Kitchen Bygones: A Collector’s Guide, by Geoffrey Warren, ISBN 0 285 62669 8. Souvenir Press.

In 1883 Deane and Company of London offered customers this complete set of kitchen equipment for the, even then, astonishingly small sum of £11 3s 10d.- An illustration from the book.

You see them tucked away on shelves in rustic country pubs, in pioneer villages, in museums, junk shops, on eBay – kitchen bygones. These are the old kitchen objects of days past. Gadgets for peeling apples, toasting bread, roasting meat over an open fire.  Grinders, whippers, mincers, mashers, Ornate jelly moulds that would be lifted from a glistening jewel-like dessert destined to pride of place on the table. Skimmers, strainers, crimpers, colanders, pots, pans, tins, cans.

This book was written by Geoffrey Warren in 1984. Warren likes old things and has also written Royal Souvenirs, Vanishing Street Furniture, The All Colour Book of Art Nouveau and a study of Victoria and Edwardian needlecraft – A Stitch in Time. He did the rounds of museums and private collections in his quest for kitchenalia and find them he did.

Some of the old pieces are veritable works of art, not merely functional but also beautiful. There are pieces I remember from my own grandmother’s kitchen – a lovely glass rolling pin with white speckled swirls, a long toasting fork,  tin biscuit cutters. Or the old iron pot that would sit on my great aunts’ coal range.

Ornate weight-driven spit jacks that turned a horizontal spit have a magic today’s power driven spits will never have. Fortunately many of the old kitchens were large rooms because some of these pieces of equipment and “labour-saving” devices took up a lot of space. Without the captions, some old gadgets would have the readr completely mystified. One gruesome looking array of hooks on a long rod with another hook at the top turned out to be a steel game hanger.  Another large pair of pliers mounted on a wooden base was an iron sugar cutter – sugar used to be sold in large solid cones often nearly a metre high and weighing about 6kg. This hard sugar had to be cut with special iron cutters.

I did recognise another complicated structure with cogs, wheels and a turning handle – it was an apple peeler. In fact I have a couple of these myself – one for peaches, the other for apples. Romantic as they seem, today’s spud peeler is quicker and takes less cleaning than my collector’s items.

There’s a fascinating item from the author’s own collection – one of the first can openers, invented in 1875 by J A Wilson of Chicago for opening tins of bully beef. It’s made of cast iron and has a steel spike and blade. Interestingly the first canned goods were produced more than 60 years earlier but no one thought to invent an opener. These early items bore the instructions: “Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.” Imagine that!

This is an intriguing book and well worth tracking down if you’re interested in old kitchen items. There’s an excellent bibliography with valuable ideas for further reading. A Google search threw up a few for sale. I bought my copy about 15 years ago at a secondhand bookshop.

The Encyclopedia of World Cookery, by Elizabeth Campbell, 1958, Spring Books, London.

I am flipping through this book 40 years down the track. Here's what Campbell says as a preamble to the section on Australia and New Zealand, after mentioning the sunshine and open air life and the friendly people. "Their culinary traditions are based on their mother country, England...The great difference is that they eat much more meat and much less starchy food."

Some of the Down Under food is distinctly weird - Banana Beef Steak features thin pieces of fillet steak, bananas dipped in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fried, and a sauce full of egg yolks and cream, tizzied up with horseradish. An onion languishes in the ingredients, unused. There's a Wahgunyah Steak Casserole made with a can of stewed steak, jazzed up with onion, celery, apple, tomato puree and Worcestershire sauce, tipped into a shallow dish or mashed potato and baked till the potatoes are brown (and the meat dried out?).

I don't recall eggplant being available in New Zealand at the time, so I guess Fried Eggplant was an Australian dish. And how about some "apples" made from cream cheese balls rolled in paprika with a whole clove in one end and a clove stalk in the other. Thoroughly nasty. We've some a long way since then.

Fortunately the fare from the other countries looked more enticing. Ah, I see I have turned down the odd page corner. In the Russian section for Beef Stroganoff, in USA for Boston Baked Beans, for Indonesian Bahmi, for Canadian Brownies. And, in the French section, for Quiche Lorraine! Remember when that was the only sort? I see I also fancied Siphanic Honey Tart from the Balkans. Memories!

When I was at boarding school I would regularly send a note home to my mother with one of the day pupils. It always read: “Please bring me a chocolate cake on Sunday.” What is it that is so good about chocolate? I can go for weeks without the stuff but every once in a while I have to have my fix. My temptation is dark, bitter chocolate. The darker and more bitter, the better. I will have a closet session with a chunk of 90 percent cocoa solids and then return to a life of virtue until temptation strikes again.

This book has tempted me sorely. I’ve had to ration my reading to bite-sized portions so I don’t fall completely off the wagon and go on a binge.

The lovely chocolate mud cups almost had me reaching for a spoon to see if they were real. Fig and chocolate tart, Jane’s chocolate tart, chocolate brulee – temptation at every page turn.

The recipes in this book cover biscuits, brownies and slices, desserts, cakes, savoury dishes and sweets, drinks and sauces. They are gleaned from 20 years of TheAge’s weekly Epicure section, or have been contributed by readers.

The styling is impeccable, the photography lush and it would take a very resolute browser not to want to get into the kitchen and start cooking.

The anecdotal bits prefacing the recipes make for a good read – memories of cakes arriving in the mail from Mum (I’ve posted boxes of homemade brownies and chocolate chippies to a student son myself), never-fail recipes handed down the generations, family favourites, goodies named after the people who passed on the recipe.

This book is total indulgence, a cure for winter blues. And hasn’t new research revealed chocolate is good for us? You should sin, too!

Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, Meredith Publishing Company (1953, First Edition, Fourth Printing).

My father visited the United States in 1956 and brought this cookbook home for my mother. Up till then she had just a few cookbooks - the sort found in every Kiwi home such as the Edmonds Cook Book, Aunt Daisy's Cook Book, a couple of collections of handwritten recipes and not much else.

We pored over the pages. There were strange ingredients like graham crackers, corn syrup, clams, dill pickles, confectioner's sugar, cornmeal and hominy. Some things seem a bit dodgy by today's standard - a "crown roast" made of cans of luncheon meat. But they looked "inventive".

We'd never seen a barbecue before. We'd never tried hamburgers because no one made hamburger buns to contain the meat patties. This was all exciting stuff.

Mum set to and made the Pineapple Upsidedown Cake on page 119. It was an outstanding success. Her morning tea guests were terribly impressed.

And then there was the Tomato Aspic, made in a ring mould and filled with cabbage salad. So nouveau it was awesome. Those were gentler, less sophisticated days and peeking into an American kitchen made that book very exciting.

[I recently discovered an exact reprint of this classic is now available - New Cook Book: 1953 Classic Edition]

A-Z of Asian Ingredients (ISBN 9 310432 390169, Oriental Merchant, $5.00)

I picked this book up when I was out shopping recently because I am always keen to learn more about ingredients from various parts of the world.

This inexpensive little volume covers a wide range of items in its 98 pages ranging from commercially packaged sauces, condiments, spices and canned goods through to fresh Asian vegetable varieties.

To help you with the shopping, there are excellent explanatory notes on each product and how to use it. Once you've stocked up, there is a comprehensive collection of recipes to get you cooking.

A worthwhile addition to any kitchen library. The book is available online from Oriental Merchant.

The Scots Kitchen, by F Marian McNeill (Blackie & Son Ltd)

I can't resist secondhand bookshops or book sales of any description. I rescued this book from the Wellington Public Library when they had a sale of withdrawn books. I paid $2 for it.

The book was first published in 1929 and this was the 1971 reprint of the 1963 second edition. Between editions McNeill garnered a good deal more about the history and traditions of the Scots kitchen and she has included this material and a number of new recipes in the second edition.

This book interested me because numerous of my forebears were from Scotland. I was soon engrossed in the pages reading about Tweed Kettle (salmon hash), Cloutie Dumpling (pudding), bannocks, Deer Horn Jelly, Athol Brose, Toddy, Arbroath Smokies and other treasures. But the recipe that has always fascinated me was Powsowdie or sheep's head broth (From pow, the head and sowdie, sodden or boiled.) You take the sheep's head and trotters to the blacksmith to have them singed, or you can do it yourself, following the em... explicit... instructions. It is said the reason the head was so tender in the old days was that the blacksmith's boys played football with it. Some people preferred the head of the ram but that took much longer boiling. There are detailed instructions for soaking the head, removing the "glassy part of the eyes", splitting the head, cleaning the nostrils. Too much information? The rest involved barley, mutton, peas, carrots, turnings, onions, parsley, seasoning, the "modern" addition of celery and about four hours' boiling.

Aye, a grand book, specially the Sweeties section.

Spice Travels: A Spice Merchant's Voyage of Discovery by Ian Hemphill
(ISBN 0732911516)

Sydney spice merchant Ian ("Herbie") Hemphill and his wife Liz trip along the spice routes of the the ancient and modern world, viewing where the products are grown, processed and sold and learning something new at every stopover.

Hemphill encountered the brotherhood of spice merchants when he attended a meeting in New Delhi and that set him on this trail of discovery.

Those little jars of spices in the pantry each have a tale to tell. It's a fascinating journey and Hemphill tells a good story with the passion of a man who clearly enjoys his work in the spice world and wants to share his knowledge.

Ever been seduced by an offer of surprisingly cheap saffron on your travels? Chances are the origin wasn't the saffron crocus but the safflower. And those awe-inspiring displays in the spice bazaar? Hemphill took a close look and gave one top marks for presentation but a low score for quality and vaue for money. The spices had lost their freshness and oomph.

If you like to learn about the ingredients you use in your kitchen, this is recommended reading. A bonus are the illustrations.

The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten (ISBN 0747260974, Review Books)

"Day One. Thoroughly disrobed, bone-dry, and advantageously evacuated, I step onto my rusty old Detecto Doctor's Scale, the kind with the balance beam and the little weights that you nudge back and forth. The numbers are chest high and easily legible, meaning that you can leave your eyeglasses on the sink and save twoounces. No need to peer five feet down to the floor over a pile of sullied flesh."

And so begins another chapter in Steingarten's delightful book. In 1989, Steingarten, then a lawyer, was appointed food critic of Vogue magazine. He set about facing uo to his food phobias and liberating his palate so his prejudices would not get in his way. He took the path of exposure. He also immersed himself in scientific literature on human food selection.

In this book, he shares some of his adventures along the way as he battles his weight ("Another 10 pounds and I will be legally obese") and his curiosity in the quest for knowledge. In his kitchen, he fronts up to a $300 slab of wagyo beef like a man. The sight of a horse has him dreaming of the fat round its kidneys, the perfect vehicle for frying potato chips.

This book is as entertaining as it is informative. And having rationed it out to prolong the enjoyment, I was delighted to find the equally delicious sequel It Must've Been Something I Ate.

A Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden. (Penguin).

It's more than 30 years since this book joined my library. It's well thumbed. Turned down corners show recipes I want to try. The odd blotch on the page shows me recipes I have tried. I never could come to grips with a perspex cookbook holder.

Roden takes us on a cook's tour of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, the Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. When the book was first published, many of the ingredients were hard to find. Not so now.

This book has recently been updated and enlarged from about 500 recipes to 800. SInce the first as published in 1972, Roden has spent a further 30 years travelling and gathering recipes and stories.

The recipes still look fresh and inviting because we've grown used to Middle Eastern food as part of our diet and this is certainly a comprehensive collection. My criterion in buying a cookbook is it should contain at least five recipes I fell impelled to try. This once has been well used.

Scour the secondhand bookshops for the original or sample the new edition - The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

Kitchen Basics, by Matthew Evans (ISBN 1-921190-31-0, Fairfax Books, $29.95)

Did you forget to learn how to cook? Don’t panic. Foodie, chef and restaurant critic Matthew Evans has recently revised his award-winning Kitchen Basics. It should be a part of everyone’s “leaving home” kit. Once the excitement of escaping the parental nest subsides and is replaced by the ugly reality that in order to eat, one must cook, wistful nostalgia for Mum’s cooking sets in. While my own sons have mastered the basics of self-preservation, their eating tastes have grown more sophisticated and their menus more ambitious. I can see them getting a lot of mileage out of this book. In fact one of them "borrowed" my review copy and reported back: "The sort of questions I'd ask you about cooking and the kitchen are answered ... Lots of 'how-to' tips with recipes to go with them, even with basic things like cooking eggs. It's almost written like a good mate is giving you helpful suggestions."

Evans guides the budding cook through setting up a pantry and choosing the best produce, how to store cheese, herbs and meats, find the right oil. And how to follow a recipe – read it through from start to finish, trying to see where it is heading. “You need to know whether the first step in the recipe happens a day before you can devour the dish.”  Fallen into that trap myself!

His section on how to sharpen a knife is excellent as it demystifies the difference between sharpening and honing. He lists 10 things most recipes don’t tell you and the wise book owner will read these first – things like “tomatoes virtually never need peeling” and "the temperature of your oven is probably based on virtual rather than real values”.

Evans deals with various techniques that are worth mastering, including how to boil (and poach and fry) an egg. There are the Sunday dinner essentials: roasting meat, making gravy, roasting potatoes, getting good crackling, making the trad accompaniments.

The techniques are married with recipes and these aren’t boring nursery school fare but real food. From stir-frying to sushi,  pasta and risotto, winter casseroles, plenty of good ideas. Some of the lessons will last a lifetime like dressing a salad, chopping herbs, making stock, roasting spices, making bread. Everything finishes on a sweet note with desserts and baking including “How to create a pannacotta with just the right amount of wobble”.

And what can’t you learn from a book? One of the six things Evans lists is how to fillet fish. “If you can get it right then you’re a genius. It took me a four-year apprenticeship then a stint as a fish chef to do a half-decent job.” But this book is a good place to start learning plenty of other techniques.

Rick Stein's Taste of the Sea, by Rick Stein (ISBN 056338781, BBC)

I love fish and eat it regularly so it's always good to have some inspiration when I step into the kitchen with my latest "catch" from the fishmonger's.

Rick Stein is one of my food heroes because he does good things with fish, doesn't over-gild the lily and keeps things fairly simple yet enticing.

Stein is optimistic about the future of fish cooking and that makes me feel content because I look forward to many more fish meals from these pages.

He covers choosing and preparing fish, basic recipes, soups ad stews, oily fish, mediterranean, round and flat fish, large fish, crustaceans and shellfish. All with style and plenty of flavour.

I met Stein during a visit he made to New Zealand and he kept a breakfast gathering of food writers and food suppliers happy for an hour with his observations on food.

As a bonus, he signed my copy of his book.

The Penguin Companion to Food by Alan Davidson (ISBN 0-14-051522-4 Penguin)

Over many years of food writing, I have invested in a large number of reference books. Of course one of the first was my Larousse Gastronomique, hugely interesting but not really in touch with today's cooking.

A more recent purchase was this excellent encyclopedic work that rarely lets me down when I am doing my research. Davidson has been joined by food experts from round the world so there's information on regional cuisines, practically anything that's edible, fish, fowl, flora and fauna, dietary laws, nutrition. It's one of those books that is impossible to pick up without flicking back and forth through the entries, and finding some veritable treasures.

Good clear presentation and only the occasional illustration. Australia rates a couple of pages and New Zealand one, though various foods from both are interspersed through the alphabetic sections.

India with Passion: Modern Regional Home Cooking by Manju Malhi (ISBN 1-84000-947-0 Mitchell Beasley)

I could hardly wait to start cooking from this book.I've always enjoyed Manju Malhi's food show Simply Indian on television. Her recipes are eminently cookable and certainly not too complicated for the average home cook.

This book starts with a most interesting introduction to the various cuisines of India With 31 states and territories with varying climates, it's inevitable that location and local produce will influence the food.

Add to that mix the dietary observances of the Hindu and Muslim religions and then stir in the contribution of the Arabian, Mogul, Iranian and Chinese influences on the food over the centuries and you've got a truly vibrant gastronomic culture.

Malhi prefaces her recipes with little explanations as she takes the reader through dishes from the north, south, east and west. It's most informative, as well as tempting.The beautiful photos by Jason Lowe are a worthy garnish.

I'll be using this book regularly as the resident test panel is a huge fan of Indian food.

Epicure Winter (ISBN 0-9758155-4-7 Fairfax Books) RRP $34.95

This luscious cookbook is the first in a seasonally driven series from Epicure, The Age’s weekly food and wine tabloid. It features the work of three talented contributors, each with her own style – Stephanie Alexander, Brigitte Hafner and Jill Dupleix.

This is definitely a cookbook to be used. The recipes are designed for home cooks, not chefs. And they are very seductive. “Cook me,” they shout, because the generous photos look so edible. A cursory flip through the volume and it was immediately put on the kitchen bench and I was in the pantry gathering the ingredients for Jill Dupleix’s anchovy baked fish with tomatoes and onions. My kind of recipe. Maximum effect for minimum effort.

Brigitte Hafner’s roast stuffed lamb with parsnips and potatoes ended up on our Easter dinner table. In fact Hafner has a range of roasted meats that will keep a carnivore content for winter. Stephanie Alexander’s simple beef stew is something even the  novice cook can put together in a few minutes, leave to its own devices for two hours, and keep the whole household happy.

The soups are comforting ones that will be wonderful to come home to. The dried cannellini beans I picked up at the market are destined for Hafner’s Piedmontese white bean soup. And oh, those winter desserts – apple crumble cake, rhubarb sponge, little golden syrup puddings, the latter beckoning from the cover. Let it rain!

Most Kiwi homes have a copy of the Edmonds Cookery Book somewhere in the kitchen.

It was first published in 1907 as a 50-page pamphlet of recipes promoting Thomas John Edmonds’ baking powder and jellies. The marketing ploy proved so successful that the second edition, in 1910, had a print run of 150,000. Sales of Edmonds' baking powder were also soaring. In 1905 370,600 tins were sold. By 1913 this had leapt to 1,171,344. There was a lot of baking going on in those days.

It is not known if any first editions of the book survive. However, some second editions do.

I have a couple of copies of the later Edmonds book first issued in 1955. One of mine dates back to this era and was my mother's kitchen bible. I inherited it, coverless and a bit tattered, when she bought a new one. My second one is the 25th anniversary edition (pictured below). According to the cover, "This new improved edition, designed for the 1980s, offers a reliable A-Z in cooking techniques and recipes."

Today, more than three million copies of the Edmonds books have been sold. Now, thanks to modern technology, the third (1914) edition of the iconic Edmonds Cookery Book (pictured right) is available in cyberspace, courtesy of Victoria University of Wellington.

Some 150,000 copies of the third edition were printed and the University’s New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has converted the book, lent by publishers of the modern text, Goodman Fielder, into a digital format. It is now freely accessible to the world via the New Zealand Electronic Text collection.

Alison Stevenson, director of Victoria’s text centre, says the project has been very exciting. “There aren’t many families in New Zealand who have grown up without a copy of the Edmonds Cookery Book, so it’s been great to see what it was like almost at the beginning.

The centre has scanned and digitised all 50 pages, including advertisements and testimonials for the baking powder from happy housewives.

Mrs A T Phillips of Taranaki, wrote: “I use 1 ½ tins a month, and always refuse any other offered to me” while Mrs H Bromley of Taumarunui boasted: "At the Levin and Horowhenua Autumn Shows I was awarded 10 Firsts, 3 Seconds, and 2 Highly Commended Prizes for Cakes, etc., made with your Baking Powder."

Recipes include more typical treats such as rock cakes, Christmas cake, and the Kiwi favourite, pikelets. While Elsie's Fingers keep their attribution in modern versions of the book, Rene's Kisses just become Kisses (both definitely in Mum's repertoire).

There's a Vegetarian Roast with the ubiquitous peanuts. But it's not a very committed one - the recipe contains milk and suggests basting with butter if the roast starts to dry out. I don't think there were that many vegetarians around in those days.

Inside the back cover there's an ad for Edmonds' Egg Powder. "It's unwise to experiement with eggs," says the ad. "They're generally more or less doubtful and expensive. For a modest sixpence you can buy a tin of Edmonds' Egg Powder. It is always reliable and is a perfect substitute for eggs." Sales of this powder started in 1879. Nonetheless, plenty of the recipes contain eggs.

I was interested to see the 1914 book was published by The Christchurch Press Printing Company. I worked at The Press newspaper in Christchurch for a couple of years and still write for its food section Zest.

This iconic book can be downloaded from the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre.

For further information, contact Alison Stevenson on +64 4 463 6847 or email Alison.Stevenson@vuw.ac.nz.

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