On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 01:43:18 -0500, "Mark Zanger"
> wrote:

>I don't think so. Ships were essential to the war, and could not be risked
>in whaling. I faintly remember a 50s British cookbook with whale recipes,
>quite surprising to me, but treated casually. By then it would have been an
>import from Scandinavia, perhaps promoted as a protein source since times
>were still so hard and rationing had continued after the war.

I think Mark is correct about the shipping question.

My memory of whale meat is eating it in a London restaurant in the
grey days of the late 1940s. I was with my uncle who had venturesome
tastes compared with most British people of those days. I do remember
it as slightly fishy in taste but nothing more about its properties.

That whale meat was not a WWII resource is supported by the otherwise
comprehensive "Wartime 'Good Housekeeing' Cookery Book", published as
a Penguin Special. My edition dates from November 1942. There is no
mention of whale meat. Most of the recipes are woeful, but times were
hard then.

COPAC shows that there is a 1948 edition of "Good Housekeeping Cookery
Book, i.e. with 'wartime' omitted. That's about the right time to be
looking in cookery books.