More of Grandma's Little Black Book of Recipes From 1905 - 1927

Les Dale

I discovered many of Grandma's recipe books in a shoe box while rummaging around in my attic in 2015, where they had remained untouched for over over 35 years. When I showed one to my daughter, who is a keen baker and has many recipe books, she immediately took out her phone and took a photo of the recipe for Chocolate Tartlets. On her next visit she came with a tin containing the results, they were delicious. She asked to see the book again and took another photo of Drop Scones, it turned out they were easy to make. The seed was set to for me to try and publish some of Grandma's recipes. I decided to photograph each recipe individually, then type the ingredients and instructions. The first “Grandma's Little Black Book of Recipes from 1910” was published later that year.
During the pandemic of 2020, at the age of 75, I found myself being confined to the house, I decided to put my time to good use and revisit the shoe box containing Grandma's little black books of recipes and notes. From yesteryear to this year. Enjoy

Relive the tastes and smells of an age where there were no microwave ovens or digital scales. Back then, cooking was done on a Yorkshire Range. The books were compiled by young women who visited each other's houses, and loved swapping favorite recipes, as well as catching up on the latest gossip. Therefore, you will see handwriting here other than Grandma's. Their recipes used simple ingredients that were available at the time, including isinglass, suet and gelatine. This is not a book for the complete novice. You won't find any "preheat the oven to 200 ° C" instructions. Grandma's skills would not only have been in baking, but also maintaining the oven at a constant temperature. Remember the heat came from the coal and wood, no thermostatic controls or glass fronted doors in ovens existed back then. The recipes included instructions like "place into a bowl and warm by the fire, stirring until melted". Self raising flour was not in common use, baking powder was used with plain flour, although some later recipes in this book contain self raising flour. UK measurements are used, oz, lbs, pints, gills and quarts, also terms like "bake in a quick oven". I have included comprehensive conversion pages to help anyone experimenting with these recipes with modern day equipment.
The typed recipes and instructions are a direct translation of the handwriting seen in the photographs on each page. No extra instructions have been added to preserve its authenticity. Spelling has been copied as written, for example, 'candid peel ”and“ castor sugar ”.