Category Archives: Series: Wartime Recipes

Family and Household, Modern, Series: Canadian Studies, Series: Politics and Propaganda, Series: Wartime Recipes, Women and Gender

Recipes for Waste Reduction

1 Comment

Kesia Kvill

Fig. 1. "Waste Not - Want Not," 1914-1918. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN no. 2894436
Fig. 1. “Waste Not – Want Not,” 1914-1918. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-706, MIKAN no. 2894436

In June of 1917, the Canadian Government introduced the Office of the Food Controller under the direction of Conservative Ontario politician and businessman, W.J. Hanna. The introduction of Food Controller during the First World War was part of Canada’s recognition that they were one of the main sources for food staples to Great Britain.

One of the Office of the Food Controller’s main goals was to educate the public on how to reduce their use of essential foodstuffs like beef, bacon, and wheat, that were high in energy source and easily shipped overseas. The government encouraged women to voluntarily free up these essential food products by changing their food consumption and diets. The Food Controller encouraged the use of less popular cereal grains and flours, cheaper cuts of meat, and larger amounts of fresh and persevered local produce. Kitchen managers were also encouraged to free up food for the Allies by reducing their food waste.

As part of their educational efforts, the Office of the Food Controller published a variety of pamphlets that explained the importance of food control through careful meal planning and thoughtful waste reduction. While these pamphlets did not include specific recipes, they clearly emphasized the threat of food waste and encouraged Canadian women to alter their families’ eating habits from the extravagant diets that had been a feature of the pre-war era.

Fig. 2. "Waste Means Defeat," 1914-1918. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-710, MIKAN no. 3667237
Fig. 2. “Waste Means Defeat,” 1914-1918. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-710, MIKAN no. 3667237

The “Waste Not – Want Not” section in the government-published Food Service: A Handbook for Speakers called food waste in a time of war a crime. It professed that Canadians wasted at least $50,000,000 in food every year and warned women to guard against “waste in the kitchen and pantry” and in the dining-room. They suggest that instead of throwing bones into the garbage that that “every scrap of marrow” should be boiled out and made into soup. As a handbook for speakers, the suggestions for waste reduction made in Food Service focused on using the facts to demonstrate the importance of food control to the war effort.

War Meals, another Food Controller published pamphlet, aimed to provide more practical suggestions for saving beef, bacon, wheat, and flour through waste reduction. This publication suggests that careful planning and meal preparation “will enable a housekeeper to make her food purchases go as far as possible.” Several suggestions for meals were made, with attention paid to the type of work performed by men and what they should eat and the age of children. To feed a family of five (with children’s ages ranging from 3-12) for a week it was suggested that the woman of the house plan for meals with 10 lbs meat/substitute, 20lbs cereal product, 20lbs potatoes, 28lbs of veggies and fruit, 3lbs of fat, 14 quarts milk. This, it was noted, would fulfill the family’s nutritional needs, but left no room for “the waste of anything usable.”

Fig. 3. "Sign the Food Service Pledge," 1914-1918. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-719, MIKAN no. 3667246
Fig. 3. “Sign the Food Service Pledge,” 1914-1918. Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1983-28-719, MIKAN no. 3667246

The government suggestions in War Meals include ideas for conserving wheat, like diluting wheat flour with other grains, potatoes, and cooked breakfast cereal. War Meals provided some ideas on reducing food waste by preventing food spoilage and through transforming one food product into another. Bread, it was noted, could be saved by cutting no more than needed and drying it thoroughly to save from mould if it could not be finished. Leftover cooked breakfast cereal could be added into batters and doughs, and leftover bread could be made into “new bread, cake or puddings.” Cooks were encouraged to waste no ham and salt pork (used as a bacon substitute), as “even the rind and bones … [could be conserved] for the flavour” they provided to other dishes. Locally grown vegetables and fruits could be preserved to prevent their spoilage and to lengthen their enjoyment into the winter months.

The Office of the Food Controller knew that its primary audience was women and that their work as kitchen managers was essential to reducing food waste. Throughout their literature, it acknowledged the pride that women took in providing plentiful and varied diets for their families. The Food Controller’s appeal asked that the “foolish notion that carefulness in serving food without waste is ‘stinginess’” be abandoned in the name of duty and common sense. The Office reinforced the expertise of women by suggesting that cooks use and modify their favourite recipes; their “ingenuity will devise many ways of saving” important foodstuffs for the Allies. By recognizing the importance of women to the food situation, the government was simultaneously reinforcing gendered boundaries of work while also encouraging women to participate fully in the war effort as citizens.

British Studies, Medicine, Modern, Series: Wartime Recipes

Feeding Under Fire: Medicinal Food

Leave a comment

By Simon Walker

When I first began Feeding Under Fire, I was excited for the episode on medicinal food because it offered the chance to combine my public engagement platform and my PhD research into the improvement of soldiers’ bodies in the First World War. Now that the video is up, it is important to consider the role that food played in the improvement and recovery of soldiers’ bodies, while also drawing attention to the peculiarity of medical improvements during the war being supported by traditional recipes.

Let’s start with calories. According to the British Royal Army Medical Corps Training Manual soldiers were supposed to receive between 3000 and 5000 calories per day dependant on the strenuousness of their activities.[i]

From: Royal Army Medical Corps Training Manual, p. 60.

The manual also notes that a varied and healthily diet was important for ‘general health and liability to disease’.[ii] Obviously, food was an important aspect of keeping men healthy, and meal plans were devised to attempt to ensure that soldiers were getting enough to eat.

Food also played a regenerative role. Within the 1915 Manual of Military Cooking and Dietary, several recipes are displayed under the heading ‘When soldiers are required to attend their sick and wounded comrades the following simple recipes are useful’.[iii]

Manual of Military Cooking and Dietary, p. 48.

These recipes include ‘Toast and Water’, essentially burnt bread steeped in water, ‘Calves food Jelly’, a citrus treat with sugar that had to simmer for a full day, and the onion porridge from my episode. This dish of boiled onion, salt, pepper, corn flour and butter would be very much at home on the side of a roast dinner, but instead the instructions read ‘eat the porridge just before retiring for the night. This is an excellent remedy for colds’.[iv]

Cook’s Guide And Housekeeper’s & Butler’s Assistant, p. 53.

Onions have a long history of being associated with folk medicine. Gabrielle Hatfield, for example, explains that they were already considered a cure for coughs and colds in ancient Egypt.[v] The recipe that is printed in the manual has almost the exact same wording as in Charles Elme Francatell’s 1868 Cook’s Guide and Housekeeper’s & Butler’s Assistant, except Francatell’s claims the recipe ‘…was imparted to me by a jolly, warm-hearted Yorkshire farmer’.[vi]

The story for my other recipe, rice water, is similar.  This dish, dating back to ancient Chinese medicine, has hundreds of different versions, including additions of milk, sugar, or fruits, and is found in numerous recipe books including John Milner Fothergill, Food for the Invalid: The Convalescent, the Dyspeptic, and the Gouty (1880).

Food for the Invalid: The Convalescent, the Dyspeptic, and the Gouty.

It is interesting that while improvements such as blood transfusions, plastic surgery and disease prevention through sanitation and inoculation were being employed. The British army were still somewhat reliant on recipes that soldier’s parents may have just as easily made for them as a home remedy.

Moving to consider those whose maladies carried them off the line and into medical facilities, although some of these home remedies may have remained part of their diet, overall all, food whilst in a hospital bed could be significantly more substantial. After the war, Private George Elder wrote in his memoirs about how being transferred to the hospital could have meant ‘…comfort, good food, bed and skilled attention.[vii]

Towards the end of the RAMC Manual there are several pages of recipes for hospital cooks including, meat dishes, vegetables, breakfast foods, desserts and beverages. Next to Gruel and Stewed Tripe (see Episode 7 of Feeding Under Fire for the “delicious” use of tripe in the trenches), there is also Roast Fowl, Fried Filleted Plaice, Lemon Jelly, and Lemonade.[viii]

These recipes were not only far from the ‘trench’ treatments of a nice bowl of onion porridge, but also seemingly beyond the usual fare that men were getting for their regular meals both in and behind the trenches. They may have been sick, wounded, controlled by tyrannical medical staff and wearing a blue pyjama uniform, but at least it seems the food was good.

Ultimately, food was an important part of maintaining and improving the health of soldiers, but is it interesting to note that in the face of traditional medical dishes being printed in the official military medical handbook, that its seems old remedies still had a place next to ever improving military medical practice.

References

[i] Anon, Royal Army Medical Corps Training Manual (London: HMS, 1911), p.60

[ii] Ibid. p.61.

[iii] Anon, Manual of Military Cooking and Dietary, (London: HMS, 1915), p.48

[iv] Ibid. p.50.

[v] G. Hatfield, Encyclopaedia of Folk Medicine: Old World and New World Traditions (Oxford: Clio, 2004), p.255.

[vi] C. E. Francatell, Cook’s Guide and Housekeeper’s & Butler’s Assistant (London: Richard Bentley, 1868), p.53.

[vii] G. Elder, From Geordie Land to No Man’s Land, (London: Bloomington, 2011), p.76.

[viii] RAMC Manual, pp.415-426.

About the author

Simon Harold Walker is a Military Medical Historian in the final stages of his PhD at the University of Strathclyde. His PhD Research focuses on how British soldier’s bodies and identities were created, conditioned and controlled over the course of the First World War. He has published on the role of Army Chaplains within the medical services in the First World War and presents a popular YouTube series, Feeding Under Fire, which examines First World War soldier’s food. Simon has also researched inoculation and power and is in the process of researching soldier’s experiences and medicinal food in the First World War.

Article Round-Ups, Modern, Series: French Studies, Series: Jokes and Humorous Recipes, Series: Wartime Recipes

The funeral of Mrs Potato: a round-up of World War I recipes

Leave a comment

A few days ago, while visiting the exposition ’14-18 – it’s our history’ at the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History in Brussels, Belgium, one document particularly caught my attention: an obituary notice for the passing of Mrs Potato.

The French text reads as follows:

Announcement of the death of Mrs Potato, 1916
Announcement of the death of Mrs Potato, Brussels, 1916

Mr Joe SPUD, his wife Industry TATER [the word in the original is the dialectal Walloon word ‘crompire’];

Mr ONION, his wife Mrs LEEK and their children shallot and gherkin;

Mr CELERY, his wife Mrs CHERVIL, their child parsley;

Mr SPINACH, his wife Mrs SORREL, their children salt and pepper;

Mr CARROT, his wife Mrs TURNIP, their children green cabbage and cauliflower;

Mr GARDEN PEA, his wife Mrs FRENCH BEAN;

Widow CHICORY, born in Brussels;

have the great pain to inform you of the cruel loss they have suffered in the person of

Mrs POTATO

Born in Canada, piously deceased in Brussels

The funerals will take place every day at one (Central European time) in all homes where bellies go empty and cooking pots are in mourning.

Pray that her soul may rest in peace and that she may resurrect soon.

No flowers or wreaths.

Having never suffered from hunger, this satirical text brought things home for me. How does one cook without the most basic of ingredients? How does one go through their day without one of the cheapest source of carbohydrates? Here is a round-up of sites and blogs that may offer some answers to these questions.

Painting by R. Willems-Geurt on a sand cabine at the Belgian sea resort of Koksijde. Photo: Laurence Totelin, August 2014
Painting by R. Willems-Geurts on a sand cabine at the Belgian sea resort of Koksijde. Photo: Laurence Totelin, August 2014

The Telegraph tells us how to prepare a Trench Cake, which included currants, cocoa, ginger and nutmeg, perhaps to hide the fact that it was mostly made of flour and margarine – no eggs or butter in sight. Cookit! for its part gives us the recipe for a Trench Stew based on the recollections of a soldier from the 9th Bedfordshire Regiment. Beth Wilmshurst at greatfood mag reproduces several recipes from the 1918 British Ministry of Food, Win the War Cookery Book. The fish sausages are particularly intriguing –  might give them a try myself.

David Setevenson devotes an interesting post to the War effort at home on the British Library website, including information on food supply and rationing. Note at the bottom of the post the photo of the Belgian Cookbook (1915), which includes recipes sent by Belgian refugees. Edible Swansea had written a fascinating post on that same book a couple of years ago.

Painting by L. Ardaean at the sea-resort of Koksijde, Belgium. Photo: Laurence Totelin, August 2014
Painting by L. Ardaen at the sea-resort of Koksijde, Belgium.
Photo: Laurence Totelin, August 2014

In the USA, the University of Wisconsin has an amazing collection of North American documents relating to food and cooking during and after World War I: Recipe for Victory: Food and Cooking in Wartime. The following title  by the United States Food Administration particularly caught my attention: Food saving and sharing, telling how the older children of America may help save from famine their comrades in allied lands across the sea, prepared under the direction of the United States Food administration in cooperation with the United States Department of agriculture and the Bureau of education (1918). The tract is 102 pages in length, showing that the Food Administration expected quite a lot from its ‘older children’. The National World War Museum at Liberty National in collaboration with American Food Roots has produced a series of videos on food, cooking and rationing. The Doughboy Cookbook, by the Quartermaster Corps Foundation, presents several adapted recipes (with no claim to full authenticity) that soldiers would have used. Note in particular the ‘Mess Sergeant’s Java‘ or ‘Black Jack’ a nauseating recipe for recycling coffee involving egg-shells and salt.

Finally, in Toronto a Symposium ‘Recipe for Victory – Great War Food‘ took place in September. It involved recipe testing and tasting, including a tasting of Canadian butter tarts, on which you will find more information here.

There is of course much more to be found on the web, but no orgy of blog-reading on war recipes will ever give me a full sense of what it really felt to be hungry and scared in a trench or on the home-front. Lest we forget.

NB: many of the links above were suggested by Amanda Herbert, who is currently on leave.

American Studies, Food and Drink, Modern, Series: Jokes and Humorous Recipes, Series: Wartime Recipes

Ironclad Apple Duff: Exploring Recipes from the American Civil War

Image 2 Comments

By Jessica Eichlin and Amanda E. Herbert

USS Monitor crewmembers cooking on deck, in the James River, Virginia, 9 July 1862. Photographed by James F. Gibson, courtesy of Wikipedia.
USS Monitor crewmembers cooking on deck, in the James River, Virginia, 9 July 1862. Photographed by James F. Gibson, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Food rations during wartime do not have the reputation for being delicious, fresh, or even edible, and this was especially true during the American Civil War.  Fought from 1861-1865, the war disrupted supply lines across the United States, making food difficult to acquire for soldiers and citizens alike.  When Union (northern) and Confederate (southern) troops were receiving rations, these usually included hardtack, salt pork, flour, and cornmeal; when soldiers were lucky, this rather grim diet was supplemented by small amounts of condiments such as molasses, salt and pepper, and sugar; beverages such as milk, coffee, or tea; and vegetables such as rice or hominy, dried beans or peas, and “fresh” (although frequently desiccated) vegetables.  And whenever they were able, soldiers and sailors foraged for food, or traded with locals – both free and enslaved – in order to survive.

Finding and issuing nutritious, reliable rations was made even more difficult by the new military equipment that was developed during the Civil War.  Although European countries had begun developing ironclad ships in the late 1850s, American shipbuilders were not prompted to create this innovative type of ship until the American Civil War.  The South was the first to construct their ironclad (the CSS Virginia), followed quickly by the North.  The Union’s USS Monitor, designed by John Ericsson, was ironclad as well as semi-submersible: it was the first ship with its living quarters and engines entirely below the waterline.  The ship was nicknamed “Ericsson’s Folly” and “cheesebox on a raft” as no one thought it could float, let alone sail into battle.  Because the sailors lived almost entirely underwater, provisioning them and keeping them healthy proved to be a difficult undertaking.

Primary source documents written by the sailors on board these ships help to reveal important details about the history of Civil War food.  George Geer, a First-Class Fireman from Troy, New York who was stationed aboard the Monitor, corresponded with his wife Martha throughout the war, describing skirmishes, interactions with other sailors and officers, and especially the food on board ship.  Prior to enlisting, Geer had been unemployed and in debt: as he and his wife had two children, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of his letters focused on food.  But if Geer thought that joining the Union navy would keep him well-fed, his hopes were soon dashed.  His letters are full of funny, sarcastic comments about sailor’s rations.  In regards to the rock-like hardtack crackers, which were a staple of their diet, Geer said that the sailors could “eat as many crackers as [they] may wish which for me is usuly one.”  When the men were given pork, Geer was dismayed that “it is of the Lardy kind and no body pretends to eat it…the balance [is] given to the Fishes.”  Discussing bean soup, which the sailors consumed three times every week, Geer noted wryly that he was “tempted to strip off my shirt and make a dive and see if there realy is Beens in the Bottom.”

George S. Geer, First-Class Fireman, USS Monitor. Image courtesy of the Mariner's Museum, Newport News, Virginia.
George S. Geer, First-Class Fireman, USS Monitor. Image courtesy of the Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, Virginia.

Geer’s colorful discussion of the food on board the USS Monitor did not stop with mere description.  In his letters, he sometimes provided his wife with recipes for the foods that made up the sailors’ rations.  In order to make navy-style tea, he told his wife to take “abut three times as much of black Tea or Grass as you would take to make a cup of Tea for you and me and about a tea cup full of that muscovada shugar that has such a bad taste.”  The most detailed recipe inscribed by Geer was for a dessert called Apple Duff.  Duff was a steamed or boiled pudding which was consumed frequently in the nineteenth century.  It was simple to make and contained cheap ingredients, usually just flour, water, and a handful of fruit.  Geer told his wife that he would “give you the recpt and you can try it.”  He told her to “take ½ lb Flour to each person and wet it until it is a thick paste then put in one ounce [o]f Dride Apples to each person.”  The apples, he noted, included “cores and dirt” and his wife should add them to the dough “without cutting them up or Washing them.”  This mixture was to be put “in a Bag over night and boil then in the morning until it is about half done through then cut it up with a knife so as to make it as heavy as poseable.”  The resulting lump of half-cooked dough was hard to digest, but it was filling – for although most puddings “will be apt to work out of your stomac in the course of time,” Geer joked, “this Duff is wanted to stay.”

*****
Interested in the sources used in this post?  You can find them here:

  1. “What Did Civil War Soldiers Eat?” Civil War Preservation Trust, accessed 13 April 2014. http://www.civilwar.org/education/pdfs/civil-war-curriculum-food.pdf
  2. “Duff,” in The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 259.
  3. “Letter No 2,” George S. Geer Family Papers, 1862-1995, MS010, The Mariners’ Museum Library, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia.
  4. A.A. Hoehling, Thunder at Hampton Roads (New York: Prentice Hall, 1976).

*****

Jessica Eichlin is a senior History Major at Christopher Newport University.  She found these documents while working as an intern at the Mariner’s Museum and Mariner’s Museum Library, both in Newport News, Virginia.  Jessica is on Twitter @jesseich