When World War II began, Britain had an immediate crisis on its hands:
its ability to import food drastically curtailed, the island would very
quickly have to find ways both to produce more and use less.
For that latter task, the kitchen was the headquarters, and this little
book presents the battle plan. Drawn from scattered sources in the
archives of the Imperial War Museums and presented here in a charming
gift book, the recipes of Victory is in the Kitchen helped guide
British cooks as they coped with unprecedented scarcity and
restrictions. Rustling up creative dishes out of meager rations, the
recipes gathered here include scrap bread pudding, potato pastry, and
sheep's heart pie, as well as adapted English standbys like Lancashire
hot pot, Queen's Pudding, and crumpets.
Interwoven with the recipes are colorful reproductions of inspirational
wartime posters, while an introduction sets the historical context. The
resulting package is the perfect gift for any cook, a reminder of a time
when ration books and recipes had to be made to work together.