What is in a Name?

There has been much talk of the need to eat more plant based food for health reasons as well as environmental reasons. Recipes for plant based foods are very popular.

Recently I was reading about “Meat Free Monday” with suggestions of recipes for such days. Many are being hailed as new recipes. But are they really new? What determines a new recipe?

I believe that recipes manage to meander from generation to generation with slight twists and very often change with what is on trend.

Recently I saw a recipe which included mashed sweet potato, hard boiled eggs and nut based Bechamel sauce and vegetarian cheese. It sounded very familiar. In fact it sounded too familiar. I had memories of making something similar but where was that recipe?

If it was a distant memory then the recipe was probably in a scrap book of recipes which I had made back in the late 70’s. My goodness but I hadn’t realised how faded they had become. Yes I found it…Egg and Vegetable Bake. Ingredients included potatoes, hard boiled eggs, vegetable soup to which I had added or “Bechemal Sauce”

This was brilliant. Back in the 70’s tinned soup was often added to oven baked savoury dishes and it eliminated the hassle of making sauces or the possibility of lumpy sauces. In Ireland sweet potatoes would not have been widely available nor widely used. But the recipes were basically the same, just with the modern twist of plant based milk for the sauce, sweet potatoes and vegan cheese.

Another recipe which has developed into an updated dish and influences from a different part of the world.