The Bowes Museum Cookbook, Bowes Museum, £14.95, ISBN 978-0-956-2669-5-8

The Bowes Museum Cookbook was inspired by our current exhibition, Feast Your Eyes: The Fashion of Food in Art (until 6 January 2013), which is celebrating 500 years of depictions of food in art.

We decided that it would be an interesting alternative to the usual exhibition catalogue, while celebrating the rich and diverse collections at the Bowes Museum.

It also pays tribute to Café Bowes, which has become more than just a restaurant for our visitors since its recent transformation aided by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The cafe, with its talented young head chef Ben Parnaby, who won Teesdale Chef of the Year 2010, is now a destination of choice for those looking for locally sourced good food.

Café Bowes is also renowned for its afternoon tea. Patisserie chef Hazel Herworth’s secret scone recipe is dedicated to the Friends of the Bowes Museum for their contribution towards the book and also because they are great ambassadors for the cafe.

The recipes are inspired by the Bowes Museum’s fine art collection and are typical of the dishes available in Café Bowes. Beside these are images from the fine art, ceramics and textiles collections, along with captions and commentary from food historian Ivan Day and keeper of ceramics Howard Coutts.

In addition we have looked back through the archives of the founders of the museum, John and Joséphine Bowes, and have included bills and menus from their dinner parties and snippets from their daily lives. An example is the section on the history of the Christmas pie.

In 1867, John Bowes wrote about one such pie that had been sent from his ancestral home Streatlam Castle in County Durham to Paris for Christmas; it arrived safely and was good except for a slight crack in the pastry.

The book is lighthearted and is intended to be an attractive coffee-table book that the art lover can lightly peruse or a cook book for those more interested in rolling up their sleeves.

Francesca Young is the assistant to the director of the Bowes Museum, County Durham