Books for a Keen Cook

They Can't Ration These

This cookery book 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; and using recipes which are both excellent and unusual. Vicomte de Mauduit, a Frenchman living in England who had already published four cookery books, wrote They Can't Ration These in 1940, in response to the outbreak of war – after which English cooks might have to rely completely on squirrels, trout, nettles, samphire, beetroot, blueberries and camomile tea; 'for them this book will be a delight' wrote the TLS about this perfect present for the ecologically-minded.

Endpaper

'October', a fabric design in potato prints and paint on sugar paper, was done at her kitchen table by Alma Ramsey-Hosking in c. 1940