How recipes date...

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In the recycling today, we found a single copy of a cookery part-work, from around the mid 70's I'd say. This edition majored on two food styles. Veal (which it said the continental indoor style of rearing was getting so much more popular!), and souffles. Cold souffles, rather than the baked ones - more like stiff mousse really.

Flicking through it, I happened across one called "Souffle Monte Cristo". A hollow in the middle of the souffle is filled with pineapple chunks and ratafias, soaked in sherry.

Can you think of a more dated thing, than a cold souffle called a Monte Cristo? It just screams 70's dinner party!

I think the two things we find that date the most are cookery magazines, and knitting patterns!
 
My Grannie's recipe books include an original copy of the spagetti grows on trees newspaper article from the BBC in 1957 and also numerous recipes dating from post war rations when sugar and eggs were still rationed and ironically are much healthier than today's recipes for the same things. It is quite interesting looking back at them including articles on introducing pasta and how to cook it and what to serve with it.
 
Yes, I'm sorry I'll miss out on the next edition of this partwork, which includes an Italian three course meal, billed as "Not all Italian food is pasta..." Plus a section on whisked jellies...

Of course, some recipes are timeless. My Mum's cooking bible is a 1960's edition of Mrs Beeton's, and she still turns to it for the recipes for sponge cake and crumble and other things.

The original book fell apart in the 90's, and I found another copy in a second hand bookshop.
 
One of our favourite recipes is from a Bovril cookery card from the early 1930s. It's for topsy turvy pie, and the recipe is reproduced here. What really strikes me about old recipes is that the quantities are so low - I always use 400 - 500g of minced beef, two large hard boiled eggs and two large tomatoes. The original Bovril recipe contained even less meat than the recipe I linked to!
 
Sandra Piddock said:
One of our favourite recipes is from a Bovril cookery card from the early 1930s. It's for topsy turvy pie, and the recipe is reproduced here. What really strikes me about old recipes is that the quantities are so low - I always use 400 - 500g of minced beef, two large hard boiled eggs and two large tomatoes. The original Bovril recipe contained even less meat than the recipe I linked to!
Click to expand...

Great Depression ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_era#United_Kingdom
 
My Mum has a cupboard full of her Mums & Grans recipes books, some are really odd with recipes for squirrel.

I love my Mrs Beeton's book, but some of the recipes are certainly lurid calling for food colouring in pastes for sandwiches.
 
you can never re event the wheel ,i was trained as a chef in the 80s with the repertoire de la cuisine,not a recipe book as such but a guide to garnishes and dish content,i have used books from when cooks were in service,from my great great aunts time,
dishes come and go trends change but split dishes down theres nothing new,we have access to trend foods from around the world and we all travel more,
 
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