionist Xander Pipe on 40s school meals. 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.

But in most working households this has been replaced with less elaborate arrangements now called midday dinner/lunch.’ Chat! Sign up to School Recipes and you have instant access to our Discussion Forums where you can post questions, answers and general chat to your heart's content.

If you are a member of the lower classes or live outside London and the south-east, the midday meal is called dinner and is often the main meal of the day. But for the upper classes and metropolitans, the midday meal is called lunch. In the evening, the lower classes and northerners come home from work, school or shopping and sit down to another fairly substantial meal called tea at about 6pm. Ministers have announced that from next January, school meals in England will have to include at least one portion of vegetables a day - and no more than two portions of fried food each week. So, no thankyou. I won’t be swapping an hour of my free time for lunch and supervision! And one day, maybe someone will come along and change things for the better.