Miller's recipe book

From the librarian's dossier · AI-generated, grounded in the scanned text

Miller's Recipe Book is a promotional cookbook issued in 1947 by James Miller (Food Products) Ltd, makers of Miller's British Baking Powder. Framed by an introduction celebrating the firm's claimed centenary since Dr. James Miller developed the product in 1847, the book is really a compact, practical manual for baking under postwar British rationing. Its recipes are built around economizing on scarce ingredients such as eggs, fats, and sugar, leaning on dried egg, dried milk, mashed potato, and margarine as substitutes. Readers get pastry of several kinds (shortcrust, suet, potato, oatmeal, rough puff), steamed and boiled puddings, scones, cakes, buns, biscuits, and a handful of savory items like meat pies and sausage rolls. A weights and measures guide translates spoon and cup quantities for the home cook, and later recipes give oven settings in both Fahrenheit and Regulo gas marks. Though slim, at only two sections and roughly 78 anchored food records, the book offers a vivid, product-anchored snapshot of British domestic cooking during a period of severe ingredient shortage. It is as much a piece of commercial literature promoting a branded baking powder as it is a functional recipe collection, and modern readers will find both dimensions worth noting.

The book is organized in two mechanically gated sections. Section 1 opens with an index, a heritage-focused introduction to Miller's Baking Powder, and a weights and measures guide before moving into core recipe categories: pastries, steamed and boiled puddings, scones, cakes, buns, biscuits, savory bakes, and fried batters. Section 2 continues in the same vein with a further cluster of puddings, tea cakes, buns, biscuits, and savory items, each recipe paired with precise oven temperatures in Fahrenheit and Regulo settings. There is no separate chapter apparatus beyond these two sections; headings within them mark individual recipes and reference material such as the weights and measures guide and teaspoon measure descriptions.