May 2024
Rifling through a collection of recipes and other food related paraphernalia I had bought in a bundle from an antique dealer, I came across a set of 38 recipe sheets produced by the Australian Gas and Light Company (AGLC from here) c1950. Titles of the sheets and the recipes on each are Appendix 1.
This kind of ephemeral material – recipes printed in booklet form or as in this case single sheets – were a common promotional tool. These recipe sheets were part of the promotion of what these days would be called a ‘wrap-around service’. They were distributed free at ‘Lecture Demonstrations of Automatic Gas Cooking’ at one of AGLC’s Home Service Centres of which there were six – the western suburb of Parramatta, the inner west suburb of Burwood, the southern suburb of Hurstville, the eastern suburb of Bondi Junction and central Sydney. Each of these Centres had a Cookery College – on site teaching kitchen. There were Home Service Advisers at each centre who could undertake Home Calls if the ‘housewife require(d) assistance with cookery or kitchen management which necessitates a visit to her home’. The Advisers also managed a Recipe Service with Home Service Advisers supplying recipes on request.
