New items for the museum collection – Lorraine’s recipe book

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One of our community curators, Lorraine, was a school cook in Rochdale from the age of 15 until she retired at 65. Having worked across many different schools in Rochdale she saw huge changes to the provision and requirements of school meals. She carried this recipe book with her and has talked with the group about how everyone had their own book and recipes weren’t shared, even amongst staff working in the same kitchen they were very carefully protected!

Lorraine worked her way up to kitchen manager and advocated for her colleagues as a union rep. She had some run ins with Jamie Oliver around the time of the ‘Jamie’s School Dinners’ TV shows, defending the high quality and healthy school meals that her kitchen provided. She also worked in the kitchen that inspired the BBC radio show ‘Dinner Ladies’, and later the comedy of the same name written by and starring Victoria Wood. The BBC put hidden microphones in the kitchen to observe the interactions between dinner ladies and this warmth and humour inspired the scripts.

Cultural attitudes towards health and nutrition, local and national government policies and the changing demographic of the borough can all be charted through looking at our school meals. Now part of the museum collection Lorraine’s recipe book tells an important part of Rochdale’s food story and will be on display in the Dining Room when the building re-opens.