Author and photography: Leah Pattem
What began with a mysterious apple cake note found inside an old cookbook has turned into a quiet treasure hunt through the city’s bookstores and free libraries.
Torta de Manzana: For one egg, use 5 tablespoons of milk, 5 tablespoons of oil, 100 grams of sugar, 130 grams of flour, one grated apple, and half or more of a packet of yeast. Bake as you would any other cake.
I found this bonus recipe carefully tucked between two pages of a second-hand cookbook. On its own, the instructions are incomplete, but read alongside the apple cake recipe on page 153, everything falls into place. It’s written in neat, flowing Spanish cursive – the kind of handwriting that suggests an older woman with an education.
I’m not that familiar with how older generations write in Spain. To me, the script looks old-world – the capital Ts and Ps and Cs are like nothing I’ve ever seen. Using my best detective skills, I see that the recipe is written in ballpoint pen so could date as far back as the 1940s, but the cookbook, however, was published in 1984, which makes me accept that this note was probably written within my own lifetime.
But where mystery remains is by who? And for whom? I’ll never know. But because the neatness of the writing and the way the cooking advice is given, this recipe wasn’t written as just a personal note, it was meant for someone else. I’d like to imagine that, somehow, it was meant for me.
I discovered this used cookbook in a metro station, in one of the city’s Metrotecas – small public libraries scattered across twelve stations in the underground network. Anyone can leave a book or pick one up in return, but they do vary in supply. That’s where I found it: nestled among well-thumbed paperbacks, still marked with its original price sticker of 530 pesetas.
Since then, I’ve become a hobby treasure hunter for handwritten recipes and I’ve now collected nine of them, all found tucked into second-hand books from independent bookstores or free libraries.
One of my favourite hunting grounds and probably the best place to find hidden bonus recipes is the open-air ‘People’s Library’ in Retiro Park. If you’re lucky, you might find it fully stocked. Another place I love to browse is independent second-hand bookstore Tuuu Librería, with locations in both Lavapiés and Salamanca. Here, you pay whatever you think is fair, much like at La Casquería, the charming bookstore inside Mercado de San Fernando, where you pay by weight using the old scales from when the store was an offal shop.
The once based in Lavapiés, Librería 7 Colores has now relocated to the more affordable barrio of San Fermín. It still has its signature precarious piles of books stacked on the floor which are worth the dig for those unique hand-written recipes.
Then Libros A. Hernández in El Rastro is a delightfully chaotic maze of books and magazines, many of which even the owner has forgotten exist. Be ready to stretch before you enter, you’ll need some flexibility to squeeze between the overflowing shelves, and don’t be surprised if dust or even crumbs of plaster fall on you as you reach for the top shelf.
These scraps and annotations are more than recipes, they are fragments of lived-in kitchens, of memories and meals quietly passed on – intentionally or not. They speak to how we cook, how we remember, and how we pass on knowledge through the generations. The next time you find yourself in a second-hand bookstore, you might leave with more than just a book.
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