Description:
Wartime cookery book issued in the 1940 National Food Campaign Exhibition. The book features nutritious recipes based on ingredients available during rationing, which ran from 1940 until 1954. Recipes include date and apple pasty, syrup tart, date and walnut loaf, tripe and liver hotpot and sausage and tomato pie.
Prior to rationing, people in Britain had been able to import a lot of foodstuffs but during wartime there was less food available to go round and people had to become more frugal and creative with their meals. Early in the War, for example, onions became scarce as they had mostly been imported and were rarely grown here; bananas had virtually disappeared in Britain by 1943. Cooking ingredients included such things as dried eggs, Spam and tinned snoek (or snook), an unpopular type of fish of which there was a surplus of tins left over after the War which were later sold as cat food! A more popular wartime food was Lord Woolton’s (vegetarian) pie.
Share your thoughts on this item
Join the discussion by sharing your memories of this item with other website visitors.