Institutional Food

[Carlovski]

Posting in another thread I was just reminded of some of the horrors which were served in the name of food at my old college dining room (And I lived there for 3 years!).

Some of the highlights were

• Pie (Filling unknown) served with rice
  
• Fish finger (yes one!) in puff pastry?
  
• Orange juice and soup which were at the same temperature
  

The rest of the food I think you would have to experience to understand. To be fair, they did have to feed us 3 meals a day for a food cost of about £1.70. We used to liven up mealtimes by giving food the 'Bounce' test. It was suprising how much of the food did bounce.

The foreign students were particulary confused, although one poor lad said it was much better than his mum's cooking!

The highlights were Saturday lunchtime where they gave us bacon eggs, sausages chips and beans (Perfect for the hangover) and during the beef crisis where the plummeting price meant we could get a fairly decent (Although obviously cooked until leathery) bit of beef on a sunday.

Anyone else got experience of such high quality institutional food?

[jackal10]

You've heard of treacle mines? There is a rumour that my college kitchens are located on a tinned fruit salad well, next to the luncheon meat quarry....

Actually high table (for teaching fellows of the college) is remarkably good. They realised that employing cheap staff was a false economy, so recruited a Chef from serious establishment. The kitchen now turns out decent food, runs more efficiently and has much less waste. In addition the conference and corporate dinner party trade has greatly improved. That in turn has trickled down into the undergraduate food.

The undergraduates get a choice of cafeteria or formal dining (gowns, grace etc). In order to make the formal dining more popular, and partly instigated by the students, they increased the price, and served better food and wine, It is now a popular (indeed, overbooked) social occaision.

AS the college in in competiton with the other colleges for the best talent, both student and staff (we have something like 4 Nobel prize winners in residence), the excellence of the food and wine is one way to attract the best.

For wine the college has something like 100,000 bottles laid down... but that is another thread

Edited June 9, 2003 by jackal10 (log)

[Gareth]

I once went into the canteen at the Dept for environment FOOD and rural affairs (DEFRA).

It was a pokey little establishment in the basement of Whitehall Place with some charming steel bars on the windows. The whole thing summoned up the ambience of the Maze H Block during a dirty protest, and smelt like a kebab shop after an In-ger-land international.

A quick glance at the physicality of the Plat du Jour - Lasagne alla Exxon Valdiz - and I left.

The whole thing was a shameful encapsulation of our institutional attitudes to food. Can you imagine such a thing at the French Ministery for Food ?

[Carlovski]

The sad thing was they could occasionally knock out decent food. The food on the high table was usually better, and they did have a decent stab with the formal meals (Although the wine may have helped!). The attempts at themed 'international' formals was quite funny though - the single sardine (Cooked, strangely in tin foil) as a starter for the portugese one, and I am sure you can guess the ingenious garnish for the 'Hawaian' chicken!

For the conference trade, for balls, and the 'pass the port' style dinners they usually fared quite well.

[Jon Tseng]

Probably two conversations going on here...

on the one hand canteen food at colleges (as with canteens everywhere else) remains resolutely unreconstructed in the

UK (think legendary BBC canteen tea? - has anybody had it?). For my part I remember scrambled eggs made with powdered egg in infant school - rubbery clots of yellow not reminiscent of egg at all

on the other hand the conversation has touched on oxbridge college dining, which is actually a remarkable snapshot of edwardian style franglais dining which is very difficult to find anywhere else with the passing of the connaught; may be at some gentlemens clubs in london. Particular when it comes to college feasts think silver service, lots of stuff plated at the table, silly french names, soup, fish, meat, pudding, cheese and port courses (at the very least), maybe a savoury to finish things off... vast numbers of cut-price, top-notch booze... very much reminiscent of a different world

cheerio

J

[Carlovski]

Yep, some people think Porterhouse Blue was fiction.....

[jamesmarsh]

oxbridge college dining, which is actually a remarkable snapshot of edwardian style franglais dining which is very difficult to find anywhere else with the passing of the connaught; may be at some gentlemens clubs in london.  Particular when it comes to college feasts think silver service, lots of stuff plated at the table, silly french names, soup, fish, meat, pudding, cheese and port courses (at the very least), maybe a savoury to finish things off... vast numbers of cut-price, top-notch booze... very much reminiscent of a different world

I worked in the dining hall of an Oxford College for a few of my teenage years. I never had to serve the high table or any of the "feasts" but average weekdays were strange enough: wearing gowns to dinner (this college had formal hall every night), saying grace in Latin, ritualised drinking games often involving yards of ale...

And, as I remember it, the food was crap.

Put me off ever going to Oxbridge (good job considering the A level grades I eventually got).

[Carlovski]

We had formals about every fortnight. Very odd combination of wearing gowns and formal clothes, saying grace in latin (I can proabably remember it at a push, even if I can't spell it) and then being served chicken kiev!

[fresco]

What you get for 1.32 pounds in schools today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/educati...ion/2976010.stm

[JudyB]

We had formals about every fortnight. Very odd combination of wearing gowns and formal clothes, saying grace in latin (I can proabably remember it at a push, even if I can't spell it) and then being served chicken kiev!

I don't remember ever getting Chicken Kiev at formal hall, but the people I felt really sorry for were the scholars. At my college we had formal hall *every* night and the scholars were on a rota for going to read grace in Latin.

Most of us only bothered to turn up for formal hall once a week (Sundays) so most nights the scholar had to read grace for the fellows and only one or two students.

The advantage of this for the scholars was that if the scholar was the only student there the fellows sometimes felt sorry for them and they got to eat at high table. Having eaten at high table a couple of times I can say that this was probably worthwhile. Although the food at formal hall was pretty good the high table food was much better.

[Winot]

If I can join this nostalgia fest...

We had two sittings, the first informal and the secong formal with high table, Latin grace and gowns. Terrible food made bearable by being able to order pints of beer from the buttery. The worst was navarin of lamb, rechristened navarin of dog. How witty we were.

The worst meals were in vacation times, when the unlucky few still around were served such delights as (bad) pie with rice, potatoes and bread. An early attempt at food combining?

Formal dinners were somewhat better but the style of food was lost in a 70s time warp (e.g. baked alsaka, and not in an ironic way). All irrelevant really as the huge quantity of alcohol meant most of the food ended up resurfacing not long after.

Intellectual creme de la creme, us.

[endless autumn]

I was only let out of my institution one year ago.

Even at high table, at various feasts and special smaller-scale dinners the food was embarrassingly poor. My favourite was venison with cherries.

Once every year, upon the slaughter of the college's excess deer (I think they were killed according to colour so that the herd remained as aesthetically pleasing as possible) scholars would be afforded the privilege of eating a stewed shin of deer with raw tinned cherries. Served with watercress, hilarious potato croquettes, and vegetables twice-cooked under hot-lights and over steam-baths - an ancient recipe which is quoted in various culinary history books. So the college claims.

At school, pupils designed the week's menu with the kitchen staff and the housemaster's wife. A merry game played by the snotty upstarts was to see how many 'amusing' recipe names they could sneak into the week's bill o' fare. 'Rideaux de boeuf' somehow escaped detection even though the housemaster's wife was French.

[Suzi Edwards]

we always knew it was formal hall when everything was served with watercress (i assume the kitchen viewed this as a suitably formal garnish, unlike the baked beans served at almost every other meal)...which would invariably be recycled as soup soon after.

and i still have nightmares about armenian lamb.

funnily i took my (american) boyfriend to cam the other week, showed him round my collage and upon walking into hall he whispered "it's just like hogwarts"

:-))

[Carlovski]

Still not had any dishes to rival the Fish finger in pastry (IMO), surely there must be somewhere worse?

Tarka,

Bits of cambridge must seem pretty ancient to the average American, I have a friend who recently visited America and went to see something billed as the oldest remaining residence (Can't remember what city), it was from about 1850 something. I have lived in older places than that, and they definitley weren't museums!

[jackal10]

How nice to see so many Oxbridge alumni on this list!

Yes, the dining scenes from Porterhouse Blue or C.P Snow are not exaggerated much.

However only two colleges have ancient permission to serve Swan. (overrated btw - tough and muddy)

In Cambridge only Peterhouse maintains its deer park.

In many colleges Grace (in latin) has been said by a Scholar in Hall every single day since the foundation (1284 in the case of Peterhouse, 1584 for my college, Emmanuel). Since a scholarship is worth about £50, this works out to about £10 per grace...

The practice of Sconcing has almost died out. This was if one comitted one of the table crimes - used the wrong cutlery or discussed one of the prohibited subjects (religion, sex involving those present, the food, or politics) one could be challenged to a "sconce". A sconce required one to drink a quantity (in some places a yard) of ale without stopping. If successful you could challenge your challenger, and so on until the loser paid for the beer. You could escape from a sconce by writing an apology, on the spot, but the apology had to be written in classical latin or greek...

Next week sees the May Balls (held, of course, in June). Free Champagne all night. The fountain will be drained and refilled with wine. Doesn't do anything for the wine.. Strawberries and cream..

This year Emma has a Alice in Wonderland theme. May Ball Site

Dining Menu:

Smoked Chicken Consommé

(Vegetable Consommé)

Oven-Roasted Fillet of Salmon in Basil with Salsa Verde

(Oven-Roasted Polenta with Salsa Verde)

Chargrilled Supreme of Guinea Fowl with Sweet Potato Mousse and Pink Champagne Sabbayon

(Chargrilled Aubergine Melanazzine)

served with a selection of summer vegetables and Jersey Royal potatoes

Queen of Hearts Pudding with Honey Fig Compote

Coffee served with Frangelico Hazelnut Liqueur and Mints

Edited June 11, 2003 by jackal10 (log)

[lamington]

I still have nightmares about canned spaghetti and fish fingers and that powdered egg goop in primary school (thankfully my parents saved me and we returned to Australia).

I was recently doing research work in some posh London schools and the different levels of plated filth were quite interesting. Very very fancy school: three choices, including vegetarian, vaguely pleasant but definitely institutional...; slightly fancy school: fried this, fried that, fried this again. Revolting. I couldn't stomach anything.

But the worst was when I attended a conference at York, and the "lunch" was rubbery quiche and cold peas. The room stank of canned spaghetti. Worst conference food ever.

[Carlovski]

Strange how it is considered that Fried food is ideal for mass catering, when in fact everyone knows fried food

a - Doesn't take standing around too well

b - Doesn't work for more than a handful of people

Although I do know someone who only likes fried food that has gone soggy (They say they don't like 'Crunchy'!)

[shilly]

In many colleges Grace (in latin) has been said by a Scholar in Hall every single day since the foundation (1284 in the case of Peterhouse, 1584 for my college, Emmanuel). Since a scholarship is worth about £50, this works out to about £10 per grace...

I was at Emma too, and my memories of the food are that it could be pretty good from time to time. Formal hall was pretty crap, but lunchtimes were tasty enough, and posh dinner (eg 10 or 20 quid a head) gave the kitchens enough budget to do some tasty stuff.

Next week sees the May Balls (held, of course, in June). ... This year Emma has a Alice in Wonderland theme. Dining Menu:

Seeing the ball menu reminds me of when I arranged food along with a good friend in 1994. We were absolutely rooked by a local supplier who provided about half the quantities we were expecting. But the kitchens did a great job for the posh dinner, which pulled in a fair old crowd, and I was pleased with the menu we chose. It was themed in colours (pinks and whites) and for £13.50 a head or thereabouts we managed some nice grub, mostly derived from the roux brothers' classic cuisine book:

smoked salmon mousse covered with a piece of smoked trout

marinated escalopes of chicken sauteed with basil and black grapes / three mediterranean tarts for the veggies

strawberry shortbread biscuits

great cheese from the cambridge cheese company and great port organised by a posh feller who went to London and bought it at auction for £6 a bottle, which we thought was very slick, as it was much cheaper and much better than buying from the college

coffee and bits