Do you ever get stuck for ideas of what to cook for tea? Are you sick of having the same old meals every week and want to try something different? Then why not take some inspiration from recipe books found in archives and cook up a blast from the past.
Miss Brown’s recipe book, Gloucestershire Training College of Domestic Science 1946-1947
Archive reference D525/1/4
Our item this month is a recipe book written by Evelyn Brown, a student at the Gloucestershire College of Domestic Science from 1946-1947. These vintage meals were prepared at a time when the country was still undergoing the hardships of rationing after the Second World War. Some look very familiar to us:
Accompanying the recipe book are various publications from the 1940s including “A Handbook for Institutional Catering” and the “Nutritive Values of Wartime Foods”. There is also a goffered cap made and worn by Miss Brown and photographs with her fellow students.
Archive reference D525/1/3
The Gloucestershire Training College of Domestic Science had existed in various forms since the 1890s when it opened as the Gloucestershire School of Cookery. The founder of the College was Mrs A T Playne, a sister of Beatrice Webb the social reformer. Students studied all aspects of domestic science including cookery, institutional management, dressmaking, haberdashery and general housewifery.
Archive reference D525/1/5
The photograph above shows students outside the College buildings in Barrack Square, Gloucester. In 1926 degree courses were offered for the first time in affiliation with the University of Bristol. The College moved to a site on Oxstalls Lane in the 1950s which today houses the University of Gloucestershire’s Oxstalls campus.
The College went on to have further name changes until it merged to form the newly created GlosCAT in 1980. The Higher Education strand of GlosCAT merged with the College of St Paul and St Mary in 1990 to form the Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, becoming the University of Gloucestershire in 2001.
For more information on this deposit, or the history of the Gloucestershire Training College of Domestic Science, please contact archive staff.
