French Nursery Food

When we think of nursery food, most of us are acutely nationalistic. One cannot imagine toad-in-the-hole, milk pudding and junket being consumed in any other country. Some of us never escape the grip of the nursery and are happier eating very bad food than going to any damned foreign restaurant, while others so loathed the food of their childhood that they are forever sworn against it. If anything, I belong in the first camp, even if I have happily migrated from the world of club food and institutionalised deprivation. I liked almost everything I was given as a child, from Nanny’s Mess (a sort of Irish stew with scrag end of lamb and pearl barley) and spam fritters and, not even but especially, prunes and custard.