Times Have Changed - Recipes

Cookery books from the past                                          Image:Marie Vonow

I am fortunate to be living in a time and a location where I can ask myself what I should cook for a meal, not, 'How can I obtain something, anything to feed the family?' My circumstances mean I have access to food, I have the money to buy it and I can grow some fruit and vegetables in my garden. I can swap with other people. Okay, my budget doesn't stretch to the more expensive cuts of meat but cheaper cuts provide the same nutrition and encourage one to be a bit more adventurous with recipes. Buying 'in season' is cheaper and the produce tends to have more flavour.

It is interesting to think back to recipes of my childhood. Sometimes I read recipes from that era and gasp in horror at the amount of butter and the number of eggs in a cake.

Back sixty or so years ago it was considered fine to have several eggs in a cake recipe. Those were times when many people had hens free ranging in their back yard so there was a plentiful supply of eggs. Some people had a cow or even two for milk and cream. They often made their own butter.

Green and Gold Cookery Book compiled in 1923                               Image: Marie Vonow

I borrowed a copy of the Green and Gold Cookery Book published in 1923, from my library. My mother and grandmother both used this cookery book when I was little. A recipe for American Pound Cake contains eight eggs and 500 grams butter among other ingredients. Christmas cake has six eggs and 500 grams butter, Fairview cake uses five eggs.

Incidentally, the Canadian War Cake contains no eggs, milk or butter.

I remember in my childhood more use was made of kidneys, liver, brains, tongue and the like. I never had to eat tripe but it doesn't sound appetising to me. The Green and Gold Cookery Book includes recipes such as ox tongue in jelly, steak and kidney pie, stewed ox kidney, stewed tripe and onions, stewed ox tail and curried kidneys.

Rabbits featured quite frequently on the menu, especially of people living in rural areas. People trapped them in the scrub or bred them in the backyard. Curried rabbit and stewed rabbit recipes can be found in the Green and Gold Cookery Book.

These days more people are returning to growing some vegetables and herbs in their backyard or in a few pots or raised garden beds. This was a common practice, especially in the country, when I was a child. I recall Grandma picking sweet corn cobs, quickly boiling them and serving them with real butter. Delicious.


Grandma grew other vegetables and there were a variety of fruit trees, strawberries and young berries growing in her garden. Grandma made relishes, jam and chutney. She preserved fruit and dilled cucumbers in her Vacola preserving outfit.

The Green and Gold Cookery Book includes numerous recipes for jam, jellies, marmalade and preserves. The recipe for Royal marmalade uses six pounds of Seville oranges and eighteen pounds of sugar. The recipe for Marmalade (Scotch recipe) uses four pounds of Seville oranges and 12 pounds of sugar so it seems it was usual for a recipe to have three times as much sugar as fruit.

Oranges can be made into lovely marmalade                   Image:Marie Vonow

Online I found a modern day recipe for marmalade using Seville oranges . It uses 500grams oranges for a kilo of sugar. Another recipe used 1.3 kg Seville oranges, the juice of two lemons and 2.6 kg sugar. These recipes have twice the amount of sugar as fruit so are not as sweet as recipes for orange marmalade from 1923, even though they are still using a lot of sugar.

I haven't  time to do detailed research to see if this is the general pattern but I found it interesting to notice that more sugar was used nearly 100 years ago. There wouldn't have been as much awareness of the health problems which can result from high sugar consumption.

These days there is a wider range of recipes from different cultures. Many foods are used which I had never heard of in my childhood. There are numerous sources of recipes in addition to the traditional books, magazines, newspapers and family favourites, with television and the internet providing plenty of new ideas for cooking.

I wonder what recipes will be like in fifty years time.