Deadly Plot – the latest Bunch Courtney investigation – due out in the new year – has reached 1941/2 and it occurred to me as I embark on my annual sweet making for Christmas making such gifts for family and friends that sweets & chocolate rationing during the war would have been tough for Bunch and her contemporaries. Not that my undomesticated crime-fighter Bunch Courtney would have had the slightest clue how 😊
Like many I had made the assumption that after the decision to ration the sales of sugar in January 1940 that sweets were likewise on the list. But I was wrong. Rationing only came into force in the uk n 26 July 1942 and did not end until 5 February 1953.
Even with rationing in place sweets were becoming increasingly scarce so that many people found that they had the sweet coupons and nothing to spend them on. Bunch and co would have found it equally as hard to get chocolate from the USA who also found supplies dwindling.
The UK government banned the use of milk in commercial confectionary, which when combined with the shortage of cocoa and sugar meant Chocolate manufacturers were forced to dream up substitute products and improvise with ingredients. Cocoa powder, cocoa solids and cocoa butter were replaced or mixed with vegetable fat, brewing malt or rolled oats. Milk powder and sugar content has also increased because it was cheaper (and even with sugar rationing more available) than cocoa powder or cocoa solids. Chocolate was made with powdered milk and a million miles from the product people saw before or since.
Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars were withdrawn in 1941 – even their famous Milk Tray was withdrawn from the production when the factory ceased much of its confectionery production and turned to war work making – among other things – seats for fighter planes. Cadbury still kept some of its production line going, using powdered milk to sell the infamous Ration Bar – described by my father as like eating greasy cardboard. Other sweets were available but chocolate as we know it today was off the list!
The Paynes chocolate factory in Croydon in South London turned all of their premises over to war work – specifically munitions and the highly dangerous manufacture of fuses – my mother and aunt both worked there!
Rowntree’s also gave over much of its factory to munitions. They produced a range of sweets designed to be durable and long-lasting, including the Toffee Crisp and the Kit Kat, which were both popular among soldiers on NAAFI counters and in rations.
In the home, even in the most affluent homes, cooks struggled to bake without basics such as cocoa powder, which was often replaced cocoa powder with carob power (supposedly very similar to cocoa powder but believe me it isn’t!). Also used: beetroot, coffee, cocoa essence flavouring or even molasses, though as that is a derivative of sugar was almost as hard to find.
Other types of sweets were equally affected. Commercial manufacture of fudge made with fresh milk or cream was forbidden by the UK government to be made. Recipes were altered to include condensed or evaporated milk and margarine. My mother used one such recipe right into the 2000s and handed it in to me. It is more like a scotch tablet than cream fudge but not bad for all that!
People took whatever chance came their way – in one famous incident in London’s blitz torn Docklands a warehouse full of sugar started to burn. After the fire was doused a sweet smelling toffee was left behind which workers allegedly chipped off the road and took it home to their families. When a supervisor tried to stop them – saying that it was unhealthy – the workers just replied that they washed it when they got home and it was ‘quite alright’! Sounds grim but I suspect in such times people would tend to have been a lot less finicky.
On the home made sweet front making fruit leathers became the norm – made by boiling fruit until it set as hard as… well, leather. This process usually, carried out in the autumn, uses orchard fruits, berries or even rose hips. It requires no added sugar and uses up fruit not suitable for canning or bottling.
Christmas and sweets are synonymous, and people are nothing of not inventive. Cocoa and sugar may have been scarce but our parents and grandparents still managed to find sweets for Christmas – even in 1942!
Jan Edwards 
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