Eat at our house -- Sept. 3, 2008
Dorothy Eedy Lucy Waverman writes in her column in the Globe and Mail about a friend telling about the family coveted original recipe for his Grandmother’s best pancakes. After his Grandmother died he found the recipe in a vintage cookbook in her home.
I met Edna Staebler when, years ago, I took a cooking course at the prestigious Rundels restaurant in Stratford. We were a small group that met once a week for eight weeks for about four hours. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. We had so much fun, learned so much, and it was amazing how we bonded, and I became long time friends with three or four of the food enthusiasts, Edna being one of them.
Later, during one of my visits with Edna, she told about a serious fight she became involved with that actually ended up in the courts. One well-known company who produced cookies was suing another equally well-known manufacturer for stealing their cookie recipe.
The manufacturer who was being sued somehow found out that Edna had the recipe in her famous cookbook Food That Really Schmecks. Edna had mentioned that the recipe came from a Mennonite lady who in turn said it been handed down through generations of cooks in her family.
The company brought Edna down to the United States to be witness in court and  treated her like a queen. Needless to say, the proceedings came to a halt. Edna always claimed she wasn’t a cook but a writer, which endeared her to her readers as she had a story about most of her recipes. In fact at one time she taught a Creative Writers’ course at university in Kitchener.
I had sort of a mini version of the same situation. When I first started writing my column I used recipes from ladies in St. Marys. When I asked one of the town ladies, noted for her being a fabulous cook, for a recipe she had served, she said, “oh no, I can’t give you the recipe it belongs to ‘Mrs. So and So’ and she made me promise not to pass it on.”
Some time later I was looking through a cookbook and there was the recipe, word for word, and with the same title. Mean me, of course I printed it!
As Lucy Waverman said in her column, there aren’t many really true original recipes, and practically impossible to maintain a copyright. She adds that when someone uses a recipe from her column or one of her cookbooks, as do other writers, they rely on people giving credit where it is due.
I don’t have any original recipes but I have several of “my version” of a recipe. One I created just recently when I suddenly had to come up with a recipe for company. The following is IT!
Dorothy’s Simply Delicious Recipe
Using Chapman’s no sugar Vanilla ice cream (which I try to always have in my freezer), place a scoop of ice cream in a glass sherbet dessert glass dish, top with two tablespoons of Lemon Curd, which I also try to keep in my freezer, and top this with fresh or frozen raspberries.
Lemon Curd can be found in most cookbooks but I like the one in the Kirkton “Favourites” cookbook.
Lemon Curd
3 eggs
1 cup white sugar
Juice and rind from 1 lemon
Beat eggs well and add rest of ingredients, mix well. Cook over low heat stirring constantly until thickened. Fill baked tart shells.
My version uses the microwave oven. Follow above recipe but place all ingredients in a micro safe bowl. Microwave for 50 seconds, stir well, repeat two more times, stirring well between each until thick. If it is not thick, micro 25 more seconds. Cool completely, store in well sealed container and keep in freezer. When needed it thaws quickly, use only what you need and replace in freezer.
At one time I had several vintage cookbooks but I passed them on to a friend who collected old cookbooks. When checking through my many cookbooks I found that the oldest one I had was Davis Dainty Dishes, it cost 50 cents, first published in 1922; mine is a revised edition that came out in 1942.
My other cookbook I still use, a poor, tattered, food stained book with no cover, the Purity Cook Book was published before the second World War as it was amongst a collection of things my mother-in-law had waiting for me in a large laundry basket when I arrive in St. Marys on July 1, 1944. The basket also included two hand made quilts. Oh where did they end up?
A recipe from the Davis gelatine cookbook which caught my eye:
Apricot Souffle 
(serves six)
1 envelope Davis gelatine
1/4 cup hot water
2 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup apricot pulp (drained and slightly mashed from canned apricots)
1 cup apricot juice
2 tbsp. lemon juice
Few grains salt
1 cup whipping cream
Dissolve gelatine in hot water. Set aside. Beat egg yolks and sugar thoroughly. Add apricot pulp and fruit juices. Stir all over hot water (use double boiler) until well blended. Cool completely. Add dissolved gelatine to apricot mixture. Add salt to egg whites and beat until stiff. Whip the cream; take half and add to beaten egg whites, Fold into apricot mixture. Pour into serving dish or sherbet glasses and serve with remaining whipped cream.