Shortages encouraged Londoners to be inventive with their sources of food. Beef, pork and lamb were all on the ration and very difficult to get hold of, but many sources of meat were not. Rabbit and chicken were not rationed. Neither were horses and many a beef dish must have been made with bits from a late finisher of the 3.20 at Kempton Park. Those with friends who lived near the sea even tried seabirds of all shapes and descriptions, despite their saltiness ('cormorant casserole' was a particular favourite). Above all, millions of tins of processed meat, deboned and compacted, were shipped from the USA and Argentina to supplement London's stews and salads. Spam had arrived in Britain.

Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food, urged people to be creative in their cooking with rationed food, to use more vegetables, particularly potatoes. He even had a recipe named after him:

Ingredients
1 lb (454g) potatoes1 lb (454g) cauliflower
1 lb (454g) swedes1 lb (454g) carrots
3 or 4 spring onions 1 teaspoon of vegetable extract
1 tablespoon of oatmeal Parsley
Wholemeal pastry

Method
Dice the potatoes, cauliflower, swedes and carrots, slice the onions and cook all with the vegetable extract and oatmeal for 10 minutes with just enough water to cover. Allow it to cool, then put in a pie dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley and cover with wholemeal pastry. Bake in a moderate oven until the pastry is nicely brown and serve hot with gravy

"Looks like a frisbee, tastes like a scone"

Other recipes were perhaps not so mouth-watering. Sainsbury offered this recipe for sugarless sponge cake to its wartime customers:

Ingredients
1 oz Cornflour4 ozs Flour
½ teaspoon Baking PowderPinch of Salt
2 ozs Margarine1 Egg
1 small tin sweetened skimmed1 teaspoon lemon juice
milk
A little lemon rind

Method
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. Rub in the margarine. Add the egg well beaten. Lastly add the milk, lemon juice and rind. Bake in the greased tin or tins which should be warm for 20 to 25 minutes at Reg mark 5. When cool spread with jam and sandwich together. This sandwich is not quite as moist as a Victoria Sandwich.

Children from Underhill Primary School in High Barnet tried out this wartime recipe for Sainsbury. One comment was "Looks like a frisbee, tastes like a scone". See the Sainsbury Virtual Museum (www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/museum/museum.html) for more modern day attempts at wartime recipes.

Spivs

Even with rationing and short supplies, some Londoners could still get hold of what they wanted, providing they had enough money and knew the right person. The 'right' person was usually some dealer who had rationed goods that had 'fallen off the back of a lorry'. These shady characters were known as 'spivs'.
Steve on www.aldertons.com remembers them from his childhood.

"They were young men dressed in tight double breasted pinstripe suits with exaggerated jacket lapels pointed right out to the shoulder, loud ties, and trilby hats. There was always a line of them at the pavement on the north side of Oxford Street in front of a bombed site between John Lewis and Debenhams. Sales were accompanied by heavy duty Cockney banter. These spivs were generally on the fiddle - under the table might be nylons or other rationed luxury items."

So began the modern generation of Arthur Daleys and Del Boys and the Londoners' love-hate relationship with dodgy geezers who could duck and dive, do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and charge you over the odds for a load of old tat.