Cooking with Wine, Spirits, Beer & Cider

This is one of the smallest compact cookbooks I have come across. Its pocket sized, has a blurry highly colourized reproduced photo on the cover, published by Herbert Jenkins Limited, written by Pamela Vandyke Price, who was a British Wine Taster and Writer, printed in 1959 and part of the Home Entertaining Series; this book has ninety-one pages and offers a selection of choice recipes, ranging from the basic to the extravagant, for those inclined to cook or bake with wine, beer, cider, brandy, rum or liqueurs. There is a compact seven page introduction which is both informative and economical, giving a brief synopsis of the selected spirits to use and the method of preparing. It covers starters, mains, desserts and extras, not bad for such a bijou book.

I will share the Cream of Avocado Soup and Pears in Wine recipes, keep in mind the year the book was printed, 1959 so the recipe is as it appears and written in the book.

Cream of Avocado Soup

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2 ripe avocado pears

3 cups chicken broth

1 cup thick cream

2 tablespoons sherry

few spoonfuls salted whipped cream

Cut a spoonful of the avocado pears into dice, mash the rest of them and add to the chicken broth. Bring this slowly to the boil, add the thick cream, then the sherry, but do not allow to boil. In each soup cup or plate put the pieces of diced avocado, pour in the soup and top each helping with the salted whipped cream. Serves 4. 

Pears in Wine

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Peel and halve 6 pears and remove the cores. 

Poach them in a syrup made with 2 tablespoons of red wine, 3 tablespoonfuls caster sugar, a slice of lemon peel and a small piece of cinnamon stick. Bring this to the boil before putting in the pears and then simmer them till they are quite tender. Drain the pears and arrange them on a serving dish. Take out the cinnamon stick and lemon peel and reduce the syrup by rapid boiling to about half, pour it over the pears. They may be served hot or cold. Serves six.