An unplanned lunch that led me back to a favourite schooldays cookbook

Earlier this week I had lunch with a friend in the Market House Restaurant in the Abbey Hotel in Donegal Town. 

I was pleasantly surprised, when looking at all the delicious options in the Food Hall, to see, what I first thought was braised beef but which turned out to be liver and onions in gravy. 

It looked very inviting on a bleak, January lunchtime and so I thought I’d give it a try. 

With all the trimmings of various styles of potatoes and types of vegetables, it could not have been tastier.

I can’t remember the last time I had liver, and this was as good as any I have ever had, even while living in France where it is eaten regularly and cooked with great pride.

There aren’t many takers for offal in my house, so I don’t buy it very often. I don’t believe in forcing kids to eat things they don’t like; there is so much choice of good nutritious food available nowadays that there is really no need.

And so my lunch in the Abbey Hotel felt like a real old-fashioned, personal treat. 

I found myself thinking about something that I have touched on in this column before, my mother’s old cookbooks, and another book of my own which I’ve had since my secondary school days, All in the Cooking (pictured).

My mother’s books included The Good Cook’s Encyclopedia from around the 1930s, which to the amusement and horror of my children, included a recipe for jellied brains, among other delicacies.

But as the name suggests, it has all the recipes, tips and techniques to run a family kitchen safely and successfully.

Another book of my mother’s which came into my possession was a handwritten, hardback recipe notebook.

I remember her telling me that her Catholic pre-marriage course in Liverpool had included cookery skills, and this book had its beginnings in those classes. Over the years, she added a few recipes of her own, including a significant number that she cut out of Ireland Own magazines and from the back of soup packets.

It doesn’t take much to work out which recipes got the most use in our house - there are some well thumbed pages and even a few crumbs in the binding, along with tea stains and grease marks, and the lasting childhood fingerprints of special meals and festive baking days. Indeed, Christmas bunloaves, marzipan and royal icing are among the well used recipes in the handwritten book.

It also seems funny to my generation, and even more so to my own children, that the pre-marriage cookery course even existed, and that at a time when we are looking at reducing our red meat intake, recipes included a mixed grill with six different types of meat and offal.

I feel fortunate to have a great love for cooking and a good grounding in culinary skills, having worked in professional kitchens and restaurants in Ireland and France, but mostly from my excellent Home Economics teacher Ms Grainne Cunningham during my five years at the Abbey Vocational School. 

I’m very glad that I kept my copy of All in the Cooking because I still consider it an absolute treasure trove. From recipes for everything from beef tea or white roux to lemon tart and strawberry shortcake, this book has hundreds of recipes. 

It has advice on buying and storing a range of food, as well as information on the nutritional value of food. There are step by step guides on a whole range of cooking techniques, as well as explanations of culinary terms and guidance on kitchen equipment.

First published in 1946, it was used by generations of (mainly) girls who learned Home Economics, also known as Domestic Science, at secondary school. I read somewhere that it was used in schools from its first publication up until the 1970s but I can confirm that it was definitely still in use here in Donegal Town in the late 1980s!

With cookery and a knowledge of nutrition considered essential skills at the time, All in the Cooking was comprehensive while also being easy to understand. Written by four Home Economics teachers, Josephine B Marnell, Nora M Breathnach, Ann A Martin and Mor Murnaghan, this gem of a book would be difficult to improve upon. 

I have accumulated a lot of cookbooks over the years, and like everyone, have a few that I go back to time and time again. Some, such as Darina Allen’s Year at Ballymaloe and anything by Mary Berry are the ones I turn to when making something for the first time because I know that they are tried, tested and 100% reliable.

My bedraggled little orange paperback copy of All in the Cooking easily holds its own with the best of them. 

I love incorporating all the shared culinary awareness and knowledge that we have as a 21st century global community into my cooking, all the influences of multiculturalism, television chefs, the world wide web, and social media platforms such as TikTok. 

However, it feels like this is a good time to make a long overdue personal journey back to the pages of All in the Cooking to see what delicious classic dinners I may have forgotten.

By the way, I’m far from being alone in my love for this book. It even made it into the National Treasures Archive, a collection of objects that reflect Irish life over the last 100 years. 

If you didn’t keep your copy, or never owned one in the first place, all is not lost. Like a number of other schooldays favourites, All in the Cooking has been reissued by O’Brien Press. I’m not sure how widely available it is locally but it can be bought directly online from obrien.ie

There are also vintage copies available to buy on platforms such as eBay.

If you want a really solid grounding in cookery, it’s a great place to start. You’ll be a domestic god or goddess in no time at all!