[Sca-cooks] [OOP] Culinary History from the Dark Side

[Terry Decker]

>> Wow.  One does not think of the
>> other side living under the same circumstances.  Of
>> course, there had to be wartime cook books on both sides
>> with propaganda to use rationed food properly.
>
> The genuinely scary part is that this book predates the war by two years. 
> Its cuisione is largely optimised for the demands of a war economy as 
> envisioned at the time (nobody expected the kind of privation the war 
> would eventually create), but it was sold in fairly large numbers and 
> advertised heavily in peacetime, and a lot of the transparent war 
> preparedness measures - reducing meat consumption, favouring local 
> producem, fuel economy - are disguised as 'health advice'.
>
> It's a pretty chilling realisation. This was not any decision from above, 
> BTW - the authors (domestic economy teachers, a heavily politicised 
> occupation at the time) took it upon themselves to prepare the people for 
> the great struggle to come.
>
> Brrrrh.
>
> YIS
>
> Giano Balestriere

One needs to remember that in 1938, Germany was still an austerity economy 
with a 432 million mark trade imbalance and a world wide recession in 
progress.  The financial measures of reducing meat consumption, using local 
produce, practicing fuel economy were probably as important to economic 
health as to preparing for war  That being said, I think, given the year, 
publishing such measures in a cookbook may have been meant to serve multiple 
purposes.  Although declarations of war did not occur until 1 September 
1939,  World War II really begins with the Austrian Anschluss and the move 
into the Sudetenland in 1938, which would dovetail with the idea of this 
book being used to prepare for war.

I'd love to read the thing sometime.

Bear