Wine Service

There are a number of pages in the beginning of the book that show evidence of old sticky tape, and the many loose pages, suggest they have come unstuck over the years. The first page that still has an article adhered to it is on the 'Notes from 1939' page. It appears to have been cut from a newspaper and is called Wine Service. The first point the author emphasises is that you should "Buy well-known brands from reputable dealers. There is almost a normal supply of excellent Australian wines on the market today." This may refer to the returning of normal supplies after the war. The author goes on to discuss the wines that should be served depending on the course although he/she comments that it is no longer necessary to have a special wine with every course, since formal dinners are not an every day practice!
The author suggest hors d'oeuvres should be served with cocktails, sherry or vermouth and goes on to make the usual connections between whites and fish and red wines for meat and game. Desserts should be accompanied by sparkling or sweet wines such as sparkling hock, sweet sauterne, moselle, muscat or tokay - the latter I have never heard of. Finish with coffee and brandy, liquers or red port.
The name Hock is rarely seen these days but I remember in the seventies people bought flagons of hock to parties. I think from memory that the white wines Australians drank then were much sweeter.
What I can see of the back of the page shows an ad for vegemite and Kraft cheddar cheese!
They were always in our house when I was growing up.

The continuous thread

Some time in the first months of my mother's married life her Uncle Tom gave her an old 1940 Commercial diary. My mother married in 1947 so the diary had probably been gathering dust in Uncle Tom's cupboard. My mother used this diary to collect recipes. The first dated recipe is from The Australian Home Beautiful, April, 1948 and it was an article on how to make stuffed capsicums by Susan Moffat. The book is very old and fragile now but I still use it, albeit carefully, as the pages are beginning to break where there is a crease. The edges, dusted with tiny marks from butter, sugar, eggs and flour for nearly sixty years, are beginning to disintegrate. The book contains the handwriting of my grandmother's, my aunts, my late sister and myself. One day it will be added to by my daughter, it has become a legacy and a record of the journey of domestically prepared food in post war Australia.