How to Avoid Food Waste – Wartime Recipes Make A Comeback

Wartime Recipes making a comeback in frugal kitchens

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Kitchens across the UK are becoming more frugal than ever with thousands of people seeking ways in which to make their food go further. Methods of food rationing and utilising wartime recipes reflect this way of living, as people were required to ration their daily and weekly food intake.

According to the BBC, food rationing changed the ‘social landscape of Britain for a generation, creating a national culture of ingenuity, austerity and making-do’. Wartime recipes reflected this change and depended greatly upon careful choosing of ingredients based on the little amount of food that was available, a perfect source of inspiration for a frugal kitchen.

Wartime Scotch Shortbread

If you had a sweet tooth in the 1940s a common dessert of the time was a traditional scotch shortbread biscuit. It is a simple recipe and one that has remained quite popular in kitchens across the UK and Europe.

Ingredients & Method:

4 ounces of melted margarine combined with 2 ounces of sugar and 8 ounces of plain flour are to be mixed well and kneaded so that the mixture holds together. Next, put the mixture into a baked tin (there is no need to grease it) and then gently press down on the mixture until it is about half an inch thick.

Use a fork or knife to prick the surface before baking in the oven at a moderate temperature (170 to 180C) for 30 minutes. When the shortbread is cooked, sprinkle some sugar over it to add the finishing sweet touch and there you have it – an easy to make wartime scotch shortbread biscuit to share with the family.

Baked Bean Loaf

This recipe – easy baked bean loaf – comes with a range of different ingredients which may seem like a lot at first but you will quickly find that it is a simple case of adding most ingredients together at the same time. The ingredients to make an easy baked bean loaf are:

Large tin of baked beans

1 cup of fine breadcrumbs

3 ounces of oats

6 ounces of grated cheese

2 beaten eggs

1 onion, chopped into small pieces

1 ½ teaspoonful of freshly chopped parsley

Method:

Line a square tin – around 18cm in circumference – with baking parchment.

Then mash the beans before adding the remaining ingredients.

Mix well until a stiff dough is formed.

Press the mixture into the tin and cook at 160C for an hour.

Wartime Cake

Cakes were very popular during the war, mainly because ingredients were quite easy to find and to ration. To make a traditional wartime cake you will need:

2 ¼ cups of hot water

2 tablespoons of butter

2 cups of brown sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

¾ pound of seedless raisins

½ teaspoon of soda

½ teaspoon of cloves

3 teaspoons of cinnamon

2 ½ cups of plain flour

½ teaspoon of nutmeg.

Method:

Take all of these ingredients except for the flour and soda and boil them together for a period of five minutes. Once this is done, wait until the mix has cooled before adding the cups of flour and spoon and a half of soda which are to be sifted together. Use moderate sized bread pans and bake the mixture in two loaves for an hour in the oven at around 160C

Why not give these simple recipes a try?

For further advice on avoiding food waste, click here.

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