Some of the most delicious recipes were invented out of necessity. Faced with a lack of certain ingredients, creative bakers scraped together whatever was in their larder so they could still put bread – or cake – on the table. Resourceful wartime cooks used their rations and their imaginations to come up with tasty meals and make each scrap of food stretch as far as possible. Here are some of the best dishes that were born from hardship and are now firm favourites.

Italians are king when it comes to scraping together the scantest of ingredients and creating something incredibly delicious. That applies to stale food that many of us might just shove in the bin, too, like the old bread used to make this classic salad. Chunks of said bread are tossed with juicy tomatoes and olive oil to magically create summer on a plate. Peasant food at its best.

The dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda and, if available, cocoa powder) are combined in the tin, then vegetable oil and vinegar are poured into wells. The baking soda and vinegar ‘meet’ while in the oven, helping it to rise beautifully. Now, as vegan recipes become more prevalent, this cake doesn’t seem quite so wacky after all.

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It’s debatable whether this is a fabulous food but, when you think about it, peanut butter isn’t technically a sweet food – so why not slather some creamy mayo on top? This became an easy, inexpensive and high-protein snack in the 1930s and during wartime, and was promoted in a joint ad campaign by Hellmann’s Mayonnaise and Skippy Peanut Butter in the 1960s.

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This recipe, made by 19th-century settlers in the Appalachian Mountains, is a clever way to make bread if you don’t have any yeast. It’s a starter that makes it rise, in this case made by cultivating bacteria by mixing boiled milk, cornmeal, a sliced potato, sugar and salt and leaving it out overnight. It isn’t as trendy as sourdough, though James Beard – who inspired the famous US food awards – was a fan, including it in his 1973 cookbook Beard on Bread.

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The earliest known recipe for carrot cake dates back to 1929 but, like so many once-frugal foods, it rose to its now legendary status during the Second World War. In fact, the benefits of ‘Doctor Carrot’ were a key part of a British Ministry of Food campaign to encourage people to use more readily available vegetables that weren’t subject to rationing.

The natural sweetness of carrots made them a popular choice for stretching out sugar rations, and they were also used in Christmas puddings. The wartime carrot cake was a little less luxurious than today’s versions – often slathered in indulgent buttercream or cream cheese icing – but we’re still not above kidding ourselves that it’s sort of healthy.

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So many brilliant recipes are the product of people rummaging around in their cupboards, especially when it comes to sweet treats. Anthill cake is a prime example, popular during the Soviet era. It basically involved throwing together bread, pastry, biscuits, cake – whatever needed using up – crumbling and binding with butter, sour cream and condensed milk. Its name (muraveinik in Russian) comes from its resemblance to a small hill.

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The smooth, creamy soup is made with potatoes (of course), leeks, celery and onion, blended and jazzed up with chopped herbs. And it’s basically a warm, comforting hug in a bowl. Try it yourself with our recipe.

Often known simply as Woolton pie, after the British Minister for Food, Lord Woolton pie was one of many simple, tasty, carb-heavy dishes to come out of the Second World War. With meat scarce, the pie crust instead became a vehicle for lots of veg with oatmeal to bulk it out.

Also known as savoury goose, this English dish is referenced in 1747 cooking tome The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, who describes it as “Knuckle stuffed with Onion and Sage…with a little Pepper and Salt, Gravy and Apple-Sauce to it”. The knuckle in question tended to be pork, though sausagemeat or offal were often used.

Similar to the poor man’s meal, which was widespread during the Great Depression, this ‘salad’ of potatoes and chopped up hot dogs (plus anything else) was a hit in the 1940s. Convenience foods, like tinned hot dogs, were more readily available and, with many women working during wartime, quick, protein-packed meals that could be thrown together in minutes were understandably popular.

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Known, charmingly, as cookie-crumb potatoes, kartoshka don’t actually contain any spuds at all. In Soviet Russia, industrial kitchens and canteens had to account for every scrap of food to the extent that no crumb went to waste. Instead, those crumbs were used in new creations like these sweet, potato-shaped truffles made with biscuit or cake crumbs bound with butter, condensed milk and cocoa powder, sometimes with rum or liqueur added.

Also known as army stew, budae jjigae was created around the end of the Korean War using leftover food purchased by Koreans from US army-base mess halls. That food, which would have otherwise been thrown out, consisted mostly of tinned ingredients like hot dogs, Spam and beans, plus processed cheese. Combined with kimchi, garlic, chilli and noodles, however, it created a not-particularly-pretty but actually very delicious dish that remains a popular comfort food.

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Pasta bakes are pretty standard nowadays, but they were novel in 1950s America, when magazines and adverts shared recipes for simple, quick suppers making use of convenience and tinned foods. Spaghetti casserole became a mainstay for time-poor cooks, making use of budget store cupboard ingredients and leftovers from tomato soup to veg.

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The name is definitely not a giveaway. Cape Cod turkey does not, in fact, contain so much as a turkey thigh or scrap of white meat. It’s actually salt cod served in a creamy sauce, topped with boiled eggs and potatoes. It isn’t known for sure where the name came from, though a popular theory is that it was served at Thanksgiving when early New England settlers had little available but fish.

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Thankfully, the slugburger isn’t quite so surreal – or slimy – as it sounds. Yet another favourite that emerged during the Great Depression, it’s actually a beef or pork patty supplemented with potato flour and fried. It was a way for restaurant and diner owners to make their scant meat supplies stretch further, but the crispy texture – giving way to soft, juicy meat – remains popular in America’s Southern states.