“When you have a luncheon date,
And there’s bread beside your plate,
GIVE THAT BREAD BACK TO THE WAITER!
Fill yourself up with pertater!”

The Prime Minister's strictures on household economy and food waste recall the days of Second World War rationing, and he certainly has a point; not only could we follow the example of wartime thrift and throw less away, but the wartime diet was far healthier than what we eat today, even if it was tasteless, monotonous and utterly grim.

The First World War had seen efforts to curb excessive eating, occasionally with comic results. In 1916, The Times published a letter from a helpful reader, suggesting how households could simultaneously cut down on consumption and help the war effort:

“It can be done with very little effort and self-denial. Our nine household servants have agreed to give up meat of any sort for their breakfast, and the money thus saved is placed in the bank each fortnight and invested in the War Loan.”

In 1917, a new food economy campaign was launched, with guidelines for local Food Control Committees. “People of the working classes are to be asked to spend less money than they have been doing on food. It is felt however that this appeal will be prejudiced if elaborate and costly luncheons and dinners are still eaten in public by wealthy men and women. Without any breach of existing regulations, it is possible to obtain a dinner made up of seven courses.”

Whatever the intentions of the campaign, they were not felt to be a success, and when the need for national belt-tightening arose again, there was no such vagueness. The Second World War Ministry of Food used the media to spread its message, broadcasting its recipes on the wireless, posting them in public buildings and publishing them in newspaper advertisements, with merry poems to keep up spirits in the kitchen.

These austerity recipes should appeal to the heart of a prudent Prime Minister:

Cream of parsnip soup

Thick soup is nourishing, a meal in itself

Corned beef mould

This recipe won’t try to be ‘clever’. It will be simple, practical, economical

Prune roly