9th December 1941, Berwickshire News and General Advertiser
As the mother of a little girl who has a whole array of food allergies, including eggs, the eggless baking of the Second World War is a rather useful inspiration. Rationing meant only one egg a week for an adult, and it seems a bit of a waste to use it in a cake if there’s other ways around it.
9th December 1941, Berwickshire News and General Advertiser
Here’s an eggless Christmas Cake recipe, from the Berwickshire News in 1941. The moisture and binding properties are replaced by milk and golden syrup, and vinegar is added to help the rise. Vinegar is also a key ingredient in the vegan “wacky cake”, which originated during the Depression, a version of which the lovely cook at my daughter’s nursery makes for her every Monday.
9th December 1941, Berwickshire News and General Advertiser
Christmas Cake (without eggs)
10 oz flour
4 oz margarine
4 oz sugar (brown or caster)
8 oz currants
8 oz sultanas
4 oz raisins (chopped)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp. golden syrup
1/2 tsp mixed spice
3 level tsp Royal baking powder
1 dessertspoonful vinegar
1/2 pint milk
Peel on 1 orange
Clean and prepare the fruit
Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and spice together, and rub in the margarine.
Chop the orange peel very finely.
Add all dry ingredients and mix well.
Bind with the syrup and the milk mixed together and slightly warmed.
Lastly, stir in the vinegar.
Turn at once into a greased and lined cake tin (best size 7 ins.) and bake in a moderately slow oven (Regulo 3 or 325 degrees) for 3 1/2 – 4 hours.
2 oz of chopped nuts may be added to the cake if desired.
Blanched and split almonds may be used to decorate the cake and should be added after the cake has been in the over 15 minutes.
Until I saw this advert, I didn’t realise that eggs used to be a vital component of Ovaltine. They even had their own egg farm next to their original factory in the UK, based in Kings Langley, and which they used in the advertisements. “Malt, milk and eggs, flavoured with cocoa,” was how they described it. Today Ovaltine is owned by Twinings and has ditched the egg, apart from the “may contain traces of egg” disclaimer. As all food adverts were apparently compelled to do from around 1850-1950, the claimed nutritional value was paramount.
Western Gazette, 24th October 1930
Eggs, and the associated implication of nutritional value, were indicated in its original name of Ovomaltine which references “ovo” for egg, and malt. It was invented in Switzerland in 1904 and is still called that there – amusingly, the reason for its name change to Ovaltine in the UK in 1909 was apparently because of a spelling mistake on the trademark application.
It was a household name of a brand thanks especially to the “The Ovaltineys” radio programme. It ran from 1935 until 1952 on Radio Luxembourg, with a break while the station closed for the duration of the Second World War. It might have ended over 20 years before I was born, but even I know the “Ovaltineys” jingle as sung by The Beverley Sisters.
In 1953, the brand got more positive publicity for its nutritional value when Sir Edmund Hilary took Ovaltine with him on his expedition to climb Mount Everest. Now, I associate it more with a soothing, warm-milk-to-help-you-sleep, kind of effect, rather than climbing mountains.
I’m always a fan of Art Deco buildings, and the Kings Langley factory is a beautiful example. It closed in 2002, and now it’s been converted into flats, but with the same listed façade. And where the The Ovaltine Egg Farm was based is now the site of Renewable Energy Systems Ltd.
Ovaltine Factory, Kings Langley
The company doesn’t make it very clear where it’s manufactured for the UK now. But it does have some more vintage Ovaltine ads available on their website, which are worth a look.
Like some kind of beef-based electricity, Bovril puts BEEF into you.
If anyone can tell me what “The Body-building power of Bovril has been proved by independent scientific investigation to be 10 to 20 times the amount taken,” I would be grateful.
An advert from 1898 for “Dr Tibbles Maltated Bread” that sounds like it should be announced by the town crier, or else the Beatles should have written it into a song, Mr Kite-style.
“Be it known unto all men that the celebrated DR TIBBLES of VI-COCOA FAME is now introducing MALTATED BREAD, MALTATED BANANA BISCUITS, MALTATED BANANA FOOD and numerous Household Remedies, including Brain Feeder, Cough Balsam, Child’s Restorer, &c”
Biggleswade Advertiser, 10th June 1898
“Dr Tibbles” – he was probably one of those made-up doctor names used to add some weight to branded products. But this is what I’m imagining….
Bircher muesli – an old recipe that has been recently revived, trendified and is probably now available in a independent coffee shop near you. However, it has been modernised a little. The original cream and sugar have largely given way to yogurt and more fruit, but there are a huge amount of different recipes out there now.
It’s one of those nineteenth-century health recipes, served in sanitoriums and spas – like those invented by Dr Kellogg, and Hydropathic Pudding. It was invented by Dr Maximilian Bircher-Benner who considered it to be mainly of use in order to get patients to eat raw apples, believing that raw food contained a high level of energy from solar light. He invented muesli in general, not just adapting it to produce this version – muesli meaning “little mush”, which is a very apt name for this recipe.
It was presented in this 1928 newspaper as “a new breakfast dish” – although Dr Bircher-Benner apparently invented it at the end of the nineteenth century, it was only in the 1920s that it became popularised. This recipe is the authentic version, consisting of oats soaked in water overnight, grated apple, lemon zest and juice, brown sugar, cream or condensed milk, and chopped nuts.
I made the recipe exactly as specified. There is the option to use cream or condensed milk and I went with the condensed milk version as:
1) that was what Dr Bircher originally used,
2) the recipes on my blog are all about the retro, and this definitely adds that element to it,
and 3) frankly any excuse to eat that divine nectar.
It calls for grated nuts to be sprinkled over as a finishing touch, and I toasted some almond flakes for this purpose.
My verdict – “little mush” is very apt for the look of it, brightened only by the grated red skin of the Pink Lady apple I used. Not particularly inspiring appearance-wise. But the taste! Oh, easily the most delicious breakfast I have had in a long time. The fresh juiciness of the grated apple with the soothing oats, the crunch of the toasted almonds, and the sharp lemon and sweet condensed milk deliciously combining to make the overall taste almost like pudding. I had previously only tried Bircher muesli in those pre-made pots you get with a Boots Meal Deal, which are a not unpleasant but blandly sweet slop. This was….well, not like that.
For more information on the infinite variety of Bircher’s muesli, have a look at Felicity Cloake’s recipe from her fascinating “How to cook the perfect…” series, to which I am a devotee. She tries a range of different recipes, old and new, in order to come up with her own, “perfect”, version. Her verdict on using condensed milk is that it makes the dish “jarringly sweet”, which I didn’t find to be the case, although in my recipe there is only one dessert-spoon of the stuff between four portions, a little less than a teaspoon each, which I think was an amount which worked well. She ditches the brown sugar for the same reason, and I’m sure it could happily be jettisoned, especially if you soaked the oats in apple juice rather than water. My main disagreement with Felicity is that she considers the lemon to be unnecessary if you’re not using the condensed milk – the sharpness not needed if the sweetness is not there. While I’m sure her recipe is perfectly lovely itself, it was the lemon zesty-ness that elevated this dish into the realm of the delicious for me, and stayed with me long after the bowl had been scraped clean.
Bircher Muesli, 1928-style
For four people
Three-quarter teacup of rolled oats, soaked overnight, the cup being filled up with water.
Four medium-sized apples.
Grated rind of one lemon and half the juice.
One dessert spoon brown sugar
One dessert spoon thick cream (or condensed milk)
Grated nuts
Grate the whole of the apples, leaving out only the stalk and the pips. Add the lemon juice and grated rind. Pour off any superfluous water, and add the soaked rolled oats. Lastly, add the sugar and cream, and mix all well together. Grated nuts may be sprinkled over it if wanted – or taken with it at table. This may be made with bananas or other fruit in place of the apples.
You can’t give a baby booze, to quote Vic and Bob.
Oh, you can with this one, it’s “temperance”, non-alcoholic “Kops Wine”. Kids wine. Edinburgh Evening News, 13th November 1924
Plus, a slagging off in 1891 for temperance “Kops Ale”, below. They are making a joke on the old phrase “a good wine needs no bush” which means, I think, that a good product doesn’t need to be advertised or promoted. “Kops” was so rubbish it didn’t only need a bush, it needed a whole copse (do you see what they did there?)
It doesn’t sound like it was much “kop”! Haha! Well, that’s a better joke than the one below anyway. Lichfield Mercury, 10th July, 1891
A letter from The Liverpool Echo, 1918, deploring the racism evident in pubs, preventing black customers from getting served. However, it wasn’t until the Race Relations Act of 1965 that it became illegal to refuse to serve someone on the basis of their skin colour.
Liverpool Echo, 3rd September 1918
“Coloured Men and Drink
In many public houses in Liverpool if a coloured man asks for a drink, he is told “I am sorry, I am not allowed to serve coloured men!” In the name of justice and right, why? Can the Liverpool authorities say that the percentage of convictions for offences through drink of black men exceeds that of white men? If not, why is he denied a drink? – G.C.”
At the bottom of the clipping are some more of my favourite “problem page” correspondances – the ones where the question asked is never revealed, only the answer printed.
Brown Windsor Soup – surely the stuff that the British Empire was built on? I know of it through Tony Hancock ordering it in an unappetising 1950s canteen, the Carry On team being served it for dinner it like unadventurous Brits in Carry on Abroad, and, well, in numerous other comedy settings from the 50s to the 70s. It’s famously the dull embodiment of dreary British cuisine and looks a bit like sludge. Although I can’t remember the ingredients ever being specified, I imagined it as a kind of thin, liquidised beef stew.
So it rather blew my mind to learn on Wikipedia that, in all likelihood, Brown Windsor Soup never actually existed as an actual, real thing from Victorian or Edwardian times. It was first included on the odd menu in the 1920s and 30s and thereafter apparently mainly used as a jokey kind of reference to terrible, dull British food.
Michael Quinion has investigated, and makes the claim that Brown Windsor Soup is first mentioned in print as late as 1943 – in the book The Fancy by Monica “great-granddaughter of Charles” Dickens. He has a few theories as to where the name came from. Firstly, there was White Windsor Soup, an undeniably real Victorian dish. Secondly, Brown Windsor Soap was also a definite, very famous, type of soap. And so there might have been some kind of confusion between these two items, or possibly a deliberate mashup of them both, for satirical purposes or otherwise.
I decided I wasn’t going to take Wikipedia’s word for this. I was going to uncover some true Brown Windsor Soup, as enjoyed by Queen Victoria. Wading through The British Newspaper Archive, the extensive search results that immediately popped up looked promising. However, on closer investigation, it was a quirk of the reading software of the Archive, which isn’t always entirely accurate on account of the age of the papers scanned, and the tiny typefaces that can be used. Every result referred to Brown Windsor Soap, not soup.
However. There is another type of Victorian soup that may have been the Brown Windsor in all but specific name – the vague-sounding “Brown Soup”.
In basic form, this could be “Beef Tea” – either in invalid cookery form or as a kind of Bovril drink, like this one, “Bouillon Fleet” from 1889: Aberdeen Journal, 16th March 1889
Or here on this restaurant menu in 1890, which was probably a more substantial version: Shields Daily Gazette, 24th March 1890
And it was served as a starter at the New Year’s Dinner at a “Home for Old Men and Women” in Glasgow, 1895. This stereotypical Victorian menu consisted of brown soup, beef-steak pie and plum pudding. Glasgow Herald, 2nd January 1895
Talking of pudding – look! A recipe for “Brown Windsor pudding” in 1897. It’s a spiced fruit steamed pudding which sounds gorgeous. I’m guessing that this was a reference to the aforementioned soap, which was also advertised as containing spices such as cinnamon. If there was spiced food based on the soap, then maybe “Brown Windsor Soup” should properly also be cinnamonned, gingered and cloved, a bit like Mulligatawny soup? Dundee Courier, 22nd December 1897
Here’s a 1913 recipe for brown soup. It’s made of beef and vegetables, but made extra brown with the addition of Bovril and browning. None more brown. Northampton Mercury, 26th December 1913
And one from 1916, with instructions on how to make the soup extra brown, by browning the flour in front of the fire. The People’s Journal, 4th November 1916
And another one. It all sounds quite nice to me. The Arbroath Herald, 1th September 1925
The first actual mention of “Brown Windsor soup” I found, on a Hartlepool menu from 1928. It was from Binns’ Restaurant – perhaps they invented it? Hartlepool Mail, 1st February 1928
A 1928 recipe for Brown Soup here, using vermicelli to thicken, if wished. Western Gazette, 13th April 1928
Brown Windsor still being served at Binns’ in Hartlepool in 1931: Hartlepool Mail, 2nd October 1931
A prize-winning brown soup recipe from 1931. I suspect that the winner, Mrs G. Walker, had seen the “Everything That Is Good” recipe above, in 1928. Veeerry similar. The Western Gazette, 17th April 1931
Windsor soup was finally commercially available in the 1940s. Batchelor’s version is here, although it wasn’t called “Brown”. Tinned foods were handy in wartime, it’s “A meal in itself” and could be heated “at the minimum of fuel cost”. Although “quantities are rather limited and a little patience may be needed,” in order to obtain some. Emphasizing its potential scarcity makes it sound more desirable, of course. Nottingham Evening Post, 2nd June, 1942
Finally, the last reference I found. Because The British Newspaper Archive only goes up to the mid-1950s, so far. I love the Britishness of the “If you must eat out…” Berwick Advertiser, 17th March 1955
I wonder when the very last bowl of Brown Windsor soup was eaten? Maybe there are people still making it out there, although what their recipe is, who knows? I couldn’t find anything specifying what makes “Brown Soup” different from “Brown Windsor”, if there even is a difference. And so, now I feel the need to invent my own version – a very gently spiced, very brown, beefy, vegetabley kind of concoction. Watch this space.
Update – thanks to Steve in the comments below, who let me know that there was now a date of 1926 as the first reference on Wikipedia. This is it:
Portsmouth Evening News, 24th February 1926
And after some more research I’ve found a 1926 reference to Brown Windsor in Binns’, earlier than the 1928 version above. Still a few months later than the one in the Portsmouth Evening News though.
Hartlepool Mail, 21st May 1926Hartlepool Mail, 21st May 1926
A protest against the Temperance movement in 1920. The advert is saying that the only real effect of an alcohol ban, as was seen in the US, would be to prevent the working class from accessing booze – those with money would always be able to pay their hands on it. I agree that “a sober working class” was, no doubt, desirable by those in charge.
Lanarkshire Daily Post, 13th June 1920
And here’s a nice little picture of some members of the labour movement having fun – trade union delegates taking a break from the 1917 congress for a splash about on Blackpool beach. How great it would be if politicians did this at their party conferences now.
Another peek at a book from the brilliant Forgotten Books website, and one which includes one of my favourite topics – the disappeared art of invalid cookery. This book, “The Art of German Cooking and Baking” by Mrs Lina Meier is a general cookbook from 1922. I like looking at the slight through-the-looking-glass effect of recipes from other countries with their different ingredients and food traditions.
Pre-NHS (in the UK), there were a lot of sick people being looked after in the home, and effective medicines for many diseases were either new or non-existent. If you look at any cookery book from Victorian times to pre-World War Two, you’ll find a chapter on “Invalid Cookery“, aimed to help those looking after sick loved ones, and designed to be appropriately nutritious and easily digestible. However, they are significantly different to what we might think of as food for sick people now. When I’m ill I want either Heinz Tomato Soup, toast and butter or my mum’s mashed potato. When I was a kid the upside to feeling ill was that it was the only time you could have Lucozade. It would have been weird to drink it while not ill in the 1970s. However, if anyone had tried to give me toast water or raw minced beef soaked in lukewarm water, I wouldn’t have considered that my first choice to settle my stomach.
Looking at the Invalid Cookery section, this doesn’t differ much from what was suggested for British invalids – a lot of beef tea and bouillons.
We’re getting on the train to crazy town now, though – with “Fried Calf’s Brain” and “Calf’s Tongue” being offered as suitable sickness foods. Also “macaroni” is classed as a vegetable for some reason.
Mmmm, invalid puddings. It starts off sensibly and recognisably with a kind of rice pudding, but quickly starts getting quite raw-eggy. “Chocolate Cream with Red Wine”, is a strange chocolately-wine cross between a jelly and an uncooked meringue. I object to “Beaten Egg” (ingredients – egg and salt) being classed as a “sweet dish”. Interestingly, there are strict instructions on where to beat the egg – “The egg should be beaten in a well-ventilated room only, because the air in the room influences the nourishment served to the invalid.”
There’s lots of “foam” recipes – “Red wine foam” on this page. Very cheffy, circa 2013. Ice cream “can often be given to invalids without harm”. I think I’ll pick that, please.
I can’t help noticing that invalids were expected to drink quite a lot of wine. It’s in nearly all the recipes. Here there’s the disgusting-sounding “Milk Lemonade” – water, sugar, milk, lemon juice and, of course, white wine. Even the ascetic-sounding “Water with Lemon Juice” contains sherry.
This is an interesting recipe – “Iron and Wine“. Iron deficiency was a big problem then, as it still is now. In fact, I recently read about a simple remedy to combat endemic anaemia seen in parts of the world today – an Iron fish which you add to your cooking pot, and which leaches out small amounts of iron into the food. In 1922, you could either have your Pink Pills for Pale People or you could cut to the chase and add iron filings directly into your wine, like the kind of reckless experiment I would have done with my chemistry set aged 9. Ignoring the iron, which I imagine would give the wine a bit of a bloody tang, wine with ginger and horseradish sounds pretty exciting.
More for the alcoholic invalid here – “White Wine Soup”, “Red Wine Soup” and “Beer Soup”.
“Cow Udder”, anyone?
Moving on from Invalid Cookery, some general baking now. The directions for “1 1/2 cents’ worth of yeast” in the ingredients didn’t make these recipes very time-proof.
Berliner pancakes, of John F. Kennedy fame:
I object to to this one – “English Cake“. It contains ammonia as a raising agent, not something I believe is traditional in English cookery, but is seen in German and Greek baking. Ammonia, though. Apparently, it smells as a raw ingredient but the aroma bakes off during cooking. I don’t think I’d chance it, to be honest – the fear of ending up with “Cat Litter Cake” would be too much.
“English Bride’s Cake” here – still the traditional wedding fruit cake.
I like this recipe for “natural” green food dye – soaking coffee beans in egg white to produce a green colour.
Finally, another “English” recipe – “English Chow Chow”, . It’s a kind of piccalilli, although I think the name “chow chow” only lives on in parts of the US now.
