Standard Recipes for 50: Metric Edition: For employee cafeterias and other large food services.

Standard Recipes for 50: Metric Edition: For employee cafeterias and other large food services.  Paperback book spiral bound published by The Australian Government Publishing Service 1986, 255 pages.

“This book contains recipes for larger quantities of food. The first edition of Standard Recipes for Fifty was written and published in 1942. This is the twelth revision or reprint since then and the object has been to progressively incorporate changes to help users keep abreast of developments in the large-scale catering field and improve the quality of food produced in their services. Full account has been taken of nutritional and cost considerations, with the number of recipes included in this volume exceeding seven hundred of proven popularity.”

It seems like just yesterday that I wrote about a similar book that concentrated on the catering of salads for large numbers of people… or small numbers of large people. This title was published a few years later and obviously covers a broader range of food as the world is not made up of salad alone.  It caters for Australian tastes in large quantities and apparently was an excellent source of catering information here in Australia for many years, with nursing homes being particularly fond of some of the more Aussie dishes such as Sweet and Sour Pork, Moussaka and Meatballs in Curry Sauce.  It does also have a recipe for Lancashire Hotpot that serves 50.

I always imagine someone who is about to have a big dinner party, or has been roped into catering for a wedding (on the cheap) wanting/needing a book such as this.  I look forward to one day being invited along to a feast of Mock Chicken Croquettes, Sausages Duchess with Meatloaf.  I have of course picked out the choiciest recipes and have failed to mention the various potato salad recipes (…yes more salad), minestrone etc. that abound in this volume. 

This copy does have some marks and minor stains on more than one page… a good indicator that it’s a book that you can go back to for at least a second serve.