in 1924, "things were not as good as they used to be—including Windsor soup". Windsor soup was transforming into an icon of dreary British cuisine. Michael Bateman states, "In the 1930s, the art of soupmaking sank to an all-time low and every hotel offered disgusting brown soups (so-called Brown Windsor soup)". The so-called "brown Windsor soup" first appeared in the 1920s, when it was served aux masses in cafes and cafeterias. Examples include Cadena Cafes (Portsmouth) which advertised "Soup – Tomato or Brown Windsor" on its menu dated 24 February 1926. Bobby's of Queens Road, Bristol, advertised "Potage Brown Windsor" (under the "soup" heading) on its menu dated 13 February 1931. The Scottish department store Isaac Benzie advertised "Brown Windsor soup" in a menu published 14 December 1933. The easy availability of tinned and packet soups was driving soup in new directions, for example there was a "Batchelor's Windsor Soup" sold in a tin can during the 1940s. With wartime rationing, some towns kept stocks of canned Windsor. P. D. James reminisced that during the war, "brown Windsor soup featured largely on the menus of British Restaurants set up under the aegis of the Ministry of Food ... the soup tasted of gravy browning." Author Eric Wright recalled being indigent in 1945 and eating free Windsor soup at a cafeteria run by the Asiatic Petroleum Company. After the war, food rationing continued into the 1950s. Leftovers would be pureed or mixed into brown mystery soups whose connection with the original Windsor recipe may have been in name only. The soup may have been nothing more than a watery, tasteless gruel made from bouillon powder and starch thickener, or leftover cans: "I can remember cans of Windsor in my grandmother's larder, which she kept from the war. Humorously thought of as only to be used in the event of an invasion." Satirists began poking fun at Brown Windsor in the 1950s because on the one hand it was rubbish served in shabby establishments, on the other it had a pretentiously posh name. Annie Gray notes that despite the jokes it was in fact "a real soup", but one "largely associated with shabby boarding houses trying to sound posh." Nicholas Parsons confirms "It was very much part of the culture when I was young. Nearly every cheap hotel had brown Windsor soup. I think hotels used all the remains of their meat