Guernsey post war austerity – ration book recipes
Now the flood gates have opened…
It seems that since the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (we promise not to reference this in every blog) every man, woman and dog has something to add to the ration book recipe debate. Even upper-crust TV chef, Valentine Warner.
Valentine Warner hosts "Ration Book Britain" on UKTV
Well, I guess it’s no coincidence, what with it being the 70 year anniversary of the introduction of World War Two rationing being introduced to the British Isles.
Thanks to Mary Ann Schaffer there’s a reading group in West Caldwell, New Jersey USA, which hosted a fine old cook off with eggless cakes, vegetable meatloaf and mock goose. (The bean soup was voted best, by the way, with the special, secret, winning ingredient cited as spam!)
Food shortages ensured that post war Britain continued in an atmosphere of austerity, typified by drab clothes and endless queues. It’s been suggested that post war rationing was even harsher, with two world wars having taken their toll on the Empire.
There’s even a school of thought that says we’d all do better thank-you-very-much if we looked to ration book recipes for nutritional guidance in these times of fat bankers and general obesity. (Although I do think it tasteless to go as far as introducing The Ration Book Diet – did our grandmothers choose to get thin thanks to scarce supplies??).
Guernsey Ration Book
And here’s food for thought from pioneering television chef Marguerite Patten (adviser to the Ministry of Food during the war and original radio recipe broadcaster): “There is no point in bringing back rationing, but there is in bringing back healthy eating and bringing back ‘no waste’. That was one of the golden rules,” she says.
Marguerite Patten
Rations fluctuated throughout the war but the lowest allowances per person per week were:
Typical ration portions
Bacon and ham: 4oz
Sugar: 8oz
Tea: 2oz (surely not man, we’re British!)
Meat: One shilling-worth
Cheese: 1oz
Preserves: 8oz (per month)
Butter: 4oz
Guernsey residents introduced a barter system, with enterprising shopkeepers exchanging goods on behalf of owners as shelves emptied, taking a percentage of the value. By 1942 the German Controlling Committee introduced licensing for barter shops and banned rationed goods from the exchanges. There was also an exchange service offered via the newspaper.
Some of our favourite recipes include:
Quantity 4 helpings, Cooking time 1 hour
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
Mock Apricot Filling (for tarts)
Grated carrot, plum jam and almond flavouring.
Soften 1/2lb margarine in basin with 1 tablespoon boiling milk. Add ½ cup castor sugar and beat to cream for 5 minutes. Dissolve ½ teaspoon gelatine in cup with 2 tablespoons boiling water. Gradually add to creamed mixture until light and fluffy. Flavour with vanilla.
Valentine Warner’s ration book cooking: Woolton Pie
Serves 4
Ingredients:
450g King Edward potatoes
900g carrots
225g mushrooms
1 small leek
60g chicken fat
2 spring onions
Salt and pepper
Nutmeg
Chopped parsley
Bunch of herbs made of 1 small bay leaf, 1 small sprig of thyme, parsley and celery
Method:
Peel the potatoes and carrots, cut them into slices of the thickness of a penny. Wash them well and dry in a tea-cloth.
Fry them separately in a frying pan with a little chicken fat or margarine.
Do the same for the mushrooms, adding the finely chopped onions and leek.
Mix them together and season with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg and roughly chopped fresh parsley.
Fill a pie dish with this mixture, placing the bundle of herbs in the middle.
Moisten with a little giblet stock or water. Allow to cool then cover with a pastry crust made from half beef-suet or chicken fat and half margarine.
Bake in a moderate oven for an hour and a half.
1 potato
1 beet
1 Tablespoon milk
Method:
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.
