The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
What a feast!
Rounds of sandwiches, eggless sponge cake and saved-up beer…
Tongue, tinned grapefruit, sherry stashed since Christmas… Food historian Annie Gray on 1945’s celebratory fare
When victory was announced, the people of Britain – made innovative by years of rationing – ate, drank and made merry as they hadn’t since the war effort began. Food historian Annie Gray recounts the celebrations
When we think of VE Day, we think of impromptu celebrations with soldiers hugging girls in fountains, and street parties in villages across Britain. As the guns fell silent, long tables were constructed on roads, covered with sheets and surrounded with a mishmash of chairs. Locals stayed up, making ‘rounds of sandwiches and biscuits… ’til four in the morning’, as cook Ruth Mott would later recall, packing them into bags printed with Union Jacks.
For as much as VE Day was about speeches and fireworks, it was also about food and drink, and the coming together of people over a series of feasts, compiled in the face of years of rationing. As our thoughts turn to our own gradual return to normality, what are the parallels with May 1945?
Just as with recent weeks, the Second World War had brought restrictions: unnecessary travel was frowned upon, if not actively outlawed, and there were forbidden zones around military bases. Much of the coast was inaccessible, laid with barbed wire and other anti-invasion defences. In addition, fuel was rationed, so long drives in the sunshine were largely impossible anyway. Food was also rationed (and paper, including toilet roll).
The Ministry of Food reported that there was enough food being produced in Britain, imported from its Empire or the Commonwealth, or traded with America that everyone would have sufficient calories to live on – around 3,000 a day. Today, of course, the global trade networks we rely on for our food are all still functioning – we import about 50 per cent of our food in 2020, compared with about 70 per cent in 1939.
Although we may have a few shortages at the moment, as the just-in-time supply chain has difficulty keeping up, and trade suppliers struggle to convert to retail, we are very far from the malnutrition feared by some wartime officials. Nor are we likely to mutiny – Churchill wrote in 1940 that ‘the way to lose the war is to try and force the British public into a diet of milk, oatmeal, potatoes etc, washed down on gala occasions with a little lime juice’.
Many of us are currently discovering new ways to cook, spurred on by a wealth of food advice and sudden time on our hands. It was rather different in 1945. Time was short, and ingredients limited. Although the system worked, diaries of the time show an obsessive interest in food. Vere Hodgson, a London charity worker, was typical, writing in August 1944 that ‘plums and apples have come to town. This is an event of great magnitude’. She queued for 20 minutes, returning triumphant with ‘two pounds of pink and two pounds of greengages’.
By the end of 1944, victory seemed likely. People had time to plan ahead. Cornwall-based Neville Harcourt Paddy later remembered that ‘small portions of rationed food [were] set aside and stored with a crate or two of bottled beer’, along with stashes of Christmas sherry.
In April 1945, the War Cabinet drew up plans for a national day of thanksgiving in honour of victory in Europe. A committee was appointed to oversee such details as the relaxation of the blackout and floodlighting of public buildings, ringing of church bells and local victory parades. The nation was on tenterhooks, an air of anticipation about.
Finally, on 7 May, the BBC interrupted that evening’s programming to announce that the next day – a Tuesday – would be VE Day, that the Prime Minister would address the nation, and that – for most people – it would be a holiday.
Some threw off their wartime shackles immediately, rushing down to the pub, or digging out the bottles of beer or spirits they’d been saving. One Londoner admitted that his plans went no further than getting ‘really blind drunk’. There was a sense of both release and disbelief. In Buckinghamshire, Jean Lucey Pratt treated herself
Some immediately rushed to the pub, or dug out bottles of beer or spirits they’d saved
to a celebratory orange for her supper (she also had a salad from her garden, and some bread and butter).
As 8 May dawned, and the first bells started to ring, towns and villages across the country were festooned with bunting and flags. Those who could made for London, and the trains were packed. Some took picnics, eating them in parks or by the river. Others headed to restaurants. Unlike in our current situation, public eating had been actively encouraged by the government, especially Churchill, whose idea it was to name the communal feeding centres set up by the government to provide very cheap meals to workers and those who had been bombed out of their homes, ‘British Restaurants’, on the grounds that it would add a bit of glamour to proceedings.
Restaurants did have to operate under restrictions though, with food allocated by number of customers, and menu prices regulated. In York, the historic Bettys tea rooms, known now for their Fat Rascal scones, offered ‘things on toast’, eking out corned beef as best they could. Underneath Bettys was a bar known as ‘The Dive’ where the names of Canadian airmen can still be seen, etched on to a mirror. It did a roaring trade on VE Day, and by the evening, according to its then manager Victor Wild, ‘people were rolling round in the streets, singing and dancing’.
Meanwhile, The Savoy raised its larders and produced a victory menu with elegantsounding dishes such as ‘la tasse de consommé niçoise de la victoire’, and ‘la coupe glacée des Allies’ (their exact contents left to the diner’s imagination). The Savoy had its own poultry farm and, unlike others, never had to resort to the dreaded dried egg. Fresh eggs were scarce, having been widely imported before the war (we still import about 10 per cent of our supply), and dried egg was shipped from America to supple
ment them. The Ministry of Food tried hard to promote it as almost as good as the real thing, but it performed badly in baking and needed a great deal of butter – also scarce – to make it edible as ersatz scrambled egg or an omelette.
Despite the equality of rationing, there were disparities, and the rich fared better than the poor. Churchill’s daily menus no longer survive, but his typical breakfast was toast and honey (from his own hives), with fruit and fresh eggs, plus a bit of meat left over from dinner the night before.
However, on VE Day the Prime Minister lunched at Buckingham Palace, where George VI was practising conspicuous austerity, and the food was reputedly somewhat miserable (the King and Queen had ration books just like everyone else). Later that day, he gave a speech from the balcony at the Ministry of Health, cheered by thousands of onlookers. As he was leaving, he spotted his cook, Georgina Landemare, described by her colleagues as ‘a woman who excelled at her craft’, and rushed over to her, shaking her hand and declaring that he could not have achieved victory without her. She later said that cooking for him had been her ‘war work’ and that his words meant more than anything.
Most people celebrated at home, with friends and foods they’d been deliberately saving for the end of the war. Marguerite Patten, who had been part of the Kitchen Front team, broadcasting cookery tips and recipes for the BBC, said later, ‘You can’t exaggerate the joy of that day.’
In Sheffield, Edie Rutherford opened up a tin of asparagus tips and one of tomatoes.
Joan Wyndham had tinned fruit – a reckless amount of points if bought via the ration. Research scientist and conscientious objector Ernest van Someren let his children have chocolate spread. Vere Hodgson’s party included ‘ersatz champagne. Tinned Grapefruit. Salad, Tongue. Tin of Crayfish – and a Plum Pudding. All of us had been saving these viands up for a long time.’ Their host even had some real coffee, followed by ‘his pièce de resistance, some 1898 port…or some such date’.
Elsewhere the tipple of choice was gin, or sherry, or cocktail ingredients that had seen better days. Freddy Dyke commented ruefully that in Warwickshire ‘the partying continued all night long provided you could stand up after consuming so much ale or spirits’.
For some, the celebrations continued to the weekend, when street parades and organised parties were held. Roads filled with hastily assembled trestle tables, and communities came together to make food. Even while they gleefully pulled down the blackout curtains, women were mulling over how to provide sandwiches for parties when they had no butter left.
Solutions were the same as ever: mock bananas made from parsnip and banana essence, mock lemon curd thickened with arrowroot and swede, carrot added to as many things as possible, and cakes made with bicarbonate of soda and a teaspoon of vinegar in lieu of eggs. With the exception of the last, none of these are worth trying at home.
For many children, these parties would be their first taste of ice cream as freezers were briefly turned back on. Custard powder formed a decent base, flavoured with jam or fruit purée. Trifles were possible, with jelly from a packet and saved-up cake crusts. Pastry was made with self-raising flour in order to give it a chance at lightness in the face of the very dark wholemeal National Flour. Introduced early in the war, this had a high extraction rate – meaning that it retained most of the grain, so it was more nutritious but very heavy. White flour disappeared for the duration.
Choux pastry became an unexpected hero, as it could be made with dried egg and filled with almost anything. There was no icing, but decorations could be made using paper and cloth, fresh flowers and bunting, which was emphatically not subject to the restrictions on fabric.
Wartime conditions were certainly not over. Rationing would get worse in the immediate aftermath of the war and would remain in place until 1954. But VE Day was a release for years of pent-up emotion and hard work; it was a reward and a promise. The end of lockdown, likewise, won’t be the end of the global effort to contain the coronavirus, but it will be a chance for us to break open our larders and share (at a socially responsible distance) what Churchill called ‘a brief period of rejoicing’. Victory in the Kitchen: The Life of Churchill’s Cook, by Annie Gray (Profile Books, £16.99), is out now
‘Plums and apples have come to town. This is an event of great magnitude’