Wartime Cookbooks

Recipe books from periods of war-induced food shortage are now largely no more than amusing flea-market finds. Wartime cookbooks are, in fact, tokens of a significant problem of the First World War. Important foodstuffs were rationed in most countries during the war. Food was “eked out,” for instance by adding a proportion of potato flour to bread dough. Bread produced with a high proportion of potato was disliked by consumers. Suggestions as to how food could be supplemented, an…