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Favourite old recipe book that you still use?

(82 Posts)
lilypollen Fri 23-Mar-18 20:44:47

Baked a Simnel cake for Easter today using a well-used recipe from Black Hamlyn book published in 1970. Looked through it and there are at least 12 recipes that I still use today.

Camelotclub Sun 25-Mar-18 13:14:56

I admire you all for cooking. My favourite Easter recipe is a Cadbury's choc egg.

goldengirl Sun 25-Mar-18 13:15:22

A book I won at school courtesy of Stork - probably because my cooking was so awful. It's my go-to recipe book and whilst I like 'modern' books, it's the best book I've ever come across for basics.

eGJ Sun 25-Mar-18 13:30:25

Still count 25 strands of spaghetti per person as in Cooking in a Bedsitter every time I do spag Bol!?

Maccyt1955 Sun 25-Mar-18 13:43:07

My Scottish grandmother was a cook, and I loved to watch my Oxfordshire grandmother cook apple crumbles and egg custard tart. So my parents bought me a copy of The Good Housekeeping Institute’s ‘Cooking is Fun’, in 1965.
I treasured this book and I still do, even though the pages are very tatty now.

Harris27 Sun 25-Mar-18 14:43:51

Have loads of books lining the shelves but I like my be - ro as well. Happy times when the boys were little.

Sheilasue Sun 25-Mar-18 15:44:24

Mrs Beeton not that I use it now but keep because it was a wedding present. I have a few cook books. Latest is James duigan clean and lean diet.

Blinko Sun 25-Mar-18 16:15:37

I still have a spam cookbook from the 1970s grin It reminds me how far we've come, culinarily speaking..... (is that a word?)

luluaugust Sun 25-Mar-18 16:21:46

The Paupers Cookbook, still occasionally make the potato, onion and bacon hotpot.

Grammaretto Sun 25-Mar-18 16:25:37

I must have missed out. I don't have Mrs Beeton. I did have the Be-ro, good for cakes and scones. My favourite when the kids were young was Good Food on a Budget by Georgina Horley. It's month by month. She tells you when fish is in season for example. Herring when there's an r in the month. or is that haddock. It has a super section on jam making and on Christmas cooking. I tend to use the internet now because I'm usually trying to find the best way to use up fruit and veg past their best.

Nonna22 Sun 25-Mar-18 16:54:35

HildajenniJ, I also have a Cumberland and Westmorland WI cookery book from the 70s. It was my
Mums and it’s falling apart but I’d never part with it. I use the Christmas Cake recipe every year x

SueDoku Sun 25-Mar-18 18:00:15

Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. Guaranteed success with any recipe - and lots of scribbles where I've adapted/added things. The pages that stick together are the most used recipies...! smile

missdeke Sun 25-Mar-18 18:16:54

I often used to invent cakes when my kids were small, it depended on what was in the cupboard at the time. My son got fed up with with me never being able to repeat any invention that he particularly liked, so spent his pocket money on a notebook for me to write them down in. The bargain was that they would give each invention a name! One of their favourites was named Dead Chicken Cake (after some dubious eggs from the farm). I still have the book and still refer to it some 40 years later!

Marydoll Sun 25-Mar-18 19:17:22

I have made a digital copy of all the family favourite recipies for my daughter, some my late mother's, some my own.
I also made a cookery book for her including pictures of what the dish should look like, with step by step instructions. As I always improvise and never do the same thing twice, I found it hard to explain to her!

gma Sun 25-Mar-18 19:50:31

I worked for a large printing company and we would often get a free copy of a new book! My favourites are Good Housekeeping and Cooking for Compliments, both circa 1966/7! Doubt it happens now!
One to test the memory....Nancy Spain’s Colour cook Book! The most weird selection of recipes ever, I really wish that I had kept it, anyone still got a copy???

123kitty Sun 25-Mar-18 21:02:16

Got rid of all my cookbooks as every recipe is now available on line

gagsy Mon 26-Mar-18 04:02:13

The BeRo book and the Radiation cookery Book that came with my new gas cooker in 1962. My mum had the 1939 version.

absent Mon 26-Mar-18 06:03:09

Most of the cookbooks I use, if I resort to one, are those I have written myself over a period of more than 30 years. I tested the recipes, so I know they work, but I tend to go for the familiar and favourites and only occasionally – usually when I have guests – move out of my comfort zone into, what is, of course, my comfort zone.

gmelon Mon 26-Mar-18 08:57:00

Dairy book of home cookery 1977. Bought from milkman. My Grandmother bought three.
One for me, herself and my extremely absent Mother.

I love the way that what are now commonplace meals such as spaghetti bolognese and pizza are in a "foreign foods" chapter.

I've still got my original and in addition seven copies purchased from the internet and charity shops. They are mostly identical, although published in various years.

I also had a Stork book from school, Marguerite Pattern and a Farmhouse kitchen. I'm off to look on the internet for replacement copies of them.

gmelon Mon 26-Mar-18 09:11:39

I've a large collection cookery books from the late sixties seventies, I wasn't old enough at the time to use them.

Can't pass a charity shop without going to the book section for a look.

Especially keen on the ones for entertaining. Some of the recipes, complete with photos are horrendous. Anyone keen on aspic? Duck a la orange still a firm favourite.
It seemed to be the way to go for impressive dinner parties.

Did any of you have dinner parties in those decades? Using these impressive concoctions?

Jeanniejoo Mon 26-Mar-18 10:28:18

I always loved Rissoles. We had them on washing day which was always Mondays. Very little spice but enough to know what you were eating. That's when mums were in a hurry between dumping clothes in the boiler and hanging them out in the 'not so big' garden and chatting across the fence with likewise neighbours for a few minutes.

I still have the Radiation cook book.

shandi6570 Mon 26-Mar-18 10:34:20

Like M0nica I have an old, much used, copy of the Bee Nilson Penguin Cookery Book. It was given to me by a friend when I got married, it didn't look very exciting but has proved invaluable over the years. So many of you recommend the BeRo book that I may have to see if I can find a copy on EBay or similar.

JackyB Mon 26-Mar-18 12:16:23

Good Housekeeping cookery book - the cover has fallen off and half of the index at the back is missing! Brilliant for basics, menu suggestions, how to adapt for large parties.

Also a thin freebie I got when I got married - a selection of Good Housekeeping recipes to be made with various Moulinex kitchen gadgets. Brilliant home-made sausages!

Dottypotty Mon 26-Mar-18 17:03:32

Dairy Book of Home Cooking is still the one I use the most.

allsortsofbags, I still have that microwave book!

Grandmama Mon 26-Mar-18 17:56:06

My dual purpose boiled fruit cake recipe (no sugar but a tin of sweetened condensed milk) doubles as a Christmas cake and a Simnel cake and is in an ancient Nestle book. My gingerbread comes from an old Egg Marketing Board book and I also have 2 Be-Ro booklets - all recipes in that are with SR flour, even Yorkshire pudding.

Maggieanne Mon 26-Mar-18 21:13:31

I bought a book "500 recipes for Cooking for Two" by Katie Stewart, 30p when I got married in '72, a paperback from Boots. Sad that no-one else has mentioned Katie Stewart! I have used it time and time again, the simplest of recipes. Family favourite recipe is from Bero, quick and easy spice cake I think it's called, everyone loves it.