Week 3: Wartime recipes

This week I will share with you some of the many recipes created in wartime to help rations go further. I will have a go at cooking some of these recipes including Woolton pie and the national loaf.

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.

The Ministry issued many cooking leaflets, often dedicated to specific topics such as the magic of carrots. The language used was practical, and realistic for the time -- in listing ingredients for suggested recipes, the government leaflets would often say beside an ingredient such as butter: "if possible."

Cooking demonstrations by women such as Marguerite Patten were held in many stores, including Harrods. Educational short movies on cooking were made for showing at cinemas; BBC Radio ran a morning radio programme called "Kitchen Front", broadcast from studios in Oxford Street, London.