January is a dreary month, and it is not difficult to get quite fed up with the damp, the cold and the darkness, so I always look forward to seeing the first Seville oranges on the market as making marmalade really cheers me up. I make enough to last the whole year, about 10 lbs, and the aroma of oranges quite fills the whole house. I have made marmalade all my married life and don't think I have ever bought a jar. The January before I got married in the March, I bought a Prestige Pressure Cooker from Debenhams in York, which then had a home-wares department near the end of Lendal. It was in the January sales. It lasted well until two or three years ago (therefore about 37 years) when a valve went and I could not get a replacement. I bought a new (smaller) pressure cooker a year ago, and the contrast in the accompanying recipe books was unbelievable. The new one was on rather nasty , flimsy, re-cycled paper. Try and turn a page when cooking and the whole thing would disintegrate. Here is my ORIGINAL Prestige recipe book. Amazing isn't it ! Which made me then start to think, in years to come will forensic scientists take samples of food from old recipe books to see what we were eating ? Where else have I left evidence of my culinary efforts ? I am not a particular good cook, and don't really like baking, but just accept that it comes with the territory and certainly when family were at home did a lot of baking. Our favourite recipes date us as much as fashion. So forty years ago I started with the trusty Be-Ro Recipe book, and my old school recipe book. I only did domestic science for a very short time but learned all the different methods of baking, rubbing-in method, creaming, whisking etc all the different types of pastry and how to bake with yeast. So starting with Rock Cakes I had everything I needed to know to keep husband's packed-lunch box filled. The Prestige cookery book was a saviour. How to make very economical meals with cheap cuts of meat, pot roasts, boiled beef and onions, broths and soups, you name it, I worked through every recipe in that book. The other great cookery book was "Every day cook book" by Marguerite Patten which a friend bought for me just before I got married. It taught me everything I needed to know. Very few glossy photographs, and four or five recipes on each page. Some of my mother's recipe books also leave a food trail behind them. I think this was one of my mother's most used recipe books. It reminded me that I also collected recipe books issued by producers of branded products. Trex produced lard, I also have recipe books for Echo margarine, Stork margarine and Atora suet (also economical recipes). The other useful recipe book was the WI (Women's Institute) cookery book. This page is splattered with ingredients. The favourite recipe on this page was for the Ginger Nuts. In the margin the quantities are multiplied by THREE and the amount of syrup is written in my father's hand. Most unusually for a farmer, he liked baking. I am not sure how old this book will be (it is now in the care of younger daughter). But recipes date us. This much cleaner page has a recipe for TRIPE. I don't think we ever ate this. But in times gone by you had to be economical and not waste anything, every part of an animal had to be used, even the offal. Many years ago I picked up a couple of old recipe books (I think at a jumble sale) which amuse me because of their simplicity and lack of sophistication. But, we forget that food had to fill you up with calories to keep you warm in houses with no central heating. The section I think most worthwhile in this book is "Left-over meat". And in days gone by the routine was to have a large joint of meat at the weekend and then it lasted ALL WEEK, ending up as rissoles which was the scrapings off the bone put through the mincer with an onion and some breadcrumbs and an egg and fried. I do pride myself that I rarely if ever throw any food away. But the simplicity of the recipes in this book can be explained by the instructions that you had to have a "medium fire" or "very hot fire", so they were designed for the cook who cooked over an open fire, which my mother did in the early years of her marriage. So in looking at the history of food and what was eaten you have to understand how simple the utensils and methods of cooking were. How we have changed our methods ! The book above issues instructions regarding cabbage "Stewed Cabbage ..... cover and stew gently till the cabbage is tender from one to one and a half hours " And under Brussel Sprouts, the advice is to "steam them for 40 minutes to an hour". Good grief, the flatulence ..... This shows what it was like to have no oven, no hob, just a large cauldron suspended over an open fire. Very unsophisticated. The picture is from the ArtUk website and is called "Old Scotch Kitchen" by William Baxter Collier 1836 - 1882 and is at the Fife Folk Museum. Imagine getting enough fuel to get the fire hot enough to boil a piece of meat for several hours in that pot ? I am rather worried about the artist and can almost imagine chaps in high visibility jackets and hard hats behind him about to put in Acrow props to hold the place up ! Here is another old kitchen, the artist is Ralph Hedley 1848 - 1913 and this is at the Laing Art Gallery. The metal apparatus in the hearth which suspended the pot over the flames was called a Reckon [at least in this part of Yorkshire] and had various attachments for pots and kettles. A Reckon and its crewks or crooks often feature in inventories. This is from an inventory for 1564 and says Item one calderinge [cauldron] & brasse pots and two olde panns 12 shillings This inventory is from 1587 and says Item in potts & pannes 10 shillings Item in fyre vessels 4 shillings Item in pouder [pewter] vessels 2 shillings Fire vessels were pots you would cook with on the fire. This is from 1634 and puts several items together. Five panns, five pewther dishes, two Candlesticks, one pewther bowle and a Salt 20 shillings Three skeeles, fower cheesefatts, one little Gymlin [small tub], three stands, one cheesetrough, one Reckan, a paire of Tongs, two Creame potts 7 shillings one speet [spit] and one axe This was the inventory for a woman called Ellen Lobley and she milked cows and made cheese and cooked over an open fire; the Spit, the reckon, the pans were for her cooking, the skeels, cheese vats and cheese troughs were for her cheese production. She also had flax and yarn, two churns, eight cows, two sheep and £11 10 shillings worth of cheeses. In contrast I found another inventory for a very humble dwelling as there was only 1 old bed and bedding, 1 old panel chest, 1 chair and 1 stool, 1 iron pot and a frying pan and one old kettle. All these inventories were made for the purposes of probate. I have another inventory made in 1762 which was made for the purposes of settling the accounts of a bankrupt and reveals a more sophisticated kitchen. It included one tin oven, but it was only valued at 6d, but there were 3 jacks and spits, which would have been in the fireplace. But when there was an auction of the contents of the house it went down as "an iron oven six shillings". Was this a free standing iron box in which you could bake ? This picture shows a woman who has some sophistication. She has some nice cups and saucers on the table and a table cloth, yet she still cooks over an open fire. This picture is called "An Old Friend Failing" by Haynes King 1831 - 1904 at the New Art Gallery Walsall. So before she could begin to cook anything she had to gather the fuel and lay the fire and get it lit and very hot, summer or winter. Alexander Somerville was an itinerant farm labourer who in later life wrote " The Autobiography of a Working man by One who Whistled at the Plough" 1848. His early life was in North Berwickshire. He moved about from farm to farm and took with him, as other labourers did, his own sack of oatmeal, and where ever he lodged the price included hot water to make his "brose". It was a very monotonous diet, oatmeal morning and night, with bean and barley bannocks at mid-day which he brought from home, but obviously sustained him in his tough, outside work. This is an advertisement from "Grace's Guide" for a Yorkist Range. The model at the top is similar to the one I remember my mother cooking with. The kettles always sat on the hob [the shelf in front of the open fire] simmering ready to make a pot of tea. One of the first things you had to sew at Primary school was a pot or kettle holder, everyone would have a kettle on the fire. Oh woe if the wind was in the wrong direction and you could not get it hot enough to "draw" and cook the mid-day meal. Then my mother had a small gas cooker which ran off a cylinder of gas, and eventually a Belling electric cooker, which she gave to me when I got married. It served me for a few more years. The kitchen fire had to have a constant supply of fuel and kindling sticks were dried in the top oven. There were flues and dampers which directed the heat to a hot water tank or oven. But it was still an open fire which was smoky and dirty and sparks could spit out at you when you were stirring a pan on the hob. This was the envy of any who had to cook over an open fire, an enclosed "Range". You still had to stoke the fire, but it was enclosed and not likely to make all the dirt and mess that an open fire did. Look at the beautifully shiny pans hanging above the cook's head. If you sat pans and kettles on the fire they got very black indeed. This picture is called "Woman in a Kitchen" by L R Garside, early 20th century at the Pannett Art Gallery. This is a lovely picture, called "Half a kitchen" by Thomas McGoran, circa 1956 belonging to the Glasgow Museums. This is perhaps more like a kitchen I can remember. It would have a clip mat in front of the fire, and there was no linoleum, just stone flags. So what forensic evidence have you left behind in your recipe books ? I would love to know. Do you have a favourite recipe book ? Was it handed down to you ? What do you think of present day recipe books which are all about promoting celebrity cooks ? I was given a rather nice recipe book featuring TV cooks, but found it quite unuseable because my ONLY set of kitchen scales measure in ounces. So making marmalade on a rather snowy day in January cheered me up, and brought back memories of food and cooking and how things have changed.
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AuthorThis is where you can share creativity with me. I believe that everyone has something creative within them, and it is a joy to find ways of being creative. Blogging is NEW to me, so here goes ..... Archives
January 2024
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