What was the smell of school dinners ?

[Toddy]

All these threads and discussions of food, and suddenly from the depths of my mind comes this query

It was an unmistakeable smell when at school, and then decades later when I worked in dozens of different schools, every single school had the school dinner smell.....why ? what was it ? why was the smell so prevalent ?
From inner city to western isles, from country to town to....they all have that same smell at lunchtime.

Why ?

 

[John Fenna]

Same cheap ingredients, same cheap utensils, same cheap detergents, same cheap disinfectants, same cheap labour....

 

[TeeDee]

Dinner lady sweat mixed with cheap overly strong nanna perfume.

Sprinkling of boiling semolina

Amuse-bouche of industrial strength bleach.

 

[Chris]

Boiled cabbage and warm slices of processed meat.

 

[Broch]

I think it was the over-boiled veg and the standard gravy mix. The strange thing was, the same smell existed even on days when we had spam fritters and chips

 

[TLM]

Maybe they just had one spice mixture that was used on everything.

 

[Chris]

Maybe they just had one spice mixture that was used on everything.

Spices? On British school cafeteria food?! Don’t be absurd!

 

[crosslandkelly]

Boiled cabbage. Left over yorkshire puddings with a dollop of jam in, and custard for dessert.

 

[HorseGuy]

Recreate your childhood olfactory memories by getting the cheapest can of budget mixed vegetables you can find and boiling them in a pan for an three hours while mopping the floor with cheap bleach.

 

[Broch]

Interesting, we never had the bleach smell. Maybe the hygiene standards ar our school were too low

 

[Keith_Beef]

I sometimes encounter a similar, strangely comforting smell... I think that it's vegetable soup with the main ingredients being peas and carrots.

 

[TLM]

Spices? On British school cafeteria food?! Don’t be absurd!

Sorry, I guess I was thinking my own early primary school.

 

[Bhod]

Maybe they just had one spice mixture that was used on everything.

Spices? Aldershot stock aka salt and pepper if you were lucky

 

[Broch]

Spices? Aldershot stock aka salt and pepper if you were lucky

Only white pepper at that!

 

[Laurentius]

Boiled cabbage immediately came to mind. My mum worked in various school kitchens as she rose from general assistant to cook in charge. They had to keep to a very strict budget so the ingredients were not exactly the best quality.

 

[oldtimer]

That was the smell of 100 children mixed with carbolic and cabbage. The cabbage being responsible for the smell coming from the children.

 

[HorseGuy]

100 children mixed with carbolic and cabbage.

An rather unusual recipe.
Remind me never to eat at your house.

 

[demented dale]

All these threads and discussions of food, and suddenly from the depths of my mind comes this query

It was an unmistakeable smell when at school, and then decades later when I worked in dozens of different schools, every single school had the school dinner smell.....why ? what was it ? why was the smell so prevalent ?
From inner city to western isles, from country to town to....they all have that same smell at lunchtime.

Why ?

because gruel smells the same everywhere. xxx

 

[slaine_23]

Food? There was a smell of food?
Ee were lucky!
How’d that make it above the delicate odour of a couple of hundred teenage boys?

 

[Toddy]

That smell though; I worked in primary schools in the Western Isles, and though the vegetables (tatties apart) were bought from the mainland, the meat was from local cows and sheep, and deer. Fish was fresh twice a week from the harbour.
The school still smelled of 'school dinner'.
Right across the country and in Fife, again fresh local food, and Fife grows much of the veg for the entire country, and there was the same smell.

Our primary school smelled of varnish, sometimes of coal smoke if the wind was in the wrong direction to clear the boiler flue, wax crayons and school dinners.

Passing the boys loo though there was the unmistakeable smell of Jeyes fluid....and carbolic soap