First, a few documents about rationing in the UK, during and after WWII
Click on the photo to find out more
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Wartime Recipes (try them out!)
Women were told that food was their munition of war. The Ministry Of Food and women's magazines of the day, gave basic nutritional advice and suggested substitutes such as mashed potato for flour, sour milk for cheese, grated vegetables for fruit and whipped margarine with vanilla instead of cream, but the housewife of the 1940's had to be very creative with what little food they had queued for with ration books in hand. Here are some of the meals they cooked up.
Mock Goose
Quantity 4 helpings
Ingredients 1 and a half lb Potatoes
2 large cooking apples
4 oz cheese
half a teaspoon dried sage
salt and pepper
three quarters of a pint vegetable stock
1 tablespoon flour
Cooking time 1 hour
Scrub and slice potatoes thinly, slice apples, grate cheese. Grease a fireproof dish, place a layer of potatoes on it, cover with apples and a little sage, season lightly and sprinkle with cheese, repeat layers leaving potat oes and cheese to cover. Pour in half a pint of the stock and cook in a moderate oven for three quarters of an hour. Blend flour with remainder of the stock, pour into dish and cook for another quarter hour. Serve as a main dish with a green vegetable.
Mock black pudding
Ingredients1 cup oatmeal
1 pint vegetable or meat broth
salt, pepper
marjoram, thyme
2 - 3 small onions
Stew one cup of oatmeal in one pint of broth or vegetable water, add salt, pepper, marjoram, and thyme, simmer, stirring constantly until thickened. Chop onions very fine, brown in little fat and stir in.
And the best for last, the (in)famous potato peel pie
Here’s a recipe for a potato peel pie, but I warn you, it tastes like paste. The more authentic it is, the nastier. These ingredients will make a very small pie (expand at will):
1 potato
1 beet
1 Tablespoon milk
Peel the potato and put the peelings in a pie pan. Don’t cook the peels, because you’re in the middle of an Occupation and you don’t have any fuel. Boil the potato and the beet together in salty water, but not for very long, due to the fuel problem. Just until you can stick a fork in the potato. Take them out and mash them up with the milk. Pour the glop in the pie pan. Bake at 375 for as short a time as is consonant with digestion (fuel again), say, fifteen minutes.
The finished product will look quite attractive and pink. If you squint, you can almost imagine raspberries. Don’t be fooled. It looks a lot better than it is. However, if you forgot that you were in the middle of WWII and added a bunch of butter and milk and salt, it could be quite tasty.
1 potato
1 beet
1 Tablespoon milk
Peel the potato and put the peelings in a pie pan. Don’t cook the peels, because you’re in the middle of an Occupation and you don’t have any fuel. Boil the potato and the beet together in salty water, but not for very long, due to the fuel problem. Just until you can stick a fork in the potato. Take them out and mash them up with the milk. Pour the glop in the pie pan. Bake at 375 for as short a time as is consonant with digestion (fuel again), say, fifteen minutes.
The finished product will look quite attractive and pink. If you squint, you can almost imagine raspberries. Don’t be fooled. It looks a lot better than it is. However, if you forgot that you were in the middle of WWII and added a bunch of butter and milk and salt, it could be quite tasty.
To finish, here's an extract from a show on BBC Radio 4 with some genuine wartime documents, prick up your ears !
| today__rationing_recipes__edible_and.mp3 |
