Book helped us make something out of nothing
YOU don’t need me to tell you that we are living in straitened times. Should it slip your notice for a moment you’ll be reminded each time you pick up a newspaper, turn on the news, or chat with the next door neighbour that austerity is the theme of the day.
If any commodity hasn’t gone up in price in the past week, it’s an eyebrow raiser.
So I was pleased to find a copy of the Gleanings From Gloucestershire Housewives Cookery Book in a charity shop recently, especially as it was only £1.
Published in 1948 and originally priced at 3/6d (18p), it offers frugal recipes using what was available in those post-second World War times when almost everything was in short supply and still on ration. In other words, a predicament similar to ours in 2022.
The foreword to the book is signed Bledisloe, who was Charles Bathurst, Viscount, former Governor General of New Zealand and resident of Lydney Park. And he praises members of the Women’s Institute, making the point that “now that the raw materials of our kitchen output are limited in quantity and description, the ability to provide acceptable, tasty, wholesome and nourishing meals will lie preponderantly in their ingenuity, resourcefulness and adaptability”.
And yes, people really did talk like that in 1948.
Of course, tastes have changed. Here’s how to make Gloucester Jelly, for instance.
You’ll need an ounce each of powdered rice, sago, pearl barley, isinglass, eringo root and hartshorn shavings. Then you simmer the lot in three pints of water, and keep doing so until the liquid is reduced by a third and strain. “Pieces may be cut from this jelly and taken in tea or broth every morning,” comes the instruction.
This is mooted as a delicacy popular in Down Ampney, which is where the composer Vaughan Williams came from. Do you think it might have provided the inspiration for The Lark
Ascending?
Not for the faint-hearted is this recipe from Lower Swell for Headcheese. First take a calf’s head and singe the hairs off. Then thrust a red hot poker into the ears and nostrils. Add herbs, spices and vegetables, then boil the whole thing until the meat drops off the bone.
And the final words of the recipe are: “Take note that the eyes which in boiling will be removed from their sockets are taken out and thrown to the hens.” Vegetarians were rare and vegans nonexistent back then.
There’s a recipe for elvers, cheap in 1948, vastly expensive now even if you can find them.
Tuffley and Whaddon WI’S contribution, the recipe for Mother Eve Pudding, was in the form of a poem.
“If you would have a good pudding/ Observe what you’re taught. Take two pennyworth of eggs When twelve for the groat And of the same fruit which Eve had once chosen
Well pared and well chopped, at least half a dozen.
Six ounces of bread, let your maid eat the crust,
The crumbs must be grated as small as the dust.
Four ounces of sugar won’t make it too sweet,
Some spice also nutmeg will make it complete.
Six ounces of currants from stones you must sort.
Lest they break out your teeth and spoil all the sport.
Take four ounces of suet, well chopped it must be
The mixture now ready, quite good you’ll agree.
Three hours let it boil without flurry or hurry/ And then serve it up without sugar or butter.”
Most or all of the ingredients for the above delight were available from such grocery stores as George Mason, which had branches across the county. But milk was delivered to your door and this household hint from Gloucestershire Gleanings reminds us that a daily pinta could be used for more than just putting in your tea.
“Dip a cloth into milk and rub linoleum with it. This will clean and polish and will not be slippery.”