Dried Egg off the Ration!

The London Times of this day (June 24) in 1942 gave up considerable space to an important announcement about a development in the wartime food supply:

Home News

DRIED EGGS ON SALE TODAY

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19,000,000 TINS AS A FIRST INSTALMENT

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VALUABLE NEW FOOD

Nineteen million tins, each containing 12 dried eggs, will be on sale at grocers’ shops and dairies today at 1s.9d. a tin. Within the next three weeks another 15,000,000 tins will reach retailers, and after that a further distribution will ensure that sufficient have been sent out to provide a tin for each registered consumer of eggs within a space of five weeks.

In other words, the Ministry of Food will be placing on the market before the end of July the equivalent of 540,000,000 eggs.

Actually , it Is doing far more, for caterers are receiving the generous allowance of 1lb. of dried egg (or nearly 40 eggs) for each 100 meals served, and other large supplies are going to bakers. The Minister yesterday emphasized that this new product was not an egg substitute but entirely egg, with all its nutritive value, minus only water and shell, which was profiles the transport over thousands of miles of water.

Before the war 55 per cent of our eggs came from the Continent of Europe; this new dried egg will more than compensate for that loss. It occupies only one sixth of the shipping space needed for eggs in shell, and refrigerated shipping is not needed. The dried egg, which will supersede imports of eggs in shell except from Eire, will come from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina.

The Ministry of Food of course stepped up its production of advice on the use of dried eggs over the ensuing months. The following recipe appeared in The Times of 21 August, 1942:

Savoury Bake.

Cooking time: ½ hour.

Ingredients: 4 slices of stale bread, 4 tablespoons grated cheese, 2 tablespoonfuls milk, 1 dried egg (1 level tablespoonful dried egg, 2 tablespoonfuls water), 1 tablespoonful chopped onion or shallot or 1 teaspoonful mixed herbs, salt, pepper, 1 ½ level tablespoonfuls fat.

Quantity: 4 helpings.

Method: Soak bread in water until soft, squeeze out water and beat bread with a fork until smooth. Add grated cheese, onion or herbs, egg, milk, pepper, salt. Beat mixture well. Heat fat in baking tin. Spread in the mixture, bake in a moderate oven for half an hour.

If you don’t want to use the oven, melt the fat in a pan, drop large spoonfuls of the mixture in and fry both sides until golden brown. Serve at once with a green vegetable.