WWI French Rationing Etiquette

“Less Cake for Paris – 

And Tea Shops’ New Closing Days” …

Chef pastry cooks have for centuries been known around the world for their delicious delicacies, as shown in this vintage American advertisement.

PARIS, Thursday. – War economies are to be begun at once in the tea-shops. A meeting of the Pastry cooks' Union of Paris, at which that of Marseilles is also represented, has decided to close all tea shops and pastry cooks' shops twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Moreover, the pastry cooks, after consultation with the Minister of Commerce, have decided to bake no more cakes containing cream or iced with sugar. Finally, a resolution was passed that, “except at meal times, no customer will be entitled to sit down to eat cakes.” Presumably, tea-time will be included among meal times. Although it was never actually said in the first place, “let them eat cake” so much for Parisians now.

A great number of Paris laundries are now closing down owing to the shortage of coal, and many laundries are being turned into munition factories. If I may speak for myself, my washerwoman has just announced that she is closing down her laundry till the end of the war, land is going in for munition making as being more profitable. The Union of Master Launderers confirms that a very great many the suburbs. A meeting of the Syndicate de la Blanchisserie will be held next Sunday to consider the situation. —From our own correspondent, the Telegraph, 1/1/1916

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