Sunday, August 14, 2011

200 year-old cookbook has been found

A rare find: The Art of Cookery book was found at the back of a kitchen drawer in Devon

200 year-old cookbook has been found in an old kitchen drawer.
The cookbook, 'The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy', explains the culinary delights including baked calf's head and pickled pigs feet.
There is also the first ever English recipe for curry, which is very similar to recipes used today, frying chickens with herbs and spices, then adding cream and stock.

Lucky find: Sylvia Sibley from Devon found the recipe book dating back over 200 years when she was clearing out a drawer
Sylvia Sibley found the recipe book dating back over 200 years when she was clearing out a drawer

The cookbook was written by Hannah Glasse, dating back to 1796 and has hundreds of recipes.
Sylvia Sibley, 73, found the cookbook while cleaning some of her late mother's possessions at her home in Plymouth, Devon. 
Mrs Sibley said: 'Some of the recipes are certainly very unusual and I wouldn't necessarily fancy them. 
'I have read through it but the recipes are very complicated. The list of ingredients is very long and uses meat like 'calf's head' which I wouldn't fancy cooking.
'It is interesting to see the difference between these recipes and modern cooking.'
The cookery book is a later edition of one of the first ever widely available cookery books, which was first published in 1747. 

The 'Calf's Head Surprize' is where you 'Take a calf's head with the skin on, take a sharp knife and raise off the skin with as much meat from the bone as you can possibly get, so that it may appear like a whole head when stuffed. 
'Stuff the head with ingredients including beef suet, veal, bacon and herbs' before putting the whole thing in the oven for two and a half hours'.

There is even a section at the back of the book, which includes a host of 'medical recipes' like the cure for the bite of a Mad Dog. 
It reads: 'Let the patient be blooded at the arm nine or ten ounces.
'Take of the herb called in Latin lichen cinereus terrestris, in English, ash-coloured, ground liverwort, cleaned, dried and powdered, half an ounce. Of black pepper, powdered, two drachms.
'Mix these well together, and divide the powder into four doses, one of which must be taken every morning fasting, four mornings successively, in half a pint of cow's milk warm.
'After these four doses are taken, the patient must go into the cold bath, or a cold spring or river every morning fasting for a month. 
'He must be dipped all over but not to stay in (with his head above water) longer than half a minute, if the water be very cold. After this he must go in three times a week for a fortnight longer.' 
Mrs Sibley said, 'I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it now. I quite like the book and it is certainly very unusual so would like to hold onto it.
'I think it would be quite nice to hand it down to my children one day and keep it in the family.'