A WRITER'S HOBBY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22349, 21 February 1936, Page 4

A WRITER'S HOBBY

ANCIENT COOKERY BOOKS j / j | The interesting hobby of a well-known Australian writer, Miss Helen Simp-; son, is that of collecting early cookery books. She does this, not because she thinks they can be adapted for presentday use, but because sho is deeply interested in the life led by the ordinary working-class people in the 17th and 18th centuries, states a London writer.

The average fanner's wife of Elizabeth's day could not write, so these recipes were often passed on by v,onl of month, to be eventually recorded painstakingly by some more. educated person, &nd then handed round the countryside as a particularly treasured possession, to be guarded with every care. One reason for this was that the.v held many prescriptions for medicines alleged to cure the " ague and the colick," scented pomades to keep off the plague, and mixtures which would, so said the scribe, " comfort £he heart and be good for the swobnings."

One "precious cordial" contained in a verj' early and valuable book was made from 48 ingredients, including curious and ingenious items such as colt's foot, scabious flowers, thistle, wild daisies, maidenhair fern, apart from rosemary, lavender and the homely cabbage, lhis possibly substantiates Helen Simpson's theory that British women are not sufficiently experimental with their cookery, and so probably miss many subtle and "fascinating flavourings used by our ancestors

A cookery book dated 1653 is almost undecipherable, but later they were much more legible, and so you discover that limes and lemons were capable of curing that distressing and prevalent disease, scurvy, therefore they are to. be found among the ingredients of many recipes. Now' exploiers were beginning to bring back fascinating foreign products, all of which English housewives swiftly, introduced into their cooking. Pigs are "broiled in the China manner" and mangoes, arriving after the formation of the East India Company, were amazingly popular a little later.

People living in 1735 or thereabouts called jellies "quaking puddings,!' while you read that they ate "potato pudding served with surrup, cloves and gillyflowers." to say nothing of the *"Bath bunns," "hunting milk punch," "plumbe cake," "soope"—which is termed a "comfortable drink for a weak body"—concocted in the 18th century kitchen. Rather more medical is the "snail'water," said to cure consumption, and the "plaster of red leather," applied to draw the blood fropi the heart!