Army catering in World War II. The writer of these lecture notes was a private in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, attending a course at what is now the Westminster Kingsway College's School of Hospitality. Army catering had undergone many changes in the years immediately before World War II and this manuscript gives a clear and full idea of what troops might expect for their rations. The recipes are each for 100 men or double that number, and therefore the quantities are prodigious, for example 57 pounds of beef for the Beef Curry. Vegetables are plentiful in the various stews and potatoes are omnipresent. Instructions are also given for the construction of equipment, most notably ovens, like the Aldershot oven. The fuel used in this oven is wood. Another piece of equipment for which there are instructions here is the Hydra Petrol Burner. There are recipes here for meats, stocks, stews, tea and cocoa, pastry, and sauces, as well as butchering diagrams.

There are two notebooks here, a quarto(EN 49 Vol 1) and a folio (EN 49 Vol 2). (in two diffrent boxes)

The quarto is written in a cursive hand. A number of pages have been torn out but this seems to be essentially the complete course with the names of the lectures given.

The folio volume seems to have been produced for graduatuion, being formally written in capitals and endorsed at the end by the Chief Instructor, School of Cookery. The folio contains drawings of the ovens. The folio volume was used by Susan Crooks (presumably Private Crooks' daughter) as a school exercise book, not uninteresting in itself as a record of post-war education. Lessons on subjects such as algebra, and geology, and a younger childs doodles are interspaced through the army lectures.

Vol 1: Hard covers, blue cloth with black spine. Quarto Sized Vol 2: Black cloth over hard covers Folio Sized