I can’t remember when I bought this book, but as it was published in the sixties and was reprinted after decimalization and cost me fourteen pence, I’m guessing it was early seventies.
Its recipes are odd and not very exact because they are old, and probably weren’t handed down as very exact! Here is the introduction:
Here are vintage recipes from the Old World and exciting preserves from the New. Recipes to fit that quaint-looking medlar or dark juicy mulberry, to cope with the crop of japonica apples, or the basketful of sloes that the children gathered and presented so proudly – if unexpectedly.
The recipes from far and wide – some traditional, some old family treasures – are, many of them, far older than any “bulletins” published now. Cooks should consider carefully both the ingredients and quantities and take as much care in the making of them as with the more familiar recipes.
Recipes include high dumpsie dearie jam, Glencar jam (figs, rhubarb, candied lemon) ripe whortelberry jam, medlar marmalade, elderberry and crab apple chutney, asier (marrow and horse-radish pickle) parsley honey and white currants bar-le-duc.
Lois Elsden 