Tag Archives: 1950s

CURRIED SAUSAGES

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What did we do before coconut cream in a can?  The answer is in this old recipe of Mum’s.  She may not have had canned coconut cream or a jar of curry simmer sauce or paste, but Mum’s curried sausages were still great and you can see by the age of her recipe that she’d been making them for a long, long time.

Curried Sausages

 

CURRIED SAUSAGES

  • 750g sausages
  • 1 apple
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • Juice and grated peel of 1 lemon
  • 1 onion
  • 1 tablespoon curry powder
  • 1 dessertspoon flour
  • 2 tablespoons desiccated coconut

Put coconut in saucepan with cupful of stock or water.  Bring to boil, boil for a few minutes.  Strain off liquid, discard coconut.  Fry flour and curry powder in a little fat for a few minutes, add liquid from coconut, add sugar and lemon, stir well.  Cook until smooth, pour into saucepan.  Fry sausages till brown add to curry sauce.  Slice onion and apple, fry till brown in little of sausage fat.  Drain.  Add to sausage and curry sauce.  Cook slowly for 1 hour.  Rice or chutney may be added.

BUTTERFLY CAKES

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I always associate these little cakes with my birthday parties. They were a treat Mum would make to put on the party table and I guess after two sons she was more than happy to make something ‘girlie’ for my birthday.  She did make them at other times for afternoon tea with her friends and for suppers, but I still think of them as my birthday butterflies.

Butterfly Cakes

 

MOCK FISH PATTIES

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I guess these are the old version of American Hash Browns, maybe not quite so crunchy, but just as delicious.  Mum’s being making them since I was a little girl and they’ve always been one of my favourites.

Mock Fish

 

The old recipe is a bit faded at the edges but reads:

MOCK FISH PATTIES

  • 2 cups grated raw potato
  • 1 dessertspoon finely minced onion
  • 2 rounded tablespoons plain flour
  • ½ teaspoon salt,
  • 1 egg
  • pepper
  • 1 teaspoon chopped parsley
  • 1 dessertspoon anchovy essence (optional)

Combine potato with onion, flour, salt, pepper & parsley.  Add unbeaten egg and anchovy essence.  Mix well, drop spoonfuls in hot fat & fry until golden brown on both sides.  Flatten each piece with back of spoon as it cooks.

MAYONNAISE

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Salad dressings these days are many and varied.  You can make them yourself or buy them in the supermarket, but in the 1950s you had no choice but to make it yourself.  Mum always had a bottle of homemade mayonnaise in the fridge.  Today this recipe seems a bit mundane, especially with the condensed milk, but it’s part of my family history and I’m guessing lots of others as well.

Mayonnaise Crop

 

SHORTBREADS – Thel Payne

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Christmas in our house always started with Mum making the pudding and the cake, the next thing on her list was fruit mince pies and shortbread.  Although I’ve hunted through her recipes I haven’t been able to find her fruit mince pie recipe yet, I know it’s in there somewhere, but I have found lots of recipes for shortbread.  This recipe seems typical of the handwritten ones and was given to her by an old friend – Thel Payne.

Shortbreads cropped

 

SHORTBREADS – Thel Payne

  • 250g buttter
  • 125g castor sugar
  • 375g plain flour
  • 75g rice flour

Cream butter and sugar, add flours.  Knead in basin till smooth.  Divide into 3 pieces and roll into circle approx 10mm thick.  Cut into 8 to 10 pieces and bake in oven 160o for 5 mins then 120o for 30mins.  Turn tray half way through.  When cool dust with icing sugar.