Favourite old recipe book that you still use?

Dundee cookery book. Size of paperback. No illustrations. All the basics. Also how to look after a house and an invalid.

Over the past three years, including clearing out for a house move, I've butchered some old recipe books and cut out the recipes I use. The books are too well-thumbed for a charity shop. Most were from a Marks and Spencer series of large thin paper backed books with colour illustrations for each recipe. I use the internet but that is not as satisfying as the printed recipe in front of me.

grandmama Please could you share the condensed milk boiled fruit cake recipe.
It must be delicious.
Please.
Please.

I had a few of those “500 recipes” books back in the day. The strangest one was one for Chinese food. The recipes were very much more authentic than anything I had ever come across and most of the ingredients (chickens feet anyone?) were not widely available. I don’t think I ever cooked anything out of it, but it had a certain curiosity value!

MawBroon
I have a very well-thumbed copy of How to Cheat at Cooking too.

Despite the fact that I have a whole shelf full of cookery books from Mrs Beeton to Jamie Oliver, I tend to google for a recipe whenever I want to try a new one.

I love my Bero book and bought one for each of my 3 children ?

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.

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.

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

allsortsofbags, I still have that microwave book!

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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???

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!

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!

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...!

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

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.

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

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