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Vegetables, the off-ration mainstay of meals in WW2 UK

Meals based on vegetables were the norm in WW2 because vegetables were not rationed and grew well in the UK. However, the demand was great, so they were sometimes in short supply. After a brief introduction to home-grown vegetables, the page describes how shops managed to get hold of enough vegetables to satisfy demand. It then describes how housewives managed to produce nutritious meals based on whatever vegetables were available at the time.

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By the webmaster: her childhood recollections with contributions from others who lived at the time

Home-grown vegetables

Most of the homes that I visited during the war had either given over their entire back garden to growing vegetables and fruit or were keeping a small area back for flowers to cheer themselves up. My mother was in the latter group. It meant that she had to buy most of her vegetables from the greengrocer, but whenever I went with her, the greengrocer was doing a rapid trade.

So people grew their own vegetables and potatoes in their back gardens - and housewives became very creative at using them as a the main part of family meals.

How shops acquired their vegetables to sell

I remember the cooked beetroots that Alan Talbot mentions above, but ours were always shop-bought and steeped in vinegar. I hated it as it was like eating solid vinegar.

Spring greens

'Spring greens' deserve a special place on this page, as "A pound of spring greens please" was my mother's regular purchase at the greengrocers.

Although I remember very little about meals at home during the early 1940s, I do remember complaining, "I'm sick of greens!", as if it was my mother's fault. She never explained, presumably because she thought I was too young to understand that she had to make use of what whatever was available and waste nothing.

What spring greens were

'Spring greens' were very dark green leaves, obviously from some sort of cabbage, and in later years I often wondered what they were because they no longer seemed to be on sale or in shops or seed catalogues. I am pleased that Neil Baker and Peter Johnson have been able to give me two examples - see below.

Hot vegetable-based meals

Vegetables were used to pack out meals of rationed foodstuffs. Housewives' creativity meant that there were a large number of different ways that complete meals could be made this way. No doubt everyone's health benefited.

I understand that the Government helped by publishing recipes with available ingredients, designed to be filling. However, as a child growing up at the time, I never saw any of them. I suspect they were of most value for large families, as my mother often complained that it was easier for them as they could use what she described as 'one bit of food in with another'. While my father was in the army, we were a family of three - my mother, my grandmother and me.

Woolton pie

Woolton pie was a deep pie made with a cooked mixed vegetable filling which could be varied according to what was available. This was topped with mashed potato - or pastry if the ration could stretch to it - and baked in a hot oven for about half an hour. It was named after the Earl of Woolton who popularised the recipe after he became Minister of Food in 1940. Yet, popular as it seems to have been, I never heard mention of it among the people of all ages who I knew during the war or afterwards. Perhaps they just called it vegetable pie.

Cold vegetable-based meals

If you can add anything to this page or provide a photo, I would be pleased if you would contact me.

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