I use isinglass for clearing my wine, but only when it is difficult to clear------Fred
I thought it was waterglass that was used for preserving eggs and the isinglass is something entirely different
It is the same thing
During the war it could be bought as a viscous, clear liquid which you added water to, usually cold water but there is talk of boiling the water first.
To answer some other queries that came up...
Ration cards
were given regarding chickens. I have a good few friends who grew up during the second war and one of them remembers going down to "Honours", an agricultural merchants where they would buy "Brand" in paper sacks with coupons issued to them specially.
Apparently it looked a bit like demerara sugar but dry - they would make it into a paste and then add boiled scraps to it. This was called "chicken meal".
The display I have produced at the museum is a Dig for Victory garden which shows how people literally dug up their gardens (and local parks!). A few chickens are kept in the garden too and their "surplus free range eggs" (as we know they must be labelled properly within the guidelines of today!!) sold in the shop.
You can see a picture of my wartime garden and chickens on
www.knobblyveg.co.uk or
www.kbobm.org.uk Interestingly, by the end of World War II, approximately eleven and a half MILLION hens were being kept by "Backyarders" (people who kept chickens in their backyard/garden/balcony). Just before the war and at the beginning of the war this number was nearer 5 million. It is said that if BEER had been rationed it was stated by Lord Arnold of the House of Lords at the time that there would be enough barley available to feed nearer 18 million hens which would provide the equivalent to around 4 eggs per family a week and there wouldn't therefore have been an egg shortage - or the necessity for dried eggs come to that!! Didn't dried eggs make a comeback into supermarkets this year by the way??? Or was that something else on the milk shelf?
History lesson endeth herewith! sorry