I have mentioned before that my father-in-law was in Africa during the war; I never knew him so I never was able to talk to him about his experiences. We have his photo album though, and we did have some rather large furniture, and on a smaller scale, The Congo Cookery Book by Clare E. Willet. My father-in-law was stationed nowhere near the Congo, but whether he once visited and bought it there, or whether he came across it elsewhere, or in a second-hand book shop or at a jumble sale we will never know. Maybe he bought it, thinking about the time he had spent in Africa.
As well as recipes, as so often with old cookery books, there is a section on household hints; some are universal and could be applied to any household anywhere, some are more specific to life ‘in the tropics:
- furniture – a recipe using palm oil – plus turps, meths and vinegar… what on earth did it smell like!!!
- gloves – “all leather goods and silk stockings should be kept in an air tight tin or a screw topped jar”
- hot water bottles – “When your hot water bottle has perished, use a bag of sand from the river in its place. Sand keeps hot a long time and a hot sand bag fitted into the small of the back can be a great comfort in the chilly stage of fever“
- ink – keep the lid closed
- lamp wick substitute – a strip from an old felt hat soaked in vinegar and dried
- loofahs – “Loofahs grow on a creeper which spreads rapidly and will cover a fence quickly. They make good pot scrubbers as well as bath sponges. Ask a native who speaks Lingola for some seeds of the ‘Linyuka’.”
- marking ink substitute (to mark clothes and laundry, not ‘making ink’) – see ‘avocado pear and cashew apple’ – turning to those pages, there is nothing about marking ink for the avocado!
- moths and silver fish – use a spray!
- postage stamps and gum labels – to unstick them cover with a thin piece of paper and iron
- shampoo – if you run out, use soap, and Borax powder in the rinsing water
- raw coffee – coat the beans in melted butter or palm oil then roast
- coffee stains – will yield to a mixture of egg yolk and glycerine
- damp stains – remove with eau-de-Cologne
Lois Elsden 