The Kitchen Front

 Jennifer Ryan seems to have found her fiction niche with wartime Britain.  Her third book, The Kitchen Front (#970), is centered around a BBC-sponsored cooking contest.  Open only to professional cooks, the winner's reward will be to add a much-needed feminine voice to the radio program The Kitchen Front.  The Ministry of Food has done its best to provide nutritional tips and tricks for the strict food rationing system, but they know they could attract a wider audience by adding a knowledgeable woman presenter.

Ambrose Hart, the program's current solo presenter, has a home in Fenley Village, outside London.  To make the contest easy on himself, he decides to keep the competition local, and divide it into three sections spread across three months: Starters, Main Course and Dessert.  Points will be awarded for each course, with the winner accumulating the most points overall.  Frankly, he's not expecting much...

Enter Audrey, the widow with three boys and a pie-baking business; Lady Gwendoline, the lady of the local manor, and Ministry of Food demonstrator; Zelda the cordon bleu chef relegated to a local factory's canteen; and finally Mrs. Quince and Nell.  Mrs. Quince has a formidable reputation throughout southern England as one of the best manor house cooks in the country.  Nell as her protégé has been taking over the burden of cooking as Mrs. Quince ages.  Now the stage is set for some cut-throat competition as each of the women struggles to produce a delicious entry with the scarce materials available on hand, keeping in mind what the average housewife might be able to duplicate with ingredients rationed or home-grown.  The rivalry between the women is personal, but the stakes can be life-changing.  Their stories interweave during the three months of the contest and the reader is drawn into their lives, personal tragedies and triumphs.

Jennifer Ryan can certainly tell a mesmerizing tale, as I found in her two earlier books: The Chilbury Ladies' Choir and The Spies of Shilling Lane.  (See my posts of 12/27/2017 & 7/15/2019.).  She's delved deep into the Ministry of Food's archives to present the difficulties the average British family faced in maintaining a nutritious and healthy diet.  She's even included some of the Ministry's recipes the contestants prepare during the course of the book.  I've read them over, but quite honestly, I'd probably starve before I could bring myself to prepare most of them!  A wonderful and satisfying read.