Mum kept several of these recipe books.

She had shelves of cookery books too, but these are the ones I remember her actually using.

Inside there are pages and pages of recipes, splattered with margarine and sugar. Some are hand written, some are cut from magazines. They describe the food of my childhood, and every family occasion since: Betty’s pudding, battenburg, ginger squares.

The contents page is adjusted to reflect the types of recipe included. Additional space is given to “cakes and biscuits”, “Chinese and vegetarian” and “more cakes”.