TAPIOCA pudding, nicknamed frogspawn by schoolchildren everywhere, has received the wooden spoon in a survey of school meals.
In a judgment that will strike a chord with generations of pupils, the slippery pudding, introduced in wartime because it was the cheapest source of calories for humans, topped the poll as the nation’s most-hated dish.
Cabbage, known as “compost”, came a close second, followed by over-boiled vegetables of all varieties, lumpy mashed potato and lumpy custard. Other canteen fare that brought back traumatic memories included spam fritters, semolina, liver and wobbly blancmange.
The top five favourite foods were fish and chips, ice cream, sponge pudding, jam roly poly and jelly.
One in three people surveyed said they had devised cunning ways to dispose of their lunch when the dinner ladies were not watching, from smuggling it on to someone else’s plate to wrapping it in a handkerchief.
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Over half of those questioned admitted that they had been so scarred by school dinners that the experience still affects their eating habits. Antony Worrall Thompson, the celebrity chef, said: “My worst dish was boiled swede that looked like pond life.
“I used to smuggle in a plastic bag, get one of my friends to distract the teachers and hide it in there. But I loved spam fritters.”
The survey of more than 2,000 BBC Good Food magazine readers and users of the Friends Reunited website also found the most popular food nicknames. Custard was “cat sick” or “yellow peril”, peas were “bullets” and the mushy variety “elephant snot”. Spotted Dick was “fly cemetery” or “leper’s arm”.
Tapioca is produced from the fleshy root of the bitter cassava, a plant cultivated in South America and the West Indies.
Often used to thicken soups and sweeten baked food, it has 40 per cent more carbohydrate per gram than rice and 25 per cent more than maize, making it one of the cheapest source of calories for humans.
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Pearl tapioca is the form used for the pudding. It must be soaked for several hours to soften. It is then simmered with milk and vanilla pods until it swells and goes transparent.