item details
Overview
This cookery book, published in 1952, was one of the recipe books Lya Riley (nee Kleinmann) used when cooking for her family in the 1950s. The book was written by Bee Nilson, a graduate of the School of Home Science at the University of Otago, who had a long career in the United Kingdom and became a major food writer.
Lya Kleinmann was born in Vienna on 27 March 1921, the only child of Emil Kleinmann and Eugenie Rosenberg. Emil was a director at Anker Insurance, and the family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. They had a cook and a maid, and all of Lya’s clothes were made by a dressmaker.
Lya and her mother Eugenie fled Austria in 1939 and lived in London throughout the Second World War (1939-1945). After the war Lya met a Londoner named William (Bill) George Alexander Riley, and she followed him to New Zealand in 1948. They were married in Dunedin in October that year, and quickly purchased an old Victorian cottage at 247 North Road. Their first child Lysette was born in January 1950, and Peter followed in December 1951.
Bill worked as a cook and as a subeditor at the Otago Daily Times, while Lya taught herself to cook and extended her skills by attending night classes at the School of Home Science. Lya was well-known for her wonderful cooking and baking, and a love of food is one of the threads that runs through the generations of the family.
The cookbook is part of a collection of objects from Lya which materialises aspects of her childhood in Austria, experiences during the war, and life in New Zealand.
References:
- Riley, Lysette and Helen Riley-Duddin, 2021. Conversations and emails with curators Katie Cooper and Stephanie Gibson.
- Riley, Lysette, 2021. Unpublished biography of Lya Kleinmann, born 27 March 1921 Vienna.
- Smith, Duncan, 2018. The New Zealand Food Revolution. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/eyewitness/audio/2018676083/the-new-zealand-food-revolution