Wartime cookbooks, it sounds like a paradox. Who buys a book when he has hardly any bread on the shelf? And why should that book be about cooking? Nevertheless, a large number of cookbooks appeared during both the First and Second World War, in which the influence of the war is sometimes perceptible literally, sometimes between the lines.
At the outbreak of the First World War, the Dutch population ran in blind panic to shops and markets to stock up. Although the Netherlands itself was not at war, the international situation also caused shortages in our country. There are numerous police reports of looting, thefts, riots and other disturbances that eventually culminate in the Potato Riot. There was not only a shortage of luxury products, but also basic food was hardly available. Citizens were entitled to only two ounces of meat per person per week, there was hardly any butter and it was even difficult for city dwellers to get hold of potatoes.
There were also major food shortages in World War II. Despite a well-oiled distribution system, in addition to a lack of meat and eggs, there was also a shortage of tropical fats to make margarine and salad oil. Fish was also hard to get. The situation worsened during the hunger winter:we all know the stories about tulip bulbs and sugar beets.
Need for information
The shrinking food supply in both wars required extra creativity from the Dutch housewife. Because what do you do on bread, for example, if there is hardly any butter, cheese or meat available? And how can you feed your family as healthy as possible despite all the shortages? The demand for information was great. And it came. The government printed posters and organized food exhibitions with cooking demonstrations. Domestic teachers saw their chance:healthy and nutritious food had to replace the beloved white bread and fatty meals. Their ideals of frugality and nutrition date back to the end of the 19th century, and the two world wars offered them an excellent opportunity to disseminate them to the general public.
War cookbooks played an important role in this information campaign. The often soberly published booklets are full of surrogate recipes such as potato cake, oatmeal slices and ground beans. In Good recipes for bad times from C.J. ten Bosch from 1918 contains a recipe for potato pie made from two eggs, potatoes, sugar and some milk. And in Get the best of it from 1942 by Ria Schute, mayonnaise is made from buttermilk, whereby the cook gets the tip “with a few drops of butter coloring a soft-yellow complexion to the mayonnaise ” so that the imitation “almost completely ” becomes.
That citizens had to get used to such dishes is apparent from the countless introductions in which the authors insist on trying new things. Thus writes C.H.A. Scholte-Hoek in Cooking for the time of distribution and partly… forever (1940):“Have no prejudice against foods that you have never tasted before, or against preparation methods that you have never used yourself, or against combinations that you have never eaten before. In that respect, don't be a real Dutchman, but eat whatever is set before you (…). ”
In addition to recipes, the war cookbooks contain a remarkable amount of health and especially saving advice, such as processing leftovers, camouflaged meat shortages and cooking in a hay box. In almost all war cookbooks, saving fuel and electricity plays a major role. Mia de Kok devotes herself to Cooking…. now! Distribution and Wartime Recipes from 1942 even a separate chapter. It deals with cooking vegetables with as little water as possible, cooking with the lid on the pan, using the hay box and 'stack cooking', i.e. cooking in two pans placed on top of each other to keep them both warm on one and the same flame.
Fried tulip bulbs
What is also striking is the large amount of publications with recipes. If we define war cookbooks as publications that were published in the Dutch language from 1914 to 1918 or from 1940 to 1945, were printed, contain at least eight recipes and refer to the war situation in title, text or recipe, then in the First World War 26 and 53 titles printed during the Second World War.
The market seemed insatiable. This was partly because the food supply continued to change during both wars. In 1940, for example, How should I cook economically in times of crisis by M. van der Poel. The author could not have known that many of the products she used would no longer be available a few months after the publication of her book. The recipes in the booklet were therefore compiled in connection with the distribution measures announced in August 1939. Dishes such as macaroni with cheese, scrambled eggs, fried steak, chocolate custard, bacon pancakes and kale with sausage cannot be found in later war cookbooks. Instead, we see many surrogate recipes such as shrimp mincemeat, bean croquettes, sham mincemeat, and cheese chops. It also contains many dishes with potatoes:potato cake, potato pie, potato cakes, potato bread and so on.
There was therefore always a need for new recipes. From this perspective, it makes sense that even during the famine winter, when not only food but also paper was extremely scarce, cookbooks continued to appear. One should not imagine too large a book. They often consist of no more than a few loose sheets of paper with recipes for unusual ingredients such as sugar beets. In Using tulip bulbs, Published in 1945 by the Amsterdam Local Commission on Domestic Information and Family Management, there are, for example, recipes for soup, stew and biscuits made from tulip bulbs. They did not offer much solace. How about this recipe:
Clean the tulip bulbs and cut into slices. Brown them in a frying pan with some oil. Present the tulip bulbs with some salt at will.
Cheap
The cookbooks from the Second World War look more professional, but are relatively no thicker than the editions from 1914-1918:the average number of pages is 55 and 57 respectively. There is also hardly any difference in price. A World War I war cookbook cost an average of 44 cents. In World War II it was 63 cents. Today this corresponds to €3.12 and €3.53 respectively. They were therefore fairly cheap and therefore also affordable for the working class woman. There were also publications that were distributed for free by the government.
There are also differences between the war cookbooks of 1914-1918 and those of 1940-1945. In the First World War it took a while for the power to get going; the majority did not appear until 1917. It was only then that the publishers had adapted to the new situation. It was different in World War II. The cookbooks seemed to be ready at the time of the German invasion. Many more appeared. This is remarkable since the influence of the war on the book business during the German occupation was much greater than in 1914-1918. For example, paper was scarcer and the Germans kept a close eye on the publishers.
There are also differences in the recipe. War cookbooks published between 1914 and 1918 contain many rice and potato recipes. It is clear from the recipe that much more food was available than during the German occupation. Back then, it was more about cooking cheaply than about cooking surrogate.
Temporary obsession
The war cookbook was by no means a luxury product like the cookbook that is in stores today. A.M. van Anrooy and H.M.S.J. de Holl describe this aptly in their Cookbook for the crisis from 1918:
“How does one use a cookbook in normal times? Or to refer to a recipe that one wants to prepare (…) or to consult the contents and then derive an idea (…). But why do people store a cookbook now? In the faint hope to find in it a preparation of peas or beans, which will be eaten with more pleasure than their well-known soups (…). ”
Rarely have food and eating occupied the minds of the Netherlands as much as during these two wars. Scarcity forced people to constantly think about food and to be involved with food. Scarcity made people stand in line for hours, constantly coming up with a different dish with the few foodstuffs available, disguising unusual flavors and worrying whether there would be enough tomorrow. This temporary obsession with food was reflected in the war cookbooks.
It can also be concluded that the Dutch still pursued an eating culture of some level with few resources available. Although food and paper became scarcer, they continued to do their best to make something beautiful out of it. In increasingly sober publications, advice was given on how to give an acceptable nutritional content to a war meal. This even went so far that during the Hunger Winter, recipes for crisis cake and biscuits made from tulip bulbs appeared. The many war cookbooks were a dire necessity. Not only for the body, but also for the mind.
Continue reading:
- Ileen Montijn, At the table! Fifty years of food in the Netherlands (Utrecht 1991)
- Anneke H. van Otterloo, Eating and appetite in the Netherlands 1840-1990, a historical-sociological study (Amsterdam 1990)