Powdered Egg I respect you.

Few foods evoke the wartime feel than powdered eggs and I have just completed the War Cookery Leaflet Number 11 with its optimistic statement that ‘dried eggs are just as good as fresh eggs.’ After cooking with the powdered egg, I can from experience confirm that this statement is not true. The recipes are inventive, but they are not a substitute for the ‘real thing.’ However, in the war, eggs were rationed to one a week, and the ration allowance of powdered egg was the equivalent of a dozen. I can see that these were essential and powdered egg is better than no egg at all.

Eggs became scarce during 1940 following massive cuts in imports and the culling of chickens to save on feed. You cannot imagine the shelves in the supermarket without eggs, the ingenious and precious food item is taken for granted and so are the chickens that lay them. Most eggs are produced in a factory like manner and I have seen a dozen for £1. This does not seem right to me and living without real eggs makes you really appreciate how ‘special’ they are. The cook in WW2 must have really missed a real egg and would have done anything to get hold of them. The government encouraged people to breed their own chickens as they were in such short supply and I can understand why my great grandmother stored them in isinglass. She wanted to do everything she could just so they would go that little bit further. The egg is versatile as a meal and almost critical in most baking. This is why, with a shortage of shell eggs, powdered egg became invaluable when living on rations.

Powdered eggs do not taste or look great, they rarely resemble what they are meant to and when using them in cakes, Yorkshire pudding and anything else that needs to rise they refuse to. Once my little project is finished I doubt I would stick to powdered egg, as I do not believe anyone would use them out of choice, (they are also virtually impossible to get hold of and expensive), but I do find their rubbery, ‘egg flavour’ endearing. In the darkest moments of rationing, with the store cupboard empty, there they were providing meal options for the family. Let us, for now, thank the powdered egg for providing emergency meals and helping to feed Britain through the War.