Book of Days Tales

On this date in 1945 the Allies celebrated Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day). On 30^th April, Adolf Hitler, committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin. Germany’s surrender, therefore, was authorized by his successor, Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg Government. The act of military surrender was signed on 7^th May in Reims in France and on 8^th May in Berlin in Germany.

It was the lean war years with severe rationing that produced the dull food that came to epitomize British cooking, so rightly reviled by the rest of the world. But, those days are long past. Great British cooking rivals any in Europe.  What surprised me was that quite a few of the recipes in wartime cookbooks are not as dull as I thought.  Here’s summer pudding, an old English standby, from a wartime recipe book.  I love it.  It’s made with summer berries, but you can make it with apples (peeled cored and thinly sliced), when it is called apple Charlotte. In wartime the berries were probably often culled from roadside brambles.

Summer Pudding

Ingredients

8 oz fresh fruit (red or black if possible)
¼ pint water
1-2 oz sugar
5 oz stale bread cut into slices ¼-⅜ in. thick

Instructions

Stew the fruit with the sugar and water until tender. Cut a round of fruit to fit the bottom of the basin (1 pint size) and line the side with fingers of bread cut slightly wider at one end than the other. Fit the fingers together so that no basin shows through. Half fill the basin with stewed fruit. Cover with a layer of scraps of bread left from cutting the round etc. Add the remaining fruit and cover with a layer of bread. Pour the rest of the juice over all and cover the pudding with a weighted plate or saucer. Leave for at least 2 hours to cool and set. Turn out carefully and serve with custard.

N.B. – Very juicy fruit does not require any water for stewing. Bottled fruit may be used if fresh fruit is not available.

I would increase the sugar a little if you want, and I always serve this with whipped cream. In these days of refrigeration you can cool the pudding in the refrigerator. Worth noting that the recipe is very efficient: little cooking time to save fuel, and all the bread is used up. If you lived in the country you could even pick your own berries.

People in Oxford told me that it was common at one time to bring their tables into the streets on special occasions, including V-E day, and eat together.