Anything in a tin. From fruit cocktail to burgers, to the customary spam and 'chopped pork' which rears it's ugly head every Christmas at 'buffet time'.

tinned butterbeans also

Fluff-coating optional. I know Werther's have been trying to 'sex up' their image lately, but they'll always be the oldies' boiled sweet of choice.

nuts covered in brightly coloured sugar. play havoc with your dentures.

Once, at the age of about 8, I examined the bottle of said delights that sat on the kitchen shelf at my Grandparents house. I was seduced by their shiny transparent yellowness, and asked my Grandad what they were. On being told that they were, "sweets that are good for you", the curiosity must have been writ large across my beaming little fizzog. Gramps had a twisted sense of humour. You can guess the rest.

Those things covered in sugar. Which are then rolled in sugar. And then some sugar is sprinkled on top. They sometimes also come with a side serving of sugar too. Plus there's usually loose sugar in the bottom of the box.

Remember one auntie always giving us these disgusting things with a cuppa. They looked like dog biscuits and tasted of dead flies

and I will long remember the OAP dinners served by the Denny's chain of restaurants. Basically there was a separate menu for elderly folk without a full compliment of teeth. A "chicken dinner" thus consisted of aforementioned bird, spuds, veg etc all liquidized to a soup that they would then drink through a straw.

I stuck to the hash browns...

Things found only in OAP's cars, those overpriced travel sweets that come in a lovely tin and are genrally sprinkled in a strange white powder.

When I was a kid, our next door neighbours were pensioners and always had delivered by the milkman (remember them?) a bottle of sterilised milk, which tasted horrible. Why did people use this stuff? Does anybody know? This was the early to mid 60's by the way.

mmm...now doesn't this look delicious?

I guess if you lived through WW2 and sugar rationing, this probably seemed exotic and tasty

And no, that's not a euphamism....stop sniggering at the back!

as I regularly have piccalilli it goes well with tongue funnily enough and there's nowt wrong with battenberg either.My dad does have huge store of tinned fish in the cupboard but then again I quite like a tinned sardine . We do argue over how best to cook tripe though he prefers the milk and onion root i prefer Spanish style with some chili and tomatoes etc.

pink blancmange used to appear reguarly during my childhood at elderly relative's houses, but I haven't seen the stuff in years. Do kids today still eat jelly too?

And I love and eat all the above. Though much as I like tongue, tongue in a tin is not appetising.

What about those horrid Goblin meat puddings in a tin? Even the smell is like an old people's home.

Another day-glo yellow foodstuff . usually served on bread and tasted like Lemon Fairy Liquid

which is slightly worrying. Mind you, I will be 54 in January.

Not much more than a few years ago I would have no more have eaten the likes of pickled beetroot than I would have bought a Westlife album. I love it now.

My in-laws refuse to eat pasta. Times and tastes change. Maybe these things skip generations. My 17 tear old son loves tinned tongue sandwiches his gran makes. He's even been known to make a black pudding sandwich.

but here in Sweden the only people that buy corned beef are OAPs.
A couple of local OAP food items that are disappearing from supermarkets and only found in special food markets and such these days are;
"Paltbröd" - bread baked with pigs blood, dried rock hard and then boiled before eating...and;
"Spickekorv" - extremely salt sausage eaten sliced on sandwiches. Many years ago I worked in a grocery store where a foreign guy came back with a packet of this vile stuff, saying "This salami is spoiled, it tastes horrid!" When I looked at it and said "No, it's a special swedish sausage, it's supposed to taste like that" he looked at me as if I and the entire nation were insane.
If a young person tasted it today, they'd agree with him.

The pre Werther's pensioner sweet of choice.

all seemed to arrive in those cheap Xmas food hampers you'd get from 1970's mail order catalogues. Tinned hams, tinned fruit cocktail, crab sandwich paste, packets of dates etc. I always remember the heartache as a kid discovering the only confectionery item included in the hamper would be something foul like the aforementioned Meltis Newbury Fruits

I remember Irel coffee, a chicory-based product like Camp's, Flash bars, a small threepenny chocolate treat with coconut (?), and broken biscuits and broken Fry's cream bars. Helluva long time ago.

Small glass jars of unidentifiable pinkish paste that seems to only work when spread between two slices of white bread.

Scrapings from the abattoir floor, put in a blender, boiled up, then sold in ridiculously expensive lttle glass jars. Bought by people who fear the strange, unknown world that is pate. Also see 'fish paste'.

My grandad always had a tin of these in the glovebox of his Triumph Herald.

I am almost guaranteed to love any foodstuff mentioned on this thread.

surely the greatest scourge of the young palate : Victory V's. Bleurgh.

in our local VG supermarket in the buthery department. Every week a little old lady came in and bought a bag of blood. Didn't buy anything else, just a plastic bag full of blood. Speculation was rife amongst us younger staff members.

Do they still make them?

I was going to say kidneys for breakfast and Liver and onions for tea, but offal is pretty trendy now isn't it?

what about a "nice salad?" Aka limp lettuce, tomatoes, some tinned ham. Oh, and a bit of salad cream.

God, my first husband's aunt used to bring an enormous home-cured tongue to every family Christmas; it was unveiled with a great flourish and then sat on the sideboard daring us to eat it for the whole season, every mealtime one had to turn down repeated offers of 'Won't you have a little tongue?' (make up your own) and getting The Look from auntie.

Advocaat anyone?

Those Fray bentos meat pies that come in tins. Why?

of Clan Dew.

Years ago I had a craving for pie and chips. What with the nearest chippy being closed, I bought some oven chips and a tinned Fray Bentos steak & kidney pie from my local cornershop. The oven chips were passable, but the pie was nasty as f**k. Not even smothering it in lashings of heinz ketchup could stop it tasting like you were really eating dogfood encased in pastry

..did you know that the health and hygiene laws for canning pet food are more stringent (stringenter?) than for canning food for human consumption? See? I knew you didn't.

wrapped in tin foil and sealed in tupperware, for at least 2 hours during a coach trip on a hot summers day.

When opened just behind you, you find yourself looking about in startled vain for the elephant that undoubtedly must have been sneaked on board to fart copiously.

Then you hear the wavering tones. 'Oh these are lovely, aren't they dear?' and you realise it's just an old couple having lunch.

...particularly cock-a-leekie soup

"I was never any good at math"

That was me wubbling on about Camp Coffee!

Anyway. This one's possibly just my relatives... Calves' foot jelly.

Ugh.

Grandma: Mellow Birds coffee
Nan: Camp coffee... in a bottle... why, Lord, why?

Also: my Grandad (married to Nan) made coffee (Camp) from the hot tap. He never boiled a kettle. The hot tap was a miracle and he used it for warm beverages from the day it was installed... Total insanity.

we live together, The Dad died when I was an infant blah, blah...

She hates anything with onion in it, fave meal is Munz n' Tatties, and the tatties are boiled too.
When her tum's upset she heads for the Scots' Oats.
I'm addicted to currys, pasta and Chinese dishes.

we are an odd couple but it works, for us

I've speed-read this thread, but I haven't seen anyone mention creamed corn.

handkerchief-licking qualify as eating? I've never seen anyone under 60 do it.

But I always always always carry a Hankie in my back right hand pocket. This seems to bring out genuine shock from people,as I am only 35. I feel the near forgotten handkerchief has certain merits which I must have inherited from someone somewhere who was of a different generation to me.

Let's play Hankie Bingo - person who is youngest who carries a Hankie about their person wins a hamper containing all of the above......

Sanatogen and Cherry Brandy.

A yellowy pudding. It was yummy!

Don't look for it. It's not there anymore

a few years ago armed with travel guide to the UK. She wanted to try the recommended British fayre - such as curry with rice and our famous dessert .... Angel Delight.

but I recently saw a BBC3 doc about Buckfast wine, and how it's high alcohol/caffiene content makes it a favourite amongst the yoof North Of The Border. I'd no idea it was so popular. Apparently the high caffiene levels sends you mental and is supposedly behind a crimewave by Scots teen tykes.

Bournevita?

are we allowed to call people OAPs any longer?

Are they not Denizens of Advanced Maturity or Non-Dentally Able Citizens of Experience or some such thing these days?

was very partial to haslet in a salad. Also semolina, tapioca and Ovaltine. And crab paste.
I drink to forget.

wasn't a fan of coffee, but on rare occasions, he'd ask Mum to make him a 'milky coffee', which meant a mug of milk, with a homeopathic suggestion of coffee hidden in it. His tipple of choice, was, of course, our old favourite Camp. His supply would last for YEARS, But here's a question. I hadn't looked at a bottle for ages, not until it got a mention on this thread, and I see the picture on the label has changed. I remember our stout Highland officer being handed a steaming cup by an attentive turbanned servant. I now see that the servant has been invited to take a seat and join Jock McEquality in savouring the flavour. When did that happen?

you could cause consternation by asking for that in an Alabama diner

I'm horrified to discover I've OAP'd early.

Piccalilli, yes. Love it.
Butter Beans, got some in the cupboard.
Corned Beef, had a toasted Corned beef and Piccalilli (see above) sandwich only this morning.
Cod Liver Oil capsules, every morning along with vitamins, glucosamine and garlic caps.

Obviously I'm past it before I realised I was even there.

Pease pudding and saveloys.

Brawn.

Jellied eels.

Conger eel and parsley sauce.

Cow-heel and tripe.

None of which were ever a source of culinary joy to her grandchildren.

Disgusting meat products only enjoyed by the elderly - or small solictor's firm?

They still sell it in my local Sainsburys. Haven't tried it.
Apropos jellied eels, see above. I recall Kellys Pie and Mash shop, which also sold jellied eels. No pie n'mash combo was complete without 'liquor' or 'green gravy' and if you didn't fancy the pie or the mash or the jellied eels, there was a stall outside where you could buy fresh eel. Choose your own, slithering wetly in a shallow tank with its pals, and your friendly eel-wrangler would lop its head off toot sweet , and hand you the corpse in a brown paper wrapper. Don't like pie or mash, or eels of any persuasion

featured on this thread - trotters, tripe, tongue etc - have been turning at up at huge expense on the menus of restaurants like St John for some time now.

"What do you say Fyodor, Marcos, Duleep - shall we dine lavishly on Brain, Brawn and Backside - washed down with some Krug and Puligny Montrachet? We'll leave belt tightening for lesser mortals shall we?"

The only people that drink Mann's Brown Ale are getting on and I don't think there are many youngsters that would order a bitter lemon.