Favourite old recipe book that you still use?

Shysal Cookery in Colour was my first cookery book - DH bought it for me just after we got married, more in hope than expectation I think! I still have it but don’t bring it out much as it is showing all of its fifty one years of wear and tear, (yours looks positively pristine compared to mine!) but I have a lot to thank it for!

I have the Good Housekeeping book that my mother gave me in the early 70s when I was first married.

In the early '60s, when I was in my first job, I would listen to an early morning BBC Scotland show 'Morning Call' in which a very Aberdonian cook, Janet Murray would give Scottish recipes and I still have the book that accompanied her talks. I still use her shortbread recipe which has the usual ingredients but instead of rubbing in the butter, melts it instead. It has always been appreciated. One that sounds revolting is 'potted heid' -ie cow's head. Don't ask! Gingerbread made with beer sounds enticing but I haven't tried it in all these years!

My favourite is Marguerite Patten's "Cookery in Colour". I bought a new copy in a discount sale (for £2) almost 40 years ago nd still use it today. Some of the recipes are a little old fashioned but the traditional baking, soups, supper dishes and especially the things like meat roasting times have always been invaluable.

I bought a second hand copy on Amazon a few years ago for my daughter - second hand it cost me £3.95!

Cooking in a Bedsitter by Katherine Whitehorn circa 1968.
It cost me all of 3/6 and contained the only pertinent advice regarding whether to serve red or white wine I have ever needed

“White wine goes with carpets, red wine only with floors you can wipe clean or don’t need to care about”
Adding helpfully
“Basically play to the carpet rule unless you’re quite sure you are entertaining non-spillers”

This is the Margaret Patten one I got 42 years ago.
It is falling to bits, it has been used so much.

Maw what a really helpful book to have.

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Not long afterwards I graduated to Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking
That must have been 1973 and I see it cost me 60p
Also much thumbed and stained - easy to spot (see what I did there?) the favourite recipes!

I've got a 1970s copy of Not Just a Load of Old Lentils by Rose Elliot.
I still occasionally make a veggie recipe from that book, very tasty ideas.
I used to have a very old Mrs. Beeton but it got lost in one of our moves.

I've always used the Be-ro book and now have a modernised version but still with the old favourites in

Another Marguerite Patten fan, for her 'Step by Step Cookery', bought around 1963 when my mother was very ill in hospital. I had to come home from college and despite being totally inexperienced, my father expected me to cook for him, so I rushed to the bookshop and bought this. A lucky buy, and it still sits where I can most easily reach it.

This is one of my favourites, I have used it a lot over the last 30 odd years.

I've got the Katherine Whitehorn nook, Maw!

We were given Mrs Belton when we got married but I rarely used it. I have always been much more interested in more 'modern' cooking and loved buying the latest books.

My most thumbed book appears to be a Madhur Jaffrey (sp?) and I recently found a virtually unused one in a book sale at our Library - what I don't understand is why I prefer to use the old one.

Delia Smith ' Complete Illustrated Cookery Course' 1989.

Good Housekeeping Step By Step Cookbook - my mum's basic standby and my copy dates back to at latest mid-70s. Have just got rid of some of the small books I have never used, having recently gone vegan, but old faithful GH coudn't bear to part with.

Ber-o book for me too (for cakes. Also still use Cooking in a bed sit (K Whitehorn), Delia's How to cheat at at cooking and her Complete cookery course (3 volumes) for main courses. Plus some weight watchers cookery books. Im afraid I tend to use tried and tested recipes. Not good at trying new things.

Allsortsofbags is this the one? It's on ebay

To answer the question I use the Be-ro recipe for sponge cake with lemon juice & yellow colouring and lemon icing and little choc egggs on top, sometimes in a nest of milk flake with little chicks too. The grandchildren seem to like it. Or little choc buns with choc icing and speckled chog eggs on top. I'm not a great cook!

My Mum passed on to me her very well used McDougalls baking cookery book. It is only a slim book but she swore by it and would only use McDougalls flour. I have used it for most of my baking which will reduce now as DH has just been diagnosed with diabetes.

I also have a very old Mary Berry cookery book with a wonderful recipe for lemon meringue pie, again this will be a thing of the past now.

I remember the Farmhouse Kitchen recipe books and tv programme. There was also a series of Woman’s Weekly recipe books.

Fourth granddaughter aged 8 shows an interest in baking so I will probably pass them on to her when she is older.

My mum's ‘Readers Digest Cookery Year', from the '70s. Still gets used, especially the 'how to' instuctions in a section at the back. And I like the 'what's in season' for each month.

My mums cookery book, it must be 70 years old I still dip into it now and again, my DD bought me a book to write all my favourite recipes in, I am faithfully doing that so I can pass it on to her.

Katharine Whitehorn's 'Cooking in a Bedsitter' did it for me through my bedsitter days and beyond too. When it fell apart I bought a new one to pass on to my son!

I used to love farmhouse kitchen, if I remember it was full of good honest home cooking type recipes, I could just imagine the men coming in from working the fields and sit down to eat a hearty casserole followed by a good wedge of fruitcake.

My very old Oxo book still has the best recipe for beef olives I've found.

The only prize I ever won at school was the 'Housecraft' prize, I felt rather ashamed not to have got something more academic, but I was allowed to choose my books, and the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book with its prize sticker in the front has seen me through my married life. The other one I chose was Rev Keble Martin's Flora of the British Isles, useful for identifying wild plants to the grandchildren!