The national kitchen in Britain, 1917-1919

This article provides the history of the 'national kitchens' of the First World War, which existed between 1917 and 1919, and argues that as one of several techniques for feeding Britain they formed a popular arm of British wartime food supply policy. It outlines how the Ministry of Food tried to position the new phenomenon of state-sponsored communal dining within national cultural parameters : culinary, social and political. It explores the functioning of the 'national kitchen' in the final years of the war and accounts for its demise with reference to a trade culture of 'fair play' which clashed with the collectivist ethic of wartime consumption.