Breadcrumbs and Banana Skins: The Birth of Thrift

In the early twentieth century, many housewives had no choice but to make every penny count. Stringent meal-planning, thrifty shopping, and careful cooking were second nature in families where money was tight, and vigilant use and re-use of every resource from coal to hot-water bottles ensured that nothing was wasted and little was thrown away. Cookery books of the period offered cheap recipes, menu plans, meals made by means of little or no fuel in hay boxes and jam jars, and prepared using leftovers. This book surveys the range of money-saving and thrifty living advice offered to housewives in the years before the Second World War, from strict budgeting to penny capitalism, and demonstrates that the practice of thrift was entrenched in the national consciousness before the war years. Moreover, it contains advice that can still be followed in today's households.