Recently I was reading with some children in school. The book was Michael Morpurgo’s Butterfly Lion (brilliant writer, fantastic book!). Chapter One is called Chilblains and Semolina Pudding. Before doing any reading, I had to explain the two things to the children. I know people do get chilblains and you could, if you wanted to, buy semolina and make a pudding with it. Yet as far as the kids of today are concerned they are unheard of. We were very familiar with both in the 1950s. I suffered from chilblains every winter and semolina pudding was a regular (if rather unpleasant) feature of school dinners. This started me thinking of other things which were part of our lives as we grew up which today’s children have no knowledge of.
I will start with food. Semolina pudding had several relatives in the milk pudding family. I think rice pudding is the only one which has survived into the 21st century in the UK – and even that isn’t very common. The others were macaroni (yes, pasta in a dessert!), ground rice, sago and tapioca (nicknamed frogspawn – the reason for this can be seen in the photo).
With the advent of ice-cream, mousses and brands like Angel Delight, the traditional dessert blancmange has disappeared from the face of the earth. It was a milk-based, coloured and flavoured dessert thickened with cornflour and set in a mould. It was often served with jelly. For our birthday parties when we were little my mum used to make a rabbit-shaped blancmange and surround it with chopped up green jelly.
Mum had a rabbit jelly mould like this.
A warm drink in the evening was also largely milk-based and could be cocoa or perhaps Ovaltine or Horlicks. I think they can still be bought but I don’t think many children drink them or have even heard of them.
Moving on now to school and school uniforms. All school uniform for boys included a school cap which had to be worn every day throughout school if the boy stayed on until 18 years old. Long trousers were not worn by boys until they were thirteen and uniform shorts were worn with long woollen socks.
Girls wore gymslips until thirteen when they could wear skirts. There were no tights (they hadn’t been invented) so long socks were worn in winter, ankle socks in summer – even if you were a sixth-former! In our school the girls had to wear a beret (known as a tam) and woe betide you if you ever stepped outside school without it on!
The school bag – for boys and girls in secondary school – was a leather satchel. Games and P.E. kit was carried in a duffle bag.Two more expressions unknown to today’s children! The school uniform coat was a gabardine mac or raincoat, usually double-breasted and belted.
Here are some other things today’s youth have not heard of (I’ll cover these in more detail in Part 2):
Meccano, plimsolls, cycling capes, leather footballs, Dinky toys, Liberty bodices, golliwogs, Spangles, leather footballs and bus conductors. Watch this space!
Childhood Memories of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. 
Going down memory lane…very enlightening. Thanks for sharing.
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I’m glad you enjoyed it!
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We liked rice pudding, though my mother stewed the rice in milk on top of the stove, rather than baking it in the oven which (I think) is the more traditional method. She added sultanas, for more flavour. We called it ricie-raisins. I’d forgotten all about macaroni as a pudding until now, but we liked that too. We didn’t have tapioca (I don’t think Mum liked it), though I think we may have had sago once or twice and turned our noses up at it.
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There was definitely a strong focus on milk!! Thanks for the contribution, you didn’t miss much not having tapioca – rice pudding was much nicer!
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Oh my gosh, tapioca! Just seeing it makes me squirm in the same way as it did when I was a child! I was ill and in hospital a lot in the 50s and tapioca was one of the puddings we’d get to eat. I hated it! As you say ‘frogspawn’! I didn’t like semolina either. At home, my mum always made a really nice rice pudding (different from most British versions of it, I think, as it was baked in the oven, with sultanas and had a thick ‘skin’ on the top that went brown.) Do you remember nutmeg being added to puddings? It had nutmeg, too.
I loved custard (as long as it was yellow and not pink and raspberry flavoured like in school!) but didn’t like blancmange very much. I did love Jelly. (My husband refuses to eat it because he doesn’t like gelatine. He reckons nothing should have ‘hooves’ in it!)
My bedtime drink at home was always Horlicks or sometimes, if I had a sore throat, my dad would insist on me drinking hot milk with sugar and – of all things – melted butter floating on the top. How odd! I only ever had Ovaltine in the hospital. There was another like that, but I can’t remember the name of it.
Your posts are wonderful. If you see lots of views of your archives in your stats for today, then that’s me. I’m just loving them! 🙂
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Wow! Thanks for the positive comments! I have been away for a few days and am only just catching up with all your messages. Your reaction is exactly what I wanted to achieve when I set out to do this blog. My mum made that wonderful oven baked rice pudding too with nutmeg added. I adored it. Other people’s rice puddings always seemed pale and insipid in comparison. I had forgotten about pink school custard! Ghastly! There was another milk drink brand – if I remember the name I’ll let you know. Meryl
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The other malted milk drink was Milo made by Nesle – actually bought a tin from B and M the other day …… same green label.
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Just remembered there was called Bournvita too
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I’ve heard of Milo but I’m not sure they sold it where I lived which was quite remote. But I definitely remember Bournvita. Also Nesquick which was a powder and made more of a cold flavoured milk, not a hot milky drink. Thanks for commenting!
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Hi – I’ve just discovered your site as we were searching for blancmange on line, thinking it no longer existed. My gran used to make a ‘raspberry special’ at Christmas which would be made up of tinned raspberries, sponge (I think), raspberry jelly and pink blancmange. No one can remember cream or chocolate which I imagine was very expensive in the 50’s and 60’s, even if available. But we all loved it and it was tradition! Now I’ve been told it had blancmange in it (older cousin) I am going to have to assemble something and see how it shapes up!
There was another milk pudding which may have used arrowroot.. does any one remember such a thing? I have a memory of this ‘other’ flavour and since we had all the milk puddings tapioca, rice, semolina, sago, macaroni etc etc yet this one I just can’t pin down. Any thoughts? Oh – and I loved the skin referred to in another reply on all these puddings – great for sibling teasing!
Great place you have here!
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Thank you so much for your lovely comment about my blog and for sharing your memories. Now that you mention it, I have a vague memory of arrowroot. I think it was a powder and when mixed with water could be used as a thickener like cornflour but would also set if made thick enough and left. I seem to remember it being clear, colourless and tasteless. Perhaps like a vegetable based gelatine? I hope your raspberry special works out well! There was definitely no fresh cream around – unless you used ‘top of the milk’. That might have been partly to do with not many people having fridges in the 50s? Cream only came in tins back then, as did peaches and pineapple.
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Hi – thanks for your thoughts. I had completely forgotten there were no fridges – I can remember my parents getting their first fridge but that was probably in the early 60’s. So – if it isn’t arrowroot there must be another ‘pudding’ out there – it certainly wasn’t anything fancy and for my money resembled a custard in looks. May be someone else knows, or may be it was my mum being clever with the money!
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I reckon it could have been arrowroot mixed with flavouring and left to set. In the way that blancmange is made with cornflour. I’ll let you know if I can remember anything else about it.
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I’ve been Googling arrowroot pudding recipes and it’s very interesting. Although less common in cold set desserts than cornflour there is quite a bit of info on its use. There’s even a Nestle arrowroot pudding recipe. I’ve never noticed arrowroot powder in the shops so it must have fallen out of favour.
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Hmm …. The pud I have in mind was more of a custard than set. I did try some years ago but the flavour missed the mark … not that I can describe the flavour … I should look as well. … this is fun!
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It is! 😊
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This is an absolutely fascinating site – but very long!
https://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpuddings.html
There’s an arrowroot custard recipe on food.com.
I think that, like cornflour, you added more for a set pudding and less for a sauce or custard.
An interesting fact I read on that link I’ve attached is that several hundred years ago – 15/ 1600’s – a chilled set pud like blancmange was known as ‘cold shape’.
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:). Investigations and trials will need to take place ! Thank you …. I’ll leave ‘feed’ back in due course 🙂 🙂 🙂
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😊
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I was looking up semolina and came across this site. I also remember Junket, another milky pudding. Then there was regular cod liver oil and some kind of orange liquid …a spoonful daily I think. Maybe linked with post war rationing and health for children
I also remember chillblains….very painful. Coal fires being lit and drawn by placing newspaper in front of the aperture….Life was rather cold in the north. Witnessing extreme poverty….kids in rags and no shoes but Whit Sunday everyone tried to have something new.
A bath night 1x weekly! So it goes on!
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Oh, chilblains!!! They were awful! My mum gave us cod liver oil and malt. Thick and gooey but slightly more palatable than neat cod liver oil. Thanks for sharing your memories, all familiar to me.
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