The Challenge

We set our chefs Phil and Jethro the task of creating some recipes using only wartime rations. They’re used to creating new recipes for us, but this was certainly trickier than usual! 

For a suitable setting, we took Phil and Jethro along to the Boscombe Down Aviation Collection and they cooked surrounded by aircraft, cockpits, replicas, model weapons and trial equipment documenting the story of flight and flight test in the UK. We had to tear them away from the flight simulator at one point!

The volunteers at the BDAC approved the meals!

Phil’s recipe - Egg and Sausage Pie

Phil’s recipe - Egg and Sausage Pie

While meat and eggs were both in short supply, many families turned to back-yard chickens to supplement their one-egg-per-adult weekly allowance. This recipe is a great way to make four sausages feed a lot of people. It could be served hot with vegetables (potatoes and carrots were fairly plentiful), or cold; it sets firm so could be sliced and taken on the go.

Ingredients 

     Pastry                                                   Filling

     · 110g plain flour                                · 4 pork sausages

     · 55g lard                                              · 3 eggs

     · ¼ teaspoon salt                                · 150ml milk

     · Approx. 125ml water                       · ¼ teaspoon pepper

Method

1. Rub together the flour, salt and lard until it resembles breadcrumbs.
2. Add enough water to work into a ball. Cover and chill for 30 minutes.
3. Fry or grill the sausage until golden, cool, then cut in half lengthways.
4. Beat the eggs with the milk and pepper.
5. Grease a pie dish with a little more lard and line with a disc of greaseproof paper.
6. Roll the pastry and cover the dish, pricking with a fork.
7. Arrange the sausage halves like the spokes of a wheel.
8. Pour the egg mix over.
9. Bake until pastry is golden and the filling is firm (around 30 minutes at 180°C).

Jethro's recipe - Carrot Cookies

Butter and sugar were both strictly rationed, however the weekly margarine ration (4oz) was twice that of butter (2oz). Carrots were easy to grow in a back garden, and their sweetness led to them being used to replace some of a recipe’s sugar content. We ate carrot jam, carrot curry, carrot pudding and even the ‘carrot lolly’ which was just a raw carrot on a stick!

Ingredients                                                

     · 1 tablespoon margarine

     · 2 tablespoons sugar                                         

     · A few drops of vanilla or almond essence                          

     · 4 tablespoons grated raw carrot

     · 6 tablespoons self-raising flour or plain flour mixed with ½ teaspoon of    

baking powder

     · Extra sugar to sprinkle on top

Method

1. Cream the margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy.
2. Beat in the flavouring and grated carrot.
3. Fold in the flour and baking powder mix.
4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into greased muffin trays.
5. Sprinkle the tops with sugar and bake at 220°C, 425°F, gas mark 7 for about 20 minutes.

Jethro's recipe - Carrot Cookies

Do you have any recipes with a story behind them? 

So share it with us, we’d love to hear them!

Taking good care of our precious planet

As a sign of our commitment to combatting climate change, we are making a pledge to become ‘net zero’. We want to get there by 2040, which might be a little way off, but the journey has begun - and there are lots of targets along the way. We’re working together across every part of the business to identify opportunities for reducing our carbon footprint with a view to getting it all the way down to...zero!

Don't forget - you can also return all of your empty meal trays back to us on your next delivery! We make sure that 100% of these are recycled into brand new trays for our meals through our trail-blazing Collect and Recycle Scheme.