Victory Cook Book

Victory Cook Book

A recurring theme in wartime community cookbooks is the kitchen as home front. An ad for Eaton’s specifically celebrates “Soldiers of the Kitchen Front,” the women whose knowledge of nutrition and food preparation would help them nourish their families and keep up morale, while also conserving vital foods to support the soldiers’ victory overseas. Other advertisements, such as that for McGavin’s bread, instructed housewives on the fundamentals of nutrition. The company used Canada’s first Official Food Rules as a guide; these rules emerged in July 1942 as a response to the perceived need to maintain health during the strictures of wartime rationing (see Mosby). “Canada Approved” bread, available since 1942 and specifically endorsed in Canada’s Food Rules, refers to flour that is milled in such a way as to retain B vitamins (“Canada Approved Bread”). While the United States and Britain encouraged fortification of foods, the federal government’s Nutrition Services Division and the Canadian Council on Nutrition instead advocated for this alternative milling technique (Mosby 421). Vitamins are a recurring concern in the book, which exhorts the consumption of pork for its vitamin B content and notes the importance of “vitamin G,” now known as riboflavin. The book also gives instructions for how to clarify and deflavourize fat and use animal fats in place of butter or shortening, as well as advice for “stretching” small quantities of meat. It also includes a recipe for a “Supper Dish” from Mrs. A.P. McNab, the Lieutenant Governor’s wife.

Knox United Church

Friendship Circle, Knox United Church

[1944?]