Learning to cook

I knew very little about cooking when I got married - my husband was a much better cook. Everything I know now has been learnt the hard way, by trial and error, with frequent reference to cook-books.

These were my reference books in those early days, the grubby green-covered one was the first I bought, put out by the Housewives Association. It was a life-saver, and I still use some of those recipes today. On top is the Aerophos cook-book, with lots of simple instruction for the novice.

Despite my careful reading and experiments, I didn't have much success, and shed quite few tears over the failures. Finally my sister-in-law took me in hand, and taught me a foolproof cake recipe. I can still recite it today - 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup of sugar, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 1 1/2 cups of S.R. flour.

It's a useful recipe, too; but it didn't help much, my oven just wouldn't get hot enough, no matter how much wood I put in.

At the time, my failures were, I'm sure, put down to my incompetence; but when the old black woodstove was finally pulled out and replaced, I was vindicated. The sides of the old beast had rusted out, allowing the heat to escape - not my fault at all!

With a nice new semi-combustion stove, my cooking improved no end, especially the cakes and scones!

I had also began a handwritten notebook of recipes - you can tell which ones I used most! Many of these have been copied into successive recipe books, and adapted over the years to family tastes.

Old recipe books like these are small historical documents in their own right; often there's a note beside the recipe, showing where it came from - "Ivy Douglas" or "ABC radio", and mine, at least, were adorned with promising recipes and pictures cut from magazines.

Even the printed books were annotated, with comments or adjustments to quantities. I have a large collection of recipe books now, and the ones I treasure most are not the modern glossy books, but the old ones put out by school mothers' clubs and the like - well-tried, practical family fare.

Today we have shiny stoves and microwaves, beautiful cookware and wonderful appliances - but a good recipe is still your roadmap to success.