Some of the most delicious recipes were invented out of necessity. Faced with a lack of certain ingredients, creative bakers scraped together whatever was in their larder so they could still put bread – or cake – on the table. Resourceful wartime cooks used their rations and their imaginations to come up with tasty meals and make each scrap of food stretch as far as possible. Here are some of the best dishes that were born from hardship and are now firm favorites.
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Hoover stew
A combination of elbow macaroni, tinned tomatoes, sweetcorn, beans and chopped hot dogs, Hoover stew emerged during the Great Depression in the 1930s. It was often served in soup kitchens in ‘Hoovervilles’ – shantytowns built by displaced people and named after then-president Herbert Hoover. Now, this ramshackle concoction has a strangely comforting appeal, especially if you happen to be suffering with a hangover.
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Meatloaf
American meatloaf originally emerged as a terrine-like take on scrapple, a mix of pork and cornmeal dating back to the 1800s, and rose to legend-like status during the 1940s. Adverts – like this one for a handy pamphlet of meat recipes – urged home cooks to be more creative with their meat dishes, using cheaper, more available cuts and mixing them with ingredients like breadcrumbs and eggs.
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Meatloaf
This US family classic was a prime example, turning ground meats, leftovers and kitchen scraps into a worthy substitute for a whole-joint roast. Best enjoyed sliced, drowned in gravy and served with heaps of mashed potato.
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Desperation pies
More delicious and a little less dreary than they sound, desperation pies were popular among Indiana’s Amish and Shaker communities in the early 19th century. The category encompassed any sweet pie that could be made from larder ingredients when fresh, seasonal produce was scant. Sugar cream pie – or Hoosier cream pie – is a classic, made with sugar, milk (or evaporated milk), vanilla, nutmeg and flour.
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The poor man’s meal
Hot dogs and potatoes were relatively plentiful during the Great Depression, as well as having a decent shelf-life, so they became staples of many dishes born of desperation across the USA. The poor man’s meal was a basic yet tasty and satisfying combination of fried potato and onion topped with sliced hot dogs – a little like breakfast hashes, which are still eaten (and craved) today.
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Panzanella
Italians are king when it comes to scraping together the scantest of ingredients and creating something incredibly delicious. That applies to stale food that many of us might just shove in the trash can, too, like the old bread used to make this classic salad. Chunks of said bread are tossed with juicy tomatoes and olive oil to magically create summer on a plate. Peasant food at its best.
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Wacky cake
This could equally be called ‘lacky cake’, since it rose from a complete absence of the usually essential baking ingredients. Butter, for example, and even eggs. Yet this creative solution – also known, less breezily, as a ‘chocolate Depression cake’ – somehow works…
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Wacky cake
The dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda and, if available, cocoa powder) are combined in the tin, then vegetable oil and vinegar are poured into wells. The baking soda and vinegar ‘meet’ while in the oven, helping it to rise beautifully. Now, as vegan recipes become more prevalent, this cake doesn’t seem quite so wacky after all.
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Peanut butter and mayo sandwich
It’s debatable whether this is a fabulous food but, when you think about it, peanut butter isn’t technically a sweet food – so why not slather some creamy mayo on top? This became an easy, inexpensive and high-protein snack in the 1930s and during wartime, and was promoted in a joint ad campaign by Hellmann’s Mayonnaise and Skippy Peanut Butter in the 1960s.
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Salt-rising bread
This recipe, made by 19th-century settlers in the Appalachian Mountains, is a clever way to make bread if you don’t have any yeast. It’s a starter that makes it rise, in this case made by cultivating bacteria by mixing boiled milk, cornmeal, a sliced potato, sugar and salt and leaving it out overnight. It isn’t as trendy as sourdough, though James Beard – who inspired the famous US food awards – was a fan, including it in his 1973 cookbook Beard on Bread.
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Carrot cake
The earliest known recipe for carrot cake dates back to 1929 but, like so many once-frugal foods, it rose to its now legendary status during the Second World War. In fact, the benefits of ‘Doctor Carrot’ were a key part of a British Ministry of Food campaign to encourage people to use more readily available vegetables that weren’t subject to rationing.
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Carrot cake
The natural sweetness of carrots made them a popular choice for stretching out sugar rations, and they were also used in Christmas puddings. The wartime carrot cake was a little less luxurious than today’s versions – often slathered in indulgent buttercream or cream cheese frosting – but we’re still not above kidding ourselves that it’s sort of healthy.
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Frozen fruit salad
This dessert has a touch of retro-cool about it, yet it became popular as a rare treat during the Great Depression, when people had to make use of the cheapest and most long-lasting ingredients. A true pantry concoction, it’s made by mixing tins of fruit cocktail with honey, egg yolks and cream and setting in the freezer, to serve in snowy-white slices.
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Anthill cake
So many brilliant recipes are the product of people rummaging around in their cupboards, especially when it comes to sweet treats. Anthill cake is a prime example, popular during the Soviet era. It basically involved throwing together bread, pastry, cookies, cake – whatever needed using up – crumbling and binding with butter, sour cream and condensed milk. Its name (muraveinik in Russian) comes from its resemblance to a small hill.
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Oxford potato soup
Soup is one of the best vehicles for using up pretty much anything and everything – a fact that didn’t escape the British Ministry of Food during the Second World War. Like carrot cake, this simple but tasty recipe was part of a campaign to push non-rationed foods, featured in Potato Pete’s recipe leaflets.
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Oxford potato soup
The smooth, creamy soup is made with potatoes (of course), leeks, celery and onion, blended and jazzed up with chopped herbs. And it’s basically a warm, comforting hug in a bowl. Try it yourself with our recipe.
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Meat and potato patties
These fat, juicy discs became popular in the US during the Second World War. The rationing of meat meant people were always looking for ways to make it go further. For these patties, ground meat (usually beef, but really whatever was available) was mixed with potato, with chopped onions and other veg thrown in when available.
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Lord Woolton pie
Often known simply as Woolton pie, after the British Minister for Food, Lord Woolton pie was one of many simple, tasty, carb-heavy dishes to come out of the Second World War. With meat scarce, the pie crust instead became a vehicle for lots of veg with oatmeal to bulk it out.
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Lord Woolton pie
Back then, it was typically made with non-rationed root veg like potatoes, turnips, carrots and swede, all of which were relatively easy to come by. And it became such an icon of wartime sustenance that it was referred to as “weapon of mass nutrition” against the Nazis.
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Mock goose
Also known as savory goose, this English dish is referenced in 1747 cooking tome The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, who describes it as “Knuckle stuffed with Onion and Sage…with a little Pepper and Salt, Gravy and Apple-Sauce to it”. The knuckle in question tended to be pork, though sausagemeat or offal were often used.
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Mock goose
The recipe was especially popular during the First and Second World Wars, when it became a festive substitute for goose or duck. Recipes vary, throwing in lentils, sliced potatoes, apples… Sometimes there was no meat involved whatsoever and it was more like a lentil bake – very much in keeping with the frugal, ‘make do and mend’ wartime spirit.
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Potato and hot dog salad
Similar to the poor man’s meal, which was widespread during the Great Depression, this ‘salad’ of potatoes and chopped up hot dogs (plus anything else) was a hit in the 1940s. Convenience foods, like canned hot dogs, were more readily available and, with many women working during wartime, quick, protein-packed meals that could be thrown together in minutes were understandably popular.
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Kartoshka
Known, charmingly, as cookie-crumb potatoes, kartoshka don’t actually contain any spuds at all. In Soviet Russia, industrial kitchens and canteens had to account for every scrap of food to the extent that no crumb went to waste. Instead, those crumbs were used in new creations like these sweet, potato-shaped truffles made with cookie or cake crumbs bound with butter, condensed milk and cocoa powder, sometimes with rum or liqueur added.
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Budae jjigae
Also known as army stew, budae jjigae was created around the end of the Korean War using leftover food purchased by Koreans from US army-base mess halls. That food, which would have otherwise been thrown out, consisted mostly of canned ingredients like hot dogs, Spam and beans, plus processed cheese. Combined with kimchi, garlic, chili and noodles, however, it created a not-particularly-pretty but actually very delicious dish that remains a popular comfort food.
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Egg drop soup
Eggs became a valuable source of protein in 1930s America, when meat was too expensive for many families. Egg drop soup, a simple take on a Chinese recipe, sounds quite fancy but was actually simple and relatively inexpensive, making it popular in homes and soup kitchens during the Great Depression.
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Egg drop soup
Its base is potato and onion, browned to add flavor, to which seasoning and water are added to simmer into a simple broth. Eggs are added once the potatoes are nice and mushy, stirred in until scrambled to add texture. Still delicious and satisfying today.
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Spaghetti casserole
Pasta bakes are pretty standard nowadays, but they were novel in 1950s America, when magazines and adverts shared recipes for simple, quick suppers making use of convenience and canned foods. Spaghetti casserole became a mainstay for time-poor cooks, making use of budget pantry ingredients and leftovers from tomato soup to veg.
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Cape Cod turkey
The name is definitely not a giveaway. Cape Cod turkey does not, in fact, contain so much as a turkey thigh or scrap of white meat. It’s actually salt cod served in a creamy sauce, topped with boiled eggs and potatoes. It isn’t known for sure where the name came from, though a popular theory is that it was served at Thanksgiving when early New England settlers had little available but fish.
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Plum Charlotte
The ‘Charlotte’ pudding – made in a ring mold lined with bread and filled with apples – dates back to the 17th century, but this frugal fruity sponge was a wartime hero in 1940s Britain. It fulfilled its patriotic duty simply by using up ingredients that were plentiful and might otherwise end up in the trash, namely old fruit and stale bread.
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Slugburger
Thankfully, the slugburger isn’t quite so surreal – or slimy – as it sounds. Yet another favorite that emerged during the Great Depression, it’s actually a beef or pork patty supplemented with potato flour and fried. It was a way for restaurant and diner owners to make their scant meat supplies stretch further, but the crispy texture – giving way to soft, juicy meat – remains popular in America’s Southern states.
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