In The Margins

Noticing what's hidden between the pages of old cookbooks

Friends, my mother Bea enjoyed tasty food. And sweet things.

She never had a mother to teach her how to cook. Her mum, my Grandma, died when Bea was five. Getting married in her mid thirties - later than most of her friends - she learned to cook as a wife and new mother. She adopted the challenge with gusto.

Mum died several years years ago. This still gives me tremors when I write the words down. But this week, going through her recipe books, I’ve noticed she left me little love letters in the margins: food receipts, guest lists and recipe tweaks.

Recipe books, particularly for Chinese cooking (written in English or bilingual English and Chinese), were a booming market from the 1960s onwards. Most of the cookbooks came out of the US and Taiwan as China was in the grip of the Cultural Revolution. But by the 1970s, Hong Kong (where we lived) got in on the act and Mum was an early adopter in Chinese cookery for English speakers.

Here are some of the margin notes and scribbles she left for me to find:

Below is the book accompanying Mum’s first modern convenience: a grey-blue Kenwood Chef mixer. I remember it well. The recipe book that came with the mixer (which we no longer have) is a beauty and a doozy in one. So many descriptions like Invalid Fish Creams (a meal, liquidised) we would balk at today and others - like Orangeaid and Tutti Frutti that we don’t hear enough of.

What have you found in the margins or hidden in the pages of old books? I want to hear about your love letters from the past.

That’s it for this week, friends. Have a delicious weekend and a Happy Father’s Day to my husband, my Dad, my brothers and all who are fatherly in Australia. Why don’t you give my little Father’s Day Q&A a try?

And there’s still time to book my Conversation Show in Sydney.