Paging through some old recipe books of my grandmothers, hand-written exercise books, and struck by the almost unwavering notation of desserts and little else. Tarts, cakes, sweets and biscuits, many of them variations on the same theme.
The recipes date from the late 1940s and into the 50s, and looking at the few main course recipes and their plain style (roast meat and plain cooked vegetables) I speculate that these were invariably cooked from memory or in the most straight-forward manner; while the desserts, with their measurements and weights, were the ones to notate.
Or was she simply a sweet-toothed granny?
Aren’t all grannies sweet-toothed? But yes, I’ve also noticed that in the recipe world, desserts are the most ubiquitous, as if they are the greatest mysteries, even (because?) they are the most “scientific”…