Sovay's Profile

From: Northern England,

Joined: October 7th, 2012

About me: I've embarked on a mission to cook something new from every cookery book I own - currently 260 - and am planning to use my account here to keep track (thanks to rfb from Librarything for tipping me off to the existence of this site). I've made a couple of rules for myself: to cook the recipe as given, with no substitution or variation unless suggested by the author; and to try to pick a genuinely new dish from each book - in other words, as I've cooked many Leek and Potato Soups in my time, I don't get to count Leek and Potato Soup as a new dish just because I haven't used this specific recipe before (unless it has really significant differences from the usual versions).

Hodge Podge from Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book

Beef and vegetable soup with beer - turned out disappointingly bland. The recipe had no seasoning other than salt and pepper - having tried it, I added a stock cube and some Worcester sauce, which helped... read more >

recipe reviews (241)
book reviews (5)
useful review votes (43)

• Bookshelf Home
• Reviews
• Recipe Box
• Favorite Members
• Photos
• Covers

Sovay's Reviews

2 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 2Sort by: Title | Date | Rating

Food Facts for the Kitchen Front

By Food Ministry, Minister of Food Lord Woolton
Collins - 1940

Marguerite Patten says there were other, more luxurious variations of Lord Woolton's signature dish, but I stuck to the recipe as given; diced vegetables (I used swede, carrot, celery and leek) simmered in water with a little Marmite, thickened with oatmeal, topped with pastry and baked.

The result was cheap, filling and probably pretty healthy (since the pastry contained a minimum of fat) but bland in flavour and discouraging in appearance - the oatmeal gave the sauce a distinctly grey look. I've given it a 2 because it served its purpose at the time, but I doubt I'll ever make it again - if I do, I'll certainly be adding a little cheese or bacon.

I haven't defined it as "British cuisine" as that seems a bit unfair, given the circumstances in which it was devised ...

Woolton Pie Revisited and Improved: I decided to have another go, within the spirit of rationing. I used similar vegetables to the previous version, but substituting cabbage for swede and adding a heaped tablespoon of cooked butter beans. I included a couple of sprigs of thyme whilst cooking the veg, and flavoured the sauce with quite a lot of parsley and mustard. Topped the pie with mashed potato instead of pastry, thereby saving flour and butter - though I did put a little butter and a splash of milk in the mash, plus what would, in the most stringent rationing periods, have been most of my week's cheese ration (about 25g). Result was still economical and pretty healthy, but also tasted fine. I have upped the star rating slightly.

useful (2)  

This is basically 1 part fat to 2 parts flour to 4 parts mashed potato, with a little salt. It wasn't a great success as the lid of a Lord Woolton Pie - it ended up rather thin and tough (rubbery rather than hard).

However I had some offcuts and didn't want to waste them, so I rolled out a rectangle, brushed it with mustard, sprinkled it with an almost invisible amount of grated cheese, folded it over and cut it into kind of Austerity Cheese Straws, which puffed up nicely and were surprisingly good when eaten hot.

useful (2)