I have a thing for recipe books, and each time I visit my local library, I grab some different ones to study and find new recipes to test. My favorites are those featuring baking—the types of cakes and biscuits (cookies) my mother used to make when I was a child.
New Zealander, Alexa Johnson has written several recipe books on baking. The books are called Ladies, A Plate, and the one I’m studying at present is called Ladies, A Plate: The Collection.
One of the things she mentions at the start of her recipe books is about writing things down. She says to record your experience with the recipe in the actual book since this adds interest and usefulness to the recipe book when it is passed down within a family. Forget the rules about writing in books.
At first I thought, no way! Because nothing annoys me more than checking out a library book only to find a previous reader has “corrected” it. But then I thought about how useful it would be to have the knowledge of previous cooks in my family. I would love reading notes written by my grandmother or mother since they were both excellent cooks. The idea really appealed to me, and now I’m a convert. I can’t wait to start writing notes in my recipe books.
How do you feel about writing in books? Do you do it?
It annoys me to no end to find scribbling in a book. The exception of course is when time plays a key role.
I LOVE to find notes in an old book. I have a couple of 19th century books with inscriptions and cryptic messages.
The handwriting is beautiful too, which makes me feel sad that so many schools in the US are opting to do away with cursive.
Or when someone makes corrections. That irks me when I find this in library books. You’re right about the time factor. Discovering notes in an old book often gives it extra monetary value too.
I’ve never written in my books and thankfully I haven’t come across many library books that have been written in. But my own cook books I have written in to change some measurements that work better for me.
I’ve started writing in my recipe books – cooking times etc. It’s actually very handy since I tend to forget the amount of time I cooked an item the previous time.