I love little cookery booklets and pamphlets, the sort which are given away by food companies or sold to raise funds for local groups, schools, churches. They are interesting in themselves and the recipes they have, but also as a snapshot of the time they were published; I have some booklets going back to before the first world war!
In Coleraine I came across a little book, Recipes From a Farm Kitchen by Sue Robb, with traditional recipes and little stories from a rural community which has now disappeared, replaced by modern homes for farmers and workers with every appliance and convenience. I think the booklet was published in the early 70’s, but the recipes and the little gems of stories go back decades before, maybe even to the century before.
As well as the chapters on bread scones and tarts, puddings, poultry and savouries, and an intriguing section entitled ‘Miscellaneous’, there is a section on Health Foods. It is a little difficult to understand why some recipes are in this chapter; there are salads such as carrot (grated carrot with melted honey and lemon juice, marinaded for two hours) and Austrian salad (diced boiled potatoes, finely chopped apple and onion, dressed with melted honey and cider vinegar) and also, mysteriously in this section, a recipe for marmalade. However, there are recipes for particular ailments and also for invalids, as there were in many old cookery books – although I couldn’t quite see how the recipe to make tea for an invalid was any different from making tea for anyone else!
However when it comes onto actual remedies, that’s when I think the recipes go back centuries:
- leek broth for asthma sufferers – 3lbs lean beef, 5 large leeks, 3 pints of water, boiled until reduced to one pint, skimmed, strained and taken twice daily (There must be more to it than this – was the beef in a piece,, chopped, minced? Was it cooked until tender, strained off and eaten and the stock reduced to a pint? I’m not sure anyone would use that amount of meat just to make a pint of broth!)
- lemon and honey for good health – zest and juice of 2 lemons, 2 oz butter, ½lb loaf sugar, 1 tsp ground rice, 2 eggs, sugar, lemon and rice added to the lemon juice and stirred until it boils, beaten eggs added and everything stirred until its cold, then bottled in a 1lb jar (sounds like lemon curd!)
- egg snow for invalids – 1 egg, 1tbsp milk, sugar to taste, orange or lemon juice – add sugar, milk, juice to egg yolk and beat well, beat egg white with a knife and stir into the yolk mixture, serve in a tumbler (sounds a little like a sort of uncooked zabaglione without the alcohol!)
These recipes are interesting, but I won’t ever make them, did people really think they worked – I guess before there was a National Health system and in out of the way rural areas, people had to do what they could when someone was ill
Lois Elsden 