I have a Culinary Arts Institute cookbook that my grandmother had saved up to buy back in the thirties, passed down like a family heirloom from my mother. I love reading the recipes in part because they don’t use any health or light eating, low calorie euphemisms. It’s never “vegetable oil” or “shortening”, and the word “margarine” never appears. It’s just fat, lard, butter, and sugar, and plenty of them all.
I have a similar cookbook from the same era from my grandma. My favorite part is her notes in the margins. One of them talks about a mistake that she made with hot sugar and egg whites. It still makes me laugh. I can only imagine what kind of a mess that was... it’s a good memory of just the kind of thing she would do.