2 medium size Parsnips (par boiled)
2 oz melted butter
2 oz brown sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
2 teaspoons salt
Cut par boiled parsnips into thin slices - put in a pregreased ovenware dish and pour melted butter over the parsnips.
Mix the the salt, mustard and sugar and sprinkle over top.
Brown in a med oven 375ºF for 20 minutes. (serves 6 with meat)
3/4 cup castor sugar
1 cup self raising flour
Pinch salt
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
2 dessertspoon cocoa
1 tablespoon butter
Vanilla
Put sifted flour, salt, cocoa, sugar into a basin, add beaten egg, melted butter, milk, vanilla. Stir al together for 2 minutes.
Put in a well lined greased tin, bake for 35 to 45 minutes in a hot oven turned low.
1/2 lb margarine
3/4 cup Sugar
2 cups Self Raising Flour
Vanilla
2 eggs
Pinch Salt
Cook in hot oven
Beat margarine and sugar to cream.
Add well beaten eggs.
Add vanilla and salt.
Sift flour into mixture.
Roll into stiff balls (small) and press thumb into middle and add jam.
Cook in oven until golden brown.
Makes 4 dozen.
When people are clearing out their houses (or their relatives' houses) sometimes we get their old cooking books. Occasionally we get their old recipes, the handwritten ones.
Usually they're tucked into old cooking books and when we find them that's where we leave them for the next people to discover.
Much less frequently we get a large cache of recipes, and in those instances we try to save them.
Unfortunately they're not something everyone sees value or worth in. We passed a lot onto other dealers at Tyabb who find interest in these sorts of things. Before though, we took photos of them, with the idea to present them here.
Most of them we'll try to have a single blog post to aid searching, but these presented below are the start, and the ones that aren't immediately apparent as to what they're about or recipes for.
Edit 2021: Originally begun as a 2020 lockdown project we realised with over 150 still to post in 2021 that it would take some time to get through all the recipes, so we have grouped some together in a single post under a specific recipe, and some under a common ingredient. We’d rather people be able to see them than them sitting in a folder on our computer.
This blog was first written in 2018, we have since closed our physical location. For more information see here.
One of the books that we often got asked about was "John and Betty", sometimes called 'the school reader with the orange cover'. Published by the Education Department of Victoria it was one of the first school readers that primary school children in the 1950s encountered.
It's a book that is getting increasingly difficult to find. Additionally it's an extremely small thin book made for schoolchildren over 50 years ago and a lot of them have not weathered well.
This is everything from the first page:
John and Betty
The Earliest Reader for the Little Ones.
Illustrations by Marjorie Howden
Education Department of Victorian 1951
A. C. Brooks, Government Printer, Melbourne
When we had the book for sale we had it on our feature books page, looking through our photos we realised we had taken more photos than we originally featured, so we thought we'd present it all here.
This blog was current when it was written in 2017, however we have since closed our physical location. For more information see here.
Aside from this website and email Book Browser does not have any computer presence. Especially not within our shop.
It is a wholly analogue experience, as is fitting for a second hand bookshop.
We do not have a computer-searchable catalogue, however if you can tell us the genre, subject or a certain identifying feature of the book you’re looking for we can direct you to where you’re most likely to find the book or subject you’re looking for.
Book Browser covers every subject, both fiction and non-fiction.
There is a mix of layouts and organisation is several areas, based on the subject matter.
In the fiction section there are two layouts, depending whether the section is suitably large on not.
Sorted by author’s last name: Australian novels & literature; Humour; Large hardback fiction; Large paperback fiction; Literature; Small paperback fiction; Government, war and military fiction; Crime; Horror; Animal stories (also included in this section is non-fiction Animal stories); Science fiction and fantasy.
In most of these sections there will also be sections for particularly prolific authors, usually organised at the end of a section or the bottom of the shelf.
Sections devoted to subjects but not ordered further: Historical fiction; King Arthur; Robin Hood; British Royalty Fiction; Fiction set in Ireland, Scotland and Wales; Sea Stories; Westerns; Novelisations of Movies or TV Tie-In Books; Romance & Erotic fiction.
All non-fiction, aside from Biographies are ordered by subject only, there are a few exceptions which are ordered by title.
Biographies are broken down to Australian biographies, TV & Movie Stars biographies and (general) Biographies, ordered by author / subject of the biography (by last name).
Non-fiction is ordered in a human understandable layout with everything grouped together based on genre or subject. A few large sections are broken down further by title of book.
All the books on countries are within a section together and are ordered together.
Australia has its own section with each state having a shelf or in the case of Victoria and New South Wales a few shelves, with a dedicated shelves for ‘The Snowy’ and ‘The Murray’. Victoria is broken down into Victoria, Melbourne and Melbourne Institutions & Landmarks.
The Australia section also has sections for ‘The Outback’, ‘Historic Australia’, ‘Australian National Parks’ and a general ‘Australia’ section.
All these sections, beyond being ordered into these sections and shelves are unsorted.
The Australia section also has several shelves which contain books about Australia as a genre of non-fiction. These are ordered by title.
Australia is further broken down into books ordered by title.
World War II is also broken down into books by title.
