A Country Classic

This is the third of seven posts that Mrs Clark has seen fit to recommend over the life of the blog. Another month and these Saturday shenanigans will be over.

This is the one about the Country Women’s Association of New South Wales and its fantastic old cookbook. I've chosen it because we're in the middle of planning a road trip to Melbourne and back; heading south on the coastal route of the Princes Highway and home via the Hume and inland treasures such as Yackadandah and Gundagai.

That's a return journey of over 1,900km.

It's also around 900km too much for some. Kate is staying in Melbourne on business and our holidaying whanau are skipping back to NZ.

But for the Clark lads there'll be three extra days to discover even more of New South Wales and its southern neighbour. And those Victorian ladies, we hope, will have a cookbook of their own.

Cooking for Invalids and Substituting for Eggs
MONDAY 30 MARCH

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 the morning flicking through some of the volumes we’ve collected over the years.

My starting point is obvious: The Country Women’s Association of New South Wales Cookery Book, which I picked up on a 2004 trip to Parkes and 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 'Household Hints'. I learn gelatin can take the place of three cake-bound eggs and that when picnicking one can keep a bottle of milk fresh all day simply 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.

As it turns out, this is a very 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 serve them daintily is beyond me.

Then I remember that wisdom is cemented in times more difficult 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