"Mark Zanger" > wrote

> since times were still so hard and rationing had continued after the war.

And for quite some time after the war apparently. In the introduction to the
1963 (Penguin) edition of "Italian Food", which originally appeared in 1954,
Elizabeth Davis wrote:

"...but all [of the recipes in 1954], in any case, had to be cooked with
ingredients as far as possible available in England.

"And rationing was still with us.

"Eggs, butter and cream were scarce. (At one time I was buying turkey eggs
at 1 s 3 d apiece for my experiments.) With meat, it was not only a question
of the restricted quantity: cuts were often unidentifiable--they were hunks
of meat designated as suitable for roasting, frying, grilling, or stewing.
To ask your butcher for special cuts (and foreign ones at that) was to ask
also for a sardonic laugh or a counter-request to remove your registration
elsewhere."

--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com