The Family Cookery Complete | The Family Cookery

This curated digital edition of texts from The Home Cookery by R. House presented here is my short attempt at reintroducing House’s personal presentation of the state of cooking in 19^th century Britain to a modern audience for its socio-historical value while also exploring the ins and outs of digital remediation in the context of the 21st century.

As a curated remediation of selected examples from a previously unreprinted or digitized work this remediation has been transcribed as faithfully as possible with what few alterations that do exist being reconciliations for its new digital environment and limited reproduction.

In this remediation readers will find an assortment of annotations that have been added with their chief purpose being to clarify and anchor portions of House’s work that would otherwise be unfamiliar to a modern reader such as antiquated terminology or references to contemporary authors in the art of cookery. Not so obvious, however, are the inclusions of additional annotations regarding the remediation process itself; an aspect of insight I find important for future readers considering their own prospective remedial efforts. Accompanying this remediator’s note is a brief foreword anchoring the art of cookery as a product of the early 19^th century’s energetic zeal for scientific progress.

Assuredly, in undergoing the research and discovery phases of this project I cannot help but thank the three individuals who lent their expertise and professional insights: Professor Geoffrey Turnovsky, Teacher’s Assistant Nakita Willeford Kastrinos, and Special Projects Curator Kat Lewis.

Finally, future reader, a thanks goes out to you. For even as we wade further into the reaches of the far-flung future of the digital age there always exists a value in knowing how people once experienced a familiar aspect of the world in a distant age however unfamiliar it might be to our distant palates.

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FOREWORD: Cookery, a Taste from History

Cooking as a tradition is so ubiquitous and commonplace in our homes in the digital age that it can be hard to imagine a time when it was anything but. It appears in our social media posts, pops-up as ads while browsing the web, on billboards passing by on the freeway, through radio hosts discussing the latest food trends or online podcasts examining food history. It even occasionally arrives through a few of your favorite seasonal streaming shows. Finding a recipe likewise can be as simple as opening a serialized magazine or googling a dish heard in passing on the street. Such ease of access has normalized cooking as an inclusive experience, where the professional, the amateur, and uninformed alike can work alongside one another to the better and enjoyment of all palates. Yet to reach this modern pantry of possibilities cooking would need to undertake a massive, transformative leap. One it would take through the 19^th century’s obsession with science as a mode and method for the future of domestic society.

Like other arts undergoing similar metamorphosis to the scientific systems model of progress that was the 19th century cooking was chiefly a menial, domestic labor performed with a limited field of knowledge from inherited oral traditions often compiled through the exchange of techniques between skilled practitioners in their own social circles.⁴ Of the innovations of the 19th century this foreword addresses one stands apart from other as a critical disentanglement followed by three foundational upheavals that occur in the wake of this initial separation. ²

The major disentanglement of course we refer to is the societal outlook on cooking itself that occurs through the proliferation of new print media re-contextualizing it as a unique and separate scientific system of expertise not included in the businesses of the physician’s cabinet or the chemist’s laboratory.³ This isolation and professionalization of cooking as a distinct category of practice provides it an authoritative platform for discussion alongside other scientific systems of the time that used similar technical methods to achieve a material end: chemistry and medicine.³

The first of the three major fundamental shifts following the disentanglement of cooking in the 19th century was the convergence of traditional oral knowledge into a standardized, textualized media and its incorporation of the shared lexicon of scientific enterprises. This shift, as Lieffers characterized it, heralded the revolutionary changes to the ways Victorians quantified their ingredients, precisely measured cook times, classified cooking techniques, indexed kitchen aids, and recorded observations/commentaries for digestion in the wider community of cookery.³ Each of these new shifts being part of the greater effort of 19th century cookery authors to engage cooking in the mind of the Victorian citizen as an equal partner to other scientific pursuits, just one that occurs at home rather than a lab, hall of learning, or medical office.

Though even in the popular consciousness the idea of cooking as an emergent scientific tradition would still take time to manifest as an recognized field of study and not a subject of domestic spectacle. An examination of the Dickensian works of the 19th century by C. H. Harner serves as an example of the difficulties this transition would face in curving public sentiment towards its new difficulty practice in the home.

The second of the major foundational pivots is the transition to the mass publication of recipes/treatise as guides for domestic life. Recipes were no longer the horded, scrapbooked accumulations of a lifetime, but instead became the sought after treasure of personal libraries curated by individual interests. Cooking as through this pivot was transformed from a domestic necessity to a personal craft. Its adherents interests not only the pursuit of its perceptual pinnacles of taste, but the cultivation of a body of knowledge through which the whole of their societies practice of the art could be uplifted.

House's own preface in the Family Cookery provides primary commentary on such issues through his criticism of the works of his contemporaries and the overall goal of their works. Noting particularly his incredulous tone towards the mass proliferation of recipes André by Viard in his famous culinary encyclopedia Le Cuisinier Impérial which included some, "...there are ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO recipes for SOUPS alone!!".¹ Recipes so diverse in their optioning that they detract from the ease of cooking as a practice in House's opinion. These issues of course being linked to the growing pains of an emergent new field of science of whose formulas as receipts contained no common grounding or categorization through which they could be standardized. An effort that would triumph decades after The Family Cookery in the 1850s and 60s through cookery authors such as Isabella Beeton and Eliza Acton.³

The third, and certainly not least, of the major foundational pivots was the role of women in the early 19th century as eminent pioneers of science in both domestic and public life. While their role as an agent of cooking in the domestic household was a cultural cornerstone in the 19th century the transformation of the practice of cookery can be considered the awakening of science in the domestic world. And through their chief agency, in the domestic life of women in the 19th century in general. As an alternative avenue for authority, a milestone examined in Newlyn's paper on narrative theory⁴, the true story of cooking as an emerging science is for women the rise of a new platform for authority beyond the household in the cookbook itself.4 This platform realized in its fullest form in the 1850s by Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for the Private Family and Isabella Beeton's Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. These two works representing in Britain at the time the height of domestic literature for the realm of cooking. Cooking in the context of the role of women in domestic life in Britain is transformative and revolutionary.

Through this new role as author-actors in the market of the cookbook for domestic consumption women carved out a space of authority outside the bounds of domestic life.⁴ This is hardly a sufficient renditioning of the vast plurality of add-on effects such new encounters provided for the day to day lives of women in Victorian society, but it does provide one such avenue for future endeavors of research.

In light of these historic pivots and critical recontextualizations across the new scientific sphere of cooking and those affected by its ascension one fact remains clear: cooking as a common practice was rendered to the ancient world unrecognizable in its efficacy as an agent of change, its prominence as a craft in domestic life, and its role in the daily life of the average 19th century inhabitant. Yet for a modern reader it contains an entirely different tone. It is one of rich modernity; A daily example of the success of cooking as a transformed scientific agent in modern domestic life. A subtle agent of taste and satisfaction for a time where access to food media is an ever growing leviathan. And indeed an agent without whose existence our palates would have likely become the subject of a bland and unenriched perceptual experience.

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PART TWO

THE HOME COOKERY BY R. HOUSE

Title Page

THE
THE FAMILY COOKERY,
COMBINING
ELEGANCE AND ECONOMY:
With various Reciepts
For,
MAKING GRAVIES,SOUPS, SAUCES,
AND MADE DISHES;
Directions for Roasting and Boiling
GAME, POULTRY, MEAT, FISH &c
And making of
PASTRY AND CONFECTIONARY
DIRECTIONS FOR TRUSSING AND CARVING;
BREWING AND MAKING WINES,
THE ART OF
PICKLING AND PRESERVING,
The Management of Poultry and Bees, and Bills of
Fare for the Year:
AND MANY OTHER USEFUL RECEIPTS,
Forming a complete system of
DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT
Embellished with several useful Copper Plates.
BY R. HOUSE
Formerly head Cook of the Duke of Portland.
LONDON.
PRINTED AND SOLD BY J. BAILEY, CHANCERY LANE.

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PREFACE. (i).

The great attention paid to the System of Cookery, of late years, has tended to raise it to a degree of responsibility in science, which its early proficients scarcely ever hoped it would attain to. It has been asserted, that the improvements in this art, first introduced disease and the doctor. This though partially true, must not be construed into an argument against it. Disease may be owing to other means than the cook, though he might be in some degree instrumental to the cause. There is nothing but what is liable to abuse, and if persons think that they cannot have too much of good things, the fault remains with themselves, and the cook is acquitted of blame.

Under the impression that the above remark is a generally acknowledged truism, the author of the present treatise has kept the objection in view, and in the various recipes given for the compostion of his soups, meats, &c. (which for number contain more than books of double the price) he has paid the most particular regard of the constitutio; health is consulted before apetite; yet in their effect, he has no hesitation in declaring them equal and even preferable to the most piquant and highly seasoned dishes.

In the selection of the recipes, he has given those that form the greatest contrast in state, so that those Families who are in the habit of receiving Dinner Parties, may in their soups, made dishes, &c. &c. Always preserve a judicious variety, and acquire the commendation of their friends, which next to the giving a good dinner, is the highest satisfaction they can feel.

(ii)

That improvements have always been recieved with approbation we have evident proofs. It is hardly two centuries since that SALTT HERRINGS constituted the breakfast of persons of family and rank: yet even in those days the profession was not undistinguished by royal favor, for the Manor of Addigton, in Surrey, is held by the tenure of DRESSING A DISH OF SOUP for the king at his coronation, Stow, likewise informs us, that Henry VIII. Granted an estate in Leadenhall Street to “Mistress Cornewallies, widdow, and her heires, in reward of FINE PUDDINGS BY HER MADE, wherewith she had presnted him.”

Rivalry no where abounds so much as among the professors of this art; and what is sometimes called an improvement, is in reality none; for what with the introduction of spices, and other ingredients, the dish is so disguised, as to be any thing and every thing but what it professes to be. In a work of Cookery published lately at Paris by a Monsieur Viard, who is acknowledged in that city to be the first cook in Europe, there are ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY TWO recipes for SOUPS alone!! And in sauces, he gives us in the proportion of two hundred of two hundred to one!!!

That there must be a great must be a great sameness in his preparations no one will deny; and many must be considered useless.

The object of Cookery is to enlarge the sphere of our enjoyment; if it does not this it fails in the object which it is its sole object to accomplish.

Among the female writers on this subject in England, are Mr.s Glass, and Mrs. M’lver in Scotland, who were certainly great women in their day, but that day is long gone by.

(iii)

It is a propensity peculiar to females to be eternally dabbling in physical receipts. It seems to have been done without proper consideration, for if the doctors should have recourse to retaliation, and introduce among their patients a PHARMACOEIA of Cookery, there would be an end of the fraternity of cooks altogether. In almost every page we are assailed with some such recipes as the following: --” A CERTAIN remedy for consumption,” --”A cure for wind in the stomach,”--”A speedy cure for the gripes,” consisting of an infusion of sweet oil, pepper, brandy, and green tea; as if a young lady would not endure the gripes for a twelvemonth, rather than swallow this mixture. The following is also a recipe from the Scottish Cook.

Jelly for Consumption

“Take a pound of hartshorn shavings, nine ounces of eringo roots, a choppin of bruised snails, the shells taken off and cleaned; two vipers, or four ounces of the powder of them; two ounces of devil’s dung; add to these a pint of pig’s blood, and choppin of water, and let them boil to one pint, &c. &c. The patient may swallow two teacups full of it in a day!”

Before he swallows a third, we would recommend him to prepare for another world, for a stone eater may be defied to take it with impunity.

In the following treatise it has been the wish of the writer to leave all physic to the only persons who outght to follow it. Those things which appertain to the female sex are alone andmitted, and some useful auxiliaries to Cookery added. Long time and labour has been devoted by him to bring each recipe and labour of out and economy, and he sends his book into the world, to stand or fall by its merits.

A2 R.H

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INDEX AND CONTENTS

ARRANGED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER;

Page

PREFACE.
On the choice of meats-
On the choice of poultry
and game
On the choice of fish
Suppers, bills of fare of
Ball supper for 24 per-
sons

SOUPS AND BROTHS
General observations
Asparagus soup

Crayfish ditto
Cressy soup
Eel soup

Grave do.

Giblet do.

Hare do.

Lorraine do.

Mock turtle

Muscle ditto

Milk

Oyster do

Patridge do.

Portable soup, brown

Portable soup, white

Pea soup, green

Pea soup, white

Spring soup

1
X
3
5
7
X
10

11
17
18
16

Soup Meagre

Scotch Leek soup

Transparent soup

Vermicelli soup

Beef broth

Mutton broth

Scotch barley broth

Veal broth

White pottage

GRAVIES & SAUCES

Apple Sauce

Bechmel

Braise, white and brown

Browning

Celery sauce

Egg sauce

Essence of ham

Fish cullis

Forcemeat balls

Gravy, to draw

Gravy for a turkey or fowl

Gravy, white

Gravy, beef,

Gravy for a fowl without

meat

Gravy for fish

Gravy to make mutton

eat like venison

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PASTRY. 106.

To make Paste for Tarts.

PUT two pounds and a half of butter, to three pounds of flour, and a half a pound of fine sugar beaten ; rub all your butter in the flour, and make it into a paste with cold milk, and two spoonsful of brandy.

Puff Paste.

TAKE a quartern of flour, and a pound and a half of butter; rub a third part of the butter in the flour, and make a paste with water; then roll out your paste, and put your butter upon it in bits, and flour it; fold it up, and rolle it again; after this, put in more butter, flour it fold, and roll it twice before you use it.

Paste for raised Pies

TO half a peck of flour, take two pounds of butter, and cut it in pieces in a saucepan of water over the fire, and when the butter is melted, make a hole in the flour, skim off the butter and put it in the flour, with some of the water; then make it up in a stiff paste, and if you do not use it presently, put it before the fire in a cloth.

Paste for Venison Pasties

TAKE four pounds of butter to half a peck of flour; rub it all in your flour, but not too small; then make it into a paste, and beat it with a rolling pin for an hour before you use it; if you please, you may beat three or four eggs, and put them into your paste when you mix it.

Paste Royal for Patty-pans.

LAY down a pound of flour, work it up with a pound of butter, two ounces of fine sugar, and four eggs

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THE FAMILY COOKERY. 107.

Paste for Custards.

LAY down flour, and make it into a stiff paste with boiling water; sprinkle it with a little cold water, to keep it from cracking.

Hare Pie.

CUT the hare in pieces, break the bones, and lay them in the pie; lay on forcemeat balls, sliced lemon, and butter, and close it with the yolks of hard eggs.

Umble Pie

TAKE the umbles of a buck, boil them, and chop them as small as meat for minced pies; put to them as much beef suet, eight apples, half a pound of sugar, a pound and a half of curants, a little salt, some mace, cloves, nut-meg, and a little pepper; then mix them together, and put it into a paste; add half a pint of sack, the juice of one lemon and orange, close the pie, and when it is baked, serve it up.

Lumber Pie.

TAKE a pound and a half of fillet of veal, mince it with the same quantity of beef suet, season it with sweet spice, five pippins, a handful of spinach, a hard lettuce, thyme, and parsley; mix with it a penny loaf, aud the yolks of two or three eggs, sack, and orange flower water, a pound and a half of currants and preserves, with a a caudle.

Shresbury Pie

TAKE a couple of rabbits, cut them in pieces, season them well with pepper and salt; then take some fat pork, seasoned in like manner, with the rabbits’ livers parboiled, some butter, eggs, pepper, and salt, a little sweet marpie among the meat; then take artichoke bottoms boiled tender,cut in dice, and lay these likewise among the meat; close your pie, and put in as much white wine as you think proper. Bake it, and serve it up.

Lamb Pie

SEASON the lamb steaks; lay them in the pie, with [continued page 108]

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THE FAMILY COOKERY. 108.

sliced lamb’s stones and sweetbreads, savoury balls, and oysters. Lay on butter, close the pie with a lear.

Lamb Pie with Currants

TAKE a leg and a join of lamb, cut the flesh into small pieces, and season it with a little salt, cloves, mace, and nutmeg; then lay the lamb in your paste, with as many currants as you think proper, and some Lisbon sugar, a few raisins stoned and chopped small, and some forcemeat balls, yolks of hard eggs, with artichoke bottoms, or potatoes that have been boiled and cut in dice, with candied orange and lemon peel slices; put butter on the top, and a little water; close your pie, and bake it gently. When it is baked, take off the top, and put in your caudle made of gravy from the bones, some white wine, and juice of lemon; thicken it with the yolks of two eggs, and a bit of butter. When you pour in your caudle, let it be hot, and shake it well in the pie; then serve it up, having laid on the cover.

Note. If you obersve too much fat swimming on the liquor of your pie, take it off before you pour in your caudle.

Mutton Pie.

SEASON the mutton steaks, fill the pie, lay on butter, and close it. When it is baked, toss up the handful of chopped capers, cucumbers, and oysters in gravy, with an anchovy, and drawn butter.

Veal Pie.

RAISE a high round pie, then cut a fillet of veal inton three er four fillets, season it with savoury seasonings, and a little minced sage and sweet herbs; lay it in the pie, with slices of bacon at the bottom, and between each piece lay on butter, and close the pie. When it is baked and cold, fill it up with clarified butter.

Hen Pie.

CUT it in pieces and lay it in the pie; lay on forcemeat balls, sliced lemon, butter, and close it with the yolks of hard eggs; let the lear be thickened with eggs.

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INDIVIDUAL RECEIPT EXAMPLES

Apple, or Pear, Pie

MAKE a good puff paste crust, lay some round the sides of the dish, pare and quarter your apples, and take out the cores; lay a row of apples thick, throw in half the sugar you intend for your pie; mince a little lemon peel fine, throw a few cloves in, here and there one, then what is left of your apples, and the rest of your sugar. Sweeten it to your palate, and squeeze in a little lemon juice. Boil the peelings of the apples, and the cores in fair water, with a blade of mace till it is very good: strain it, and boil the syrup with sugar till it is very rich: pour it into your pie, put on your upper crust, and bake it. You may put in a little quince, or marmalade, if you please.

Or you may make a pear pie thus, but put in no quince. You may butter them when they come out of the overn, or beat up the yolks of two eggs, and half a pint of cream, with a little nutmeg, sweetened with sugar. take off the lid, and pour in the cream. Cut the crust in little three cornered pieces, stick them about the pie, and send it to table.

A rich Cake.

TAKE six pounds of the best fresh butter, work it to a cream with your hands; then throw in by degrees three pounds of double refined sugar, well beat and sifted; mix them well together, then work in three pounds of blanched almonds; and having beat fourteen eggs, and strained them through a sieve, put them in, beat them all together till they are thick and look white. Then add half a pint of French brandy, half a pint of sack, a small quanity of giner, and about two ounces each of mace, cloves, and cinnamon with three large nutmegs, all beaten in a mortar as fine as possible. Then shake in gradually four pounds of well dried and sifted flour. When the oven is well prepared and tin hoop to bake it in, stir into this mixture (as you put it ino the hoop) sever pounds of currants well washed and rubbed, and such a quantity of candied orange, lemon, and citron, in equal portions, as shall be thought convenient. The oven must be quick, and the cake will take at least four hours to bake it; or you may make two or more cakes out of these ingredients. You must beat it with your hands, and the currants must be plumped by pouring boiling water upon them, and drying them before the fire. Put them warm into the cake.

Pancakes

TAKE a pint of thick creanm, six spoonsful of sack, and half a pint of fine flour, six eggs, (but only three whites) one grated nutmeg, a quarter of a pound of melted butter, a very little salt, and some sugar; fry them thin in a dry pan.

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PART THREE

CONTRIBUTIONS

Bibliography

Primary Source Text:

1.) House, R., & Bailey, J. (1808). The family cookery : combining elegance and economy with various receipts for making gravies, soups, sauces, and made dishes, directions for roasting and boiling game, poultry, meat, fish, &c. and making of pastry and confectionary, directions for trussing and carving, rules for brewing and making wines, the art of pickling and preserving, the management of poultry and bees, and bills of fare for the year and many other useful receipts, forming a complete system of domestic management. Printed and sold by J. Bailey, Chancery Lane.

Supplementary Sources

2.) Harner, C. H. (2020). “What do you mean by that? You must have been drinking!”: Victorian Femininity, Dickensian Cooking Disasters, and Nineteenth-Century Domestic Manuals. Dickens Studies Annual, 51(1), 123–148. https://doi.org/10.5325/dickstudannu.51.1.0123

3.) Lieffers, C. (2012). “The Present Time is Eminently Scientific”: The Science of Cookery in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Journal of Social History, 45(4), 936–959. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shr106

4.) Newlyn, A. K. (1999). Challenging Contemporary Narrative Theory: The Alternative Textual Strategies of Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cookbooks. Journal of American Culture, 22(3), 35–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734X.1999.2203_35.x

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