GREAT BRITAIN: Pass the Gravy

“Just think,” marveled a full-blown young woman of 21 in London, “I was only six years old when we had our last family joint.” All over the United Kingdom last week, other young people, grown to maturity in an age of snoek, whale meat and endless Brussels sprouts, were relearning the wonders of red meat, roasted to crackling brown and served in a sea of tangy juices. After 14½ steak-starved years, the government lifted the ration on meat, and Britain’s red-blooded trenchermen were declared free and independent of such gustatory travesties as mock goose (potatoes flavored with sage and onion), Egyptian pie (baked lentils and onions), veal cutlet made of rabbit, and toad-in-the-hole (sausages and batter).

“What a joy!” crooned the wife of Food Minister Gwilym Lloyd George,* as ration books were tossed into bonfires all over the nation. But 2,000,000 less experienced housewives, who had never before managed without ration books, were frankly baffled at the richness of the new territory that opened before them. TV screens worked overtime showing the subtle differences between top ribs and shell bones. Newspaper columnists turned epicure overnight, and at the Times Bookshop in Wigmore Street, the 93-year-old Mrs. Beeton’s Cookbook, with its cautious presumption that eight pounds of steak should be enough to serve eight persons, once more took top place in the interest of browsers.

To some extent, the end of meat rationing only confirmed and symbolized a freedom that had already arrived by stages. Meat has become increasingly plentiful in recent months, and off-ration purchases of good cuts could frequently be made—for a price. Many Socialists predicted that de-rationing would send prices even higher, but at least Britain’s housewives were legally free of one tyrant—the local butcher. Last week, after standing in queues outside butchers’ doors for more than a decade, the Association of London Housewives got to their feet once more to stage a rally in Trafalgar Square and beef about the butcher.

*Tory son of the late great Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George and brother of Megan Lloyd George, a former Liberal M.P.