Lilly Longman's 100 Year Old Recipes: Translating The Book

Lilly Longman's Original 100 Year Old Recipes covering everything from starters, meat, fish and poultry dishes - all the way to chutneys, sweets, soups and even drinks

Lilly Longman wrote the original recipe book (below) - Click To Expand the picture

Lilly Longman's 100 Year Old Recipes: Lady Fingers

Original Victorian and

Edwardian Recipes

Restored To Modern

Day English

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As soon as Lilly’s Grandson “Little Al” told Alan Smith “Big Al” about the existence of Lilly Longman’s Edwardian and Victorian recipe book, Big Al saw the opportunity, took the bit between his teeth and embarked upon an 18 month project to restore the recipes to modern day English.

Lilly Longman's 100 Year Old Recipes: A Cutlet Reform

The Restored Recipe Book Containing Lilly Longmans Original Victorian and Edwardian Recipes

Alan’s wife, Lyn (pictured right) was almost banished from the kitchen for the duration of the project as Big Al worked relentlessly to create the book that exists today! One of his biggest problems was the actual condition of the book.

Big Al's Wife Lyn Was Almost Banished from the kitchen for over a year

Click To Expand: Lilly Longman's Grandson and Big Al working on restoring another of Lilly's recipes

Being 100 years old, it had deteriorated and care had to be taken when scanning each recipe so that the original hand-written notes could be included with every recipe. In addition,many of the recipes were written in pencil so had faded. A lot of computer enhancement was required to make the original hand written recipes readable.

The eventual result was a new book containing all the Victorian and Edwardian recipes Lilly prepared for the family who employed her in Talgarth Road and later Comeragh Road London.

Alan stresses to point out that he is not a cook. He simply took the simple, wholesome recipes and successfully recreated them. His words are “If I can do it anyone can”.

Big Als House Where the Translation Was Done

Each recipe contains a scan of Lilly’s original hand-written recipe, the translation to modern day English and a picture of the dish as prepared by Big Al. He stresses to point out that the pictures are the genuine article as shot by himself with a simple digital camera whilst the dish was still warm. They are not enhanced and are not studio shots as with many other recipe books.

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Click To Enlarge: The Two Alan's and their web-master discussing the design of the web-site at Alan's house in June 2010

Above: The web-site in development. It was a warm June afternoon in 2010 at Big Al’s house in the hills above the Northern Corfu resort of Acharavi where the concept for this web-site was born.

Above: The two Alans in Big Al’s kitchen testing a dish and below: Big Al’s house in the hills above the Northern resort of Acharavi on Corfu where the book was authored.