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This all came about when I was clearing out my mother’s house in England and came across her collection of recipe books. Hidden among the classics was her own personal recipe book, a 1974 edition of The Cordon Bleu Kitchen Book and Diary. Over the years, she had filled it with cuttings from magazines, scribbled notes on scraps of paper, and handwritten recipes given to her by friends. Stuck into the front was a useful and detailed index which my father put together for her.
At the same time, I discovered she also had her mother’s ‘cookery’ book, an old red school exercise book divided into sections, with the recipes neatly transcribed in beautiful script. Needless to say, this book was not in perfect condition, but it was complete and carefully tied together with a piece of thin ‘kitchen’ string.
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It is perhaps not surprising that I, too, have my own personal recipe collection. There are many entries prefixed by ‘Mum’s’, and many recipes taken from her collection of cookbooks. It is also dotted with entries by me and scribbles from my own children who, in their younger years, seemed to savour tasty and sweet!
So I started this journey looking in detail at all three recipe books, comparing them, deciphering them and choosing recipes from each to suit today’s kitchen enthusiast.
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One thing that became immediately apparent is that recipes written by oneself for oneself tend to be brief, often cryptic. My grandmother’s cake recipes simply say “bake in moderate oven for 1½ hours” or “cook for about 1½ hours in fairly slow oven”. It assumes she will know what temperature that means. Measurements too, differ. Pounds and ounces have become kilograms and grams. Gills have given way to fluid ounces and now millilitres. But my grandmother had other measurements too such as “1 breakfastful milk” or “a suspicion of”. Wonderful!
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I began with home baking and home preserves which covered both comforting family recipes as well as some of my own creations. The next stage is to expand the collection to include soups and salads, fish and meat dishes and, believe me, there is no shortage of material to choose from. Follow us on social media to see what's coming up!
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Bon Appetit!
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