Hilda's "where is it?" of recipes

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Hilda's "Where is it?" of Recipes is an 1891 Cape colonial cookbook compiled by Hildagonda J. Duckitt, organized as an alphabetical culinary reference rather than a narrative cookbook. Its stated purpose, given in the preface, is to preserve old-fashioned recipes drawn from Cape families of Dutch, French, Malay, and Indian descent, making it a record of colonial South African household cooking at the close of the nineteenth century. The book moves alphabetically from anchovies through yeast, covering meats, curries, preserves, cakes, puddings, jellies, sauces, salads, breads, and beverages, interspersed with home remedies and household advice such as cleaning and polishing instructions. Many recipes carry attributions to named contributors, such as Mrs. Brink, Mrs. Fleming, and Tante Katje, reflecting its origins as a compiled family and community archive rather than a single author's original creations. Modern readers will find a rich mixture of European techniques and Cape Malay, Dutch, and Indian influences, including curries, sambals, bredees, koesisters, and bobotee alongside English puddings and continental cakes. As a corpus of 368 anchored food records and 4 household records, the book offers a dense, practical view of colonial kitchen life, useful to culinary historians and general readers interested in South African foodways of the period.

The book is organized alphabetically by dish or ingredient name, spanning 9 sections that move from front matter and introductory technique notes (section 1) through entries beginning with A and B, continuing letter by letter through C, D, E, F, G (sections 2 through 5), then H through the middle alphabet including jellies, preserves, and kedgeree (sections 4 through 6), and on through O, P, R, S, and finally T, V, and Y in the closing sections (7 through 9). Recipes are grouped under headword entries, sometimes with multiple numbered variants of the same dish (for example several curry or jelly preparations). Home remedies, household cleaning advice, and practical tips such as improvised ovens for travelers are interspersed among the food recipes rather than segregated into a separate section, and the book closes with press reviews praising its scope.