In The Wartime Kitchen, a collection of books published to mark the 60th anniversary of D-Day on Sunday, Marguerite Patten recalls how housewives learned to make the most of food rationing. She talks to Sarah Foster.

"WHEN you come home tired and cold after a long day's work, there's nothing so cheering for you as soup. Soup is very easy to digest, an important point when you are tired. And, if you keep a soup pot handy on the stove, soup is as easy to make as ABC."

Nowadays, this advice sounds absurdly simplistic, patronising even, but during the Second World War, it was typical of the output of the Ministry of Food, the agency charged with managing the nation's nutrition.

With the introduction of rationing, in January 1940, consumption of many staple foods was drastically cut. Beginning with bacon, ham, sugar and butter, the list of restricted items grew until by 1942, it contained many considered vital to a healthy diet. It was with this in mind, that the Ministry of Food was tasked with educating people on making the most of what was available.

Marguerite Patten OBE, who joined the ministry as a home economist in 1942, recalls going out into the community to do this. "We visited the outpatients' departments in hospitals and welfare clinics to talk to patients, mothers-to-be and mothers of babies. We set up counters in large shops and demonstrated there with the help of small, portable cookers. Many home economists drove small mobile vans and touring caravans, which were parked in convenient spots and the demonstration began as soon as passers-by gathered round. Our campaign was to find people, wherever they might be, and make them aware of the importance of keeping their families well fed."

But despite their good intentions, Marguerite, now 88, says she and her colleagues sometimes met with a frosty reception. "I had a number of sessions in charge of Fruit Preservation Centres, where groups of ladies would gather to make preserves," she says. "The sessions were not entirely peaceful, for most ladies were experienced housewives, with their own very definite ideas on how jams should be made; some wanted to use their own recipes, and addressed me firmly, 'Young woman, I was making jam before you were born.'"

Yet despite ruffling a few feathers, the Ministry of Food found a largely receptive audience for its advice. As well as through talks and demonstrations, this was conveyed in leaflets and on the radio, with its Kitchen Front broadcasts proving popular with listeners. Marguerite says the name Kitchen Front, reflecting that for the ministry-driven domestic war effort, was one she was proud of. "Someone said to me years ago, 'Did you mind being called the Kitchen Front?' and I said, 'Good gracious no.' I was proud to be. We were fighting to keep things normal at home."

With the risk of malnutrition, Marguerite and her colleagues aimed to ensure that people gained the maximum nutritional value from the foods they ate. This led, for example, to vegetables being cooked in a new way - not swamped in water and reduced to a pulp, but for the least possible time, so they retained their goodness.

The lack of basic ingredients spawned many inventive recipes, notably for those described as 'mock' something. The first book of three in the Wartime Kitchen series, entitled We'll Eat Again, includes a recipe for mock apricot flan, in which carrots are substituted for apricots. A note at the bottom declares optimistically: "The carrots really do taste a little like apricots." Recipes for mock cream, crab, duck and goose are among those seeming equally as implausible.

Yet despite the shortages, the wartime diet, with its minimal fat and sugar and abundance of seasonal fruits and vegetables, was remarkably healthy. With today's limitless choice of foods leading to soaring levels of obesity, it now seems a distant memory. Marguerite says: "I'm really very angry that we could manage to keep healthy during those war years when it was very difficult and yet we can't today." But she adds: "Does Marguerite Patten want to go back to a wartime diet? Not really."

For her, one of the best things about rationing was the way it brought out the best in British people. "I look back with pride, not only in what I did but how the British people behaved. We were really one nation fighting a common battle," she says.

l Marguerite Patten will be speaking at an event to commemorate the 60th anniversary of D-day at the Imperial War Museum, in London, on Saturday.

* THE WARTIME KITCHEN by Marguerite Patten, in association with the Imperial War Museum (Hamlyn, £14.99)

The Northern Echo has one set of the books to give away. To have a chance of winning it, send your name and address on a postcard or the back of an envelope to: Wartime Kitchen competition, Features, The Northern Echo, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF, by next Tuesday.