'Suiting the strictest economy with the highest food productivity: that is the question about the war cuisine and one of the major coefficient of the inside resistance'.
From: 'Il cuoco per tutti, Nutrizione sana ed economica con esclusione di carne e di burro. Cento ricette di facile esecuzione./ A Cook for everyone. Healthy and cheap nutrition without meat and butter. One hundred easy recipes.
The restrictions imposed by the war significantly changed the people's dietary habits.
In the daily diet, not only foods changed, but even their cooking and preservation methods, since, at a time in which, for survival, restrictions strongly limited the productions and the consumptions, it was indispensable to know how to fully re-use the left-overs with the least waste of resources.
Even the Institutions felt the need to spread as much as possible the concept of economy and, in 1917, a vademecum on the issue of war cooking was drafted by the Commissione Provinciale per la Propaganda Patriottica e La Limitazione dei consumi di Bergamo: 'absolute savings' was the watchword.
The fueling crisis led to the introduction of new instruments in the kitchens, such as the automatic boiler or the fire-case, which, not only allowed a quick food cooking with the least waste of resources, but also consented to keep the food warm and to preserve its taste as much as possible.
Besides the technology, the cooking books emphasized the methods of a correct cooking, accordingly with the food different characteristics, by underlining – for example – how absolutely important was the cooking level of certain food, so as to guarantee the absorption of the nutritional substances; also important was re-using the cooking water for the preparation of soups.
Beef, soon become rare and expensive, was often replaced by substitute products; meat extracts and meat jellies were widely publicized by the production companies, so as to fight the cost of living too, as well as other products of industrial type such as broth, stock cubes and soups. A recipe and some advertisements drawn from the Almanacco gastronomico di Jarro, can be found in this gallery.