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A glass jar, with a label reading "Can All You Can," lays on a colorful pile of vegetables.

Spring 2025

FOOD AND WAR: RECIPES OF SURVIVAL, RESISTANCE, AND POWER


INTRODUCTION

By Vanesa Miseres, Guest Editor, Spring 2025

In an era marked by the detached violence of drone warfare, where international conflicts are often debated and seemingly resolved on social media or in a simple tweet, it becomes easy to overlook the fundamental role of bodies and their sustenance in shaping the everyday realities of wartime. Yet, as this special issue of The Recipes Project powerfully illustrates, food and war are inextricably linked, revealing profound histories of survival, oppression, and resistance.

Drawing on the assertion that both food and war are inherently political, these contributions delve into the multifaceted relationship between the two. Often perceived as opposing forces—domestic concerns versus foreign policy, nourishment against weaponry—food and war instead emerge here as a dual lens through which we can examine the priorities and character of societies in crisis. This issue moves beyond viewing food solely as a material necessity, revealing its potent function as a narrative tool that exposes the stark intersections of hunger, rationing, and what some scholars term “necropolitics” — the ways in which power dictates who lives and who dies. Indeed, as Lawrence H. Keeley argues, food is essential for the very undertaking of war, and the means of its production often become primary targets. Conversely, hunger itself has been deployed as a devastating “weapon of war,” leaving countless regions grappling with food insecurity and outright starvation.

Additionally, war often catalyzes significant shifts in food technologies and practices. The development of dehydration and freezing techniques in Nazi Germany to provision its war machine, the reorganization of labor with women taking on agricultural roles in victory gardens across the United States or in the agricultural production of postwar Paraguay, the unexpected sight of men cooking at the front lines, and the widespread adoption of canning in the US—a change that profoundly shaped the post-war food industry—all underscore this transformative power. Wartime scarcity also spurred ingenious adaptations, such as the creative substitutions born from rationing in World War II Europe or more recent initiatives like World Central Kitchen, which aims to provide nutritious meals to those affected by conflicts around the world.

Moreover, food served as a vital tool for resistance, from secretly shared recipes in concentration camps to the deliberate use of cooking as a means of cultural preservation in exile or the oral histories registered in a cookbook. As noted in Food and War in Twentieth-Century Europe, an adequate diet is crucial not only for sustaining armies but also for maintaining civilian health and morale in times of total war. Furthermore, a focus on gender and race within these wartime foodscapes reveals how women and marginalized groups navigated trauma and asserted agency through culinary practices.

From this transnational and transhistorical vantage point, a central theme emerges: food acts as a powerful force that can simultaneously unite and divide, sustain and deprive, and yet also spark remarkable hope and creativity. Beyond its material and social dimensions, food carries significant symbolic weight in shaping and contesting wartime narratives. Recipes become more than mere instructions; they function as eloquent tools for keeping and shaping memory and identity in the face of profound loss.

This Spring issue of The Recipes Project offers readers an insightful selection of articles that explore these critical intersections of food and war. Featuring original research alongside compelling reflection pieces, the contributions draw on diverse disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, history, literary studies, journalism, and creative writing. The featured case studies—ranging from the experiences of the WWII Indian Army and early 20th-century Paraguay to the famines in Biafra (1967-1970), the culinary landscape of the Spanish Civil War, the food crisis in Venezuela (2014-15) and Gaza displacement camps, the perceptive wartime and avant-garde photography of Lee Miller, the sustenance strategies of the US Civil War, the hardships faced in 1980s Mozambique, and the upheaval in 1852 China—collectively underscore the significance of this theme.

In closing, while acknowledging the profound suffering inherent in wartime food insecurity, M.F.K. Fisher’s words from How to Cook a Wolf (1942) offer a poignant reminder: “You can still live with grace and wisdom, thanks partly to the many people who write about how to do it…and partly to your own innate sense of what you must do with the resources you have, to keep the wolf from sniffing too hungrily through the keyhole.” Written during the shortages of World War II to inspire courage and resourcefulness, Fisher’s sentiment continues to resonate in times of both scarcity and abundance. By continuing to write, reflect, and share these stories, we might find or offer solace in times of need, remembering that while the threat of the “wolf” may always linger, the collective knowledge and ingenuity embedded within our foodways offer a powerful means of sustenance and even, perhaps, a way to “cook it.”

 


Please note: When citing the articles in this issue, follow the OpenEdition guidelines, but use the author’s name provided below the title for attribution.


FOOD AND WAR

Of Rodents, Stockfish, and Win-the-War Soup: Surviving Starvation in Biafra

By Enemchukwu Nnaemeka

Wars in post-colonial Africa, like in other places across the world, were not only fought with guns, ammunitions, and bombardments, but also with strategies of starvation. Starvation as a military strategy has been employed by various groups, with the primary intent of forcing an enemy to surrender or retreat. These strategies take diverse forms, especially through scorched-earth methods such as the burning of farmlands, the poisoning or contamination of food storage or drinking water, or the outright blockade or bombardment of markets, food networks, foodways, and systems including airways, waterways, roadways, ports, and airports. While various studies have addressed starvation as a strategy of war, especially as implemented by victors, the question remains: how have victims of war, and especially civilians, survived in the face of deliberate starvation?

Continue reading…

Curry Goes to War: Indian Army Field Rations in World War II

By Pradeep Barua

The Indian Army participated in both world wars in the twentieth century. During the First World War (1914-1918), 1.3 million Indian soldiers fought for the British Empire. Another two million men joined the Indian Army and fought for the allies in World War Two (1939-1945). In the latter case, feeding this massive army in various theatres of war, ranging from the jungles of Burma (Myanmar) to the deserts of North Africa to the frozen Apennines of Italy, proved to be a major challenge for the Army.

Continue reading…

Remembering Francisco Solano López’s Foodways in Paraguay

By Bridget María Chesterton

The defeat of Paraguay by its powerful neighbors, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, during the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) left the country in ruins. The complex causes of the war can be boiled down to the fact that Paraguayans sought to limit the growing power and influence of Brazil in Uruguay’s politics and economics. As Paraguayans held off their enemies over a number of years, the Paraguayan military and population was forced to feed itself on nothing more than oranges, manioca (yucca), and the occasional emaciated cow. It was a military and a country on a forced starvation diet.

Continue reading…

Anguish as a Form of Resistance: Ignacio Doménech’s Cocina de Recursos (Deseo mi comida) in Civil War Spain

By Yanet Acosta

A cookbook is much more than a simple collection of recipes. In the case of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) by Ignacio Doménech, the cookbook was not only a tool of critique but also a form of resistance. It pushes back against the devastation of war, a devastation that leaves its mark not only on bodies, through the absence of food, but also on minds, through the torment of craving what can no longer be eaten.

Continue reading…

Intimate Experiences: War and Food in Lee Miller

By Karina Elizabeth Vázquez

There are only a few steps between my living room and kitchen, so a section of the library stands directly opposite to a countertop stacked with cookbooks. It wasn’t until I began to think about what to write about Lee Miller (1907-1977), her work as a war correspondent, battlefield photographer, and her relationship with gastronomy, that I realized that two books sit opposite one another, one in the library and one in the kitchen: The Unwomanly Face of War (2017) by Svetlana Alexievich and Lee Miller: A Life with Food, Friends & Recipes (2017) by Miller’s granddaughter Ami Bouhassane. The texts engage in a necessary dialogue between what is expressed in testimonies from women of the Russian army collected by Alexievich and what is present in the lives of Lee Miller, the surrealist muse and photographer, the war correspondent for Vogue, and the brilliant chef.

Continue reading...

Gaza “War Recipes”: Cooking as Survival and Resistance in Displacement

By Noha Atef

In Gaza’s displacement camps, cooking has taken on a new meaning. It is no longer just a routine task; it has become a form of survival, storytelling, and resistance.

Since October 2023, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza strip have been forced from their homes, taking refuge in makeshift tents, often with little more than flour, canned goods, and the clay ovens they crafted. Amid this devastation, a form of digital documentation emerged: Instagram reels of people cooking with what little they have. These are not typical food videos. They are war recipes, or wasfat harb, shared in the middle of crisis.

Continue reading…

Food, Community, and Resistance in Hyperinflationary Venezeula

By Oriele Benavides

The Venezuelan crisis of 2014-2015, broadly characterized by a drastic drop in oil production and prices and harsh international economic sanctions, caused absolute disorder and intensified a diaspora that continues today. Effects included hyperinflation, beginning in 2015, that reached stratospheric levels when it hit 103,008% in 2018. At that moment, the government’s rhetoric presented the situation as an “economic war,” offering a framework that emphasized a polarized vision on the matter, while shifting focus away from its own responsibility in the managing of the crisis. The production and distribution of food was one of the sectors most affected by the crisis. In the collective memory, these harsh years are remembered via ingredients that came to represent time: the year of the mango, the year of the cassava, the season of the eggplant or the Chinese bean, and so on.

Continue reading…

“Like the Genuine Moca”: Ersatz Coffee and Confederate Nationalism during the American Civil War

By Anne Sarah Rubin

Coffee, I must have coffee,
and if anyone wants to give me a treat,
ah!, just give me some coffee!

Although written by J.S. Bach and the librettist Picander in the 1730s, the Coffee Cantata’s homage to the world’s favorite stimulant certainly rang true in the Civil War South. Recipes for coffee substitutes pepper the pages of Confederate newspapers and reminiscences. Elite white women wrote down their personal formulas and debated the virtues of one concoction over another, while scientists weighed in on the chemical composition of different tinctures. Coffee, because it was entirely imported, was one of the first commodities affected by the Union blockade of Southern ports. Doing without coffee, or cheerfully drinking an ersatz variety, became a symbol of patriotic sacrifice, like wearing homespun or a palmetto hat.

Continue reading…

Quick-Rising Bread: Food Uncertainties in 1980s Mozambique

By Kathleen Sheldon

In 1982 I moved to Mozambique in southern Africa to pursue dissertation research on urban working women. I was a doctoral candidate in African history at the University of California in Los Angeles. I went there with my husband, a pediatrician, who had a two-year contract with the Ministry of Health, and our toddler-aged daughter. We were somewhat prepared for living in a newly independent socialist country that ranked as one of the poorest in the world. Mozambique had gained its independence from Portugal in 1975, after a decade-long liberation struggle. But neighboring South Africa, then under the white-supremacist apartheid regime, funded and supplied weapons to organizations that were anti-socialist or otherwise opposed to Mozambique’s government. By the early 1980s conditions deteriorated as that internal war expanded. Beira, the port city where we lived, suffered from repeated electrical power losses due to sabotage and increasing problems in obtaining food. Devastation in the country as a whole was extreme.

Coming May 29…

Preparedness for the Unexpected: Expedient Recipes for Survival in Wartime China

By Chang Xu

If you were stocking up on disaster relief supplies, what kind of reference would you want by your side? Expedient Formulas for Military Marches (1852) reads like just such a survival guide. Compiled during and after the turmoil of the First Opium War (1839-1842) and the Taiping Civil War (1850-1864), this text wasn’t intended solely for military use, despite what its title suggests. In its preface, the compiler, Luo Shiyao, explained that the collection grew out of his personal experience with everyday illnesses. Since disease during military campaigns could be especially debilitating, remedies effective under such extreme conditions were all the more valuable to the general public, addressing an urgent need for accessible, everyday treatments in times of crisis.

Coming May 29…


 

Image Credit: “Can All You Can Its a Real War Job!” 1941-1945, US National Archives, NAID: 513566.

 


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