Sugar sandwiches …. fruit salad ….. and carnation ……. food for the Gods

Well, while the young me thought I was in very heaven with sugar sandwiches I have to admit I never served them to my three when they were growing up.

The National Loaf, 1944

Nor do I think a bowl of tinned fruit with the obligatory splash of carnation milk would have been appreciated by any of them, but they were the backdrop to living in southeast London in the early 1950s.

To be fair I have yet to come across anyone else who ate sugar sandwiches.  The most common alternative I am told by friends was apple or banana sandwiches and I must admit apple did feature as alternative to sugar for me and my sisters.

They were quick to make, offered up that mix of sweetness and energy but even then, there was the drawback that the sugar granules crunched against your teeth and got lodged in the gaps created by the dentist.  I have still got those gaps from being an adolescent when Mr Guppy judged that as a boy, I would never be bothered about the appearance of my mouth.

But mercifully for my teeth there were also the savoury sandwiches, made with Pecks fish and meat paste and those magnificent dripping sandwiches.

In retrospect dripping sandwiches must have been a heart attack in waiting.  As veggie for over 40 years I shudder, but there was something magic on that mix of fat and salt and if you were lucky the dark brown liquid which lurked at the bottom of the pot.

But this is not a cry against what some would see as poor parenting or an attempt to outdo Eric down the road for the most deprived up bringing it was just part of our diet, and vied with healthy and nourishing soups, roasts and stews. 

I guess it was a throw back to mum’s childhood in the early 1930s when with granddad part of the millions of unemployed they were forced to apply for the Means Test which judged an application for help against what in the house could be sold to raise funds.

Fruit cocktail, 2025

The post war prosperity made that dark time a distant memory, but which always sat just below the surface and would occasionally surface.

Leaving aside the poverty aspect it was also a matter of “we did things differently back then”.

I never thought it odd that we would be served a pudding of spaghetti cooked with milk and sugar or that a delicacy in our house was chunks of corned beef dipped in batter and deep fried.

They were just what we ate and even now when me and my sisters get together we smile at the deep-fried corned beef which we nicknamed Dr Who’s because of the outlandish shapes the batter formed which reminded us of the monsters he confronted.

And then there was olive oil, bought in small bottles from the chemist and used on ear wax, or rubbing into the hair when mum had to use the knit comb.

Carnation, 2025

That said in the early 1950s the solution for me and my friends was that brutal haircut which left you looking like a recruit in a boot camp.

I must have other food memories but they as yet haven't tumbled out.

Against this since my mid 20s I have embraced cooking, leaving the procesed stuff behind and mastering a heap of dishes including the humble pasty.

But what is fascinating is just how quickly, the sugar and apple sandwiches and the medicinal application of olive oil vanished under the growing prosperity and commercialism of the late 1950s.  

So, in a few short years traditional puddings were replaced by such offerings as Angel Delight, and Arctic Roll, and baked fish by fish fingers and that staple which was Birds Eye burgers. And coming up fast there were those boil in the bag Vesta curries and Chow Mien.

And somewhere along the way we lost the Sunday treat of tinned fruit and carnation.

Me own efforts, 2026

Location; somewhere in the 1950s

Pictures, The Co-op National Loaf, 1944, Manchester & Salford Co-operative Herald, 1944, the alternative, the home made pasty, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and fruit salad and Carnation courtesy of Morrisons