Books Full of Secrets

I have spent much of the last week reading my old cookbooks, not looking for recipes, but doing a little exploration and detective work.     It hasn't take me very far, but I have enjoyed it.

These particular books are fascinating.    Old, well worn, so well worn that some of them are falling apart, but they are wonderful documents.   

They are mystery stories -  well, all apart from the red one, which belonged to my mother.   It was her handwritten recipe book, so I have known it since childhood and it is very dear to me.

The others are all early Victorian handwritten recipe books.     Some of you already know about my passion for them.    My exploration and enjoyment of them continues.   I am a poor detective, for I haven't really made much progress in finding out who wrote them.   I don't suppose I ever shall, but that doesn't matter.

I have managed to unpick a little of the story from one of the very worn ones, it was originally a maths exercise book for the daughter of the rector of a church in Derbyshire.     Just a few pages were used for the original purpose - beautiful penmanship - and then the rest is filled with recipes for food and medicines, written in a much less refined hand.

That particular book is a treasure, it tells so many stories, even though the name of the cook is not revealed.   There are kitchen suppers, enormous school dinners, Christmas and Easter feasts for vast numbers of people, along with many hundreds of recipes.     Cook had to deal with 56 stone pigs, so there are lots of recipes for salting hams, etc.      It isn't always the easiest of books to read, simply because the handwriting takes some getting used to, but it has been worth the effort.       There are more leads to follow before I have completed my detective work on that volume.

The tan leather one seems to have belonged to a 'lady' her handwriting is beautiful.


The scope of her recipes is somewhat different from that of the vicar's cook.


The one next to it,  with the worn and nibbled spine, reads more like the cookbook of someone who lived in a town, rather than out in the countryside, but I need to do further work on it.

The light coloured book on the left, is very interesting - well they all are - it always reads more like a book which was used for amusement.   Lots of recipes, especially for ice creams and water ices, lots of handwritten knitting patterns, lists of people attending a funeral, a poem about a very tragic accident when a man fell through the ice on a pond and died.       That particular incident was easy to check up on, and it did happen, at a big country house in Cheshire.        More leads to be followed up on in the future.

Each and every book is fascinating.      Not least, the big black one.   More of that another time.
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