What perfect pastry!

I collect old cookery books and booklets – nothing expensive, no first editions or rare publications, but just the free booklets which food manufactures and kitchen gadget makers would give away free with their products.

I’ve no idea where I got this Spry cookery book from, it cost me  £1 from some second-hand book shop. Spry was ‘a snow-white vegetable fat, made entirely from vegetable oils’ the booklet tells me, but tells me nothing about where or when the product was first made, nor hen the booklet was published. it was published by R.S. Hudsons Ltd, printed by Billing and Sons Ltd of Esher, Surrey, but I don’t know when. There was a Spry product manufactured in the USA, so maybe this English version is a branch of that.

The booklet explains about the product: ‘it is tasteless, odourless, and perfectly digestible. But the special point about Spry is that it has been “ready creamed.” This gives it a velvet texture, absolutely new in cooking fats, and this smoothness gives you easier working and  better results in every kind of cooking.’

Isn’t the cover charming? The fashion looks 1930’s – but I am no expert. On the back inside cover is a number which could be a serial number, or it could be a date, 02-3-36; perhaps this means it was published in 1936?