Recipes from the past

My grandmother, Lois Johnston (nee Stephens) was a cook. A good, plain cook. She was a cook at the Rosebud hospital on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. When I was 15, I transcribed all of her recipes into a ring binder that was sorted into sections, to make finding the recipes easier. Or so I thought at the time. She probably knew exactly where they were. The original is an exercise book (picture below) with extras, hand-written notes, empty packets, recipes cut out of the newspaper. Worn with time, splattered with cake batter of cakes past it is a potpourri of recipes and stories. There’s Mrs Olive’s plum sauce, Jean’s mock cream, Granny’s cake without eggs and Mrs Warren’s Orange Cake baked for Lana’s 8th birthday. Aunty Lana just turned 80 - I may need to make it for her again. My grandparents were fairly itinerant and did whatever they needed to do to stay financially afloat. One of those ventures was to raise and sell ducks - on the back page you can see the orders for ducks in 1951.

Many of these recipes are lost to time. It’s time to reclaim them. We often think that it is only the Italian Nonnas, Japanese Ojiisan, and Jewish Babbe (in fact any other cultural group apart from Australian elders) that have recipes worthy of passing down the generations. This is not the case. Every family, irrespective of cooking prowess, have recipes worthy of passing on. I am going to share the orange cake recipe for Aunty Lana’s 80th birthday and my own family recipe for pavlova.

In a later post I am going to discuss the controversial history of pavlova and answer the question does it originate from New Zealand or is it Australian? I am going to pull in a guest to help me, Grant Stone.

In the meantime why pavlova? Growing up we really didn’t eat cake. Mum would make a sponge with jam and cream for birthdays and more often than not it would get thrown out. Pavlova however did not. I can remember Mum making a Pav for Dad’s birthday to take to work one year. When he got home and she asked if everybody liked it? The response was “was I supposed to share?”. My son is currently living in Canada and had Christmas with his girlfriend’s family - he asked what could he make that was quintessentially Australian and the answer was of course Pavlova. What appears below is the photo of his attempt and my message to him verbatim. I think he did a great job and the pink grapefruit is inspired.

Orange Cake - Aunty Lana’s 8th Birthday - Mrs Warren

ingredients

1/4 lb of butter (a smidge over 100g)

small cup of sugar

2 eggs and 1/2 cup of milk

2 cups of SR flour

grated rind of 2 oranges.

Method

Beat butter and sugar to a cream, add eggs one at a time. and beat well. Add rind and SR flour. The recipe doesn’t say what to do with the milk but I would say add half of the flour and half of the milk and repeat. Bake in a moderate over for three-quarters of an hour (45 minutes). When cold ice with orange icing and walnuts.

Jill’s Pavlova

I am going to credit this recipe to Mum - it very rarely fails.

So this makes a reasonable size Pav - I find doubling the recipe doesn’t work so give it a go and then if it’s not big enough you may need to do two.

2 egg whites make sure there is no yolk otherwise they don’t stiffen. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks and gradually add 1 cup of caster sugar and 1 teaspoon of cornflour. It has to be caster sugar the powdered sugar in the US is icing sugar so not right and the regular sugar is too granular.

Once you have beaten in the sugar and have nice glossy peaks add in 1 tablespoon of hot boiling water. The beaters should lift out and the peaks hold. Line a baking tray with baking paper and then dollop large spoonfuls in a circle about the size halfway between a butter plate and a dinner plate. It’s not an exact thing, it’s just dolloped and you make sure they come up in peaks.

The oven is at 160 degrees celsius and you cook it until ready. When’s that? It’s dried out, it might crack a little bit but it’s a bit trial and error but roughly 30-40 minutes. You can leave it in the turned-off oven to dry out a little more but that is not vital. Oh, you can put a teaspoon of vanilla in the mix as well if you like. Top with cream and fruit.