Day at The Stores
As you may have surmised from reading this blog, I love all things historical, especially if they are to do with food. Therefore you might have an inkling at how excited I was to have a rummage around our stores recently! When our founder Frank Atkinson started the museum, he had a policy of “unselective collecting” which resulted in a huge number of items being donated to us. To get an idea of the scale, we have (for example) over 60,000 books and over two million photographs in our collection, and that doesn’t include all of the items that we have on display around the museum!
Luckily on this occasion I had an idea of what I was looking for, on previous visits there have been hours spent getting distracted by the numerous shelves, (although in my opinion any time spent in the stores could never be wasted). This time I was looking for some information on wartime cookery, one of my favourite topics. As much as I would have enjoyed researching this topic for my own amusement, this time it was for a purpose, we are currently working on finishing our very own Beamish Museum Cookbook! It is still in the early stages but watch this space, I will keep you all updated on the latest news!
We really want to get a reflection of what cooking would have been like during this time, making it feel as if you are stood in our Home Farm kitchen, rustling up something delicious on the range. To do this, I want to leave no stone unturned, so will be spending a lot of time reading through all of the leaflets, cookbooks, and hastily scribbled down recipes on scraps of paper that have been donated.
Something that will be covered in abundance is the impact of rationing, which was undeniably massive and changed the way that the nation viewed food forever. Thankfully we have a wealth of the leaflets that were distributed by the Ministry of Food for an insight. With titles such as “Making the Most of Your Sugar Ration” with a fat ration counterpart, you really get an idea of how inventive people had to be. There are techniques on how to “extend butter” by adding flour or mashed potato if the butter was going to be used to spread, I am not sure how successful or undetectable that would be…
There are also certificates issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, awarding those with impressive efforts of “cultivating plots of land to the best advantage”, a highly prized skill in these tough wartime years. There were also guides on crop rotation and seasonal planting, in order to get the most out of each patch of land – every carrot and potato was vital!
While searching through the collection, there were some great recipes that I think you will all enjoy, you might see them crop up in a cookery book in the future…
