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rushthatspeaksThis is a lot of the Daily Telegraph's World War II-era recipes, collected and organized. As a result, it's an interesting look at wartime British cookery and the way that recipes adapted to rationing, and probably not at this point in time to be used as an actual cookbook.
One thing that I note is that some ingredients that were evidently common are not, in fact, common to me. This may be an across-the-ocean thing as opposed to time period, I'm not sure; but fresh redcurrants are both seasonal and very expensive anywhere I've lived, fresh damsons unheard of (damson jam is mad expensive too), fresh loganberries right out; and apparently rabbit was a cheap meat. Oh, and suet. I have cooked with suet precisely once in my life, this time thateredien and I were using a pudding mold she had, and it had to be special-ordered. It is so assumed in this book that one knows how to make a suet crust that they do not bother with a recipe. And I think we have sultanas in this country under the name 'golden raisins' but they are not remotely standard.
On the other hand, of course a great many ingredients were incredibly scarce, and I was interested to notice which ones: dairy, certainly, most dairy, these recipes invariably use margarine and dry milk and something called 'household milk' which seems to be liquid but is distinguished from fresh, and there are many more uses for sour milk than one usually sees in a cookbook. Cheese seemed fairly plentiful, though, it's a staple here. Eggs-- everything here is with reconstituted dried egg. There's a section on how to make most egg dishes with dry ones, including how to fake hard-boiled egg for the center of a Scotch egg, how to fake scrambled eggs (with a helpful note that scrambled eggs are President Roosevelt's favorite food), how to do Yorkshire pudding with dried egg and dry milk. Many cuts of meat seem to have been prohibitively expensive, so they recommend you pot-roast everything, and make a Sunday joint by rolling a flatter piece jelly-roll style and stuffing it with forcemeat. Much fruit seems to have been around, except for some reason lemons, which were so dear that there's a recipe here for lemon curd using margarine, dried eggs, saccharine tablets and pounded lemonade drink mix powder.
There's also a fake marzipan made of almond flavoring and soybean flour, which actually doesn't sound that bad to me.
Many of the recipes here don't sound that bad, in fact. I cannot approve of boiling celery for an hour, and I have never been of the put-white-sauce-on-it-dot-with-breadcrumbs school, but the sausage pies and jugged hare and things with mutton and the things with beetroot and the salads are all completely sane, and the curries are mostly built the way I was taught to build curry, from the bottom up starting with the onion. (Mind you, I was also taught that premixed curry powder is Satanic, but that's the major difference.)
And you get things like
which if we estimate this as being printed about 1940 makes this a solidly 1870s recipe, which I believe entirely, and also it sounds pretty good to me. (Margarine would not make the bread soggy. Butter would.)
So there are things in here I would consider cooking.
On the other hand, there is the chapter titled 'Potato Fare Savoury and Sweet'. The goal is to use potatoes in place of flour wherever possible, to add bulk and make things cheaper. So you get the potato bread (all right) and the potato rolls (just fine) and the potato pancake (still okay) and the potato fruitcake (uh...) and the potato steamed pudding (...uh) and the potato-jam tart with junket (NO) and the potato 'cheesecake' (ouch) and the potato-- okay, here's the piece de resistance, which, indeed, I resist:
... if anybody feels like making these, do let me know how they turn out.
(My wife is currently insisting that we ought to, like, right now. She had a long day. My response to this is that I don't think we have any cocoa powder of a non-gourmet grade, and also, no.weirdquark thinks we should have a war dinner and cook entirely out of the book. I am not certain it would be worth tracking down dried eggs for, as then we would have dried eggs. But I am cheerful to make my family celery cheese as it will probably serve them right for something-or-other eventually.)
(Mind you,weirdquark and I just spent an interesting few minutes googling and apparently mashed potato candy is a real thing. There seem to be two major variations, one with peanut butter and one with coconut, and one recipe claims to be Amish, so it has a chance of being Actual Food. But nobody does them in chocolate.)
All in all, an interesting experience to read, about an interesting time in cookery. (There isn't a recipe for it here, but this is about the time that carrot cake was invented.) It's a very gung-ho do-it-yourself everything-will-be-fine cheery sort of book, with a surprising number of references to various allied countries and a tendency to slap 'American' on the front of recipes which aren't. There's something called Ohio pudding-- I am from Ohio-- we have never done that to carrots. So yeah, recommended. I alternately want to cook out of it and run away screaming.
One thing that I note is that some ingredients that were evidently common are not, in fact, common to me. This may be an across-the-ocean thing as opposed to time period, I'm not sure; but fresh redcurrants are both seasonal and very expensive anywhere I've lived, fresh damsons unheard of (damson jam is mad expensive too), fresh loganberries right out; and apparently rabbit was a cheap meat. Oh, and suet. I have cooked with suet precisely once in my life, this time that
eredien and I were using a pudding mold she had, and it had to be special-ordered. It is so assumed in this book that one knows how to make a suet crust that they do not bother with a recipe. And I think we have sultanas in this country under the name 'golden raisins' but they are not remotely standard.On the other hand, of course a great many ingredients were incredibly scarce, and I was interested to notice which ones: dairy, certainly, most dairy, these recipes invariably use margarine and dry milk and something called 'household milk' which seems to be liquid but is distinguished from fresh, and there are many more uses for sour milk than one usually sees in a cookbook. Cheese seemed fairly plentiful, though, it's a staple here. Eggs-- everything here is with reconstituted dried egg. There's a section on how to make most egg dishes with dry ones, including how to fake hard-boiled egg for the center of a Scotch egg, how to fake scrambled eggs (with a helpful note that scrambled eggs are President Roosevelt's favorite food), how to do Yorkshire pudding with dried egg and dry milk. Many cuts of meat seem to have been prohibitively expensive, so they recommend you pot-roast everything, and make a Sunday joint by rolling a flatter piece jelly-roll style and stuffing it with forcemeat. Much fruit seems to have been around, except for some reason lemons, which were so dear that there's a recipe here for lemon curd using margarine, dried eggs, saccharine tablets and pounded lemonade drink mix powder.
There's also a fake marzipan made of almond flavoring and soybean flour, which actually doesn't sound that bad to me.
Many of the recipes here don't sound that bad, in fact. I cannot approve of boiling celery for an hour, and I have never been of the put-white-sauce-on-it-dot-with-breadcrumbs school, but the sausage pies and jugged hare and things with mutton and the things with beetroot and the salads are all completely sane, and the curries are mostly built the way I was taught to build curry, from the bottom up starting with the onion. (Mind you, I was also taught that premixed curry powder is Satanic, but that's the major difference.)
And you get things like
Herring the Great Yarmouth Way
herring, salt, pepper, margarine, two slices of bread
Scale herring, remove head and tail, open flat, clean, take bones out. Dust slightly with fine salt and pepper.
Spread slices of bread well with margarine, put herring between. Place in hot oven, bake till well browned. Serve very hot.
This is the way my mother some 70 years ago at Great Yarmouth prepared the "long-shore" herring for breakfast or supper.-- A. Hawes, Middlesex
which if we estimate this as being printed about 1940 makes this a solidly 1870s recipe, which I believe entirely, and also it sounds pretty good to me. (Margarine would not make the bread soggy. Butter would.)
So there are things in here I would consider cooking.
On the other hand, there is the chapter titled 'Potato Fare Savoury and Sweet'. The goal is to use potatoes in place of flour wherever possible, to add bulk and make things cheaper. So you get the potato bread (all right) and the potato rolls (just fine) and the potato pancake (still okay) and the potato fruitcake (uh...) and the potato steamed pudding (...uh) and the potato-jam tart with junket (NO) and the potato 'cheesecake' (ouch) and the potato-- okay, here's the piece de resistance, which, indeed, I resist:
Chocolate Truffles
No cooking is needed for these simple party cakes.
4 tablespoons mashed potato, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons cocoa powder, almond or vanilla flavouring
Mash potato thoroughly, mix in cocoa powder, sugar and flavouring to taste. Work into stiff paste, mould in balls. Roll in cocoa powder till thoroughly coated, then in chocolate vermicelli if obtainable. Officially recommended.
... if anybody feels like making these, do let me know how they turn out.
(My wife is currently insisting that we ought to, like, right now. She had a long day. My response to this is that I don't think we have any cocoa powder of a non-gourmet grade, and also, no.
weirdquark thinks we should have a war dinner and cook entirely out of the book. I am not certain it would be worth tracking down dried eggs for, as then we would have dried eggs. But I am cheerful to make my family celery cheese as it will probably serve them right for something-or-other eventually.) (Mind you,
weirdquark and I just spent an interesting few minutes googling and apparently mashed potato candy is a real thing. There seem to be two major variations, one with peanut butter and one with coconut, and one recipe claims to be Amish, so it has a chance of being Actual Food. But nobody does them in chocolate.)All in all, an interesting experience to read, about an interesting time in cookery. (There isn't a recipe for it here, but this is about the time that carrot cake was invented.) It's a very gung-ho do-it-yourself everything-will-be-fine cheery sort of book, with a surprising number of references to various allied countries and a tendency to slap 'American' on the front of recipes which aren't. There's something called Ohio pudding-- I am from Ohio-- we have never done that to carrots. So yeah, recommended. I alternately want to cook out of it and run away screaming.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 12:30 pm (UTC)Or they grow in Florida, at the time when Atlantic convoys were being sunk frequently and there wasn't usually room on them for food.
Britain made a major effort to feed itself in WW2. It couldn't do it -- too many people in too small a space, and food still had to be imported even when the seas were full of U-boats. But nobody can say they weren't trying.
Redcurrants are seasonal, but lots of people grow them in their gardens. Redcurrants and rhubarb always offend me to buy -- haven't I got any friends? Why has nobody given me any? The first time I saw rhubarb for sale I was about twenty and I remember thinking "...You could buy rhubarb. People could. They do. It isn't one of those things where God wants you to have it or not!"
I grew up eating various meals that sometimes appeared to a chorus of "Just like we had in the war!" This greeted anything made with corned beef (bully beef, tinned) or dried eggs, but more often anything where you'd obviously use one thing and instead they'd substituted something cheaper. My grandmother was 29 and married for a year when the war started. In my lifetime she despised margerine as somebody can only if they were used to butter and forced to use marge for six years. She drank her tea sweet because Hitler could make her drink it without sugar, but nobody else was going to. There's also a story about a girl who was an ambulance driver going to (neutral) Ireland with an Irish friend who was also an ambulance driver, and in Ireland seeing a basket of eggs. A whole basket full of eggs, can you imagine. At that time the ration was one fresh egg per person per week. The basket of eggs made both girls cry -- the casual lost luxury of living in a country that didn't care what Hitler was doing in Europe. (I've thought about that basket of eggs a lot.)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-11 10:20 pm (UTC)I can understand thinking about that basket of eggs a lot. It's quite something.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-12 05:50 pm (UTC)It has always been my experience that rhubarb is one of those things God wants you to have, otherwise why does it keep ineradically coming up in the backyard, seriously, have we not made enough crumbles already?