Includes:
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Hong Kong Young Women’s Christian Association. Noodles and Rice / and Everything Nice / A Guide to Cooking and Eating Chinese Fashion (1950) 1st Edition. Original cloth. 92pp.including ads. Illustrated with text drawings. Preface by (Lady) Maurine Grantham, wife of the British Governor of Hong Kong.
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(Lady) Josephine Mary Young. Lady Young’s Cookery: Tried and Tested Recipes (ca. 1954) 1st Edition. Original cloth. 171pp., including illustrated ads.
Lady Grantham declared the 1950 book to be “the first book on Hong Kong Chinese Cookery”. The 1954 volume is presumed to be the second.
Both compilers were wives of British Governors of Hong Kong. The first, with a 20-pge introduction to eating and cooking “Chinese fashion”, was published soon after the Communist victory on the mainland, when the British colony became “a refuge for people from all parts of China”. The 82 recipes thus included “dishes which are specialties in many part of China", including Peking Duck, Cantonese Chicken and Walnuts, Shanghai Shrimp and Green Peas, and dishes from Szechuen and Fukien.There is also a 6-page Chinese-English Glossary of Food Terms,and 5 pages of ads.
The second book was compiled by the wife of Sir Mark Aitchison Young, who served as British Governor of Hong Kong for only 4 months before the 1941 Japanese invasion; he was then imprisoned for the duration of World War II, serving again as Governor for one post-war year. The Youngs apparently remained in Hong Kong after his retirement, as this book was probably published in the mid-1950s, but her recipes are distinctively “colonial”, reflecting cosmopolitan Hong Kong before the War. There are only five pages of “Chinese dishes” while recipes for drinks like Mint Juleps Champange Tea Punch and Singapore Gin Sling are followed by such diverse European meals as Scotch Broth, Turbot in the Parisienne Way, Beef a la Stroganoff, Haggis, Yorkshire Pudding, Russian Pirozki, Chicken Pie a la Russe, Cotte Hettes a la Kiev, Pheasant a la Bonne Femme and Russian Egg-Plant Caviare,