After her death lots of my aunt’s bits and pieces found their way to my home
The ‘A.1’ Cookery Book by Helen H Lawson was one. I can find nothing about the author on the net so don’t know who she was or how she came to write a cookery book. It’s possible one of my readers might be able to tell me 😊
As you can see its quite an old cookery book – this is the 1946 (war time) 5th edition – very plain front with the title etc on the spine….. all words and no pictures; the first edition was published in 1901/2 and I imagine she was an ‘older’ lady when she got round to revising it for its fifth publication.
The front page suggests it contains everything essential for those who wish to have plain food daintily prepared’ and I can imagine thats what my aunt would aspire to but theres lots included that I think she’d have run a mile from.
Somehow I couldn’t have seen her stewing eels, boiling a calf’s head or foot, plucking and drawing a partridge, pheasant or pigeon. Note on pigeons – Tame pigeons taste better if cooked as soon as possible after they are killed – bet you didn’t know that !.
Lots of very old type recipes and many basic ones with some good hints and tips relevant to simple cooking these days.
The author mentions a tip that we all know about the water from boiled vegetables including potatoes and that in which rice, macaroni, or spagetti have been boiled are useful as a foundation for soups and sauces. But seemingly there was one exception – cabbage water, which must be thrown away at once. Unfortunately she doesn’t say why
Before the section on puddings and sweets she lists whether they need butter and eggs – eggs but no butter – and those that need no butter or eggs – which would have been a boon in the days after the war when not everything was readily available and there was still food rationing
Sometime or another I’ll really delve into this and find some ‘easy’ old recipes.
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- After another look online Look what I found -….a site where you can access and read the 2nd edition (free) Scroll down the site a little until Read/Preview – then click through. There’s also a download feature as well.
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26302488M/The_A1_cookery_book
A couple of little differences on the title page – the author is named H N L (not by her full name) plus the words ‘written in the simplest possible manner to help the inexperienced’ which are not on the 1946 version
Still Waters 