HI,
While this is not an English foodstuff's source recommendation, this is something perhaps dear to UK cookbook readers:
An interview with prolific cookbook writer and home economist Marguerite Patten.
When war broke out she worked for the Ministry of Food, going out into markets, hospitals and workers’ canteens, giving advice and demonstrations on the clever use of Spam and powdered eggs and encouraging the consumption of protein-rich whale meat while broadcasting thrifty tips on her radio programme, Kitchen Front.
In 1947 she and Philip Harben were the first cooks on television, pre-dating Fanny Craddock by eight years.
'We had to make cooking very worthy because we were dealing with rationing.’
And then there's this from Nicola Humble: The dirtiest cook books I have found in many years searching the shelves of second-hand shops are invariably those by Marguerite Patten, the tireless author of over 160 cook books written in the course of a seventy-year career. I longed to tell her this when I met her at a conference, but I was afraid she might think it an insult. It seems to me a tremendous compliment [because it means that people actually cooked from Ms. Patten’s books!]. ~ Nicola Humble, Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food (2005), p. 281n.3.
I never heard of her before this evening. I miss so much.
Regards,