The turbulent history of 'Our Cookery Book'

ReCollections, 2010

Introduction > Flora Pell's teaching career > Nutrition and Our Cookery Book > Patriotism and Our Cookery Book > Domestic arts colleges and the education of girls > The turbulent history of Our Cookery Book > Curatorial challenges in interpreting and exhibiting Our Cookery Book > Conclusion > Endnotes 1-30 > Endnotes 31-65

Petit Propos Culinaires 125, 2023

The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many, as well as the Upper Ten Thousand by an Australian Aristologist is usually given the place of Australia's first published cookery book. The 'Australian Aristologist' was Tasmanian politician Edward Abbott and his book was published in London in 1864. This claim has now been challenged with the discovery of an advertisement in the first edition of the Parramatta Chronicle and Cumberland General Advertiser, dated 30 December 1843: To the Ladies. THE ONLY WORK OF THE KIND PUBLISHED IN THE COLONY. THE Housewife's Guide; or an Economical and Domestic ART OF COOKERY, containing Directions for Marketing, Instructions for Dressing Butchers' Meat, Poultry, Game, Fish, Vegetables, &c; likewise for Preparing Soups, Broths, Gravies, and Sauces; also the Art of Potting, Collaring, Pickling, Preserving, and Making Wines: to which is added the different Branches of Modern Pastry and Confectionery, &c. &c. &c. Cookery has long since been considered an art worthy the particular attention of Females, as food in general, when properly cooked, not only becomes more palatable, but MORE WHOLESOME. It is therefore hoped that Females who superintend this important branch of domestic business, and who wish to unite hospitality with economy, will find this publication answer the purpose for which it was intended, for it is the wish of the Compiler to furnish the young Housekeeper with a considerable number of receipts, to which she may have recourse whenever occasion requires; to point out the best method of preparing those things which are frequently wanted in a family, and to enable her to render them agreeable to the palate, consistently with the rules of frugality and economy. It is also hoped, that this publication will answer the purpose much better than those published in the mother country-for although it contains many receipts for particular dishes which are much too expensive for common use, it also comprises many others adapted to daily service; and it must be remembered that a Cookery Book is generally consulted at a time when some article out of the Common course is wanted, or the table is to be set out for company. Is this instead, Australia's first cookbook?

xiv for middle-class women regularly flatter readers' aspirational ideals, providing cooking instructions and ingredients the average Victorian housewife might never see or use. Truffles, champagne, foies gras, or green sea turtle, for example, were hardly affordable, but they makeup some of the most famous recipes published in Isabella Beeton's 1861 cookbook, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. Likewise, recipes with detailed explanations for preparing broths, stocks, and breads from limited ingredients appear more appropriate for a working-class reader. This meant that many Victorian women's cookbooks and recipes were read jointly, in which "the mistress would read it [the recipe or cookbook] to decide on the day's meals, and then pass it to her cook to follow the detailed instructions for individual dishes" (Humble "Intro." to HM xxvi). This collaboration between housewife and servant made the recipe an especially practical Victorian text, one which permitted middle-class women the ability to draw firm lines between themselves-the recipe's targeted audience-and their household's staff-typically, cooks who were expected to use the recipe's instructions and do the actual work. By shifting my focus from representations of Victorian women's recipes in the periodical press to Victorian women's cookbooks, I aim to contribute to Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster's request that scholars document the "range and multiplicity of the [recipe's] form" (2). In the pages that follow, I hope to provide a more complete picture of this form as well as its functions by raising important questions about the study of Victorian female authorship as it intersected with domesticity and food. In discussing the "myths and realities of female authorship" in nineteenth-century Britain, Linda H. Peterson observes that "[t]he phrase 'woman of letters' is, tellingly, a Victorian invention," and one that allowed professional women writers to develop and present their own public personae (4). But what about the Victorian woman who preferred to write about food? At the periphery of Victorian literature, history, and culture sits one of the xv many facets of the period's woman of letters, a woman who dedicated herself to writing artfully crafted recipes that rethought how she-and many women like her-conceived eating, reading, and writing. Notes 1 In A Magazine of Her Own?: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman's Magazine, Margaret Beetham notes that the "ephemeral form" of the Victorian periodical greatly affected its availability for future scholars of print media (9). Because magazines and newspapers were intended for short-term use, they were manufactured with cheaper materials and lacked stiff covers, making it difficult to access Victorian periodicals in their original form. Fortunately, as Beetham notes, "Nineteenth-century readers who could afford…[to have] their periodicals bound in volume form" helped to preserve more fragile mediums like the women's magazine (9). See LSU's Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library for a well-preserved example of The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine: Volumes 1-8 (1860-1864), call number "RARE-052 EN36." 2 Andrea Broomfield broadly defines the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century's "middleclass" as "those who practiced a profession such as law or medicine, who served as military officers, or as clergy in the Church of England" (5). Historically, this definition would have included anyone earning between £50-1000 per annum. According to the 1851 census, 270,000 professional workers lived in Britain; by 1871, this number had tripled (data qtd. in Humble "Little Swans" 323). 3 I emphasize the word domestic here to bring attention to the ways readers of women's magazines connected with each other outside of racial and class boundaries. See Chapter Three for more information on how magazines like the EDM imagined readers as a "domestic ideal," thus creating a large imagined community of domestic Englishwomen. Additionally, see Kay Boardman's article "Ideology of Domesticity in Victorian Women's Magazines" (Victorian Periodicals Review 33.2 (Summer 2000: 150-64). 4 See Janet Lloyd and Laurel Forster, "The Recipe in Its Cultural Contexts" (6) as well as OED entry "recipe, n." for more on the waning usage of the term "receipt" and its etymology. 5 I discuss the history and style of the British recipe in length in Chapter Two. For the poultry recipe I mention here, see "Method of Preserving and Stuffing of Birds" from Walker's Hibernian Magazine (423-24). 6 See Lucy Brown's chapter "The British Press, 1800-1860" (24-5). 7 See Laurel and Forster (6-7) and Luce Giard (149-22) on the recipe writer's "multiplications of borrowing" and what historian William Eamon calls the implied "contract between the reader and the text" (qtd. in Theophano 89-90). 8 Andrea Broomfield and Janet Theophano have provided scholars with indispensible archival research on the origins of the women's recipe books and cookery manuscripts. See Chapter 1 of Food and Cooking in Victorian England (Broomfield 2-3) and Chapters 1 and 2 of Eat My Words (Theophano 11-49). xvi 9 See Dena Attar's A Bibliography of Household Books Published in Britain 1800-1914 for receipts and recipe books that pre-dated the nineteenth century (11). 10 See Beetham's "Introduction" to A Magazine of Her Own? (7-9 and 28) and Jennifer Phegley's Educating the Proper Woman Reader (9-12). Also, see Kate Flint's chapter "Reading in the Periodical Press" in The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (137-83). Notes 11 In A Magazine of Her Own?: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman's Magazine, Margaret Beetham notes that the "ephemeral form" of the Victorian periodical greatly affected its availability for future scholars of print media (9). Because magazines and newspapers were intended for short-term use, they were manufactured with cheaper materials and lacked stiff covers, making it difficult to access Victorian periodicals in their original form. Fortunately, as Beetham notes, "Nineteenth-century readers who could afford…[to have] their periodicals bound in volume form" helped to preserve more fragile mediums like the women's magazine (9). See LSU's Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library for a well-preserved example of The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine: Volumes 1-8 (1860-1864), call number "RARE-052 EN36." 11 Andrea Broomfield broadly defines the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century's "middleclass" as "those who practiced a profession such as law or medicine, who served as military officers, or as clergy in the Church of England" (5). Historically, this definition would have included anyone earning between £50-1000 per annum. According to the 1851 census, 270,000 professional workers lived in Britain; by 1871, this number had tripled (data qtd. in Humble "Little Swans" 323). 11 I emphasize the word domestic here to bring attention to the ways readers of women's magazines connected with each other outside of racial and class boundaries. See Chapter Three for more information on how magazines like the EDM imagined readers as a "domestic ideal," thus creating a large imagined community of domestic Englishwomen. Additionally, see Kay Boardman's article "Ideology of Domesticity in Victorian Women's Magazines" (Victorian Periodicals Review 33.2 (Summer 2000: 150-64). 11 See Janet Lloyd and Laurel Forster, "The Recipe in Its Cultural Contexts" (6) as well as OED entry "recipe, n." for more on the waning usage of the term "receipt" and its etymology. 11 I discuss the history and style of the British recipe in length in Chapter Two. For the poultry recipe I mention here, see "Method of Preserving and Stuffing of Birds" from Walker's Hibernian Magazine (423-24). 11 See Lucy Brown's chapter "The British Press, 1800-1860" (24-5). 11 See Laurel and Forster (6-7) and Luce Giard (149-22) on the recipe writer's "multiplications of borrowing" and what historian William Eamon calls the implied "contract between the reader and the text" (qtd. in Theophano 89-90). 11 Andrea Broomfield and Janet Theophano have provided scholars with indispensible archival research on the origins of the women's recipe books and cookery manuscripts. See Chapter 1 of Food and Cooking in Victorian England (Broomfield 2-3) and Chapters 1 and 2 of Eat My Words (Theophano 11-49). 11 See Dena Attar's A Bibliography of Household Books Published in Britain 1800-1914 for receipts and recipe books that pre-dated the nineteenth century (11). 11 Debates of recipe ownership persist today, especially amongst writers publishing online. In 2012, Elise Bauer, owner of one of the internet's most successful food blogs, Simply xvii Recipes, took legal action against Amazon when Sarun Srirunpetch of Bangkok, Thailand, copied and pasted her recipes and photos into an eBook for Amazon's Kindle store. Since then, an online group called "PIPO"-Protect Intellectual Property Online-has taken further action, creating a watchdog network on Google+. See "Recipes," Factsheet FL-122, U.S. Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov). 12 See Signe Rousseau's chapter "Food Not for Sharing" in Food and Social Media for recent discussions of "the fine line between flattery and theft" that recipe writers face on the Internet (17-33). Also, it is worth noting that as of 2015, copyright laws do not cover the listing of a recipe's ingredients, but may, under certain and rare circumstances, cover a recipe's literary merit ("Recipes," Factsheet FL-122, U.S.). 13 I discuss the extent to which Acton developed "novel features" in Chapter Two. For Acton's discussion of these additions to the recipe book, see her "Preface" to the first and second editions of Modern Cookery (xix-xxii). 14 See Alexis Easley's First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, 1830-70 (1-34) for her overview of the ways Victorian women entered cultural, ideological, and literary debates as "first-person anonymous" contributors to the periodical press. 15 For...

Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse

Abstract: Our cookery book is both a culinary and historical source. The ingredients chosen for the recipes provide an insight into food economy and wastage, diet and nutrition, and food preferences in Australia in the early twentieth century. Its popularity – it was reprinted at least 24 times from 1916 to the 1950s – attests to its uptake by at least two generations of women. In the preamble, the author discusses the five components of food ‘necessary to build up the body’. This is the first time that components of nutrition such as protein, fats and carbohydrates are discussed in a cookbook. In the introduction the author, Miss Flora Pell, also draws links between nutrition and nation building. She writes about the important role of women as cooks in building up a nation of strong, fit and healthy citizens who will go on to contribute to community life and national prosperity. Our cookery book is a fine example of domestic feminism, iced with patriotism, which was first published...

New Horizons in English Studies, 2018

In 1796, the first American cookbook American Cookery by Amelia Simmons was published in Hartford, Connecticut. Although many scholars referred to it as "the second declaration of American independence" the cooking patterns presented in Simmons' book still resembled the old English tradition. The purpose of this paper is to explore the British origins of the first American cookbook and to demonstrate that it is, in essence, a typical eighteenth-century English cookery book.

Journal of Victorian Culture, 2020

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Australian Historical Studies, 2019

This article explores the rise and demise of mock food in Australian food culture by analysing recipes drawn from the pages of the Australian Women's Weekly. Mock foods were approximations and substitutions for 'the real thing' and were especially popular during the years of austerity and scarcity generated by the Great Depression and World War II. The fluctuating popularity of these foods, including mock chicken and mock cream, reveal the shifting cultural importance of various foodstuffs to the Australian diet. Their appearance also demonstrates the remarkable ability of Australian domestic cooks, especially women, to adopt, adapt and innovate, an important attribute of Australian food culture. Marrow masquerades as pineapple, custard squash as apple, mutton as ham, and a vegetable mixture as a savory "sausage" in prize recipes given below. 1 On the first of January 1944, when the above article appeared in the Australian Women's Weekly (the Weekly), Australian housewives were preparing themselves for the introduction of meat rationingthe last in a line of restrictions that the Australian government had introduced during World War II. The article presented six recipes submitted by readers, four of which were 'mock foods' -approximations and substitutions for the 'real thing'. The recipe that won first prize, 'Mock Pineapple' by Mrs A. T. Robson, substituted fresh 1 'Make-do recipes win prizes', Australian Women's Weekly (The Weekly), 1 January 1944, 24. 2 pineapple with vegetable marrow stewed with sugar and lemon, to be served with custard. This recipe was joined by others for 'Mock Apples', 'Christmas Mock Ham' and 'Meatless Sausage'. 2 The prevalence of mock food recipes in this popular women's magazine suggest that they were an important part of Australian food culture. In 1969, the Weekly itself noted the past popularity of mock food recipes in a brief piece that reflected nostalgically on a time, twenty-five years past, when 'Out of six recipes on a page' of the Weekly, 'four were "mock"'. 3 By the 1970s, mock foods had all but disappeared from Australian tables. By examining recipes drawn from the pages of the Weekly, Australia's most popular women's magazine, this article explores the phenomenon of mock foods and what they reveal about Australian food culture in the twentieth century. Australian culinary culture has been influenced by governmental nutrition guidelines, the availability of ingredients and various social factors such as migration, travel, popular recipe books, magazines, and advertisers. 4 During the 1950s and 1960s, the Weekly had the highest circulation of any magazine per capita in the world and was read in approximately 25 per cent of Australian homes. 5 While the Weekly's target audience was primarily white, middle-class women, evidence suggests that the magazine was read by all socio-economic groups, including men. 6 This wide readership gave the Weekly an immense social and cultural influence, establishing it as a force in shaping, among other things, Australian domestic food culture. The Weekly featured cookery columns from its first edition in June 1933, and these became one of the iconic components of the magazine. A survey conducted as a part of my This research has been conducted with the support of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. 2 'Make-do recipes win prizes',

… Betty Crocker to Feminist Food …, 2005

Flora Pell's Our cookery book and Mary Gilmore's Worker cook book were published at a similar time and contribute to contemporary ideas about womanhood as they were emerging during the modern period in the early decades of the Australian nation. In different ways the books politicised domestic life and sought to domesticate political life by asserting a distinct voice for women and elevating the significance of cooking. The works integrate the everyday life of women within broader societal changes. My interests are directed here towards demonstrating the role of the cookbooks in reflecting and performing the work of social transformation in the transition to modernity.