h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have spent a long time today - both this morning and this evening - looking for a recipe. I just found it. It was in the first place I looked, but I only found it the third time I looked there. This happens so often - it can't be a coincidence.

But the gems I found, while leafing through my files of scraps. Since my au pairing days - exactly 40 years ago now - I have collected recipes. They fill several files and I have at least two washing baskets of foodie magazines - well thumbed and well spattered.

There are recipes cut straight out of magazines, newspapers and supplements, some I have copied out by hand, some I typed on my little travelling typewriter that I used to tote around with me, some were photocopied, when I shared recipes with girls at work. There are many scraps cut from food packaging, stuck on to disintegrating sheets of unwanted tests dating back to when my husband was a trainee teacher, even whole books photocopied (life was easy in the 70s).

There are endless ideas for pasta, recipes specially using proprietary products that are no longer available, recipes for kids, recipes in German, English and French, recipes from the 70s, with suggestions as to how to use "new" foodstuffs which had just arrived Germany, and ideas for canapes and fondues, recipes from the 80s, when we ground our own flour and knitted our own yoghurt, There are even recipes from pre-war Germany that we found in my mother-in-law's dresser, not to mention all the others she noted down on scraps of paper in the indecipherable Süterlin script they all used, including thrifty post-war ideas (remember, Germany was more devastated after the war than the UK was, even though rationing didn't go on so long here as it did there. Hell, my first formula milk was bought when ration books were still around, but in Germany, the black market was often the only place to get eggs or meat. People starved).

Then there are more modern cuttings, reviving old ingredients, strange vegetables and giving recipes for traditional cakes and stews that the housewives of the 90s and noughties have probably never heard of, let alone had a hankering to cook. Cakes, puddings, posh dinner menus, cheap weekday dishes, meatless dishes, those cocktails that were in fashion in the 60s and 70s, themed pages - ten things to do with a tin of French beans, how to roll sushi, fish recipes, meat recipes, ways of mucking fruit about - lots of stuff using huge quantities of whipped cream.

For many many years, I religiously saved the recipes and archived them in old-fashioned cardboard files. I could only file them chronologically, as I got them, but I kept an index, sort of in categories, and numbered every page I filed away. Pages of magazines are very thin, and forty-year-old paper doesn't stand much turning over in a file - in other words, they're falling apart.

But these days, I just cook out of my head, and only refer to recipes for certain sauces I remember using, or just to look up cooking times in the book that came with the oven/microwave/slow cooker.

When I retire I shall have a great time going through them. If I did one recipe a day, I would be cooking all these things for at least three years. If it's no good, I shall chuck it out, if it's OK, I will copy it or scan it. At least - that's the plan. I shall have to find somewhere that sells powdered eggs, though.

You must have some rare treasures in there

Blimey, some of those older recipes could be really rather unusual.... I'm sure 'dried egg', isn't the only ancient ingredient that'd be hard to come by these days
I just wish I could follow recipies.... I'm useless... I read one... say 'ok' to myself a few times, and then go and cook soemthing vaguely like what I've read.... ignoring and replacing ingredients and timings as I randomly decide to do
Strangely I do seem to be better at following my own recipes

What was the recipe you were originally looking for?

I'd love to have a rummage through that lot! Although somehow, that would seem a bit impertinent. Like reading someone's diary.

Stuff like that can be an amazing social record. All the more so as everyone usually dumps it because it doesn't seem very important at the time.

Quite, KB - but the bits of paper are quite scrappy, dirty, dusty and disgusting, so the best thing will be to just scan the useful ones for their content and chuck the paper away.

The recipe I was originally looking for was one for making your own mincemeat. I knew I had one somewhere where you literally just mixed up all the dried fruit and use it straight away. I have a jar of Robinson's mincemeat, but it is a couple of years past its sell-by date. I shall use it, but only for family - and the mince pies I am making this week are for a Christmas do for other people. Last Christmas, I went crazy trying to find the recipe, because I was convinced I had it in one of those magazines. (Family Circle - a treasure trove of recipes and food ideas, really practical. I discovered the other day that it closed down in 1986). I never found it, but during this year, I had seen that I had it in photocopied form in one of the files. It eluded me again this week, but I got there in the end. Hence this journal.

You might be wondering why I didn't use the index I mentioned. Aah, well, you see, that's in the first of the three files, and I can't find that anywhere.

I also have a similar collection of knitting, crochet and sewing patterns, in all different languages (although I've never knitted to a German pattern), and countless ideas cut from magazines for things to make and do, baby clothes, toys, and things that have gone out of and come into fashion several times since the files and magazines took their place among the spiders in my loft. Going through that will involve a lot of sneezing, but I am sure that I can be more radical about throwing out that kind of thing. I'll probably just keep the embroidery patterns and a couple of standard-shaped patterns for things like oven gloves.

Oops - it's Robertson's mincemeat isn't it? I must go and see if there's still a golly on the jar.

I just knew your wonderful filing system didn't extend to your home files ! I have just spent a week going through my personal papers from the loft. Amazing the amount of junk up there that I have ruthlessly shredded.
I envy you the memories in those bits of paper. I only have one recipe file, but I do also have a much cherished Malawi Cook Book
which has a chapter on cooking insects; I remember that fried flying ants taste like peanuts.

P S In my experience mincemeat keeps forever.

If its in an unopened, unused jar, it oughta be fine... I'd risk it

I found the recipe and made the mincemeat, then made the mince pies. They were a huge success, although I used puff pastry which was silly because they shoot up and topple over, and look all higgledy-piggledy, even though they taste great. A shortcrust pastry, with an egg and some sugar in, makes the most professional finish, I find.

The mincemeat recipe is better than bought mincemeat because it tastes really fresh. So here it is in case anyone wants to try it out. It possibly even works out cheaper than bought mincemeat, but I haven't done the calculations. Anyway, no fat and if you like, no alcohol, so it's easier on the digestion, which is possibly rather overworked at Christmas anyway.

Peel, core and chop 3 apples very very small. Bring to the boil in a saucepan with 250 ml cider (I used apple juice - adding a dash of lemon juice might be nice, too), 100 g muscovado sugar, a pinch to a teaspoon of various ground spices (cinnamon, allspice, cloves, mixed spice, etc) Stir well and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add a pound of mixed dried fruit (I prefer to leave out currants, they are too dry and hard) and 4 oz (or 100 g) mixed peel. Stir in well and simmer for a further 10 minutes, longer if it is still too liquid.

That's it - I spooned the mincemeat directly into the pastry from the saucepan. It made about 18 mince pies and I still had about 900g of mincemeat left which I packed into little bags of 200g and 300g and froze. I probably won't be able to use it all up this Christmas. We shall probably have mince pies for pudding if anything on Christmas day, and at the back of my mind, I remember having a recipe somewhere for mincemeat ice cream. Do I feel another recipe treasure hunt coming on?

Oh, so mincemeat is freezable. Good. SO I can make a whole pan of it, and stick whatever's left in the freezer for later.
Thanks a lot, TC.

It can be eaten at other times apart from Christmas, but is most suitable for winter pastries and desserts. Have a lovely Christmas SuperFrenchie!

Oh, yes, it will only remain frozen until New Year or thereabouts.

Wishing you a happy Christmas too.