The Dairy Book of Family Cookery

The Dairy Book of Family Cookery, 1983, Ebury Press, ISBN 0 85223 350 7

My mum has this book and it is one that I used to pick up again and again and find things to cook whilst she was at work.  I seem to remember that it was a book that you ordered from the milkman, when they still pounded the streets on their daily round.

I really love this book, it carries many nostalgic memories.  Not least that I was captivated by the tea set in the picture on page 263 of this book and have loved it ever since.  It was a tea set that I wanted to have when I grew up. I found a copy of this recipe book in the Albion Bookstore when Mr OC and I lived in Broadstairs in 1999 and quickly snapped it up.  Then the week we were packing up to leave Broadstairs and come back home to Shropshire I saw my first ever real life pieces of this tea set in the antique shop there.  I can’t remember what pieces they had on display now but I remember that they cost £50 and it was £50 that I didn’t have at the time. I walked away with a sinking heart and a feeling that I would never own the tea set that I so coveted. Then one day, some time later, my parents turned up with a big box. This box said “Colour TV Monitor” on the side.  I wondered what on earth I was going to do with this TV monitor and how to accept it graciously.  However, I opened the box to find an entire Royal Albert Petit Point tea service inside.  I don’t think I will ever receive such a lovely gift again.

So there you go, a recipe book can come to mean much more than the sum of its parts.

I still cook from this book regularly, but I have never cooked the Baked Fruit Cheesecake, which is the food item snapped on the petit point tea set on page 263.  Perhaps I should make an effort to change that.

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