Some possibly useful information on how to cook vegetables from The Essex Cookery Book, 1930.
I’ve never heard of the dark/light theory of cooking vegetables. Vegetables grown in the dark should be cooked in the dark (i.e. covered with a lid) and vice versa, or so it says.
The Essex Cookery Book, 1930
More carrot destruction here with the timings. Not quite as bad as the advice to cook them for two and a half hours from 1910 (see below) but people apparently really liked carrot mush back then. Also – in what universe does it take 15 minutes to cook spinach? You can see why we got our reputation for soggy veg.
If you look at practically any general cookbook from Victorian times up to the 1940s, you’re likely to find a section that has now entirely fallen by the wayside in modern books – special recipes for the sickroom, often called “Invalid cookery”.
This is the kind of thing:
(This is where I had embedded a video of the Fry and Laurie period sketch on broth vs soup, and which doesn’t exist anymore, and is also not in any of their sketch books. Which is a shame because it sums up invalid cookery perfectly.)
Incidentally, I seem to remember the recipes for Talbot’s Broth and Henry’s Soup actually did appear on Ceefax as mentioned in the sketch.
Now we have Heinz Tomato Soup, Lucozade, and better medicine, perhaps these gently nourishing recipes aren’t needed so much anymore. But I do like the idea of a special menu if you’re unwell. It marks the occasion, in a way. Recipes included gruel in many forms, blackcurrant tea, barley water, invalid custard, toast water and beef tea.
I’ve also got a number of recipes for the slightly alarming-sounding raw beef tea. I haven’t got a certificate in food hygiene admittedly, but this sounds like rather a potential nightmare. I mean, it’s not quite Talbot’s fried bull penis, but still.
Raw beef tea, Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book, 1910
Raw Beef Tea
1/4 lb lean beef
1/4 pint water
Few drops of lemon juice
Remove all fat and cut the beef up finely.
Put into the water with the lemon juice.
Let it stand for 6 or 8 hours, pressing beef with a spoon occasionally.
Strain.
Serve in a covered spoon.
This is only given in cases where it could not be assimilated if cooked.
Here’s some more recipes for the sick. Not sure if I’d fancy tripe as the best of times, to be honest, let alone while under the weather.
It’s the last hoorah of summer, it’s the weekend, and it’s probably raining. But if you’re planning some time in the great outdoors, here’s some advice on camping cookery and gathering wild food from the 1938 Weekend Book:
The Weekend Book, 1938
I can’t emphasise strongly enough – DON’T MAKE YOUR OWN MICE IN HONEY. That way madness lies.
Also remember “Don’t cook and attempt to eat young bracken shoots because the Japanese do. What suits the hardy races of the extreme East may not suit you.”
Can’t help thinking not only how delicious the breakfast section sounds, but how different the reality would be just a couple of years later.
I have The Weekend Book in two editions, one from 1938 and one from 1955 and I find it interesting to compare the changes between the two. 1938 seems a much more hedonistic time – by 1955 the joys of tobacco are expunged, the first aid section stops looking like the contents of Doctor Dee’s cabinet and turns into something recognisable to us, and most importantly, people apparently don’t eat mice in honey anymore. (That’s unborn mice in honey incidentally. Surely that can’t have been genuinely popular outside of the vendor in The Life of Brian’s wares?)
Hydropathic Pudding is today’s title, but it was really a toss up between that and “Life’s too short to clean a currant”.
The Liverpool Training School of Cookery was a long established institution in Colquitt St in Liverpool City centre. It eventually turned into the Liverpool Catering College and is now part of Liverpool City College. I found a fascinating little article from 1893 on the way the School was run in an Illinois newspaper of all places, the “Western Rural and American Stockman” – http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=WRA18930304.2.20#
The School issued a thin volume of basic recipes for use in Elementary Schools, which is where I come in. I have the edition dated 1902, sponsored by Bird’s Custard (a classic brand, right there). I also own a very similar book called “The Essex Cookery Book” from 1930, so perhaps there were a few such regional variations on the theme.
Liverpool Training School of Cookery book, 1902
Liverpool Training School of Cookery book, 1902
Amongst the collection were the invalid recipes as were standard in cookery books of the time. Here’s an “invalid cake”, presumably designated as such because it’s fairly plain. A perk of being ill, you’ve got your own special cake at least.
Liverpool Training School of Cookery book, 1902
But onto the Hydropathic pudding, the recipe which most caught my eye, sounding as it does like a medical treatment rather than dessert. Funny, I thought, (in Dudley Moore’s voice), the recipe only mentions “a little water” but the name of it sounds like it should be awash in the stuff. But no, this was another invalid recipe, or otherwise a health food, as the bread casing was lighter than pastry or suet-based puddings. And it was called “Hydropathic” because it was served in spas of the time.
It’s still a popular dessert now, but we now know it by the infinitely more appealing name of Summer Pudding.
And so to cleaning currants. I’m not sure how they came in 1902 but evidently they needed cleaning. Thank god this isn’t necessary now – presumably? Suddenly I’m worried, have I spent my life missing out a vital stage of food preparation? Do you all clean currants out there?
You need flour for this, water might re-hydrate them and sticky them up a bit. This does explain why currant wrinkles are sometimes a bit floury, I suppose.
Last recipe for now, and always the one I’m happiest to see in the vintage books – raspberry buns. Every old cookery book had a recipe for them, but you never see them these days. It was also the first recipe I vividly remember making in Domestic Science class and so it’s a hugely nostalgic taste for me. I think I’ll make some for a future vintage recipe blog post.
Last, but very definitely not least, this book contains Hidden Treasure. And my favourite kind as well, a scribbled recipe kept there by a previous owner. This one’s on an envelope from the Isle of Wight in 1949 and it’s for various delicious sounding caramel things:
I remember reading about blackcurrant tea in old children’s books when I was a kid. I really wished that I could try it myself, it sounded so delicious. It was most famously a favourite of Enid Blyton’s The Secret Seven, but despite what they seem to imply it wasn’t invented by them.
Here’s a 1910 recipe from “Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book” that I have tried:
Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book, 1910
Blackcurrant tea
3 tablespoons Blackcurrant jam
1 tablespoon sugar
Boiling water to make the whole 1 pint
Stir well, pressing the fruit.
Let it stand 1/2 hour before using any.
Strain off the liquid as required.
It comes under the heading of invalid cookery, but was also a children’s nursery drink for a treat. The taste – well, Blackcurrant cordial really. My small son is a fan, although he forgets what it’s called and asks me if he can have some of that lovely raspberry coffee.
I always thought gruel was a slightly thinner version of porridge.
But I found this recipe in the “Essex Cookery Book” of 1930 by K. A. Willson and Margaret Hussey, and it turns out it’s almost homeopathic porridge, so tiny is the quantity of oatmeal – 1 tablespoon to a pint of water or milk.
It’s featured here as invalid cookery, which admittedly sounds like a perfectly fine use for it. But those having to actually survive on versions of this were pretty hard done by. No wonder Oliver Twist wanted more.
Essex Cookery Book, 1930
Essex Cookery Book, 1930
(As a side note, you may be interested to learn that the tradition survives these days in the form of the old favourite Horlicks which is technically gruel – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruel)
This is the almost unfortunately-named Mrs Dora Rea’s Cookery Book, from 1910.
Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book, 1910.
This is a lovely cookbook, very sensible and everyday, and largely lacking in Victorian and Edwardian aspic-y froufrou. Full of recipes that are easily followed today.
A few cookery quirks of the time were the emphasis on “nitrogenous” foods (what we’d call protein now) and “invalid cookery”, sickroom cooking being taken very seriously before the advent of Heinz Tomato Soup.
It also turns out that there was good reason that British cooking was derided for its treatment of vegetables. Here’s a recipe instructing how to cook carrots:
Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book, 1910, how to cook carrots
Yes, that’s boil between one and two-and-a-half hours, then chop into mush. I wouldn’t boil carrots to make baby purée that long.
At this time they were also keen on cooking heads to make brawn. Otherwise known as “head cheese”, a name that gives me terrors.
It seems like a lot of effort to go to, when the end result is still a head. All that removing of snout bone, tongue and brains. Shudder.
Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book: Boiling a calf’s head
But there are loads of great things in here. I’m as mad about cooking as I am about history and I love testing out old recipes. This is “Potato Surprise”, a 100% delicious concoction that I make with the leftovers from yesterday’s sausage and mash (I have to make extra especially so there’s enough for leftovers, of course).
Mrs Rea’s Potato Surprises
1/2 pound of cooked sausages
1 1/2 pounds mashed potato
Salt and pepper
1/2 ounce butter
(Unmentioned – an egg, breadcrumbs and oil)
Melt the butter and mix with the potatoes, also seasoning.
Divide sausages into small pieces.
Cover each with potato, make into a ball, brush with egg, cover with breadcrumbs.
Fry in hot fat.
Mrs Rea’s Cookery Book, Potato Surprises
My potato surprises
Nb. Love the old spelling d’oyley. Makes it infinitely posher-sounding.
It’s not all Victoriana and Chomondley-Warners around these parts.
I love a recipe in any form, and I find this 1986 TV Times All Star Cookery by Jill Cox fascinating. Apart from the too many pictures of a breakfast-tellying Richard Keys. It purports to let you into the food secrets of the TV stars but, for the most part, the celebrities recipes are tailored to the theme of their current TV programme.
TV Times All Star Cookbook, 1986
Therefore, Cilla Black with “Surprise, Surprise!” has a selection of vaguely “surprising” recipes, like “Gosh! Pots” which are, in fact, stuffed peppers. Gian Sammarco, TV’s Adrian Mole, has lunchbox ideas, and some reason Benny Hill is the master of kids cooking. Stan Boardman has a selection of German recipes and Derek Jameson has a load of food named after the newspaper industry.
There are a few show-offy types who parade their actual recipes on show – Michael and Cheryl Barrymore are wearing their fanciest 80s jumpers (it is pretty much a book demonstrating patterned jumpers in many ways) and demonstrating what they’d make for a dinner party.
Bobby Davro is the resident diet expert, with his “year of the body”. And by the way he describes how “the ounces creep on” (ounces!) I’m guessing it wasn’t a serious weight problem he had.
Bobby Davro’s diet recipes, TV Times All Star Cookbook
This book got dusted off again by me fairly recently when my small son became quite the scarecrow nerd. We watched endless episodes of Worzel Gummidge (still brilliant) and I remembered the Worzel-themed recipes in here. Hence this pic of Jon Pertwee looking rather dashing and a collection of scarecrow recipes that he definitely used to eat all the time.
(And “Aunt Sally Colly” is the maddest way to cook cauliflower ever)
Jon Pertwee in the TV Times All Star Cookbook
Added for Gallifrey Base – the missing Pertwee recipe page:
TV Times All Star Cookbook, 1986, first Jon Pertwee page.
In honour of my 40th birthday celebrations last night, I offer the cocktail and the cure, both from the 1938 edition of The Weekend Book.
Mr Sutton’s Gin-blind (“to be drunk with discretion”) is, I imagine, a kind of pre-war Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
To be followed by this massively hardcore hangover cure, that sounds like something an alchemist might brew up in a cauldron. I think I’ll stick with tea and toast.
