#i don't dare to take off the sticky tape for fear of damaging it

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

I need to know more about the 1920s and 1840s cookbooks if you are willing to share! How did you acquire them?

What recipes have you tried and how did they turn out?

Any fun (mis)adventures with them? (Ingredients not sold any more or that don't mean what they meant back then, etc)

Gladly!

(Edit: I am putting this under a cut, as it has gotten very long!)

(I apologise for the state of my phone camera! I tried my best! You drop your phone in a wet trench and it's never the same after...)

So, a few years ago I ended up helping at the bring and buy book shop that ran in my local village, where I was mostly the muscle who hauled around, went through and put out the boxes of books that would get donated (and there were a lot!)

The idea of going through the donations was to weed out books that weren't able to be sold on, whether they were in too poor a condition (mouldy, incomplete), something we already have a million copies of (50 shades), or just wholly unsuitable! (I'll leave that to your imagination!) I didn't mind doing it as I could just pop in my headphones and zone out for a couple of hours.

So, there I was one Saturday, listening to my tunes and sorting through donations when I came across a very old, grungy book, held together with sticky tape and with only its front cover. Now, old books fascinate me, so I opened it up to the copyright page and almost fell over when I read MDCCCXL - 1840! At that point I knew this thing was coming home with me! And for a grand total of 25p, it did!

If you can't see what the cover says, it's 'Domestic Cookery By A Lady.' This is also repeated on the copyright page.

Look! Isn't it awesome? Now, I would love to show you every page, but there's a lot, and I'm showing you two books, so you'll just get the highlights, I'm afraid.

First things first though, here's something that I love about this book.

See that? The pages all still have indents from the printing press, even after 183 years!

The contents! As you can see, this book covers a lot! It's not just recipes. There's directions on carving, guidence on servants ('One is never to retain a cook who is not fond of her occupation.' for instance, and 'A servant must possess a natural regard for cleanliness, or all the pains in the world will never render her cleanly.'), guidence for servants (aka, how to clean everything!) a wide variety of recipes as well as how to pick the best produce and when certain things are in season.

And just as this book couldn't get any more awesome, it's got pictures too!

Go look at that last picture again for me. You see those dark splodges on the right of the page? Know what they are? They're fingerprints! Fingerprints! Proof that somebody touched and used this book all those years ago! You can't tell me that's not awesome!

I will admit that I have not tried any recipes out of this book, so no misadventures, but I love reading them. There are some that I'm not sure I'd even want to try!

Stuffed cod's head, anyone?

Mock turtle soup?

Of course, if you want real turtle, there's also how to kill and prepare one of them...

How to make coffee.

Also, how big is this blooming cake!?

Not to mention the time it will take!

Anyway, Tumblr has a photo limit on posts and I still have another book to show you, so I will leave you with this final remark on cooking for the poor, especially the bit about the crust of bread.

Mmm, yum!

Onto the next book!

It came from the same place as the last, but this time at the grand cost of 30p! (Inflation, y'know?)

This one is a cookery textbook from Strathearn College, Edinburgh. Copyright page says 1925. Cool, right? Ah, but it gets better!

Ann Burlt Oct 9th 1929. She's the original owner of this book! And she made lots of notes, too!

At a guess, these were her favourite recipes, what page they were on and how many eggs they required.

And one she didn't like! I was pretty sure that there was one recipe that was crossed out with a NO! next to it, but I couldn't find it, so maybe I was wrong.

She also amended some recipes:

Additionally, there's also a few extra special things in this book too that I at least got very excited over:

Bookmarks! This one is a scrap of newspaper, sadly no date on it.

A mini booklet regarding changes to telephone charges. Now, remember that this cookbook is from the 1920s.

Look at the second paragraph on the left. 1970. 1970! This book was still being used in 1970!

And this one, which doubles as both a recipe and a bookmark! And must have been in that book for a while as it's stained the page!

I have tried one recipe out of this one, which was a Roly Poly and was very tasty! I would show you but it would seem I have one more image I can add to this post, so instead I will use it to show you something I never, ever, want to have to try, ever!

Sardine Eclaires? Really?

Excuse me while I go quietly vomit somewhere...

Anyway! Thanks for the ask! I love being able to show these off and wildly flail about things that I think are interesting, and I hope you enjoyed the ride too!