A cookbook from 1871

This post isn't giving ideas...it's just something interesting!
Mrs Beeton was a famous English cookery writer from the Victorian era (mid to late 1800's).
I found this book, All About Cookery, when poking about in a little shop in Cygnet and I couldn't pass it up.

Photo by Sarah Ryan

It's like a dictionary of recipes, arranged in alphabetic order. Given it was from 1871, I was surprised at the range of quite fancy French recipes such as souffle or beef ragout.

You thought vol-au-vents were  an '80's thing? Yes, an 1880's thing!
Raspberry vinegar modern and trendy? That's there too!
Trifle, fondue, bechamel sauce, scotch eggs, they're all there...as well as....

• 8 different ways to prepare calf's head, or
• 10 different ways to cook eels...urk.
• plovers, partridges, doves, larks...all fair game

 

                                      Photo by Sarah Ryan                                                        Photo by Sarah Ryan
Yes, there's the plover in the photo above to compare against all the other birds.

Things that really make it obvious it's from a different era:

• how to keep milk and cream in hot weather (scald it, add sugar, place the jug in a bowl containing ice).
• how to clarify dripping (my Mum had a bowl of dripping).
• how to make a good sauce to pour over boiled fowls if they're a bad colour (not sure I'd want to eat that meal)
• cookery for invalids: with references to Miss Nightingale's "Notes on Nursing" ("no mother or nurse should be without that book")
• the usage of isinglass (a collagen substance from fish bladders used like gelatine before that had become widely available) in recipes
• and who knew that a milk substitute for a cup of tea might be...a beaten egg!? Um, I think I'd prefer water!

An interesting addition to the bookshelf!