[1] Additional items can be added, such as ham, green salad, hard boiled eggs, and apple, and usual accompaniments are butter and a sweet pickle such as Branston.

[5] In the absence of access to expensive seasonings, onions were the "favoured condiment",[6] as well as providing a valuable source of vitamin C.[7] The reliance on cheese rather than meat protein was especially strong in the south of the country.

[13] The OED's next reference is from the July 1956 Monthly Bulletin of the Brewers' Society, which describes the activities of the Cheese Bureau, a marketing body affiliated with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.

And in a matter of minutes a tray is handed across the counter to you on which is a good square hunk of bread, a lump of butter and a wedge of cheese, and pickled onions, along with your pint of beer".

Only a year later, in June 1957, another edition of the Monthly Bulletin of the Brewers' Society referred to a ploughman's lunch using that name, and said that it consisted of "cottage bread, cheese, lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, cold sausages and, of course, beer".

This has been argued to be at least partially based on a British cultural "revulsion from technology and modernity and a renewed love-affair with an idealised national past",[18] although it appears the main reasons the ploughman's lunch was favoured by caterers were that it was simple and quick to prepare even for less skilled staff, required no cooking, and involved no meat, giving a potential for high profit margins.