This advertisement was in my mum’s copy of Mrs Beeton; I don’t know the date of the advert, if it was very much older than the book which my mum was given for Christmas in 1950. It is striking in many ways. First of all, the idea of captain Cook arriving at a place which is just ‘a vast treasure house’ presumably for him and his compatriots to plunder or use at will, regardless of whom the ‘treasure house’ may have belonged to. Then there is the idea of the produce of the country should supply Britain – as if the country had no rights to its own products – that everything was just for consumption by another nation on the other side of the world.
The first European known to have visited New Zealand was Abel Tasman in 1842; Captain Cook stepped ashore over 120 years later in 1769. Initially it was part of the colony of Australia, but became a separate country in 1842,although obviously still within the British Empire. However, ten years later it was self-governing, and more than fifty years later the King granted it the status of a dominion.
The New Zealand lamb advertised in my mum’s cookery book, ‘the finest quality.. the dependable lamb of delicious flavour’ are not native to the country. The very first sheep were brought by Captain Cook, but it was really during the nineteenth century that sheep farming really began to expand.
To find out more about New Zealand lamb, and some amazing recipes, look here:
Lois Elsden 