More ice-cream, less liver

Food has always been important to Ormondians. From the first meal of bread and cheese in 1881 through many puddings and soups to today’s tasty and varied menu, the history of food at Ormond tells us much about the history of food in Australia.

The first meal ever eaten at Ormond did not go well. On March 18th 1881, Master John MacFarland and the College’s first twelve students sat down to a simple meal of bread and cheese whilst the housekeeper attempted unsuccessfully to extract other food from a locked cellar. Whilst we have few records of other meals from those early decades, by the wartime 1940s at Ormond, we know that students likely felt grateful simply to have adequate meals. Tea and later sugar were rationed and meals were prepared over a coal range because of fuel shortages. 

Once Australia recovered from the war, there was more food at Ormond, and not just in the Dining Hall. By the 1950s, a student snack shop operated and there was a ‘Coca-Cola bar’ in the JCR. Dining Hall fare reflected Anglo-Australian fondness for mutton and beef, which was available at almost every meal, including breakfast. Brains, chops, cutlets, sausages, bacon and ‘meat fritters’ abounded.

Tastes at Ormond changed over the decades as they did in wider Australian society. By the 1970s at College students were asking for less liver, bacon and corned beef, preferring roast meats, hamburgers, crumbles, pies and ice-cream. By the 1990s roast meat was no longer a favourite, but students still wanted more ice-cream.

So who prepared this changing menu? For the College’s first century the kitchen was overseen by the much-loved Matron who also provided informal pastoral care, delivering meals and welfare checks to ill students. Since then, the College has at times outsourced catering, but in-house kitchen teams have been more popular with residents. When in-house catering returned in 2014 for example students promptly began consuming 20% more meals and significantly more sticky date pudding. While today our tastes tend more towards quinoa than brains, ice-cream remains as popular as ever.