Did you go to a posh school, Tambo? Throughout 22 years of school dinners (including 15 years as a teacher) I can't recall ever seeing any dish served with cream! Sponge puddings should only be served with custard ;-)
My father lived on a farm with a prize winning herd of cattle (which were actually record breakers for milk production) so milk, cream and butter were not a problem. We've still got his mother's kit for butter making.
Actually, I remember school dinners with a type of cream. But this was many many years post war. It was like a sweetened dream topping type thing but thicker. Although generally it was cold lumpy custard and its put me off for life. To this day I cannot eat custard or gravy.
I used to absolutely love school custard.
My Mum didn't care for milk or milk puddings of any kind, so we only got custard at school.
Our school seemed to specialise in very very thin custard, no lumps at all and very sweet......can almost taste it now.....I've never been able to reproduce it.
Yeah! when I was at school we had this sort of White custard on our puds, Especially choc sponge it was a white type of sauce, it was ok too. I don't think they used cream, there was no refrigeration to keep it fresh.
Steamed puddings....yum yum. What would Jamie say nowadays ?
Ginger stodge, plain stodge, fruit stodge, marmalade stodge..loved them all.
Chocolate stodge came with chocolate sauce.
Open jam tart was the top pudding, though...usually came on a Friday.
The white sauce on the puddings was just white sauce, like a custard. Very different from that articifical cream. How I hated chocolate pudding with that white sauce, yuk!
actually milk and butter wasn't scarce post war, the land went back to pasture after the frantic years of arable and vegetable crops to keep britain fed, but dairy herds were growing and thriving.
I think I just hated school dinners. Apart from Fridays when we had chips and diced beetroot (and other stuff which I can't remember).
And at secondary school, the school dinners were disgusting. There was this rancid old bag of a teacher who stood by the conveyer belt for your trays and if you had left a scrap (be it fat, gristle or whatever) you were forced to eat it. I thank the girl in the year above me who showed me how to shaft the system!!!!!
Those steamed pudding were just so heavy. We had them in huge tins and cut into squares. I hated them. In fact, I hated everything about school dinners. They ruined absolutely everything they cooked. Soggy cabbage, grey potatoes, shrivelled baked sausages and disgusting meat pie with grissle. And jam tart with dessicated coconut OMG. School dinners have changed thank goodness.