Metal grater, rolling pin and kitchen table with marble top

Elsie Curtin's daughter, Elsie Macleod, when speaking of Elsie's cookery, recollected that her mother ‘was good at all the things that I’m no good at … I could only make heavy things, heavy cakes, you know’.

The scone and pastry cutter and the grater in this collection, then, bring Elsie’s cooking—including her pasties, for which the grater may have been used—to mind. They could easily date back to her days in the family’s kitchen. The kitchen table didn’t always have its marble top; it was added to provide a cool surface on which to knead and roll pastry, which was more Elsie’s specialty than that of her daughter.