Cooking For Invalids And Substituting For Eggs

With the cake poll closing on Wednesday it’s time to start thinking about recipes. This is exciting stuff as it gives me a reason to spend some time flicking through all the volumes we’ve collected over the years.

One instantly catches my eye: The Country Women’s Association of New South Wales Cookery Book, which I picked up on a 2004 trip to Forbes.

Fifteen editions have been published since 1937, when the first was compiled by Jessie Sawyer OBE and Sara Moore-Sims to mark the coronation of George VI. Little appears to have changed, however, and it remains very much , and most wonderfully, of its time.

Looking for cakes I naturally find chocolate, banana, sultana, pound and madiera. With them are marks left by the previous generation – centenary cake and the Victoria sponge – and two I imagine must have been omitted from at least the 1941 and 1945 editions: German cakes of the coffee and pound variety.

A common (and entertaining) feature of these old books is what appears here as the Household Hints chapter. I learn that gelatine added to a cake will take the place of three eggs and that when picknicking I can keep a bottle of milk fresh all day by adding a good pinch of bicarbonate of soda. These, I am certain, will one day come in handy.

Another chapter, Invalid Cookery, causes some initial confusion. I then realise this has nothing to do with protocols or regulations but instead concerns the preparation of food for poorly or convalescent people. This is a serious business and there are three rules that must ‘dominate’ food preparation:

1. Absolute cleanliness is essential.
2. All food prepared must be nourishing.
3. The food must be served daintily and dished attractively to tempt the patient’s appetite.

Pardon? I appreciate – or at least assume - that rice water, lemon foam and chicken broth are all highly nourishing, but how the hell you’d serve them daintily is beyond me. A sprinkle of parsley? A doyley? A small narrow vase with a single, appropriately-coloured carnation? Probably all of the above.

Then I remember that wisdom is perfected in more difficult times than I have known, and I choose to put my future mealtime happiness - and perhaps health - in the hands of the fine ladies of the great towns of regional New South Wales.

For the birthday cake, I may have to turn to Nigella.


Learn about the history and activities of the Country Women’s Association of New South Wales at www.cwaofnsw.org.au