Back to School Lunch Ideas from 1950s Housewives - Retro Housewife Goes Green (2024)

Take a look and school lunch ideas from the 1950s. These are real tips and tricks from the 1950s including vintage sandwich filling recipes that were popular at the time.

The 1950s was an interesting time for school lunches. Baby boomers meant schools saw a big increase in the number of kids they needed to feed.

Up until the 1950s schools were only serving hot lunches. There seemed to be an idea that it was essential for nutrition to have a hot meal served. This changed in the 1950s and cold lunches started to be offered as well.

School lunches also started to become big business with private companies getting involved and making it a $415 million dollar business. And like many things in the post-war era, they become more commercialized with branded lunch boxes becoming popular.

I haven’t been able to find the stats on how many kids brought their own lunches to school but you will find a lot of school lunch box ideas in magazines of the time so it was clearly a popular option.

There were a lot of fun and sometimes interesting school lunch ideas shared during the 1950s in magazines like Better Homes and Gardens. I have been collecting those ideas and want to share them with you.

School Lunch Ideas from the 1950s

General Lunch Tips

• Send hot foods like soup, bouillon, or hot chocolate in an insulated bottle.
• Send an oilcloth placemat for your child’s desk. (Get oilcloth placements on Etsy)
• Cut sandwiches into small pieces so they are easy to eat. Making them in eye-catching shapes is also fun. (Judging from the photos tringles were fun shapes)
• Mix and match spreads and bread for variety.
• Fix the fillings ahead of time and store them in refrigerator containers. Put the containers on a tray to make it easy to move them to the counter in one trip.
• Use plastic containers to keep food fresh. With these kinds of containers, you can make the food the night before and pop them in the lunch bag the next day.
• Tuck in extras from time to time. Try leftover fried chicken, gingerbread cupcakes, ham and cheese spread roll-ups, deviled eggs, or instant chocolate pudding with coconut sprinkled on the top.
• Make and freeze sandwiches ahead. Pack each in a small plastic container and with a grease pencil (wet erase would be a good modern option) mark the day of the week. Or wrap in foil or freezer paper. To keep them fresh longer leave them uncut. Do not freeze mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, celery, cucumber, or cooked egg whites.
• Cover each slice of bread with softened butter. This keeps the filling from soaking into the bread.
• To cut sandwiches, stack two or three on a cutting board and cut with a sharp knife.
• Send mayo, mustard, and ketchup in small containers with lids.

You make also enjoy: Non-Toxic Kids Lunch Boxes

Tips for Setting Up a School Lunch Center

• Set aside a step and timesaving spot in your kitchen where you can do your lunch-packing.
• Keep a dispenser for wax paper or aluminum foil on the inside door of a cabinet.
• Cutting boards, knives, spreaders, eating utensils, and paper sacks can go in the top drawer of the lower cabinet.
• The bottom cabinet is a handy place to keep bulky items like mixing bowls, lunch boxes, paper, and plastic containers, and canned lunch foods.
• Store your electric mixer or blender close by to whip up fillings.

Sandwich Filling Ideas

Use these recipes with caution with modern children! It’s fun to see these vintage recipes though and maybe you’ll find a couple your family will enjoy.

Before we get to the recipes, a modern tip to make school lunches easier is to shop from Thrive Market. They have lots of organic and natural foods that will help you make delicious lunches and it’s all delivered to your house! It’s where I get a lot of my groceries from.

• Deviled ham combined with minced onion and topped with Swiss cheese.
• Chive cream cheese, chopped dried beef, light cream, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.
• Combine cottage cheese, blue cheese, crumbled crisp bacon, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.
• Combine peanut butter and honey, and spread on buttered white or whole-wheat bread.
• Liverwurst, chopped stuffed olives, and mayo or salad dressing.
• Ground bologna with ground sweet pickle, prepared mustard, and mayo.
• Baked beans, chili sauce, thinly sliced onion or pickle.
• Chopped hard-cooked eggs, cucumber, pepper, salt, and mayo.
• Combine 2 parts each of chopped cooked chicken and broken walnuts with 1 part drained crushed pineapple. Add mayo or salad dressing.
• Equal parts flaked tuna and finally cut celery, moistened with mayo or salad dressing.
• Combine one 3-ounce package of cream cheese, 3 finely cut uncooked prunes, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, and 1 tablespoon chopped nuts.
• Canned corned beef shredded with a fork and mixed with ketchup, chopped sweet pickles, grated onion, and mayo.
• Eggs scrambled with minced onion and green pepper, and finely chopped ham.
• Combine two 3-ounce packages of cream cheese and 1 ounce crumbled blue cheese; add 1/2 cup ground nuts, 1/4 teaspoon grated onion, 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/3 cup salad dressing or mayo.
• Ground cooked meat, pickle relish, or pickled onion, mayo, and horse radish.
• Sardines, chopped hard-cooked eggs, and lemon juice.
• Softened pimiento-cheese spread and chopped ripe olives.
• Combine one 3-ounce package of cream cheese and 2 tablespoons of milk or light cream; add 2 tables spoons diced toasted almonds; mix well.
• One cup chopped raisins, 1 cup cottage cheese, 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/2 cup mayo, salt to taste.
• Combine 1/4 cup drained canned chopped mushrooms with 1/3 cup softened chive cream cheese.

I don’t know about you but I will not be trying most of those. However, my favorite sandwich since I was a kid is canned tuna (the tuna from Thrive Marketis safe, delicious, and affordable!) with mayo so I am enjoying one classic sandwich filling. And my grandma made me a lot of peanut butter and honey sandwiches when I was a kid. She’d usually make a fun design with the honey, like a butterfly.

It is interesting how much our ideas of a school sandwich have changed. You’ll still see some similar sandwiches to these but you are more likely to see lunch meat and cheese.

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