Vale Margaret Fulton (1924-2019).
Her person, her cooking, her books…My Italian grandmother gave me a lot of cookbooks over the years but these two Margaret Fulton ones were given the special place of being my 18th and 21st presents. I know I didn’t appreciate them enough when I was young but over time they’ve been used often with many pages tagged and splotched and I love that Nanna Francesca wrote in both of them.
Tag Archives: Australian cookbooks
Connecting through old cookbooks…
I love cooking from old cookbooks for their connection to the past and family recipes.
This 1934 Goulburn Cookery Book belonged to my grandmother-in-law whom I didn’t get to meet but I know and much admire that she cared for her eight children in their country town through prudent circumstance and for many years independently after she was widowed.
I love that her middle name was Philadelphia and that in this cookbook she pasted cut-out recipes and wrote some in as well. (Roger has made the grapefruit jam like his grandmother’s handwritten recipe.)
There’s even a recipe for Eggs in Purgatory, albeit a bit different to the version likely cooked in 1930s Italy or the ‘eggs in tomato’ my great-granny Maddalena cooked!
Interestingly, recent studies have revealed that despite the use of ingredients like butter and eggs, most recipes in 1930s cookbooks have a third less calories than current ones, often due to their smaller portion sizes.
Filed under inspiration + history, kitchen stories
Zoë Boccabella 