Found! Old recipe book

thriftlady_2

My mum has a copy of the Good Housekeeping Compendium 1959,which is falling apart.I spent many a happy hour as a child looking at the pictures of the cakes.I found a 1960 copy in Oxfam in much better nick than my mum's.It is thick,black hardback book,i think people have already mentioned it.

I love finding old cookery books in our Oxfam bookshop,they often have handwritten recipes and notes in them .I found one once that had come from America and had a mixture of handwritten recipes in English and German,it also had a little love note amongst all the recipes,a book with a story.... :heart2:

Skintmama

My mum has the GHC too thriftlady. I did the same as you :eek: we must have been weird children!
Now of course I have grown into the sort of woman who looks in charity shops and secondhand bookshops for well used tomes on the same subject, or gardening, for a bit of variety. Sound familiar?

SammyD_2

I've got a Mrs Beetons as well, it was my great aunts. She went to work in a "big house" before the first world war. I use it for cakes and jam recipies sometimes.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested I have just read "the Short Life and Long Times of Isabella Beeton" - it seems that she cribbed all her recipes from others. And she died when she was 28. Sorry, off topic. But it was a very interesting read.

joannasmum

I have one of my mums which is the "Milk Cook book" dont know its proper name but was issued by the milk marketing board in the 70's. I also have a hand written note book of my nans which has the recipes for her xmas pud and cake in it along with other yummy things, made my dad the xmas cake this year, his face was a picture when he bit into it. I wish that I had my mums handwritten book but evil step-mum threw it away when dad moved in with her. I now have a book myself that I'm putting recipes that I use in including ones from MSE, hope to pass it on to my children one day.

recovering_spendaholic

My Grandad was head chef on the Queen Mary in the 30's and I have all of his receipe books - some date back to the mid 1800's, but the only trouble is they are written for professional chefs so they say things like "take 2 dozen eggs and beat with 2 gallons cream..." so I have to divide stuff up, but the receipes are lovely and there are some really nice notes in the margins - things are marked up as being the favourites of celebrities of the day - people like Olivia de Haviland, Lionel Barrymore, Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable. I also have all of this typed original receipes (very dog eared but still legible!)and I have to say that the receipe for curry is nicer than any other curry I have ever tasted and it is really quite simple. I love reading through them!! All my family were food fanatics and I have some other nice books from the 50's and 60's like Sophia Loren's Cook with Me and Cooking with Liberace and a very tatty Dairy book of home cookery from 1965 which is just fantastic and has some lovely receipes in.

ivyleaf

The first cookery book I bought was Marguerite Patten's "Perfect Cooking" - in 1973 - it's falling apart now and I think it's out of print, so I'm seriously thinking of having it re-bound even though it would probably cost a fair bit! I always refer to it when doing a roast because I can never remember how long to allow per pound for different sorts of meat. :rolleyes:

I also have an original edition of "The Dairy Book of Home Cookery" , which seems to have more recipes in it than the new edition does, including a yummy chocolate cake with golden syrup in it!

nicki_2

My oldest cookbook was a gift from the original owner when I was a small girl still in primary school : "Look and Cook" from "The Gloucestershire Training College of Domestic Science". It's one of a set of books about Domestic Science and it says "Last reprinted 1955" I have no idea how much it cost but it does have 3/9 in the cover so I still use it alot, infact I use it for reference on oven temperatures (pencilled in updates from me ), baking powder alternative measurements etc and used it just yesterday to do some baking with DD

Miss_Behaving

I've got a book called "From Hand to Mouth" dated 1944. It was produced by the Berkshire Federation of Women's Institutes and belonged to my grandmother. There are some fantastic recipes in it and because it was produced during the war, most of them are fairly economical.

twink

I have a Tried Favourites cookery book from 1934 with household hints and useful information, it says on the cover by Mrs E W Kirk. Might just have a look through it again, the hoovering can wait!