The speaker was Sara Pennell, historian at Roehampton University - if you were listening to Radio Four's Today programme yesterday morning you might have heard her talking about how the Wellcome's collection of historic recipes is now available online.
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| 17th century cookbook (not one from the Wellcome collection) |
Recipe books didn't all start with Mrs Beeton, of course. There were cookery books by medieval times, although the recipes were generally imprecise and it seems unlikely they were used to teach people to cook. It was in the 16th century that recipe books began to be widespread. Some have survived from the 16th and 17th centuries, in some cases beautifully handwritten and passed on as family heirlooms. Ann Fanshawe created her recipe book in the 1650s, and it is the earliest surviving English source of recipes for both drinking chocolate and ice-cream. (The ice-cream, incidentally, can be flavoured with mace, orange-flower water, or ambergris, an ingredient derived from sperm whales.)
A bit like modern blogs, there are comments on the recipes and occasionally autobiographical details. Some of them are a mish-mash, including versions of other people's recipes and printed cuttings. Often the books cover medical matters and home remedies as well as cookery.
Meanwhile technology is threatening to usurp the cookery book - there are cookery apps for your phone, and even a splash-proof gadget you can buy specifically to electronically store your recipe collection. Will these things prove as lasting as the recipe books the 17th century has passed onto us?
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| 17th century cookbook (not one from the Wellcome collection) |
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