They Can't Ration These

by Georges de Mauduit

This 1940 cookery book published in response to the outbreak of war about 'food for free' suggests ways of escaping the tyranny of the supermarkets; thinking of ready-to-eat food as being something we can find for ourselves, rather than in a tin.

Genres: World War II, Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Historical, Culinary, Food

171 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Georges de Mauduit de Kervern was known as the Vicomte de Mauduit. General de Mauduit, his great-grandfather, went to St Helena with Napoleon; his father, Comte de Mauduit, was a cavalry officer and Chief of Staff; his mother, a great beauty, died when Georges, who had three younger sisters, was only 14. After his father remarried Georges went to school in England and then travelled widely - the subtitle of the autobiographical Private Views (1932) is "reminiscences of a wandering nobleman".

He was an aviator in WWI and worked on irrigation projects in Egypt. He made his home in England, France and America and had numerous well-connected friends in many countries; he was married (briefly) twice. He wrote four cookery books, They Can't Ration These (1940) being the last.

He is believed to have been captured by the Nazis after the Fall of France and to have died in the concentration camp at Dachau, in Germany.

Reviews

[^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do hope that times do not again become so desperate that I’ll need the guidance in this book of the different methods of cooking a prepared hedgehog. Today hedgehog pâté would surely excite entirely the wrong type of conversation at the dinner table. Likewise I can see that roast sparrows must be avoided; their population nowadays not being anything like as numerous as in 1940; indeed the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) website advises that “the house sparrow is now red-listed as a species of high conservation concern.”

A certain degree of knowledge IS required in reading this book. The recipes for chestnuts are good, provided that the cook remembers to use edible (‘sweet’) chestnuts, and NOT horse (‘conkers’) chestnuts. Nettle soup is utterly delicious, and highly nutritious, but I would only use young nettles; a detail that is not given in this book, probably because eating to survive during wartime is very different from eating to reduce expenditure in peacetime! Mussels make for very good eating – provided that one can be sure that they have not grown in sewerage-contaminated water, and that they were live when picked; two crucial points which are not mentioned in this book, perhaps because seventy years ago that would be assumed to be common knowledge in the country. Not now. Methods of home winemaking have also advanced considerably; no-one would now ‘spread a little yeast on a small piece of toast’! Nowadays there’s no need to salt down crocks of butter; the domestic freezer does the job much better.

So overall, I’d say that though this is a really delightful little book to read; the edible and cosmetic preparations are probably best read, not practiced, unless the reader has access to other more recently published books on the subject: those knowledgeably written by Richard Mabey and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall come immediately to mind; both of which writers also teach plant identification.

[Felicity · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the preface to this WWII guide to self-sufficiency the author identifies his intended readership as 'country-dwellers, campers, caravaners, hikers, and the necessitous', all of them facing disruption to their regular diet. It's a fascinating compendium for back-to-the-landers and 'grow-your-own' enthusiasts, containing numerous uses for neglected staples, many of them easily garnered, some best left alone. Setting out on a first foray into the wild, the rookie forager, however, needs to be armed not only with this instructive manual for survival but also with a shotgun and the ability to use it effectively. You should not shoot a wood pigeon in the breast, apparently, lest the pellets rebound off the bird's thick ruff of feathers, and you end up eating crow. Crows, however, are off the menu, but rooks may be substituted for the wood pigeon that missed your mark. There is even a recipe for roast cygnets, although the author had surely lived long enough in England to know that swans, at least mute swans, were off limits to commoners. Roast sparrows, we are assured, are 'far from despicable', especially when wrapped in vine leaves 'if available', although I can't recall ever having seen vine leaves growing wild in Northern Europe. Some of the suggestions for home economics seem likewise outlandish; would any householders, let alone hikers, have frittered their weekly ration of butter, eggs or sugar, let alone their pre-war stock of white wine, whisky or brandy, on tarting up baked hake or smoked woodcock? And the pat-a-cake recipe for leek pie with the recommended dollop of clotted cream and pastry case -- 'egg it and bake it for 1 hour ' -- is surely a culinary crime against nature. I regret that the abundance of bracken on my land will not be harvested as poor man's asparagus, as he proposes, given the carcinogenic properties of this sometime cattle fodder. This season's vast quantity of beech mast, however, almost tempts me to make my own nut butter even if the preparation requires a great deal of brute force. Whether or not life's too short to stuff a mushroom, it's definitely not enriched by all the pounding and macerating of roots and shoots and sieving of vegetables in which the Vicomte, or more likely his commis chef, supposedly engaged. In view of his Gallic origins, it's surprising that he makes no mention of garlic or even wild garlic, both obtrusively absent from his store of raw ingredients. Overall, he has produced an edifying handbook for hunter-gathers, over a quarter of a century before Richard Mabey's Food for Free etc., appealing to both omnivores and herbivores, and most likely appalling them in equal measure.

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book published in wartime, focusing on foraging for or growing one's own food, together with recipes and notes for preparing beauty products and various other things, written by a French nobleman who had been an airman in World War One and disappeared, presumed killed, later in World War Two.

It was first published in 1940 when the population of Britain might have feared they would soon have to live on nettles, squirrels and pigeons. It's fun to see the Vicomte trying to persuade the Brits to catch and eat frogs and snails. However, the recipes rely heavily on butter and eggs, which would soon be harder to find than vegetables and butcher's meat, so as things turned out, its practical value to the average British housewife was probably low.

[Paula Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating look at WWII food and rationing problems. It's rather a hoot but take it with a grain of salt because they have a whole section devoted to eating grass. There are a lot of healthy safe weeds but grass is not one of them. It's written by a Vicomte so perhaps he was a little eccentric I'm guessing.

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ahead of its time in terms of foraging ad frugal, survival foods and medicinals.

[Alex Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

if the nazis don't get you the borax in the pickles will

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written to give people advice during thee ration years, so we have information on foraging, with recipes for Nettle Soup and edible seaweed and Roast Hedgehog or Squirrel Tail Soup. How to make charcoal or cook using a hay box, beauty treatment or medicinal concoctions from plants, and many other recipes and tips.
It is interesting more from a historical point of view and not rather than being useful advice to follow. Some of it is wrong, and some is incomplete, although it may give you some ideas of where to begin, with some further research.