Taste Testing Retro School Dinners 

I find it difficult to understand how ANYBODY cannot love a decent Rice Pudding! It's awesome, thick, creamy, warm and sweet LOVE IT!

My school did a banging Cheese & potato pie, 20 years later and I've still never had better

I loved school dinners. Chocolate sponge and chocolate custard. Yum!

We had proper school dinners until about 1978 onwards. From then it was just burgers and chips. I loved my free school meals.

I was at school in England in the 70s and 80s and we had all of those examples, school dinners were great, my absolute favourite was Cod in breadcrumbs with mashed potato, vegetables and parsley sauce, yum 🙃

Definitely a part 2. Loved this; a fantastic trip down memory lane. Don’t let anyone tell you that nostalgia isn’t what it used to be😉😀

Alanna: "Do you guys want to see a part two?" Mr Naps in the kitchen: "Noooo!"

My mum was the cook at my school so I loved school dinners and she was a great cook! Many people would queue for seconds!

I appreciate the school uniform to add to this video's authenticity!

Anyone remember that 1960s staple, Spam fritters? I could eat one right now!

I remember a fruit slice with currants and shortcrust pastry we'd call fly cemetery because it looked like a layer of squashed fruit flies. Always came with a watery custard of varying flavours.

Part 2? - We're gonna need a bigger uniform.😄

I just about remember primary school dinners from the 60's (yes I'm that old) ... things like mince beef pie, mash and veg with gravy and apple crumble with custard for pud. We all looked forward to the days there was chocolate sponge and pink custard ... mmmm.

I haven’t had pink custard since my school days and now I’m going to craving it. 😋

School dinners were originally supposed to be proper hot meals in case children did not get proper meals at home. In the '80s catering was sold off and sometimes these were replaced by sandwiches. Hot food gradually returned but terrible quality, and it was Jamie Oliver who campaigned to have healthy school meals returned. Now schools have to provide proper meals. Oh, and school cabbage was never green, it was a greyish colour.

I am older - now officially an OAP this year and I can tell you that the school meals in Britain in the 1960's were industrial. I mean at home we had Bird's custard but in school it was something really different. There was of course government diet regulations so we had pretty sound meals. Personal favourite was roast - rather than boiled potatoes. Chips were part of a revolution! I found the puddings were like ballast. Pies were great. Curry was mince meat with sultanas & curry powder. A good thing about school meals was if you liked something there were seconds and even thirds. Do you know what a Hawaiian sandwich is? Toast, spam, cheese with a pineapple on top. Spam!!! But I did like it.

Omg you look like a cast member of Grange Hill 😝 I remember we had cheesecake with a biscuit base like cement and it whiffed like it had been kept in the bogs overnight. I loved sponge cake with extra helpings of pink custard 😅 Thanks for the memories, Alanna!

Could this be the best ever video. Love the meals, love the reaction, love the enthusiasm. Its a winner Ms Naps. Brought back lots of memories of liver and bacon and butterscotch tart for pudding.

I never actually had any school dinners, in my whole 18 years there. I lived a 10 minute walk from the junior and 5 minute walk from high school, I went home for lunch every day. At home I'd have a grilled cheese sandwich (or a toastie as we call them), and an ice cream.

I'm not vegetarian but I will never forget the day (aged 9-10) when the school dinner for the veggie kids was a bowl full of grated cheese with half a boiled egg on top. That was it. Dry cheese and half a hard-boiled egg. Eat it with a spoon.

I actually loved school dinners and usually would go up for seconds.

I remember my primary school's dinners quite fondly. We had a decent variety of meals and most of them were at least OK. We'd have battered fish with mash, roast dinners and other traditional favourites. Everything changed at secondary school where the quality of food was way worse. The only constant was that the meal would be served with chips - pale, soggy, skinny chips that were invariably served cold. I remember skipping school meals most days and using my dinner money to get something from the chippy on the way home. If only we'd had the Butler cooking for us at school! Thanks for the vid and school dinner memories!

For a lot of kids , the school dinner was the only hot food they would get, in some places it still is, and in some cases the only proper food they would get.

Yes to part 2, the rice pudding and jam should be mixed together, and the pink custard is a must

I was in school from the 60's into the 70's, bangers and mash along with mince and dumplings were the favourites, puddings were spotted dick, jam roly poly, a variety of sponges including the jam and coconut one, apple crumble all with custard and yes they were proper meals.

I think it's terrible how little effort we put on school lunches in the US. This was super interesting to me.

Dinner was always the main meal of the day, no matter what time of day. If we had school dinners we would have just a snack maybe a sandwich, soup or something like beans on toast for our tea at home. At the weekend we had a dinner around the table with our family on Saturday and of course always a big roast meal on Sunday. Breakfast was always cerial usually Cornflakes or Weetabix. (with hot milk and sugar) Our Mom was Irish and was an amazing cook. I grew up in the 70's.

One of my clearest memories of going to New York as a teenager isn't the Empire State Building or the UN or anything like that. It's when my dad went into a supermarket and asked for help finding a tin of custard (in a broad Yorkshire accent). Several staff were drafted in to attempt to translate what on earth 'cuss-turd' was (saying tin rather than can didn't help either). That's how I learned that North America is not overly familiar with the joys of custard.

We used to have sponge pudding with day-glow pink icing covered with pink custard, it was wonderful!

I Remember school dinners with great fondness, pink custard, freshly cooked food. One of your best videos, more of the same please.

Brit here I remember at school Monday was hot dogs or burgers Tuesday was cheese or peperoni pizza, Wednesday was spaghetti bolognese or sausage pasta bake, Thursday was chicken pie or roast chicken, Friday was battered fish or fish fingers

These are "home made" school dinners so will be a bit nicer than the mass cooked usual food!

YES FOR PART TWO!!!. And I never understood those parents that made their kids eat a packed lunch, poor sods. We had good food at our schools in the 70's and 80's. Great video Alaina, can't wait for the next one. xx

liver is so underrated, when cooked right it is delicious. loving the school uniform, you look very cute.

Pink custard, mint custard and chocolate custard too at my school. Rainbow sponge was a favourite, Lemon Meringue and Calypso tart were some more 70's puddings. Semolina was also a milk pudding which looked like wallpaper paste, with a blob of jam. We would also have dinners such as cheese pie (pastry base, cheese and egg with tomato on top) with salad, Spam fritters and mash, Irish stew with grey boiled potatoes, Scouse and red cabbage, fish in white sauce mashed potato and cress (to give the bland colour palate some colour).Sometimes a pink milkshake or a warm milky coffee served in a thick drinking glass instead of water. No special diets, or intolerances options catered for or to bring a lunch box from home just school dinner and that was it. No lasagne where i'm from as this would have either been considered as 'foreign muck' or' exotic' back then!

Gypsy tart is the thing that lingers in my mind....i never was sure if i liked it or not, but it turned up often. (I was South London's only male dinner lady for a while back in the day. I made a lot of giant pans of custard, with about a squillion eggs in it)

Wow Mr Naps! Well done mate. I am most impressed with your cooking skills 🎊👍👍👍👍👍👏👏👏👏👏

Coconut and jam cake and custard !!!!!! I guessed you'd have that ! My favourite at school in Northern Ireland ! Requesting part 2? You should already be planning parts 5 and 6 . So many comments to make but will save for further School dinner updates.

We had great meals in the school cafeteria where I lived in BC. 3 choices - veg, and mash with gravy, or add a meat, or add 2 meats. Tuesdays were hamburger days, and Fridays were fish 'n chips. Other days could be ham steak, meat loaf, or other good things. I asked if we could have bread, and gravy, and they did it (10 cents!). The amazing thing was the prices: I graduated in 1977, and even then the prices were .15, .25, and .35 - yes, cents! Juice was 5 cents, and milk 10. Rice pudding, apple brown betty, Jello, and pies for dessert. For 50 cents, you could eat very well - and, healthy too. The guy running the kitchen was a genius - so much food for so little money. When he finally retired, no-one could be found that could do what he did. Thanks for the nice memories! Oh; when I lived in Newfoundland, "dinner" was the mid-day meal. Military messes also have the biggest meal at mid-day.

I feel like the butlers cooking might be making these meals better than they were in schools hahaha I rarely had school dinners, packed lunch was much nicer. Although "proper" meals was more of a thing in primary school, my secondary school mainly did food like you got in Canada - burgers, pizzas, chips, sausage rolls etc. Can't wait to see the Thursday & Friday meals!

Yes Alana they are all legit school dinners. I was at secondry school 80-85 and had all them. No idea what kids have now. Joined Army at 16 and similar choices just even better! I know for a fact that Friday was fish day!

My favourite school meal from the 1956 time was definitely mash potato smoked haddock cooked in milk (or plain haddock cooked in milk) with green shredded boiled cabbage together a was lovely meal and I used to request any "seconds". When I went to secondary school the menu changed into much as you presented.

We used to call rice pudding with jam as "murder in the snow,. One pudding on my menu was trifle, which many did not like so often I got seconds and even thirds. The meal content and quality was specified and monitored by local authority mainly to help kids from poor homes who relied on school meals as their principal nutrition.

Hi there Alanna, for your first meal, it is actually Liver & Bacon. One of my favourite school meals was Egg & Bacon Flan/Quiche with Mash Potatoes and Carrots. On Fridays we used to have either Fish & Chips or Hot Dog & Chips. My favourite dessert was Golden Syrup Sponge with Vanilla Custard or Chocolate Sponge with Chocolate Sauce (Chocolate Custard).

The Butler's cooking is considerably better than my old school dinner ladies!

Great retro video. You've fulfilled a typical male fantasy dressed like that!

In primary school, the mash potato scooped with an ice cream scoop, put me off mash potato for life!! I'm 37 now & I still won't touch it! I'm from North West UK & we say: Lunch Tea for evening meal BUT lunchtime at school is dinner 😄

School dinners. The thing I remember is we sat square tables of 8, each day a different one of us had to be waiter. Boys sat separate from Girls even though it was a mixed school. The table had to have mixed ages from all 5 year groups. Once a week you had to entertain a teacher. I think this was a very civilizing method of teaching us to live and communicate with those who were not in our class/peer group. The closest thing I have come to it since leaving school 50 years ago was when working in Germany when I was at the site where everyone (management, office staff, shop floor, overhead wire gangs, cleaners) sat down to dinner/lunch together at long tables and were served good wholesome food. No eating at the desk or having different times for dinner/lunch, everyone on site together. I thought it was a brilliant piece of team building. As for school food, jam rolly polly and custard. The only school food that was bad was "Prunes and Custard" I don't know what they did to them but that could have been just our kitchen. Many thanks for a wonderful video.

This was a fun watch, love the commitment!

Just two words... Manchester Tart. (Also, the school uniform and 'playground hair' make it sooooo real)

I was at school in the 50s and 60s; liver and onions served with mashed potatoes and green cabbage was one of my favourites meals! I'm now (mainly) a vege/pesca-tarian - I say 'mainly' as I'll occasionally buy liver to cook at home. I LOVE the gravy that results from the long, slow cooking of ox liver, but I also enjoy lambs or calf liver thinly sliced and flash fried. My favourite pudding was jam roly-poly (with custard of course) which had been steamed for a long time, then put into the oven for a short time to crisp up the edges. YUM! ETA The importance of school meals has been recognised for a long time; there was a short time in the 80s or 90s when junk food became the overwhelming presence in school dinners, and individual school kitchens were closing all over the country but that was - fortunately - a fairly short period in the greater scheme of things. Of course nowadays there's a lot more choice both in flavours and in dietary requirements than there was when I was a child - I have a younger friend who is head of catering in a large school and she cooks/organises the cooking of breakfasts, snacks and lunches for a thousand people of ages from 10 - 70, with many different religious, cultural and medical dietary requirements, _every. single. day._ I have tasted the food she makes and it is DELICIOUS. Served under different conditions (soft lights, fine china, white linen etc) and with some 'trimmings', it would certainly be of good restaurant standard. She is a qualified chef with environmental health and nutrition qualifications, and has large budgetary responsibilities, yet people think she is 'just a school cook'.

If you do a part two, try chocolate cake with chocolate custard. That's a good one. P.S. Your facial expressions with the rice pudding were priceless!

The school lunches I had in jr. and sr. high school when I went to school back in the dark ages here in the states were diabolical . That liver and onions actually looked good ! That school uniform brings me back to my parochial school days (grades 1thru6). Thank you Alanna for the fun and nostalgic stroll .😀👍Never had proper custard . 😢 Good on the Butler for all his efforts !👍 and yes to a part 2 if you want to do it .

These school meals look far healthier than what they serve in the US. We just got plastic-wrapped food that looked like it came from a factory and popped in the microwave!

I loved school dinners in the 1950s and 60s ........ they were substantial meals, usually the biggest meal of the day and you'd just have a snack for 'tea'. Back in those days parents would be having their big meal in factory or works canteens at 'dinnertime' ...... it was part of the communal living that we've largely lost now. Most people were getting a decent healthy and substantial meal care of school, factory or office and usually subsidised and fairly cheap. I do remember that lots of out 'puddings' or desserts were variations of various things cooked in milk with sugar .... rice, tapioca, sago, blancmange .... all white blobs served with a spoon of jam !

When I was at school, my Mum did not need to cook in the evening so it was school dinner, tea when we got home was sandwiches. Plus, dinner was in the middle of the day - tea at 4-5ish and supper before bed. Just for context, this was 1960-1973...

Great video! Love to see part II. The dinner/lunch thing is a bit of a classist thing. For many working-class families, the midday meal was the main one (hot food on the table), and therefore "dinner". Less was served later in the day. (I'm talking historically here) So the name stuck over time. That's what my understanding of it is anyhow. Hope that helps.

When I was a kid in Wales in the '50's and '60's we had....breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. Lunch was when you had a sandwich when you were away from home....a packed lunch!

Tapioca may come up later in the video and the "nickname" for tapioca is Frog Spawn, guess why (it looks like white frog spawn) For my era of school meals that veg was way too competently cooked, veg at school for me was cooked till it was falling apart and all the useful vitamins had been removed and washed away, largely thanks to school meals the only cooked veg I can stand is potato, all other veg that I eat are uncooked

Where I am we tend to use "lunch" for a midday snack (so a lighter meal like a sandwich) and "dinner" for a larger cooked meal like what you were eating. The evening meal is called tea... not to be confused with the drink. :P Some people do call the evening meal dinner though. I've seen it used for whichever is the larger meal, though its usage may vary from place to place. My favourite puddings were either lemon meringue pie or apple crumble+custard.

That was an Alanna masterclass and really made me smile. Yes to Part 2! BTW I still cook all of these main courses. Rice pudding with jam can go in the bin, though.

Top marks for the jam and coconut sponge, that was top draw! 😀Apple crumble and custard also chocolate sponge and chocolate custard my favorites.

We had an authentic Italian cook. Her lasagne was amazing. Make sure you try gypsy tart with whipped cream. Lunch is at lunchtime, tea is at teatime, supper is at supper time. Dinner can be at any of the three, and will be when you have your largest meal of the day. It can vary by location, class, or just family but most people will either have breakfast, dinner and tea, or breakfast, lunch and dinner. Supper has mostly fallen by the wayside.

Lunch and dinner is regional/and/or a class thing. If you call your midday meal lunch and your evening meal dinner, you're probably posh. Otherwise you'd say "dinner" and "tea"

lol you always put lots of effort into your content and do the unexpected 😂

I think that these are pretty authentic 70's, 80's school dinners. What happened to Spam fritters though! 🙂

I had many of those dishes when I was at school (a long time ago - 1956 until late 1970), I attended 2 different primary schools & 2 different secondary schools in widely-separated parts of the country, because of my father’s job taking us to different areas. Lunches at some schools were better than others (in general in the 1950s it wasn’t so good, basically I think the after-effects of the war and rationing, which only ended in 1952 or 1953, around the time I was born). However we always had proper 2 or 3 course meals and soup was an option quite often. We never had burgers of any kind at school, and I think if we ever had chips it must have been extremely rare. We often had mashed potato, but we often had boiled whole potatoes too, with new potatoes with skins on in late-spring or early-summer, which I love. Yes, pink custard was a feature quite often, with either stewed fruit or jams with a square of sponge or other kind of cake a regular feature. We didn’t often have creamed rice (I like it), instead more often semolina (which I love). Occasionally we would have tapioca instead of custard or semolina, and although it was OK I didn’t really like it much. Water, milk or orange juice was regularly available. When I hear about kids now (in the UK or North America) being fed on a diet of burgers or pizzas it makes me very sad, but that’s probably what many get at home anyway as many parents (mums and dads) probably don’t now cook much at home anyway and perhaps rely too much on takeaway food far too often. Although my mother did most of the cooking (she was a good cook & an excellent baker), my father also took over cooking duties at home quite frequently- he enjoyed it and was a good cook, in particular his Yorkshire Pudding was always excellent and he always sliced the roast beef we often had on Sundays, as even if mother had actually roasted the beef beautifully, she mostly always cut it the wrong way, with the grain instead of against the grain, making it tough to eat. Our school lunches were pretty traditional when I was at school, but from what I hear a lot healthier overall than much of what is served up to kids now.

I was in school from '86-'97, and while not my favourite, the most notorious were what we called ''BSE burgers', which were terrible grey floppy burger patties in soggy baps, wrapped in red and white patterned greaseproof paper. Ketchup came in sachets.

You could try those famous English meatballs (made by Brains with mash and cabbage followed by Jam Rolly Poly.

🚂 All aboard Alanna's Custard Train 🚃😅

Ah! The nostalgic aroma of boiled cabbage floating down the school corridors; boiled to within an inch of it's life, and beyond. It feels like we had it five days a week, but my memory's probably playing tricks, and it was only four. If only Proust had gone to school here, the whole history of the 20th century novel would have been totally different.

The liver we got for school dinners could have been used to re-sole your shoes! And the veg was boiled for several days.

Breakfast, Dinner, Tea for me. Advantage of school dinners is that on the way to the hall you can sing "dinner dinner dinner batmaaaaan!"

That Liver and onions looks exactly what they force fed me at school in the 70's.If you didn't eat it you didn't leave the table.They were so kind back then.I haven't eaten liver to this day won't even eat a steak and kidney pie because it reminds me of liver.🤣Have a lovely day Alanna great vid.

Hope you get Manchester Tart on Friday, (that's a pastry base covered with raspberry jam and then blancmange on the top) -perfect to go with the fish'n'chips.

Alanna's partner is now on permanent chef duty at home.

16:00 Alanna , please note penguins would only be applicable with an Antarctic Roll

If there's one thing I miss about going to school in 80s England it's the school dinners, which were proper dinners and we could go back for seconds and even thirds, fourths and fifths if we waited to see if there were any leftovers. Good value for money and proper fuel for kids.

More cooking and more Alanna dressing up please

Can’t really remember specific meal combos, but i will always remember having choc cake with mint custard for dessert 😛😛

Depends on the decade your referring to. In 1960s school had their own kitchens and everything was cooked on site. These days most are cooked in a central kitchen and taxis used to ferry them to various schools.

Yep. This was basically school meals for us from the 90s into the mid 00s. When it sort of devolved into what you were describing in Ontario, and then they removed all of the unhealthy stuff but left a lot of the crap replacements like very sad salad and apple juice. I remember deliberately forgetting my packed lunch so I could get a good hot meal at school. Of course my mum then had to pay and was really angry. Which in hindsight considering how hard she worked was a wrong thing to do but the food was really good as a child in primary school at least. It was when I was around 10 (2002-3) that it started becoming less traditional.

I think the butler did a good job on the cooking! I'm also intrigued if that's an actual school tie or just a random tie of the butlers?

This is such a good idea for a video! Sorry you’ve been having a hard time with RU-vid recently! Your videos are great and Adventures and Naps is one of the only channels I look forward to the video and watch it as soon as it comes out! Your videos and video ideas are still as good as they’ve always been too so don’t lose hope with RU-vid! Your videos are great and help a lot of people get through their week!

Sago pudding, much like rice pudding but with appearance of frog spawn. And semolina, another milk pudding with jam! But liver was often served with bacon. Small amounts of bacon added a saltiness to the mix. Chocolate sponge with chocolate custard/sauce, upside down pineapple sponge and custard. Prunes and custard. Cottage pie, steak pie… but lasagne not in my day,

Back in the 70's our big thrill was to have fish, chips and mushy peas followed by apple CRUMBLE and custard. That was the ultimate dinner for us. We always had pink custard with chocolate sponge.

Along with rice pudding, if that option bothers you, we also had semolina, tapioca and sago as other texture options on the same theme. ☺

I would love to a part 2. That would be cool. This video is a memory fest for me.

Liver onion and bacon, is great winter food. Pink sponge cake with pink custard was a treat, also jam rolly polly with custard made your day better, in the summer they served shortbread biscuits with yogurt for afters.

It's 'school dinner' because you sit down in a dining room at a dining table and eat it of a plate with a knife and fork. Whereas a 'packed lunch' is eaten with your hands wherever you find time and space. Ed. The Canadian "lunches" are all portable and eaten with your hands. You have your dinner in the when you get home because you have a table there to eat it at

School dinners are one of the memories I still have from living in England. I was a fussy eater as a kid so I had a few discussions with teachers about eating it all up. Dropping it on the floor became my resort as a 6 or 7 year old who really didn’t want to comply.

In the south the meals were breakfast, lunch and dinner. In the north meals were breakfast, dinner and tea, which also coincided with the army practice of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Liver with white cabbage, mash and gravy followed by chocolate sponge with pink custard....classic!

Thinking back to my childhood ('70s/'80s), there was a lot of fried liver and onions with mashed potato - at home, never mind at school. This wasn't about being 'boutique' or adventurous, it was about needing to feed a family on a tight budget. Thank heavens for my Mum's ability to cook - this talent seems to have disappeared in modern times, so people eat a lot of processed garbage instead (*hold hand up in shame at relatively lacking culinary skills*). I almost feel sorry for the kids of today. There's one school dessert that sticks in my mind to this day (40+ years later) - chocolate sponge in mint-flavoured custard. Simple but superb.

My Mum was a qualified chef but worked as the head cook at a couple of schools in the late 60s to the early 80s, the meals were cooked daily from scratch on the premises (including bread and pastries), were healthy, nutritious, contained strict levels of fat, sugar, carbs, vitamins/minerals etc. and no artificial ingredients, preservatives, or colours. Mum left school meals when they started to move towards pre-packaged food (Frozen chips, nuggets, Pizza, and turkey twizzlers etc.) as she considered it Junk refused to serve it…

Very authentic selections from what I can remember growing up in England. Cooking these items en masse for hundreds doesn't always work as well as having them prepared on a small scale in a domestic kitchen. As for the fast food ethos of most North American public schools, it should come as no surprise that big food companies have spent millions of dollars lobbying to weaken nutritional standards, often very successfully.

Typical meals from my schooldays years ago. Chocolate sponge with chocolate custard was to die for 😋 These meals were usually cooked on the school premises by the dinner ladies. Sadly nowadays many schools have contracted out their meals to outside caterers whose priority us profit rather than nutritious meals for children 😕

I don’t remember liver, but lasagne, various types of pies, fries, vegetables and various desserts were on offer. Pink custard was definitely a thing.

Liver, onions, mash and peas, with gravy so thick that you can stand your knife and fork up in it? Yes.

I attended elementary school (in California) in the mid-'70s, and my parents gave us lunch money once a week. The school sent home a monthly menu of what would be served each day, so we'd choose which day's menu sounded the best for each week. We'd have hamburgers or corn dogs or pizza a few days a month, but we also had more dinner-type meals such as meatloaf with mashed potatoes, gravy, and vegetables OR tacos with Spanish rice and refried beans OR spaghetti with salad, roll, and veggies OR chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy plus veggies, OR enchiladas with rice and beans, OR lasagna with salad, roll, and veggies, etc. Dessert was Jell-O or pudding/custard OR ice cream with a small cookie OR a frozen orange juice or grape juice bar on a stick. I usually bought on lasagna, enchilada, or taco days; the hamburgers were pretty terrible but the pizza was fair. When I moved up to middle school, it was more fast food-type meals with burritos, burgers with fries and a shake, or pizza. The shakes were awesome and well worth the time spent waiting in line. ;)