Cookbook reveals recipes of world's most notorious dictators

Dictators' Dinners, a bad taste guide to entertaining tyrants is a cookbook like no other as it reveals the favourite foods of murderous men including Hitler and Stalin - and how you can recreate their best-loved dishes at home.

Authors Victoria Clark and Melissa Scott describe the book as a 'blend of history, photo album and recipe book' as they reveal the foods that could sustain a tyrant. 

They write in their foreword: 'We very much hope this book will amuse and inform readers, but also acquaint them with some exotic cuisine and, by the by, remind them just how thin the line between man and monster can be.' 

The book offers a fascinating insight into the lives of the leaders via the food they ate, as we reveal below... 

JOSEPH STALIN

Dinners times in the Russian communist dictator's company sound like a British students' night out.

Drinking games, food fights and singing and dancing were all commonplace.

But while students are all about having fun, Stalin's parties provided another opportunity for him to exert his control, humiliate people and expose their weaknesses.

Singing and dancing was not an expression of joy but a compulsory act enforced by the fearsome leader.

Meanwhile, he would relish drinking his guests under the table to again prove his superiority. 

Clark and Scott write: ''Guess the Temperature' was one of Stalin's favourite drinking games and reduced many guests to staggering, incontinent wrecks.'

Stalin's dinner parties could often last for six hours with the cuisine influenced by his Georgina roots including food such as walnuts, garlic, plums and pomegranates.

Given his penchant for excess eating and drinking, the authors conclude he's just as likely to have died from a stroke than poisoning at the age of 75. 

ADOLF HITLER 

Clark and Scott reveal that while Hitler had more compassion for animals than he did for people, he was not a devoted vegetarian.

It was documented on more than one occasion that he ate dishes such as pigeon and liver.

A British chef called Dione Lucas who worked at a Hamburg hotel in the early 1930s confirmed the Nazi leader's love of bird meat.

She told readers of her Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook in 1964: 'I do not mean to spoil your appetite for stuffed squab, but you might be interested to know that it was a great favourite with Mr Hitler who dined at the hotel often.'

Such was his fear of being poisoned, Hitler had 15 food-tasters to ensure his meals were safe for him to eat.

Clark and Scott write: 'Only after a period of 45 minutes had elapsed without any taster dropping dead was a dish deemed safe for transportation to Hitler's table.' 

And while people starved during the Second World War or lived on rations, he carried on feasting like a king.  

The book quotes one of his food tasters, Margit Wolf, who was struck by the 'superior quality' of the fuhrer's meals. She said: 'There was asparagus in season, with Hollandaise sauce, vegetable broths with little semolina dumplings, roasted red peppers, rice, salads and vegetable stews'.  

(dailymail.co.uk)