A few weeks ago, my mother gave me a small pamphlet she had found in an old box when she was rummaging in a junk cupboard in her house. She assumes it was my Gran's. It is dated 1940 and was issued by the National Food Campaign, published by Lewis's in Manchester. It is essentially advice to the British consumer on how to save on fuel and food by cooking sensibly with the most readily available ingredients in order to help the War Effort.
I thanked her and later stuck it on one of my paperwork piles to read later and forgot about it. I've just come across it again. It's fascinating and is in incredibly good condition!
Some of the suggested tactics would raise a few eyebrows today. It advocates never throwing out the poaching water from vegetables. It suggests cooking all courses of a meal in the one pot in different layers. All fat from all meats should be reserved and used at a later time as cooking fat. Ingredients to consider using in cooking include cow heels, calf heads, sheep heads and any fresh bones.
Wow - it's hard to appreciate the sacrifices that were made barely seventy years ago for the greater good. I'm going to try some of the ideas included in the pamphlet. Tripe and Liver Hot-Pot sounds right up my street!
Anyone have anything similarly authentic from yesteryear?
Interesting Gordon.
I don't have anything of that type of stuff laying around. My grandmother was a pack rat but not of that type of thing. My grandfather(all of them) were all dead before I was ever born. Having a scattered family doesn't allow me access to things like this.
But, I do hope you enjoy it.
Nice, Gordon. I have some very old cookbooks around and really need to look at them again. Cooking in layers is interesting. Enjoy it.
I remember it vaguely because I was there! I was born in 1936 and lived in England until coming to Australia in 1951. All that was probably correct. However, I'd have been too young to be concerned with the detail.
However, I do know that whenever we could steal potatoes, onions or carrots from a farmers field, or apples and pears from some poor fruit grower there would be grumbles of "Oh, you naughty boys," whilst our Mum's tired eyes sparkled with joy. "Scrumping" they used to call it. Opportune stealing. It probably made quite a bit of difference as far as getting a fuller, healthier diet than proposed by the government.
Oh, and "Never leave any food on your plate." How different now in this land of plenty.
Hallo Gordon..I recently purchased an original wartime cookbook which includes all of the pamphlets that were written to advise the housewife on how to eek out her meagre rations..it is facinating and a real eye opener.
Very interesting and what an invaluable, and historic, treasure your mom gave you.
by Donna Cosmato 13 years ago
What's the best cookbook for someone who dislikes cooking but has to feed a family?The kids have to eat even when you don't feel like cooking. Eating out is too expensive so what do you do and where do you get ideas - fast!
by Wayne Brown 14 years ago
Can you explain the "Trinity" as it relates to Cajun cooking?
by Misbah Sheikh 3 years ago
Please take some time to read a very interesting article about the mystery of the Philadelphia time travel experiment by Ravi Rajan. Here's the link to his article: https://hubpages.com/education/The-Fasc … ExperimentThank you so much!
by Pamela Oglesby 3 years ago
Ravi has written a fascinating article about the riches and gorgeous Padmanabhaswamy temple. It is a delightful read.https://hubpages.com/travel/The-Dark-Se … est-Temple
by Misbah Sheikh 3 years ago
Please take the time to read Ravi Rajan's very interesting and informative article.Here’s the link: https://hubpages.com/education/The-Myth … ari-KandamThank you so much!
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |