By Rosie Denton
Walking through the strongrooms within the Borthwick, you never
know quite what you will find. There is a Crown of Thorns, an ostrich egg, and
a box simply labelled ‘Hair cuttings (family).’ So I was not surprised to learn
that within the archive of the Wood family (later Earls of Halifax),
intermingled with estate records, political journals and family correspondence,
are a series of handwritten recipe books. We say ‘books,’ but in fact it is a
box full of notebooks and loose sheets on which people have scribbled down recipes.
While these are rarely dated, they appear to cover much of the 19th
century. However, mixed in with the rest is a large, bound volume, written in
by various hands, with a collection of loose sheets tucked inside, that give us
a good idea of what the family ate.
As you would expect of 19
th century aristocrats,
the Wood family indulged in some sumptuous and luxurious meals. One recipe
provides the cook with instructions on how to boil a lobster, to be served with
a fish sauce made from anchovies, onion, vinegar and horse radish. Pickled
walnuts appear to have been a delicacy, as there are three separate recipes for
how to prepare them. There is also a straightforward recipe for ‘Oyster
Loaves.’ All the cook has to do is hollow out some French rolls, and push the
oysters inside. Unfortunately for the cook, not all recipes were so effortless.
The recipe for a pork dinner starts with the line: ‘Gett a fatt roasting pigg
and cut off its head’!
A page from the Wood family recipe book.
However not all the recipes from this book are for such
decadent meals. Served alongside various meats was a combination of boiled
cabbage, mashed potato and onion. There are also recipes for macaroni, dumplings,
and dried tongue. Those in the mood for a really humble meal would perhaps have
chosen ‘Ham Toast.’ As the name suggests, this was ham on toast with a little
scrambled egg on top. It may even have been served with their own home-made
‘Cetchup,’ the boiled innards of mushrooms.
A recipe for mashed potato, cabbage and onion, with a drawing of a 'little onion' on top.
Around the same time as the Wood family were eating ham
toast and mashed potatoes, the girls of the Grey Coats School in York were
enjoying a similar fare. Grey Coats was a charity boarding school for poor
girls founded in 1705, and the kitchen account books today survive with the
rest of their archive within the Borthwick. Looking through the account book
for the period 1827 to 1848, it appears the girls were largely fed on meat and
potatoes. Unlike the poor Wood’s cooks, these kitchen staff bought ready-made
sausages and bacon, as well as tripe, pressed beef and pork pie. In the winter
months, the school would consume around ninety pounds of potatoes a week;
nearly two pounds per student! Oatmeal was consumed at a similar rate, and
cabbage also frequently appeared on the menu.
A page from the Grey Coats' account book.
In both sets of documents, fruit make a rare appearance. Fruit
appears within a few dessert recipes with the Wood’s documents, including ‘sweetened
apricots’ (similar to stewed apples), and the particularly delicious sounding
‘French puffs’. These were made from grated apple mixed with sugar, cream, eggs, butter, flour,
nutmeg and orange flower water, which was then fried. Meanwhile, the girls of Grey Coats’ School gained
their five a day from gooseberry, apple and rhubarb pies. A similar account
book from the 1920s shows that the girls did later eat a wider selection of
fruit, including: bananas, Seville oranges, and plums. It’s worth noting,
though, that the account books feature regular payments to a gardener, as well
as an annual supply of turf. It is entirely possible that the kitchen staff
were growing much of the fruit served to the students, meaning it wouldn’t
appear in the account book.
In a later account book plums and other fruit start to appear.
As may have been apparent, puddings featured heavily in the
menus of both the Wood family and Grey Coats School. The school account books
show weekly purchases of yeast, but ‘yeast for bread’ was costed separately to
‘yeast for cakes.’
The account book show
purchases of treacle, trifle, custard powder, and a regular supply of butter
and eggs specifically ‘for gingerbread’.
The Wood family also enjoyed gingerbread. Their recipes ‘Honeycomb
gingerbread’ and the intriguingly named ‘Transparent gingerbread.’ Perhaps,
like the fabled emperor’s coat, only those worthy of gingerbread can see it. Within
the bound volume of recipes, there is not only a section dedicated to desserts
and puddings, but another for cakes and yet another for creams. They flavoured
cream with everything from lemon and Seville orange, to almonds and brandy.
However, the most prevalent recipe within the book is rice pudding. Not only
are there three different rice pudding recipes within bound volume, but
multiple recipes tucked in, all written on scraps of paper in different hands,
all using slightly different ingredients, and all claiming to be the ‘perfect’
rice pudding.
A page from the Grey Coats' account books showing "yeast for bread"and "yeast for cakes".
Recipes at the time were not solely concerned with food, and
neither was the account book of Grey Coats School. Alcohol appears in both sets
of records The Halifax book has a whole section dedicate to make special
‘flavours’ of wine (raspberry, gooseberry, spiced cider), while the staff at
Grey Coats school were allowed to order alcohol through the kitchen. As such there
are entries for ‘ale for Beswick,’ ‘port for Goot’ and ‘ale for the abbot’.
Mixed in are also payments for stamps, window cleaning, ‘manure for Matron,’
and ‘cab fare to the hospital’. The very last entries in the later account book
are for Morris dancing and a book on folk dancing. The Wood family, meanwhile,
were quite concerned with medicine. Their recipes include formulas to cure
toothache, rheumatic cramps, and ‘violent discharges,’ among others. At the end
of the aforementioned creams section, there is a recipe for ‘Artificial Ape’s
Milk’, an indigestion cure that would surely be necessary after all that
dessert! Perhaps most touchingly, tucked into the back of the volume is a
letter addressed to Sir F.L. Wood (Francis Lindley Wood (1771–1846)). It
contains meticulous instructions on how to prepare beef tea, ending with the
line “this is an excellent thing instead of broth for a sick person.”
A recipe for beef tea addressed to Sir F. L Wood.
These are by
no means the only food-based records found at the Borthwick, but together they
paint a picture of what people at both ends of society were eating in the
latter half of the 19th century. On the whole, it seems to have been
a diet of meat and root vegetables, but with plenty of pies, cakes and
gingerbread to follow. Perhaps not the healthiest way to eat, but delicious
nonetheless!
