The equal of one egg.

May 28 ...

On this day in 1941, the British wartime Minister of Food, Lord Woolton, announced experimental egg rationing.

He said “ For a long time I withstood the appeals to ration eggs. It was however, my practice to send people to stand in queues and listen to the conversations of the shoppers. By that means I got an unprejudiced account of the reactions to rationing. I became very disturbed to receive reports from wide sources that there were people in the queues who were agitators and who were trying to create dissatisfaction among the public, using the shortage of eggs and the wide inequalities of their distribution as a justification for complaint. I believed that this was a political agitation that emanated form a foreign source.”

The British accepted rationing with typical British stoicism – but the dried egg powder introduced in 1942 was utterly despised. It sounded good, if you believed the Ministry of Food’s spiel that dried eggs were "pure fresh eggs with no additions, and nothing but the moisture taken away."

One level tablespoon of dried egg mixed with two level tablespoons of water was equal to one egg. The Ministry of Food tried, and the valiant Britons tried, but no matter how it was done, dried eggs may have been OK in baking, but they were not OK on the breakfast plate. A tablespoon of powder may have been Equal to one egg, but it was not The Same as one egg.

Scrambled Egg, using Egg Powder.
(Ministry of Food recipe)
1 egg reconstituted (mixed with water), 0.5 of an ounce of fat and 1 tablespoon of milk. Melt the fat in a pan, beat the egg and milk together, add to the fat in the pan, season well and cook over a gentle heat. Diced cooked vegetables could be added for flavour.

There are other dried egg recipe stories HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Vintage Apples.

Quotation for the Day …

There are entire nations that have never learned how to scramble eggs. One has only to travel in Great Britain. Jon Carroll.