Fifty Christmases, One Leaking Ring Binder: What the Landlady's Banquet Books Really Tell Us

It lives in the drawer under the till, wedged between a laminated fire evacuation plan and a 2011 calendar nobody has the heart to bin. It's a black ring binder, spine cracked, cover stained with what our current landlady cheerfully describes as 'either Bovril or sherry'. And it is, without exaggeration, the most valuable thing we own that isn't bolted down.

It's the banquet book. Or rather, the first of three banquet books, because the Brown Cow has been feeding Chatburn's parties since long before anyone thought to write it down, and the earliest surviving one opens in the spring of 1974.

Vol-au-vents and the Disco Years

The 1974 pages are a thing to behold. Somebody — we think it's Betty, who ran the kitchen with a wooden spoon and a raised eyebrow — had beautiful looping handwriting and a firm belief that no celebration was complete without vol-au-vents. There they are at every wedding breakfast, every twenty-first, every retirement do: vol-au-vents, chicken and mushroom. Vol-au-vents, ham and egg mayonnaise. Vol-au-vents, a filling listed only as 'the pink one', which the book never explains and nobody alive can account for.

The themes were bolder then, too. Tucked into the back cover is a poster for a 'Hawaiian Fever Night' from 1977, hand-drawn, promising 'Leis! Lamb Curry! Limbo!' at 50p a head. Our landlady studied it for a long while and then said, quietly, 'We are never doing that again.' She declined to elaborate. There is a story there, and apparently it stays in the book.

The Prawn Cocktail Avalanche

Every era of the book has its signature dish, and you can date a page within a year by the garnish. The late seventies and eighties belong entirely to the prawn cocktail. It appears at the top of nearly every menu, underlined twice, sometimes with an exclamation mark — Betty's enthusiasm for Marie Rose sauce was absolute and unshakeable.

The peak came, we believe, in December 1983, when a page records a works do for the quarry lot requiring 'cocktails for 60, extra sauce, and mind the linen this time'. Mind the linen this time. Four words that suggest an incident we will never fully understand, and which we think about more than we probably should.

The Turkey That Fed 300

Then there's the centrepiece of the whole collection: Christmas Day, 1989. A full-page entry, boxed in red biro, simply headed 'THE BIG ONE'. Three hundred covers. Three hundred. For a village of our size, that means the Brown Cow fed a meaningful percentage of Chatburn and half of Downham besides — three seatings, two ovens borrowed from next door, and a turkey procurement operation that the book describes, in Betty's hand, as 'a military exercise and no mistake'.

The margin notes are the best part. 'Gravy running low — panic at 2.15.' 'Mrs H's family sang, unexpectedly lovely.' 'Never again. Same time next year.'

And they did, of course. Same time next year, and the year after, though never quite at that scale again.

What the Book Tells Us Now

Reading through it, the story isn't really about food at all. It's about ritual. The dishes change — the vol-au-vents give way to the chicken kiev, the kiev to the lasagne, the lasagne to today's slow-braised short rib — but the occasions don't. Christenings, golden weddings, the darts team's do, the annual gathering of people who all had the same teacher at school and have never quite forgiven each other for it.

The current landlady keeps the book going in her own way: a leatherette notebook now, recording this year's Christmas menu bookings in the same spirit. Turkey, all the trimmings, a proper pudding. Some things, thank goodness, don't come in and out of fashion.

If you've ever celebrated anything at the Brown Cow, there's a fair chance you're in these pages, even if only as a quantity of sauce and a note about the linen. Come and see it next time you're in — it's under the till, and we'll happily show you. Just don't ask about Hawaiian Fever Night. Some mysteries keep the pub warm.