Then it is good for printing

The recipe book lies open at one of its last pages and gives a good view of the author’s graceful handwriting. The book is full with something written on each page, yet the pages are fairly empty, as if there was more listening than writing. ‘Dan is het goed voor te Drukken’ (‘Then it is good for Printing’) is the last sentence of many of the recipes. Although ‘recipe’ is a somewhat misleading term. There is no list of ingredients or step-by-step instructions about what should happen when and for how long, like in a modern cookbook. In this book, there are ‘ingredients’ in the form of dyes, binding agents and solvents. There are also instructions like the duration in minutes or hours and sometimes a few steps when one needs to stir. But these are not recipes to follow. They are notes to an action the author knows well. As the pages fill and time moves on, the notes become more and more concise and an ‘accent’ seems more and more prominent. ‘Uren’ (hours) becomes ‘hueren’, French words sneak in and other words only become clear by reading them aloud, like ‘Couleur for den apsarbaen’, which I think means ‘Color for absorbing’.

But when was a recipe ‘good for printing’, and who decided this? In the front of the book, next to the stamp of Louis André Driessen, there is also a pencil mark that might be a hint as to the book’s possible author.