I’m looking at the interesting little recipe notebook dating from 1932 when Amy gave it to Mary. I wish I had some idea of who they were, but so far I have found no clues. A friend came across it when she was tidying her books – she didn’t know when or how she had acquired it either. It’s a cloth covered notebook entitled ‘Recipe Index’ with alphabetical tabs so it’s easy to find what you want – important if you’re baking and have floury hands and want to check something I guess!
As well as the pages, there are other recipes cut out from magazines or newspapers, and some handwritten sometimes on torn off scraps of paper – “HB eggs in small pastry cases covered with Hollandaise sauce garnished with parsley”, for example. There is another handwritten recipe (in a different hand so maybe from a friend) for Chicken Dorothea. I wondered if this was a well-known dish, or if it was the name of the friend who had shared it but couldn’t find anything when I tried to investigate (I did nearly get sidetracked by a south- African cook called Dorothy Slabberts, but she’s for another time)
Here is the recipe, very simple and with ingredients from most people’s pantries:
Chicken Dorothea
- 1 cooked chicken
- 1 onion cooked with chicken
- curry powder (to taste)
- 2 teaspoons vinegar
- ½ pint tomato juice
- ¼ pint mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon apricot jam
- 1 tin Nestles Cream (small)
Method
Chop onion and soften in olive oil add curry powder and strain, when cold beat into mayonnaise, apricot jam + cream lightly whipped add vinegar if desired.
Coat chicken with sauce &heat gently for ¾ hour
This sounds very similar to Coronation Chicken which was apparently created by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 – although an almost identical dish existed called Jubilee Chicken created for the celebration of George V’s silver jubilee in 1935. However, the idea of cheering up cold chicken with mayonnaise and spices is a fairly normal thing to think of even if you’ve never hear of Coronation/Jubilee Chicken!
Lois Elsden 