Recipe books are all but replaced in the modern kitchen. With a quick tap on a tablet or search in google, millions of recipes are now at our finger tips. I love this. Many wonderful meals have been cooked and shared using online recipes.
However, for me nothing replaces the good old fashioned recipe book. Pages filled with years of imparted knowledge. A book you can hold in your hand, refer to quickly or find inspiration on the starchy pages.
I collect old recipe books. I have always loved cooking. I remember my Mother's The Margaret Fulton Cookbook from my childhood. The page containing our favourite recipe in the whole world “chocolate self saucing pudding” had dog ears and was barely legible through the blotches of pudding stains.
What I love most about collecting recipe books, is not the recipes themselves, but the little hand written recipe notes and newspaper clippings, I find lovingly tucked into the pages.
Hand written recipes
Before an age of digital filing and the internet, family recipes were carefully written down on notes and in journals. Hand written recipes is the most common item I find hidden inside the books I collect. Half the time I can not even make out all of the text. I wonder how long each recipe has been transcribed for. Is it an original recipe of the author? What makes it special and worthy of recording? Am I the only person out there now that has this particular recipe?
Newspaper recipes
I often find newspaper recipes inside the books I find. Carefully cut out and stuck inside the front cover for safe keeping. Some are stapled, others glued in or just loose between the pages. I find the reverse side of the newspaper clipping even more fascinating then the recipe. Old adverts with slogans, images, prices or snippets of stories. A window through time. Occasionally tucked into the pages I find a brochure, grocery receipt or even a photograph.
The progression of cooking
Reading through old recipe books is insightful. I love seeing the change of styles and food ideology from 1920 through to 1950-60. A progression from the frugal nutrition focused home (with a strong emphasis on zero wastage, home grown produce and baking from scratch), to cooking for the everyday busy woman. My next favourite is the 1970's cook books. Oh those elaborate dinner party set-ups, tips on how to entertain and the lavish table cloths that match the wall paper. Then there was a boom in microwave cook books. I tend not to collect these but for interests sake, and completing a century of cooking. I probably should.
Earlier recipe books tell an interesting tale about the role of the woman through history, and her place in the kitchen and the art of homemaking. My 1932 Glasgow Cookery Book has entire chapters devoted to domestic science and scullery work.
I find food stains on recipe pages endearing. I like to imagine how many times the recipe was used and I wonder what kitchens it has sat in.
Gorgeous illustrations
I also love the illustrations in recipe books. The earlier black and white recipe books are pieces of art. Process and technique explored through talented sketches. Modern Cookery Illustrated is filled with gorgeous pictures. This book was handed down to my grandmother and then to me. I shall treasure it always!
Re-starting my collection
Some years back now, I paired back my collection of recipe books to just a handful. Books can be a heavy, cumbersome item to cart from home to home.
When I started my own design label in 2012, I started making little mahogany pendants that contained snippets of vintage recipe books. Older recipe books with beautiful letterpress font on aged creamy paper, looked the best under a round piece of glass, against the warmth of wood and the soft patina of silver. To make these pendants, I started to hunt for recipe books again. This is when my love for them really peaked. I poured over the pages, reading them from front to cover like an ordinary book. Precious gems of history. Most of the ones I found I decided were too good to cut up. That is how my latest collection re-started.
I do cook the recipes from time to time. Hunting for some of the ingredients is not always easy. I am yet to try some of the more daring meat dishes that involve plucking and gutting.
Mostly I just like to read through them on rainy days and muse over their gorgeousness. I think about my grandmother and the role recipe books played in her kitchen. I think about my young daughters. I am addicted to collecting that The Margaret Fulton Cookbook whenever I find it. I have kept one for each of my daughters when they grow up. I get excited every time I find one. To me that says it all, about recipe books. Food and cooking connects me to my family, my heritage and to my mother. The recipes in that book are nothing special, but it reminds me of my mother's kitchen. Nostaliga is a powerful thing.
Have I made you hungry yet? Or lusting to tie on an apron and bake a tart?
Until next time - you really need to try that chocolate self saucing pudding recipe!
xx Isabella