Food in the books set in wartime (Kidillin, Smuggler Ben, Adventurous Four)

[Hannah]

I've gotten the subject of food in the different series/books in my head .

I guess the Barney and the Adventure Series will be pretty similar to the Secret Series and the Famous Five - big meals at home or at inns or farms and nice picnics. All these books ignore the rationing that in most books would have still been in place.

I have decided to see which/how food is mentionend in the three books set openly in the wartime.

Smuggler Ben (1943)

• sausages
• porridge
• bacon
• eggs
• "their butter and jam" (Maybe a hint of "their" rations?)
• bread
• sandwiches
• cake
• currant buns
• sweets
• chocolate
• ice-creams
• plums
• homemade lemonade

I've been wondering if such a meal would have been really possible?

“Gracious, Hilary—you don’t mean to say you’ve had enough tea yet?” said Alec, pretending to be surprised. “You’ve only had seven pieces of bread and jam, three pieces of cake and two currant buns!”

The Children of Kidillin (1940)

• bull’s-eye peppermints
• blackberries
• tomato sandwiches
• eggs
• salt
• brown bread
• butter
• scones
• currant cake
• ham sandwiches
• tomatoes
• apples
• jam-tarts
• ginger buns
• milk

The Adventurous four (1941)
More food is mentioned but of course this book covers quite a long time span - and some of the food stems from the German stores.

• fruit - peaches, apples, pears, pineapple, bilberries
• soup
• potatoes
• runner beans
• tinned asparagus tips
• baked beans and tomato sauce
• bread
• rolls of bread
• buns
• butter
• eggs
• sausages
• tongue
• potted meat
• fish
• prawns
• shell-fish
• salmon
• sugar
• salt
• chocolate
• biscuits
• toffee
• Nestlé’s milk
• milk-powder
• tinned milk
• cocoa
• water

The description of the store cave and what they take away:

The boxes were full of tins — there were tins of soup, meat, vegetables, fruit, sardines — everything one could think of. There was a chest of flour, a chest of tea, tins of salt, even tins of butter and lard, well-sealed and air-tight.
...
The children each chose what they thought they would like to take away. Sugar they wanted, and salt. The tinned butter would be splendid, and any tins of meat and fruit. Jill thought she might be able to make some rolls of bread with the flour, or, at any rate, some scones. They took tins of powdered milk too, and each child carried quite a heavy load down the narrow passages that led from the Round Cave to the shore-cave.

[Boodi 2]

I assume that the descriptions of food in the books written during the Second World War when rationing was in place were intended to cheer up readers and did not really reflect the reality. While I have no personal experience of that period I do remember my grandmother describing the rationing that was in place at the time and which continued into the 1950s. Mind you, the idea of tinned butter sounds revolting!!!

[Hannah]

I was wondering if there was a difference between books "just written" in that time but taking place in some kind of parallel universe and those that mention the war.

The lists in the other threads are longer but then they were about series of 5 or 21 books so it's difficult to compare.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Gosh - that's some research, Hannah!

I think that ice-cream was banned in the UK in 1942. Given that a book could take around a year from being written to appearing in print, then the ban may not have yet happened when Smuggler Ben was written

[Courtenay]

I think that ice-cream was banned in the UK in 1942.

Ice cream was banned in 1942?? War is hell...

Seriously, though — fascinating research, Hannah. I read both Smuggler Ben and The Children of Kidillin fairly recently and was struck by the fact that they're among Enid's very few stories that are explicitly set in wartime, but I don't think I paid much attention to the amount and variety of foods being consumed and whether or not these would have been realistic!

[Anita Bensoussane]

A very interesting list, Hannah.

Even in books set solidly during wartime, I agree with Boodi that Enid Blyton probably chose not to dwell on food rationing. That would explain why her characters have ready access to items like meat, cake and chocolate.

Sugar rationing is touched on in the Mr. Pink-Whistle story 'A Wonderful Party'. Twins Mollie and Michael tell Mr. Pink-Whistle that their mother is making them a big birthday cake with pink icing. Mollie adds, "She saved up the sugar icing specially for us." (I wonder why she calls it sugar icing, rather than icing sugar?) 'A Wonderful Party' was first published in Sunny Stories in 1941, before appearing in Mr. Pink-Whistle Interferes.

There's also 'Mr. Twiddle's Meat Pie', in which Twiddle wonders whether he and Mrs. Twiddle ought to accept an invitation to have dinner with his wife's sister, Harriet, because "food is so expensive." Mrs. Twiddle replies, "Quite right - food is expensive just now - so you can go out this afternoon and buy a meat pie from the cookie-shop. You won't have to stand in the queue for more than an hour, I should think." That story was published in Sunny Stories in 1944, before being included in Don't Be Silly, Mr. Twiddle!

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Ice cream was banned in 1942?? War is hell...

When I used to talk to children about the background of the FF - that is what they thought too!

I also used to explain that EB was escapism literature - especially if you were being read-to in the depths of an air raid shelter

[Anita Bensoussane]

Good point, Viv. Enid Blyton wrote to librarian Mr. S. C. Dedman in 1949:

It always amazes me when people deride books for being what they call 'escapist'. Any intelligent person must surely know, if he thinks about it, that a large part of our finest literature is escapist - take Treasure Island for instance. Escapist literature should only be scorned when it is badly written or conceived, not because it is 'escapist'. This has become the kind of cliché used by the less intelligent reviewers, critics or librarians.

All adventure stories are 'escapist' - mine among them. I cannot think why some people use this adjective in a derogative sense - such stories fulfil a very real need - and one of the finest, Eric Williams' The Wooden Horse, is better than any fiction.

But only about thirty of my books are 'escapist'. I write Nature books, 'home stories' of family life, religious books, readers of all kinds for schools...

The letter can be read in full in Appendix 6 of Barbara Stoney's Enid Blyton - the Biography.

[GloomyGraham]

tinned butter sounds revolting!!!

Enid and her children thought so too. She had readers from Australia send her some in food parcels during the war but threw it away as they were rancid.

I commented once in a thread about food that Aunt Fanny's huge cupboard full of tinned items during the second FF book would have been considered 'hoarding' during those years of rationing.

[IceMaiden]

One food I notice creeps up a lot in the books is blancmange which I'm guessing must have been quite popular pudding when other things were scarcer. Having read about it but never tried it I was intrigued about this Blyton story delicacy and bought a packet a while back. To my disappointment it tastes nothing like I imagined and has a funny chalky texture that I really didn't like. That is the sort of thing I was imagining Sid's 'chocolate mould' to be, with blancmange being more similar to angel delight. One thing about the books is that Enid excelled at making something sound far better than it really was.

And I agree about tinned butter sounding revolting! I'm fairly sure tinned sausages are mentioned somewhere too, which unless they're the hot-dog type, also don't sound too appetising.

[Hannah]

I sometimes have sausages out of a glass. They're Frankfurter or Wiener - that's similar to hot-dog sausages. Here are some kinds in pictures.
Fresh sausages are of course better but the ones from the glass are ok. I should think that tinned sausages would work the same way.

[Anita Bensoussane]

One food I notice creeps up a lot in the books is blancmange which I'm guessing must have been quite popular pudding when other things were scarcer. Having read about it but never tried it I was intrigued about this Blyton story delicacy and bought a packet a while back. To my disappointment it tastes nothing like I imagined and has a funny chalky texture that I really didn't like.

Reading your post prompted me to look up the difference between blancmange and junket, IceMaiden. Junket is another milk-based dessert which features in the short story 'Junket Through the Window'. An internet search brought up the following information. I didn't know that blancmange is often flavoured with almonds (I've had blancmange which wasn't flavoured with almonds), or that curds and whey (as eaten by Miss Muffet in the nursery rhyme) is another name for junket.

Blancmange and Junket are both milk-based desserts. Blancmange is a sweet dessert popular throughout Europe commonly made with milk or cream and sugar thickened with rice flour, gelatin, corn starch, or Irish moss (a source of carrageenan), and often flavored with almonds. Junket is a milk-based dessert made with sweetened milk and rennet, the digestive enzyme that curdles milk. Some older cookery books call the dish curds and whey.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

I seem to recall that at our first Twyford meet-up I managed to take a blancmange just so that Anita could try it.

Blancmange is really a very thick custard, made from corn-flour, and the chalky texture goes when boiled.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, that was the first picnic in 2007 (though not the first Enid Blyton Day, of course). It was drizzling with rain and we sat in a huddle on the ground next to "Gloomy Water", which we reached by dodging the dog dirt along a woodland track! Stef steered us in the direction of Dinton Pastures the following year, and we didn't look back!

[IceMaiden]

, "Quite right - food is expensive just now - so you can go out this afternoon and buy a meat pie from the cookie-shop.

What is a cookie-shop? Surely it doesn't mean a cookie as in the chocolate chip/ biscuit sort? Was there even such a thing as a biscuit shop or was it another name for a sweet shop?

I sometimes have sausages out of a glass. They're Frankfurter or Wiener - that's similar to hot-dog sausages. Here are some kinds in pictures.
Fresh sausages are of course better but the ones from the glass are ok. I should think that tinned sausages would work the same way.

Oh yes I've had those, as you say, very similar to hot-dogs. But I mean sausages as in actual sausages that come in either packets or those polystyrene trays with clingfilm. I can t imagine them being in a tin so presumably they would have been the hot-dog types but where they a thing in Britain when the books were written?

Reading your post prompted me to look up the difference between blancmange and junket, IceMaiden. Junket is another milk-based dessert which features in the short story 'Junket Through the Window'. An internet search brought up the following information. I didn't know that blancmange is often flavoured with almonds (I've had blancmange which wasn't flavoured with almonds), or that curds and whey (as eaten by Miss Muffet in the nursery rhyme) is another name for junket.

Blancmange and Junket are both milk-based desserts. Blancmange is a sweet dessert popular throughout Europe commonly made with milk or cream and sugar thickened with rice flour, gelatin, corn starch, or Irish moss (a source of carrageenan), and often flavored with almonds. Junket is a milk-based dessert made with sweetened milk and rennet, the digestive enzyme that curdles milk. Some older cookery books call the dish curds and whey.

I didn't know curds and whey was the same as junket either. What's the difference between those and a milk jelly then I wonder? Maybe something along these lines is what Sid's chocolate mould was too.