Read the 1940s - May 2019: Food

Our topic for May is Food.

As usual, books can be fiction or nonfiction, Viragos, Persephones, books by Virago/Persephone authors, or books that otherwise embody the "Virago spirit." They can be set in the 1940s, or published in the 1940s. In short, there are no rules here -- participants can set rules to suit themselves. For questions, comments, and general chat about the theme read go to our General Discussion thread.

The "food" theme has challenged many of us, but by expanding our thinking a bit I think we'll all be able to find something suitable. There's some good discussion on our Book Recommendations, and you can also consult the amazingly wonderful Google spreadsheet created by Heather/souloftherose, which compiles and classifies all the book recommendations mentioned on the thread. The spreadsheet includes a "categories" column that shows which topic(s) each book would be suitable for. Below are links to two different views of the data:
* Full spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-b4Y2YrG4VseFT5qn546IjWy0JYst7cOVIrmeBHB...
* Filtered on the "Food" category: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-b4Y2YrG4VseFT5qn546IjWy0JYst7cOVIrmeBHB...

Note that the filtered view does not work on mobile devices, and it may take a few extra seconds to load in your browser. Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions for the spreadsheet.

What's everyone planning to read in May? Let's get the book chat rolling ...

I've started Mastering the art of Soviet cooking which is very good so far. It's a history of 20th century Russia through the lens of food (or lack thereof), as experienced by the author's family. She was born in Moscow but moved with her mother to Philadelphia when she was 14. So most of the memories of life in the Soviet Union come from her mother. They cook some iconic dishes together, from each decade. I'm finding it to be a good balance of personal memoir and history, and the food theme makes it different to anything else I've read on this topic.

>2 Sakerfalcon: that sounds right up my street Claire! I may have to look out for it!

I'm leaving Tuesday evening for 2 weeks in southern France, and Excellent Women will be in my bag. I'm looking forward to re-reading a much-loved book, which was my introduction to Barbara Pym way back when.

Greetings from southern France, where the food is decidedly not vintage 1940s. However, I finished Excellent Women a few days ago and thought I'd check in here. This was a re-read for me, so I knew I'd enjoy it. The blurb on my edition describes the book as set in the 1950s, so I panicked a bit at first. However, it was published in 1952 and the plot has a more immediate post-war feel to it. And there are so many food references! It's a good fit for our theme.

On mixing paint:
"Of the consistency of thin cream," said Miss Enders, reading from the tin. "That's how it should be."
"Of course it's difficult to remember what cream was like," said Miss Stratham. "I suppose thin cream might be like the top of the milk."

Having lunch in a cafeteria:
"You get the saucer after you've taken a roll, if you have one. I generally don't as we are told not to waste bread ..."

Another meal out:
She was studying the menu with a satisfied expression on her face. "Scrambled eggs," she read, "but of course they wouldn't be real. Curried whale, goodness, you wouldn't feel like having that for tea, would you?"

Preparing a meal for a male guest:
I washed a lettuce and dressed it with a little of my hoarded olive oil and some salt. I had a Camembert cheese, a fresh loaf and a bowl of greengages for dessert. It seemed an idyllic sort of meal that ought to have been eaten in the open air, with a bottle of wine and what is known as 'good' conversation. I thought it unlikely that I should be able to provide either the conversation or the wine, but I remembered that I had a bottle of brandy which I kept, according to old-fashioned custom, for 'emergencies' and I decided to bring it in with the coffee.

Having lunch alone:
After I had seen the van go away I went upstairs to my flat to eat a melancholy lunch. A dried-up scrap of cheese, a few lettuce leaves for whichI could not be bothered to make any dressing, a tomato and a piece of bread-and-butter, followed by a cup of coffee made with coffee essence. A real woman's meal, I thought, with no suggestion of brandy afterwards even though there was still a drop left in the bottle. Alcohol would have made it even more of a mockery.

France - how lovely Laura!! 😁 And wonderful quotes - the Pym is a great read!

>5 lauralkeet: Hope you're enjoying your vacation Laura!

Re Excellent Women and the 1950s, food rationing was actually at its worst in the UK after WWII had finished. I think because the Allies became responsible for feeding parts of formerly occupied Europe for a while? I'm not sure when rationing ended but my Dad (born 1947) remembers it so I think it extended into the early 1950s.

I finished reading Bombers and Mash: The Domestic Front, 1939-45 by Raynes Minns which was published by Virago under its non-fiction imprint. It looks at the entirety of the domestic front during the war but food matters make up about 1/3 of the book. The text is set out in what I always think of as newspaper/textbook style with double columns and I worried at first that it would be a bit of a dry read. But it was fascinating! They mention whale meat (>5 lauralkeet:) was made available at the end of the war after other meats and fish stocks became hard or impossible to get hold of but it was very unpopular and reportedly tasted of cod liver oil (which doesn't sound very appetising). One chapter of the book consisted of authentic and government approved recipes for women to use uptheir rations - this included sheep's head soup (you remove the head before serving, but are expected to slice all the 'meat' off the head, mince and then make into potted meat jars) and a method of cooking tomatoes to make them look like fried eggs (surely biting into what you are expecting to be a fried egg and ends up being a tomato would be more disappointing?). Given the book had covered the paid and voluntary work most women were expected to do as well as looking after their families and households (and when paid they were paid a lot less than their male counterparts had been) I was taken aback by how much preparation and planning the meals would take - lots of instructions to leave overnight or for at least an hour or two. Generally, the book shows that people did find great reserves of strength and courage to endure the war but it was a real hardship and left everyone emotionally and physically wrung out at the end (resistance to everyday illnesses was very low by the end of the war).

Heather - my mother refused tuna all her life after eating what she claimed was shark packaged as tuna during the war. Perhaps it was whale rather than shark, but she said it was disgusting. My parents emigrated to NZ in '46 and stuffed themselves with dairy products till they were sick. Cream on everything! I'm sure I had high cholesterol in the womb.

>3 kaggsy: Mastering the art of Soviet cooking was a great read. I think you'd really enjoy it for the combination of personal and social history and the focus on Russian food. Although only a small proportion of the book was strictly relevant to the 1940s I'm really glad I read it.

I'm now reading Excellent women for the first time and very much enjoying being back in Pym's world of wry spinsters, quirky clergymen and bizarre anthropologists. >7 souloftherose: I was very surprised by the mention of whale meat as I had no idea this had been eaten in England after the war. Thanks for providing some context around this passing mention.

>9 Sakerfalcon: Thanks Claire, I’ve added it to the wishlist! 😁

>8 romain: I have eaten whale meat in Norway, and there is no way it could ever be taken for tuna. Maybe it was snoek (see here). From the linked page: "Though very popular in regions like South Africa, it was not so popular to certain generations of British residents during the Second World War due to it being considered a food item of deprivation. Canned Snoek was imported in large quantities into Great Britain and government marketing of the product was not successful and may have had a negative effect.".

I finished Excellent women and loved it. I agree with Laura that it was a very good fit for the month. Food and meals are constantly mentioned in passing and you can tell much about characters' relationships by the meals they eat together. Plus it is very funny, in that wry Pym way.

>5 lauralkeet: Heather, thanks for sharing the context from Bombers and Mash. I admit the reference to whale meat in Excellent Women surprised me and it's interesting to know how it became part of the English diet, at least for a time. And I guess it stands to reason that whale could still be eaten elsewhere today, as haydninvienna noted (great LT name, btw). Funny coincidence: yesterday on a flight, I read an article in the United Airlines magazine about visiting Iceland. Not surprisingly, whale watching was part of the recommended itinerary. There was a brief mention of tourists who also seek out whale for a meal. The author was rather horrified by this, having been so inspired by seeing the whales.

I don't think I'll be seeking out whale anytime soon.

>13 lauralkeet: the occasion was a pretty good restaurant in Longyearbyen, the capital of Svalbard. They had a menu item called something like “Svalbard platter”, with small samples of reindeer, seal and Beluga whale. Reindeer is fine—it’s just venison after all. Whale is just about edible, and seal less than wonderful. Worth trying once, in other words. BTW the pub next door, probably the northernmost pub on earth, makes a terrific pizza.

Haydninvienna - Interesting... I can see she might've heard shark when someone said snoek. I guess it was pretty disgusting because my mother cooked (and ate) animal livers, kidneys, hearts, brains, tripe and feet. She skinned and cooked rabbits but never (to my knowledge) served a sheep's head. All meats were boiled and served with Bisto gravy :) To their credit - my parents were given a live goose during the war for Christmas dinner and, because no one had the heart to kill it, it died as a family pet. They had to leave the East End during the Blitz and took it with them on the train to Essex.

>15 romain: They had to leave the East End during the Blitz and took it with them on the train to Essex.

I love this story so much!

>15 romain: I remember seeing a canned fish called "barracouta" in Australia when I was a little one. Same fish as snoek, apparently, and I don't think it was ever popular in Oz either. As to your animal bits, I have eaten all of those (except for sheep's head) at one time or another although not always with enjoyment. My kids' maternal grandfather grew up in Oz during the 1930s, in the bush where rabbit--"underground mutton"--was plentiful but other meat tended to be scarce, and to the end of his days refused to touch rabbit--it was "poverty food".

It does make for a great story Laura. It was quite vicious to non-family and behaved badly on the train.

As for rabbits - I was raised on rabbit pie, offal and all the other 'poverty foods'. Loved Spam and any other meat in a tin. So tasty compared to what Mum cooked! People don't believe me but I was an adult living in London before I tasted a mushroom, green pepper, pizza, Chinese food. (And the pizza had canned spaghetti on it as a topping!) The one thing my mother splurged on was dessert. Hence the cream. But everything else was pretty horrible. When I first came to America in 1970 I lived in McDonalds. It was like I'd died and gone to heaven.

>8 romain: I do wonder what effect the food shortages during WWII had on children growing up after the war. My Dad is of that generation and loves fatty and meaty food (fried everything) - I can imagine it would have been very natural for my grandparents to encourage him to eat those sorts of foods after going so long without themselves.

>11 haydninvienna: Snoek was also mentioned in Bombers and Mash!

>8 romain:, >11 haydninvienna:, >15 romain: A lot of the recipes in Bombers and Mash suggest hiding what food is really being served to entice people to eat it (so tomatoes were cooked to look like fried eggs) - personally I think this would have been more disappointing on taking a bite than knowing what to expect but it may be your aunt was told she was eating one type of fish to cover the fact it was a less appealing type of fish.

>15 romain: Wow to the goose story!

I've read They Can't Ration These by Vicomte de Mauduit. This is essentially a set of recipes to be made from foraged ingredients and appears to be inspired by rationing during WWII. At the beginning there was a recipe for nettles on toast and this didn't strike me as very appetising, but after reading how to roast a sparrow and starve a snail to make it edible I was willing to reconsider!

I was able to finish Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd. The story highlighted the rationing and shortages caused by the War. By the end of the book, I was quite fond of Miss Ranskill and her experiences. I read They Can't Ration These too and found it interesting but I didn't like the idea of roasted Hedgehog or roasted rook!!

I read Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, translated from the French by Sandra Smith. Originally conceived in 5 parts, Nemirovsky only completed 2 parts before being arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she perished. The book takes place during occupied France circa 1940-41 and explores all sorts of levels of social class, wealth and poverty, patriotism vs. altruism. But running throughout every chapter is the obsession with food: hiding, hoarding, stealing, dreaming of food. It often takes over every other instinct. Fascinating novel; one can only imagine what a masterpiece the full work might have been.