Tomatoes and beans aside, it’s easy to turn our noses up at canned and tinned food. Because, these days, it’s all about fresh, local and seasonal. But our grandparents understood the value of a well-stocked pantry. Tinned foods – from rice pudding to pie fillings – were especially important during the Second World War, when a long shelf-life was crucial. Here’s a selection of some of the best, and possibly worst, from the 1940s into the 1960s.

There was no point in a spam filter back when this canned cooked pork was at the height of popularity. The stuff got everywhere, from breakfast tables to spaghetti dinners. Spam was invented in 1937 and became especially prevalent in frugal kitchens during the Second World War, as this 1943 ad demonstrates.

How do you rebadge something that, essentially, is just cooked pork or beef in a can? Take a leaf out of Spam’s tin and add an ‘s’. Genius, yes. Delicious? We’re reserving judgement on that one – though this 1947 ad does a decent job of selling them as a summer salad essential.

Yes, that’s bread in a tin. During the Second World War, factories began to produce ‘emergency bread’ that could be stockpiled as part of the war effort. The loaves were baked in hermetically sealed tins, apparently remaining edible for up to 10 years. They took pride of place in the center of many a household's table.

Never forget dessert again! Simply keep a tin of these syrupy beauties in your cupboard and you have an instant pud. Used in a cobbler – like in this 1948 ad – or stewed and served with a dollop of evaporated milk, cream or ice cream, a can of peaches was a reliable suppertime savior in the 1950s and 1960s.

It was sort of pink, and kind of like salmon. But, somehow, tinned salmon was a completely different animal to the fresh or smoked stuff. Still, it was a pantry staple (and still is, for many) that made it simple to whip up a creamy pasta sauce, a tasty salad or perhaps use as a filling for a ‘Sunday pie’, as suggested in this 1970s recipe booklet.

Nothing says ‘flair for good living’ like whipping out a can of corned beef hash for supper, does it? That’s according to this 1954 magazine ad, anyway. The ‘meal in a tin’ concept was hugely popular as convenience foods grew more prevalent, mainly due to more women joining the workplace and looking for simple, quick meals. And they don’t come much simpler than this.

Ambrosia Creamed Rice was a mainstay of most post-war cupboards – and the source of childhood memories of steaming bowls of rice pudding, maybe with a spoonful of jelly and a little extra cream stirred in (if you were lucky). It’s still sold (as simply ‘Rice Pudding’), if you fancy indulging your nostalgia with an old-school pud.

There were (and still are) many tins of soup, but Campbell’s is forever immortalized by Andy Warhol. And your grandparents’ favorite pasta and cream of mushroom soup casserole (often topped with chips). There’s still something comforting and cockle-warming about it, from the noise as it slops out of the can (usually in one concentrated chunk) to the nostalgic taste.

If Heinz’s cooked spaghetti was the perfect standby for suppers and maybe last-minute dinner guests, Alphabetti Spaghetti was the bowl of tangy, tomatoey fun your grandparents always gave you for supper, maybe with some buttered quarters of brown bread. The pasta letters were discontinued in 1990 after 60 years of delighting children (and often adults too) but returned to shelves in 2005 due to popular demand.

There was no need to faff around with pots of simmering water, make a sauce from scratch or even grate cheese with Heinz’s tins of cooked spaghetti. The skinny strands of pasta came already swimming in a seasoned tomato sauce with cheese. And, as demonstrated in this 1941 feature in National Home Monthly, it could be used for more substantial casseroles, pasta bakes or even to fill pies.

These chunky yellowish-green peas are basically peas that have not yet been ‘mushed’ to make mushy peas, that classic fish and chips accompaniment. They are actually mature peas that have been left to dry out naturally and are used to make wasabi peas. But we’ll always remember them as a soft, salty veg served for Sunday lunch, usually mixed in with some tinned carrot.

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Nowadays the sardines in your cupboard are more likely to be inside prettily decorated tins brought back from somewhere like Spain or Portugal. But 50 or so years ago there would probably have been stacks of them, ready to be tipped out on toast. The last US sardine cannery, in Maine, sadly closed in 2010 but these little fishes remain a good source of fatty acids.

Did you eat your hot dogs after heating them in a pan, simmering in their own brine, or cold and straight from the can (shudder)? Chopped up in a potato salad or just slapped in a skinny bun and smothered with ketchup and mustard? Or maybe served with a ‘Sack O’ Sauce’, as niftily demonstrated in this 1940s ad. Hot dog king Oscar Mayer’s wieners came with a sachet of barbecue sauce in the center.

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Pineapple upside-down cake, pineapple rings on top of thick slabs of gammon, pineapple chunks and cheese on sticks (to impress at cocktail parties)… There was seemingly no end to the uses of a tin of pineapple chunks or rings, which hit peak popularity in the 1960s. And, nowadays, you can use it on pizza too (if you’re so inclined).

There’s something strangely comforting about little parcels of meat- or cheese-filled pasta swimming in slightly sweet tomato sauce. Perhaps it's because it is exactly the type of after-school snack or dinner grandparents might serve, having heated the contents of a tin in a saucepan. Chef Boy-ar-dee, advertised here in the 1970s, was one of many easy-serve pasta meals available.

Meatloaf or liver loaf is one of those dishes that conjures images of cozy family get-togethers or grandma’s home cooking. But E-Z Serve Liver Loaf changed that, at least the ‘cooking’ part, by stuffing the ground mix of corned beef, pork and bacon into a loaf-shaped tin.

There was something a little terrifying about the Green Giant – maybe his size, the fact he could lift enormous ears of corn with ease – or perhaps his deep, guttural ‘ho, ho, ho’. But his tins of corn were (and still are) perfectly tender and delicious.

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With cubes of carrot, swede and green beans so tiny surely no human hand could have diced them, mixed with peas and sweetcorn, these ready-to-heat veggies were easy to serve but trickier to eat, as you basically had to chase them around your plate. Or you could encase it in aspic, of course.

Fray Bentos launched a generation of convenience pie-eating when its tinned steak and kidney creations, topped with a puff pastry lid, hit supermarkets in 1961. But that wasn’t all they offered to the time-poor home ‘cook’. As this 1973 magazine page shows, the company also produced pie fillings – for those who wanted to make a little effort.

Condensed or evaporated milk – milk that has been evaporated to thicken it, then sweetened – was practically a wartime hero. Its high fat, protein and sugar content made it perfect for field rations during the US Civil War and the two World Wars, and it’s also a key ingredient in banoffee and Key lime pies. It’s having a bit of a comeback, mainly for desserts that call for a creamy caramel – heating it creates a sweet, nutty sauce like dulce de leche.

Find sweet and savory condensed milk recipes here

Remember how delicious this was drizzled on pancakes, on crumpets, on toast – on everything? Remember, also, how the lid would never fit properly back on the tin because so much sticky syrup was oozing around the edges? Basically, golden syrup was sheer joy for kids, but sheer irritation for adults.

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