The Great War Cook Book

First published in 1915, May Byron’s Wartime Cookery Book soon became a classic of wartime Home Front cook books. With some 550 recipes, she showed how to make tasty meals from basic, readily available and homegrown products.

With unrestricted submarine warfare and the loss of so many ships in the war, the populations of both Britain and Germany were nearly starved into submission. Food writer May Byron gives us a flavor of life on the Home Front with her Wartime Cookery Book, showing the everyday woman how to put a meal on the table with a reduced selection of ingredients.

From pigs’ trotters to raspberry and beetroot jam, she produced tasty recipes that could keep everyone fed using produce sourced mainly from Britain’s field, hedgerows and woodlands.