I adore books. I love how they are designed, printed, and constructed. I love the history of books and historical books. I have books about books. I have books about book covers. I have books about how people store books.
I’m somewhat precious about my books, especially my sumptuous art books. Jenny Lawson recently published a post on this, Sometimes tattered and worn = loved, describing her relationship with books. I started to examine my own relationship with books by looking at one in particular.
Mrs Beeton’s All About Cookery (New Edition), c 1907, was the last book my Dad gave me before he passed away. Towards the end of his life, he was nostalgic about his pre-war British childhood and wanted me to make Cabinet Pudding. I had never heard of this. I know Mom never made this when we were kids, reaching instead for a box of My-T-Fine chocolate pudding.
Cabinet pudding, also known as Chancellor’s pudding, is a classic English steamed, sweet, molded pudding.
In case you are wondering, you decorate the bottom of your Charlotte mold or straight-sided steaming mold (you do have one, right?) with festive dried fruit, line it with stale sponge cake or savoy biscuits (like ladyfingers) and fill it with custard mixed with broken ratafia biscuits (like amaretti). Then you wrap it up in buttered paper and steam it gently for an hour like a spa treatment.
Mrs Beeton’s Household Management and Cookery books have been published in Britain since the 1860’s. In the US, Fanny Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, is the closest equivalent, published since the 1890's. These books taught millions to cook homey basics and fancy dinners. They also instructed women on nutrition, cleanliness, and how to properly manage a household.
Mrs Beeton's, circa 1907
Cabinet Pudding looks similar to the top image. But honestly, who wouldn't want that glorious Ratafia Trifle?
Organization
From start to finish, all of the recipes are listed alphabetically. Cabinet Pudding falls between Cabbage with White Sauce and Calf’s Brains (Fried). Alphabetical organization amounts to a nearly random order. If you rename something, its location changes.
I take for granted that modern cookbooks are categorized into the corresponding segment of the meal - appetizers, main dishes, desserts. Think about how useful this is when trying to decide what to make for dinner. If you are looking for something to do with a pound of beef, you can quickly look up the appropriate section. Browsing this section may spark other ideas. Since you know the dessert section will probably not include meat, you don’t bother checking there.
This is information architecture at its most simple. Matching the information organization to the reader’s mental model.
Early cookbooks tucked the ingredients away in the directions, serving more as a reminder to the chef who already knew how to cook the dish. A Victorian improvement was to list the ingredients separately before the directions.
In my copy of Mrs Beeton’s (above), you can see that the ingredients are shown as a paragraph not in a list. The modern convention of having the ingredients in a list means that you can quickly see what you need to shop for. This is one convention that is now so common, its notable if we don't see it.
Costs and Ingredients
Go get your shotguns, girls, we’ve got to get dinner on the table.
“The harassed housekeeper of to-day will scarcely need to be reminded that conditions brought about by the War have rendered obsolete the ‘Average Costs’ given with the majority of our recipes.”
Cabinet Pudding was “10d to 1s” meaning “ten pence to one shilling.” The abbreviation of d for pence originates from the Latin denarii.
My favorite listing is the cost of preparing the corn crake (a bird) is listed as, “uncertain, being seldom sold. Seasonable from August 12th to the middle of September.” Not August 11th, mind. August 12th.
Most striking is throughout the book are unusual ingredients that keep grabbing my eye and send me searching online.
- Carmine or cochineal - red food coloring that come from the scales of a Mexican insect
- Isinglass - fish gelatin used as setting agent or thickener
- Indian soy – I normally associate soy sauce with China and Japan, but soy sauce has been made in India since the 1600’s. Given this was when the British Empire was nearly at its zenith, it isn’t surprising that many goods from India found their way into British pantries.
- Saltpeter - potassium nitrate was used for color and prevention of botulism in cured meats; it was commonly available into the 1980’s from 'unwitting' chemists (drugstores) selling it to unruly children under the pretense of “me mum needs it for pickling” but actually used for homemade explosives in the field out back.
Culture
Looking at old books, it's always hard to put them into proper context. The role of women was nearly unassailable in Edwardian times. Pages of instruction are dedicated to the correct way to list, plan, prepare and serve your family’s meals. There are sections on Neatness, Punctuality, Economy, Washing of Dishes, and the Cleansing of Cooking Utensils.
There was no detail too small to berate the aspiring middle classes with. Which is probably why the women’s suffrage movement was gaining steam around this time.
This was also the era when Britain ruled over a quarter of the globe and some twenty percent of the world’s population. It was history’s largest Empire, unprecedented in scope.
The cultural stance that typified the times was alive and well here:
Colonial and Foreign Cookery… Australian, American, Canadian, South African, French, Italian, and all other foreign cookeries, have been dealt with… Amongst the recipes are all the most popular and typical dishes of the Continental nations and the Colonists, so that Britons living under other skies may learn how to combine the dishes of their adopted country with those of the Motherland.
While I love the lyrical “living under other skies,” I'm put off by the anachronistic beliefs. However, I try to remember how influential these books were. There was one of these books in most households. I look at these through the eyes of the women using them.
Stunning Edwardian entrées I'm sure I will never make.
Swapping recipes is something generations of women learned early in life as a social norm, a way to connect, show generosity, be remembered, and develop relationships. To refuse could be interpreted as snobbery or selfishness. It was, and still is, code for “let’s connect in a low-obligation way.”
Women took these books traveling to other countries as a little piece of cultural familiarity and used them as a way to share with other women when they got there.
And while I still haven't made Cabinet Pudding (I've misplaced my Charlotte mold), it is a nice reminder of both lovely British desserts and the advances that women have achieved over the last hundred years.