RECIPE-Royal Dressing

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With the rationing of oils and eggs, the luxury of “salad cream” or salad dressing soon became a rarity.

The Ministry of Food created recipes to help satisfy the craving for salad dressing.

 

Royal Dressing

  • 2 ounces of National Flour
  • ½ pint milk or vegetable water  (the water remaining from cooking or steaming vegetables, cooled)
  • 2 ounces of grated raw beetroot
  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • Salt and Pepper & Sugar

With the national flour and milk or vegetable water make a sauce thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Beat in the beetroot, sugar, pepper and salt.

Use this dressing to serve with raw vegetable salads.

saladcream

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Salads in Wartime-“A Salad A Day”

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Salads were not popular before the war. Meat was a main staple of a pre-wartime diet. In an effort to decrease meat intake, eating salads in wartime were encouraged. The Ministry of Food created a wartime salad leaflet to give information on the benefits of eating salads. Using the vegetables from the Victory Garden helped give “vim and vigour” and “build up resistance to infection.” The main message: Eating salads would keep one healthy in wartime and conserve rations.

saladsbooklet

From Ministry of Food Leaflet #5:

Use vegetables as fresh as possible and prepare the salad just before it is required, as chopped and grated vegetables and fruit quickly lose their vitamins.

Vegetables to use in salads: Finely shredded raw cabbage hearts, savoy, spinach, sprouts, chopped cauliflower, watercress, raw grated swede, turnip, beetroot, carrot, cooked potato and beetroot.

Salads

There is hardly a root or green vegetable that does not deserve a place in a salad. Use them raw whenever you can. A good mixed salad with wheatmeal bread and a little grated cheese makes a complete meal. So serve and enjoy a salad or raw vegetable sandwich every day.

When making salads, touch the plants as little as possible. Use directly after picking or buying. If this is not convenient a saucepan, with a well-fitted lid, placed on a cool floor is excellent for keeping a salad crisp.

Just before serving, wash carefully, shake off the water gently and dry the plants in a clean cloth or wire salad basket. Outside leaves can be saved for soup.

Root vegetables, such as carrots, should be washed and scrapped lightly before grating, but the thicker skins of turnips call for peeling.

Spring Salads

  1. Make a thick bed of chopped raw cabbage heart in your bowl. In the centre, pile a teacup of grated raw white turnip. Round this centre arrange smaller piles of grated raw carrot and grated raw beetroot, using a teacupful of each. Decorate with radishes and parsley.
  2. Shred 1/2 lb. young turnip tops. Mix with 1 breakfastcup diced cooked potato and 1 breakfastcup cooked beetroot. Put into a bowl and decorate the top with 1 large fresh grated carrot and sprigs of watercress or dandelion leaves.
  3. Young dandelions make a delightful salad by themselves. Cut of the roots, wash the clusters of leaves well, dry in a cloth and toss in a vinaigrette dressing. For a more substantial salad, add fresh grated parsnip or grated swede, and a few chopped spring onions.

Summer Salads

  1. Line a bowl with crisp lettuce leaves. Mix together 1 breakfastcup cooked peas, 1 breakfastcup diced potato and 1 breakfastcup diced cooked carrot. Pile this mixture in the bowl and serve with mint sauce.
  2. Line a bowl with crisp lettuce leaves. Put in a breakfastcup cooked broad beans, a breakfastcup fresh grated carrots and a medium sized cucumber, diced. Decorate with a few nasturtium leaves and parsley.
  3. Mix together a breakfastcup cooked runner beans cut into 1 in. lengths and breakfastcup diced cooked potato and a large lettuce shredded. Decorate with sliced tomato and a few chopped spring onions, if possible.

Autumn Salads

  1. Break a cauliflower into neat sprigs and steam them or boil in very little salted water. When cold, arrange on a bed of lettuce leaves with a breakfastcup of cooked sliced potatoes. Decorate with parsley, a sliced tomato, or cooked beetroot.
  2. Allow 1 cooked round beetroot for each person. Hollow out the centre and fill with a mixture of chopped apple or pear and chopped celery, moistened with a little mayonnaise. Arrange the beetroots on a bed of green salad (lettuce, chopped cabbage heart, watercress or spinach) and surround with little heaps of fresh grated carrot, diced cooked potatoes and the beetroot centres, diced.
  3. Wash and dry young celery leaves. Toss them lightly in vinaigrette dressing and serve with diced cooked beetroots, or grated raw beetroot, whichever you prefer. Serve with a potato salad made as follows: Boil the potatoes in their skins. Peel while still hot, cut into slices and mix well with whichever dressing you prefer. A little chopped spring onion mixed with the potato is a great improvement. When quite cold, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Winter Salads

  1. Make 3 tablespoons of vinaigrette dressing in your bowl. Put in 2 teacups of shredded raw cabbage heart and 1 teacup each of diced cooked potato, apple and celery cut into ½ in. lengths. Turn over and over in the dressing with a wooden spoon. Decorate with watercress and grated raw beetroot
  2. Mix together 2 teacups grated raw cabbage heart, 2 teacups fresh grated carrot and 1 teacup grated raw swede. Decorate with green celery tops and a little raw cauliflower.
  3. Line a bowl thickly with watercress, add 1/2 lb chicory cut into thin strips and mixed with 1 breakfastcup grated raw beetroot. Serve with vinaigrette dressing.

 

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RECIPE- Wartime Yorkshire Pudding

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 Yorkshire Pudding

  • 1 egg (reconstituted=1 tablespoon dried egg mixed with 2 tablespoons water)
  • 2 ozs flour
  • 1/2 pint of milk
  • Salt
  • 1 knob dripping or fat (a “knob” is 2 to 3 tablespoons)

Method-Beat egg well. Mix the flour and salt. Make a hole in the centre and put the egg and sufficient milk to make a stiff mixture. Beat well, add the rest of the milk, put aside for one hour. Make the fat smoking hot in a baking tin and pour in the batter. Cook in a brisk oven for about 30 minutes. ( a “brisk” oven is about 400 degrees or hotter)

Note-To this foundation recipe diced cooked vegetables and chopped cooked meat can be added. The addition of fresh or dried fruit makes an attractive sweet dish. The same mixture, can be used for pancakes. Pour spoonfuls on to a piping hot greased pan or hotplate.

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Eggs in Wartime

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dried eggs1World War Two. England. March, 1944. Land army girls with a large basket of freshly laid eggs as they breed chicks at redlands poultry farm at South Holmwood in Surrey.

As rationing was implemented, it became obvious that if there was not enough food to feed people, there was not going to be enough to feed animals. Since there was a shortage of grain to feed chickens, millions of commercially-farmed hens had to be killed and sold as food.  This ultimately led to an egg shortage, and rationing was implemented allowing a person one fresh egg per week; extra allowance was allowed for those with special circumstances such as giving expectant mothers and vegetarians two eggs a week.

With egg rationing, people started keeping chickens in their back yards because that meant one could have unrationed eggs. But, there was a catch: if you raised chickens,  you had to give up your egg ration, but you were given a grain ration instead for your chickens. Saving, cooking, and grinding vegetable scraps and feeding those scraps to backyard chickens became the norm for many families.

Families also kept eggs fresher and storing them for longer periods of time with the pointy side down in a rack, and the rack inserted into a pail filled with waterglass (a liquid mixture of sodium silicate). Waterglass sealed the pores of the eggs and allowed them to stay fresh.

As eggs continued to be rationed, by July of 1942, powdered eggs became available courtesy of the United States. The allowance was one tin, or packet, of dried eggs every two months. One tin was equal to 12 fresh eggs. Powdered eggs had a long shelf life; they could be hydrated on a one to two basis: one tablespoon of egg to two tablespoons of water.

dried egg

The Ministry of Food issued a leaflet explaining the use of dried eggs.

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The Ministry of Food leaflet No. 11
This dried egg mixture is pure fresh egg with no additions, and nothing but the moisture taken away.  It is pure egg, spray dried. Eggs are a very highly concentrated form of food.  They contain first-class body-building material. They also help us to resist colds and other infection because of their high protective properties.
Eggs are easily digested, and for this reason are especially good for children and invalids.
Dried eggs are just as good as fresh eggs, and should be used in the same way.  They are very useful for main dishes.  Here are some recipes for a variety of appetising dishes in place of meat, fish or cheese and which are particularly suitable for dried egg.

HOW TO RECONSTITUTE DRIED EGG
1 level tablespoonful egg powder + 2 level tablespoonful water equals 1 egg
Mix the egg and water and allow to stand for about five minutes until the powder has absorbed the moisture.  Then work out any lumps with a wooden spoon, finally beating with a fork or a whisk.

TREAT LIKE FRESH EGGS
After reconstituting the egg use at once.  Do not reconstitute more egg than necessary for immediate use.

METHOD OF COOKING
Use in recipes exactly as fresh eggs, beating as usual before adding to other ingredients.

STORAGE
Keep the egg powder in a tin with a tight fitting lid, and store in a cool place.  Do not keep dried egg in a refrigerator.

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Onions…a rare treat

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O pungent root, so lately dear to me,

Thou bulbous, aromatic rarity . . .

Today thou are a treasure vainly sought . . .

Who would have thought there would be an ode to an onion? But with the start of the war, onions became a rare treat. What contributed to the sudden disappearance of onions? The supply chain was broken due to the loss of supplies from France, Spain, Bermuda, and the Channel Islands. Since they were available from overseas, onions were not grown in great quantities in Britain, except on the larger estates.  The “Dig for Victory” campaign urged gardeners to grow onions; even the royal rose gardens were dug up and replaced with onion beds. With their rarity, onions were often given as prizes and used as raffle items to raise money!

“The taste of this humble vegetable, so long taken for granted, seemed suddenly the peak of gastronomic pleasure, partly because with meat rationed by value, not weight, stews, which used the cheapest cuts, were in favour. At least two Odes to an Onion were written in 1941. By September the shortage was no better as, these verses in one London firm’s house magazine testified:

My cupboard might as well be bare.

Bereft, I wander everywhere

And try, nose in the empty air,

To sniff a whiff of onion.

In February 1941 a one-and-a-half pound onion, raffled among the staff of TheTimes, raised £4 3s 4d and in March, when one woman remarked at a first aid lecture in Chelsea that she did not cry if she wore her gas mask when peeling onions, every woman present instantly shouted, ‘Where did you get them?’ Onions became popular prizes at socials and one wartime Girl Guide in Accrington can still recapture her pride at winning one in a treasure hunt, in honour of which her mother baked a special pie. A Cheshire doctor remembers ‘taking home in triumph’ the best gift he ever received from a grateful patient: a large Spanish onion. One ‘aunt’ on Children’sHour, wishing ‘A Happy Birthday and lots of presents’ to one small listener, added, ‘I did hear of a lucky girl the other day who was given some onions, but we can’t all expect a lovely present like that,’ A Worcestershire woman used the same onion in cooking for a month before finally eating it, and in North Queensberry in Scotland one family ‘tried putting an onion in a glass of water like a hyacinth bulb and, as the green shoots appeared . . . cut them off and used them for flavouring’. The Minister of Agriculture, announcing in February 1941 a fifteen-fold increase in the onion crop, expressed the hope that ‘onions would then be eaten and not talked about’, and by 1942 this expectation was being fulfilled.”  -An extract from Norman Longmate: How we Lived Then – A history of everyday life during the Second World War

Onions were never rationed; the Ministry of Food allocated them throughout the country at different times as part of a controlled distribution plan.

onions

 

 

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RECIPE-Leek Pudding

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I made Leek Pudding for Sunday dinner and served it with baked fish and carrots. The pastry crust was very filling (with rationing, one wanted to fill up on crust during wartime!) and the leeks were moist and only seasoned with salt and pepper. I served the pudding with a nice brown gravy. The recipe is from “Food Facts for the Kitchen Front.”

Leek Pudding

You will need a 1 quart pudding basin ( I have a Mason Cash pudding basin). See link above.

A large pot of simmering water for steaming, and a lid. Place a heat proof saucer upside down in the bottom of the pot (the pudding basin will sit on the saucer).

Pastry Crust (Potato Suet Crust)

8 oz Self Rising flour
2 oz suet (I used Vegetable Light Suet-see link to order below)
2 oz raw potato, grated
Cold water for mixing

Filling 

2 large leeks- remove most of the dark green “tops,” trim the ends, cut length wise, rinse thoroughly, and cut into 1″ chunks; salt and pepper to taste

Weigh the flour,  suet, and the raw grated potato and put into a large mixing bowl; add enough cold water to make a stiff pastry dough; form into a ball. Take 2/3 of the pastry and roll out large enough to line the pudding basing- leave the rest for a “lid.” Fill the basin with cut leeks, seasoning each layer – roll out the remaining pastry to make a lid, damp the edges and seal the top to the crust in the basin. Cover with greaseproof paper (parchment or waxed paper rubbed with margarine or butter), use cotton string to tie it to the basin, and steam for 2 hours.

Here is my result:

leekpuddingwithc leekpudding1withc leekpudding2withc leekpudding3withc

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Dig for Victory

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Dig for Victory

With the start of the Second World War in 1939, Britain imported nearly 70% of its food. This included nearly 80% of fruits and about 70% of grains and cereals. The supply chain had been cut off due to the  Nazis sinking ships bringing imports to the country. The result was: Britain needed to grow more of its own food. The ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign was set up within a month of the start of  WWII by the British Ministry of Agriculture. The start of rationing meant men and women across the country were encouraged to grow their own food to supplement their meager rations. Empty spaces, including backyards, public parks, and even the lawns outside the Tower of London were turned into vegetable patches.  A massive propaganda campaign was created to ensure that people had enough to eat, and that morale was kept high. The Dig for Victory campaign proved very successful, and by 1943 over 100 million tons of fruits and vegetables were now being grown in Britain!

digforvictorydigforvictory2

Above: Girl Guides at work on their hospital allotment producing vegetables in November 1942; propaganda posters promoting the “Dig for Victory” campaign.

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RECIPE-Parsley Sauce

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Parsley Sauce

½ oz fat

½ pint milk or milk and stock

½ oz Cornflour (corn starch in the US)

2 tsp parsley

Salt & Pepper to taste

Melt the fat, add the cornflour and mix well. Add the milk, stir until boiling and boil 3 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and parsley. Serve with Mock Fish and cooked potatoes.

 

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RECIPE-Mock Fish

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Fish was hard to get as the war loomed on. Fishermen had joined the military and were off fighting the war; those that remained had to throw their nets close to shore, as bombing by the enemy was always a threat. The fish that were caught were sold and bought quickly by those that lived close to shore; those that lived inland rarely got fresh fish. So what to do in wartime? Make Mock Fish!

Mock Fish

1/2 pint of whole milk

2 oz ground rice

1 tsp chopped onion or leek

Margarine (or butter if your ration allows)

Anchovy paste or essence

1 egg, fresh or powdered (1 tbls powdered egg mixed with two tbls water)
Bring half a pint of milk to the boil, shower in two ounces of ground rice and add a teaspoonful of chopped onion or leek, a piece of margarine the size of a small walnut, and a seasoning of anchovy essence. Let this simmer gently for 20 minutes, then take the pan off the fire, and stir in a well-beaten egg. Mix well together, and the spread the mixture out on a flat dish: it should be about half an inch thick. When it is cold, cut it into pieces the size and shape of fish fillets, brush these with milk, roll them in breadcrumbs, and fry until golden-brown. Serve with parsley sauce.

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RECIPE-Mock Banana

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When bananas weren’t available, one did the next best thing and made something that tasted like a banana!

Mock Banana

Parsnips (a root vegetable related to carrots)
Banana extract
Sugar to taste

Select young, fresh parsnips as they are more tender and taste sweeter. Peel the parsnips; leaving them whole and steam until tender; dry the parsnips. Slice the cooked parsnips and put into a bowl; thoroughly mash and add a few drops of the banana extract. Continue adding the banana extract to taste (but not too much); add sugar to taste then mash until smooth.

Serve on two slices of National Loaf bread for a nice banana sandwich!

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