The habit of cutting out and pasting recipes seems have begun with a grandmother whose recipe book was started before her marriage in 1915 (she has written in her maiden name and address). It is an illuminating piece of social history and deserves a post of its own. It has come out of its drawer and gone back to my family awaiting re-binding, An earlier great grandmother received from one of her husband's cousins a copy of Mrs Beeton's guide to household management, a fitting gift on her wedding day.
I store most of my recipes in a box inside plastic wallets recycled from the decades when I taught using photocopiable worksheets. The recipes needed to be kept splash free and legible. But they were beginning to spill out of the box and escape their category dividers. So I had a sort out and wondered how my tastes had changed.
Most of them date from ten or more years ago when we lived in London. Two neighbours would pass women's magazines to me when each had finished and I would cut out recipes and knitting patterns, some of which I still have and have knitted up.
Economical and tasty recipes (one of the favourite descriptions of the magazine) have stayed in. The vegetarian section seems to be the largest because I enjoy cooking with pulses and finding good uses for 'stickered' vegetables such as cauliflowers. It is so easy to revive these by cutting a slice from the base of the stem and leaving the cauliflower in a bowl of cold water overnight.
I have discarded the glossier stuff that is more time-consuming, the upmarket store magazines trying to sell their pre-packaged ingredients, and almost all 'family dinner' recipes for roast lamb or pork.
I have kept a selection of recipes from our grandmother's book that remind me of the home baking Friday afternoons of childhood - parkin, bannock cake, rice cake, chocolate cake - and copied them out on recipe cards with their date and provenance.
My slimmed down box now sits happily on the island table of our kitchen, propping up a good selection of cookery books. I am not proposing to dispose of these any time soon.
