Sweet treats during wartime
Anzac Day gives us a great excuse to bake a New Zealand favourite, the Anzac biscuit. Rebecca Fox takes a look back at what baking was like during wartime.
FOOD rationing is probably the best remembered of all the wartime shortages, Emeritus Prof Helen Leach says.
In her book Kitchens: New Zealand Kitchens in the 20th Century she describes the impact of rationing.
During World War 1, New Zealand’s food supplies were not as affected as they were in World War 2.
The government imposed price controls on certain staples, but meat, butter, flour and sugar prices all climbed and exports were affected by a
shortage of ships.
However, the war was reflected in cookbooks with recipes that bore the name German being renamed — German biscuits became Belgium biscuits.
In 1915, the name Anzac was given to small cakes and a pudding but by 1919, rolled oat biscuits had become known as Anzac biscuits.
In World War 2, from 1942 sugar was rationed with coupons. However, New Zealanders could buy up to 340g, compared with the 227g allowed in Canada, and they got an extra allowance for making jam or preserving.
Leach says housewives concentrated on recipes with smaller quantities of sugar or tried substitutes such as golden syrup or treacle, which were not rationed.
‘‘Not all types of baking could be successfully modified this way.’’
Her mother’s copy of the War Economy Recipe Book, from about 1943, included 39 baking recipes but only two were without sugar — a health loaf and Victory Gems, sweetened with golden syrup.
In cakes and biscuits where texture was important, it was more common to supplement sugar with another sweetener than replace it altogether, she says.
Butter was also rationed — first 227g and then 170g in 1945 — but housewives were just as concerned about the shortage of eggs, Leech says.
During this time, many familiar brands of baking powder disappeared and cream of tartar supplies nearly dried up.
The price of baking powder rose steeply and a new version of baking powder, Acto Cake Powder, was created in 1941. This product disappeared from advertisements in the mid1950s.
The composition of white flour also changed in 1946, when millers were required to raised the extraction rate from 73% to 80% to include more wheat germ to fortify the flour with vitamins. It was reduced to 78% in 1949.
‘‘Good cooks complained that their cakes staled more quickly and lacked lightness.’’
During the 1940s there were also other food shortages. Pasta imports ceased, greaseproof paper was scarce and a scarcity of rubber affected preserving in which rubber rings were needed to seal jars.