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Food and recipes of Wartime Europe |
Most of these are taken from Margaret Patten's wonderful books "We'll Eat Again" and "Post-war Kitchen". You can get these from Amazon Books in the UK (but not in the USA). |
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Click on the recipe to go there and click the up symbol
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Cooking time about 15 MinsIngredients 1 level teaspoon sugar
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Beat together the sugar and margarine until the mixture is soft and creamy, then add the honey. Sift together the flower and cinnamon. Add to the creamy mixture with a spoon until it binds together then work it with your fin gers until it is a soft smooth dough. Flower your hands, take off a piece of dough about the size of a large walnut and roll between the palm of hands until it is a smooth ball. Put onto a slightly greased tin and flatten slightly. Continue until all the dough has been used up. Bake in a moderately hot oven until the cakes are done – about 15 mins.
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Quantity 4 helpingsIngredients |
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. |
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Cheese Pudding |
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Cooking time 30 minsQuantity 4 helpings Ingredients Half a pint milk or household milk 2 eggs (2 level tblspns of dried egg mixed with 4 tablespoons water) 4 oz grated cheese 1 breakfastcup breadcrumbs salt and pepper quarter teaspoon dried mustard.
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Add the milk to the egg mixture and stir in the other ingredients. Pour into a greased dish and cook for about 30 minutes in a moderately hot oven until brown and set. |
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Ingredients 2 oz mashed potatoes 1 oz softened margarine 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce pepper
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Flake the fish finely with a fork or put through the mincer and beat into the potato until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Then beat in the margarine and Worcestershire sauce and a little pepper. Use for sandwiches |
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Pea puree pancakes |
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Cooking time 25 minutesQuantity 4 helpings |
Cook the peas until tender. Add a little sugar to the water as this brings out the flavour of the peas. Drain and mash the peas and then mix in the margarine, mint and seasoning. When you’ve made the pancakes spread the
puree between the two as though for a sandwich and serve with grated cheese. Alternatively you could serve the puree very hot in bowls like a soup adding croutons. The croutons are made by cutting bread into cubes and frying in very hot fat |
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Beetroot Pudding |
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Cooking time 35/40 minutesQuantity 4 helpings |
Just the job to make your sugar ration go further! First mix flour and baking
powder, rub in the margarine, then add sugar and grated beetroot.
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Cooking time 25/30 minutesQuantity One per person |
Pigeons for grilling must be very young, when they are often known as 'squabs'.
Preheat the grill and place the birds with the skin side uppermost on the grill pan. Cook for 5 minutes. Turn them over and brush the underside with more fat. Continue cooking for a further 5 minutes, then turn the birds over once more and cook until tender. To give more flavour to the flesh a few chopped herbs can be mixed with the melted fat. Serve the pigeons with redcurrent or apple jelly. |
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Khasha and Fish soup |
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Ingredients A fish or two Water Whatever else you can get |
In 1939 Poland was attacked by Germany and Russia simultaneously. At the age of 14 Felix Chustecki was deported with his family from their home in Poland to a Russian slave labour camp. Here he describes their food rations. "We were a month in the cattle truck while we were travelling east towards Siberia. Food was very poor quality and sometimes non-existent - just water. Sometimes a soldier might give us a few fish or potatoes and we could make a soup. We finally arrived in a settlement camp - but with hard labour attached to it because my father fought against the Russians in the 1930s. Work was terrible, because your conditions and rations depended on how hard you worked. We each had 1 pound of bread every day, usually only half-baked, but if you could scrape together some kopeks you could buy extra food from a shop, but only stuff called khasha - a sort of oatmeal - to make porridge, and we could have one tea-spoon of sunflower oil for each plate of khasha we bought. Even then in the forest the conditions were fairly good. When we were moved to the collective farms in Uzbekhstan conditions were terrible, and really there was virtually nothing to eat - not even for the Uzbekhs who lived there - they were starving to death to feed the Russian Army. In the cotton fields you could sometimes find hedges that had edible grasses - the peasants (and us) would gather these and make a very thin soup, but so many died and especially the very young and the old." You will find further information on this and related subjects in the MEMORIES searchable archive. Tom Holloway |
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to return here.
Wash and dry the birds and split lengthways. Season, then brush the birds
generously with melted fat.