Dishes win national prize

12:01pm Saturday 10th May 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

A WOMEN'S group has drawn on members' decades of cooking experience to win a national competition promoting traditional recipes.

The 28 members of Mobberley women's institute sent instructions on how to make dishes such as country parsnip soup, corned beef hotpot and lemon cake to a publisher.

Their efforts - which now feature in a series of books along with recipes from other WI groups - were judged the best in the country.

"We're absolutely cock-a-hoop," said secretary Gwyneth Moores.

"It is quite incredible really. There are only 28 of us and these days we don't cook and bake like we used to."

The women responded to an advert in the WI magazine.

"Rosemary Barber, one of our older members, decided we'd go into this and we got 17 or 18 recipes together," said Mrs Moores.

Each member who contributed a recipe explained why it meant something to them.

Margaret Banner wrote that her raspberry vinegar had literally been passed down through the generations.

"I have still a small amount of some made by my mother who died 35 years ago," she said. Mrs Moores sent in a lemon delight pudding, which she had designed to encourage her younger child to eat dairy products.

Claire Tupholme, of publisher Forward Press, said the variety of recipes sent in by Mobberley WI had earned them the £500 prize.

"We found they had an entry in every category," she said.

"The most important thing was that the recipes were easy to make."

The prize money will be spent on a celebration, a bursary to the WI college in Oxfordshire and will be used to pay for speakers.