All Change
From our UK edition
Based on a handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, my grandmother, a shepherd’s wife, who had worked as an Edwardian cook With girl’s fine nib, in blackest black you scratched down with your steel pen ‘Puzzle Pudding’, ‘Feather Cake’, script tiny, taught, as you were then. Next, sky’s blue strays into the mix, light as fire’s flare through kindling sticks. Pencil races. ‘Elderberry.’ Then biro trembles. No more pens. ‘B.P.’ for Baking Powder. Why? Self-raising flour came too late. Nor did you have penicillin, Pethidine, or the Welfare State. ‘Cake with no eggs’, ‘dried egg’, the pause in your employers’ rich food through wars. ‘Slow oven’.