Today, I'm an adopted Londoner, living South of the River and working a fairly corporate life north of the river, but when time allows I'm happiest creating in the kitchen. This is undoubtedly an impact from a childhood far from here, around 500 miles north, growing up in Deeside, a few miles west of Aberdeen.
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| The recipe books |
Many of the women (past and present) in my family have been keen cooks and bakers, and this is indeed the case for me. My parents recently uncovered a series of recipe books carefully documented by my Great Auntie Chrissie which both remind me of my childhood, but also provide a historic record of recipes more common to times past in the UK and some specifically Scottish. Chrissie began her recipe documentation in 1922 and her books appeared to date up to the 1970s/1980s, I know as one recipe is attributed to my own mother, who she would have only met in the early 70s.
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| 1985 - Chrissie with great-nieces - l-r Lynsey (me), Kate & Jane |
Together with my Grandmother, Agnes Abernethy, these two women conjure wonderful culinary memories from my childhood out in Deeside. My memories persist of my Grandma particularly in her kitchen which I remember as very dark, iron and formica-filled (this was the early 1980's after all). Whereas my grandmother baked and cooked practically blindfolded, relaying the quantities as a "bittie o' this and a bittie o' that", Chrissie was a disciplined documenter and patiently scribed each of her recipes into a series of notebooks, the first is dated 1922 and is most likely from her time at the "Do' School" - a neatly transcribed book of "Cookery Recipes" beginning with instructions on how to cook stock and including recipes such as 'Boiled Salad Dressing' and 'Brain Cakes'. Whereas I never experienced Chrissie's 'Brain Cakes' - perhaps one that never graduated into her repertoire - I do recall many a wonderful meal with her.
As much of my cooking today takes inspiration from other cuisines, I thought it would be a fun experiment and a good record to test out some of Chrissie's recipes and provide my own views on how these could be tweaked for our modern tastes.
Some recipes are somewhat brief and require some invention, so I hope that you can enjoy these too and I do welcome any thoughts from yourselves in the comments.
To learn a bit more about Chrissie, read her intro page, an except below:
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| Chrissie, far right, at the Do School |
Christina Reid Forbes (née Abernethy) was born in 1904 at her parents' farm, Bakebare, in Drumoak, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Chrissie came from a large family, the second youngest of eleven (from two mothers) and the only daughter of the second family. (Her mother was also named Christina, née Greig.) My Grandfather, Douglas, was in fact the baby of the family.
Inevitably Chrissie developed an interest in cooking and baking, one can only assume through supporting her mother in feeding her large collection of brothers, and certainly cemented through her attendance at the Aberdeen School of Domestic Science (the "Do' School") and perfected through the following twenty years keeping house for her mother.
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