American expatriate Wallis Warfield Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, wrote a cookbook in 1942. In Some Favorite Southern Recipes of the Duchess of Windsor, the woman who saved the country from a Nazi-sympathising king (Hitler’s pal King Edward VIII abdicated when he married the divorcee) shared her 140 recipes to raise money for the British War Relief Society.
13th September 1939: The Duke (1894 – 1972) and Duchess (1896 – 1986) of Windsor in England after an absence of nearly three years, at Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe’s country house, Coleman’s Hatch, Ashdown Forest, Sussex. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Could she cook? Maybe. As The Aesthete Cook notes, the book was copyrighted by campaigning food journalist Marie M. Meloney.
The Duchess could certainly feed. A friend of the duchess’s wrote in a letter in 1931, when the royal spouse was still Mrs Ernest Simpson:
“Wallis’s parties have so much pep no one ever wants to leave. Cocktails with sausages, not on skewers, caviar with vodka, soup with sherry, fish with white wine, hock, champagne, from then on to the brandy. Needless to say, I do not attempt this lavish mixture. But her food is as elaborate as her wine list.”
Wallis Windsor notes in the introduction:
“It is the simple dishes of my homeland which are the most popular… and which are the ones most frequently served at my table.”
In the section headlined “Some of My Favorite Foreign Recipes”, home cooks could try recipes for exotic chicken madras, one for haddock souffle and risotto – dishes now available on every British high-street.
Although her two recipes using terrapin look more esoteric than ever.
2nd November 1942: Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962), the wife of American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, visiting a Women’s Voluntary Service nursery in Regents Park. (Photo by Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Getty Images)
Eleanor Roosevelt added her words to that introduction:
“…the real improvements in American living and health has been the discarding of the elaborate and extravagant menus which marked our entertaining as recently as the General Grant period…This tendency toward more healthful simplicity and especially toward the more scientific preparations of food is, I believe, one of the outstanding contributions which the people of the United States have made toward modern eating habits.”
Roosevelt was the leading light in the British War Relief Society, which saw Americans donate to the beleaguered British:
11th December 1941: Children in a ‘V’ formation wearing scarlet skull caps adorned with the Victory V sign (donated by the British War Relief Society of America) at a nursery. (Photo by George W. Hales/Fox Photos/Getty Images)
17th January 1941: British film star Anna Neagle (1904 – 1986) helps a crew member of a British freighter try on a balaclava, gifts from the British War Relief Society of Brooklyn. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)
7th July 1941: Mrs Brigid Hitler, the wife of Adolf Hitler’s stepbrother Alois, sitting at her desk at the British War Relief Society in New York City. She is pointing to her Aid Britain brooch. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Famous burlesque star stripper Gypsy Rose Lee getting a $10 star plucked fr. her nude netting by wealthy mogul William Rhinelander Stewart during her show to raise money for the British War Relief Society, at the Astor Hotel
The Duchess’s recipes – such as: pilau of rabbit, wine jelly or baked Maryland chicken – were tested by the Home Institute of the New York Herald Tribune.
One recipe was for… The Duchess of Windsor’s Pork Cake.
1/2 pound fat salt pork, ground
3/4 cup boiling water
3/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup of firmly packed brown sugar
2 cups raisins
1 cup currants, washed and dried
3 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Oddly, instructions do not feature the phrase “hand recipe to lackay to hand to cook”, rather:
Place pork in a mixing bowl and add boiling water. Add molasses, brown sugar, raisins and currants and cool. Mix and sift the flour, baking soda and spices together three times. Add to the molasses mixture and beat until smooth. Turn into long narrow bar pan (10 X 4 X 3 inches) and bake in a slow oven (325 F.) 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Delicious.
Now, about that terrapin a la mode…
Would you like to support Flashbak?
Please consider making a donation to our site. We don't want to rely on ads to bring you the best of visual culture. You can also support us by signing up to our Mailing List. And you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For great art and culture delivered to your door, visit our shop.
