Whatever happened to cookery cards?

At the risk of repeating myself, I'm desperately trying to think of food associated things I can make for Christmas. Too late to do one of cookery books - they take too long, so I thought I might do a quick and dirty set of cookery cards. We have a laminator after all so it ought to be possible. And I may still do this.

However, it suddenly became apparent to me - maybe it's because I have been visiting a lot of bookshops of late - that cookery cards do not seem to exist any more. There are thousands of cookbooks, but no cookery cards - and yet they were quite the thing back in the day - the 70s and 80s? I have the set shown above, but when you type in 'cookery cards' to Google only a few names come up. So actually they may not have been quite so widespread as I thought. Robert Carrier is the one who comes up most often, and Gordon Ramsay seems to have done some too - which must surely be more recent. I think they might have been the sort of thing you collected with magazines as well. I vaguely remember some magazine having them as a regular item.

So are they dead and buried? When I tried to find out more about them I came across a site that talked about the cookery cards we all used to create ourselves - recipes handwritten on index cards (do they exist any more?), and passed down from mother to daughter. They are precious family heritage. A year or so ago our book group had a session on cookbooks (my choice) and I asked my friends to all bring along a cookbook that meant something to them. It was surprising, well maybe not, how many of them brought along these handwritten mementoes from parents. But interesting though that all was, it was not really what I was looking for today, and I have yet to really find anything on the history of commercially produced cookery cards.

I guess in the days before computers, smart phones and tablets, a cookery card was a convenient small package for using in the kitchen. That set, shown above, has two or three cards which have been very heavily used and are covered in little food stains from their use in the kitchen. Many of them are not though. But that's the same for any cookbook. Nobody cooks absolutely everything in a cookbook (with the exception of the Julie and Julia lady that is). We pick and choose.

The article about the index cards, said that these days it's all digital. And yes I do have a digital database of favourite recipes from magazines, but I would never cook from my iPad in the kitchen. As I mentioned - my cookery cards are covered in food bits and pieces. You wouldn't want those on your iPad. If I want to cook something from my database I'm afraid I print it out on paper and then store it in one of those display folders. But then there are fridges with computers on them I believe. Maybe this is what you would use them for. Put all your recipes in there and use that. In my kitchen, that would mean I would have to keep turning around to look but I guess that's OK.

And then is digital going to last? When I die what will happen to my digital database, and all the other stuff I have on my computer? My blog? I'm guessing it will all get wiped - as it should. But it's a pity isn't it? Digital storage methods change all the time - remember floppy disks anyone? You really can't expect libraries and archives to keep reformatting their collections as the next digital storage method comes along. Or can you? I suspect not. Libraries and archives are not flush with money. Paper, on the other hand will last. People don't write letters any more though. We send emails and texts. These vanish into the ether. Will there be volumes of the collected emails of famous people, as there have been collections of their letters? Really not likely.

But then the cookery cards probably wouldn't get used either. So I don't think I'll bother.