'They teach me how to cook' - dementia care chef

Traditional trifle is a favourite with residents at a care home trying to cater to - and enhance - their memories

A care home is hoping to reawaken memories by cooking up nostalgic recipes for people with dementia.

The Chase Care Home, in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, is putting together a cookbook of its residents' favourite family recipes - from trifles to toad-in-the-hole to steamed puddings.

In doing so, they hope to raise funds for the Alzheimer's Society.

The care home's head chef, Juliana Martins, said inviting residents to share their memories and recipes and help in the kitchen ensured "these things are not forgotten".

"The idea was in the back of my mind since 2018," said Brazilian-born Ms Martins.

"I was trying to make our residents happy and understand how they wanted dishes to be presented and cooked, and I thought, why not just get them to tell me what I should be doing?

"I said I wanted to know the old-school version of these dishes."

Chef Juliana Martins said the home's residents were teaching her a thing or two about what they wanted to eat

She continued: "We brought the residents into the kitchens and started having some chats about their stories and memories.

"It brought my grandmother to mind - she passed 10 years ago with dementia and I never had any recipes or writing from her."

Ms Martins' Brazilian grandmother was also a chef and "it was all about food", she said.

"The recipes there are from generations, but these things can be forgotten.

"Just having a one-to-one with the residents in the kitchen, I thought why not record that and create a legacy?"

She admitted she had never been able to recreate one of her favourite family recipes from her childhood - made with the sweetcorn her grandfather farmed - simply because it was not written down.

It is hoped traditional menus will make residents more comfortable

Since she had been working with residents on the new project, Ms Martins said it had been fulfilling to see them thinking, "they can do this, because this is their home".

"We have one resident with dementia, and she can be a bit confused, but she used to be a chef herself - but when you talk about a recipe with her, it's like she remembers, even the [basics], and she can explain the details to you.

"It's really nice to see how engaged she is getting."

Ms Martins said all the recipes they were gathering would be "introduced into our future menus because they teach me how they want me to cook - the way they want me to do it".

Residents and their relatives have been in the kitchen recreating their own recipes

Juliana Martins (seen here as a baby), learned to cook from her grandmother in Brazil

Sam Bilton, a food historian and host of the Comfortably Hungry Podcast, said food memories were "very important".

"I think it sort of connects us with our past and in some cases provides us with solace - and can connect us with someone - as well as with fond memories from childhood," she said.

"I imagine that the residents in this care home are being helped to remember comforting - and filling foods - because during rationing it was a case of 'padding', so I would expect to see a lot of things like syrup pudding or spotted dick."

The home said it hoped to "capture residents’ cherished family recipes in [the] new cookbook, before they are lost to time and changing culinary fashions".

The cookbook - The Taste of Life Journey - is expected to be published by the care home in September.