Recipes of love
Food has the power to transport us back in time. With the return of Bake Off, three writers reflect on their most cherished dishes
How cherished dishes can transport you back
On a shelf in my kitchen sits a little yellow box made of tin, and on the front in faded writing is written ‘recipes’. It is one of my most precious possessions. Inside are recipes from members of my family, going back as far as my greatgrandmothers, written on yellowing index cards. Most are covered in splodges, much-used and much-loved as the years have gone by.
This is a box of wisdom and love. These foods have held our family together over the generations, providing sustenance in times of hardship, time-honoured traditions and wonderful feasts for celebration and get-togethers.
There’s the Hertfordshire Dough Cake recipe from my great-grandmother, who, as a widow with four sons, ran a butcher’s shop in Hertford; and the soda bread recipe from my Irish grandmother,
‘The memories are bittersweet but their recipes live on’
which she made every morning without fail. Now I make it regularly, too.
My paternal grandparents were Irish, and Edre was a fiercely keen cook and entertainer, as well as the mistress of creating a meal out of uninspiring leftovers. And she was the queen of picnics – my brother and I would spend our summers in Ireland, at the seaside on the coast of Kerry, with a basket laden with Thermos flasks of home-made soup and Tupperware boxes full of hard-boiled eggs, cold chicken and date slices. And always soda bread. Dense and cakey, it was a meal in itself, and if I could choose only one type of bread to have for the rest of my life, this would be it.
There is sunshine in this box, too. My parents married in Cyprus, where my father had been posted, and life there revolved around tennis and parties and bombing around the island in a Triumph Spitfire. They wrote out many recipes to bring home, and they are still in my box, including a list of what to include in a mezze written by my father. I love to think of them laying it out on a table to eat in the sunshine, the glamorous couple in their Mediterranean paradise.
When I was nine, my father was posted to Washington, DC. The food there was a revelation: Mountain Dew, Doritos, Oreos, Koolaid, Lucky Charms – my mother spent her life trying to steer my brother and me away from most of it.
But there were recipes to be gathered here, too – including a chocolate chip cake made with sour cream, which I made every Saturday. Whenever I make it now, it takes me right back.
As a teen back in England, I started having friends over for dinner parties. Everyone dressed up and brought wine, and we thought we were the height of sophistication. I raided the box for my mother’s dinner party staples, including her Marie Biscuit chocolate pudding – basically biscuits drenched in sugary coffee and topped with cream.
The most-used recipe, which I still make once a week, is my maternal grandmother’s Canadian flapjack. She discovered it after rationing ended in the 1950s. They lived on the outskirts of London, and the flapjack was a huge indulgence after years of deprivation.
I can picture her kitchen vividly – the pale-blue Formica cabinets covered in tiny black flowers and the frosted sliding doors. Here, we spent hours baking scones and those flapjacks, which were usually served with cucumber sandwiches for tea on the lawn. I remember the agony of waiting for the flapjacks to cool, ready to prise them out of the tin with a knife, hoping that one would crumble so I could have an early bite. My gentle grandmother would urge patience, a quality I have always lacked.
Very sadly, my grandmother died quite young, but we carried on the tradition of baking for my grandfather. The ritual of carrying a tray out into the garden on a summer’s afternoon stays with me to this day.
Whenever I need comfort, I go to my little yellow box. The memories are bittersweet, for most of the contributors are long gone. But their recipes live on, and I add to the box regularly, hoping it will be handed down again for generations to come. A Family Recipe by Veronica Henry (Orion) is out now