The Vintage Potato Dish That Got Its Start In WWI

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and that adage is perhaps best displayed in all of the food innovations that spring up during wartime throughout history. Take caffeine-infused chocolate, for example, which became a staple for nightly vigils on high-alert. Or, on a more surface-level, look at the French 75 cocktail, whose name served as a sort of rallying cry during World War I. Within that same time frame, people on the home front were figuring out ways to stretch their rations using whatever common ingredients were on-hand. In this case, that ingredient came in the form of potatoes.

Potato biscuits weren't simply a different method of making biscuits — in fact, they were far from it. With wheat being a hot commodity during WWI, there were government initiatives to try to quell the wheat intake of its domestic population. And one way to limit the amount of wheat used was to substitute some of it with potato. Potato biscuits still used some flour, but it was much less wheat in total compared to regular biscuits, and helped to ease the load on a supply line that was undoubtedly strained to serve its troops.

In a similar way to how parsnip cakes would come to help families stretch food and ease the demand on wheat in World War II, potato biscuits served a similar role decades prior. The mixture of mashed potatoes with milk, eggs, flour, butter, sugar, salt, and yeast was surely not the stingiest recipe during the Great War, but it did produce a batter that would yield a hearty, filling biscuit and stretch rations even further.

Unfortunately, though, these wartime recipes often come with some kind of drawback. And in the case of these potato biscuits, that came in the flavor category. As you might expect, potato biscuits don't bring much to the table in terms of bold and exciting flavors, so you'll definitely want to have something at your disposal to pour on top or to dip these biscuits into. Jams and spreads would have been quite popular of course, as well as certain cheese sauces for something less sweet. So if you ever decide to give period-appropriate potato biscuits a try, just keep in mind that sacrificing wheat doesn't mean you need to sacrifice your enjoyment!