{"id":1810,"date":"2020-08-12T08:52:53","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T08:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/?p=1810"},"modified":"2020-08-12T08:52:53","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T08:52:53","slug":"cooking-the-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk\/dorset-history-centre-blog\/2020\/08\/12\/cooking-the-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooking the Books!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whilst browsing through the archive catalogue seeking inspiration, Collections Archivist Owen came across the Bloxworth Estate archive (D-BLX<\/a>), and when looking amongst the Family papers saw that there were several recipe books listed…<\/p>\n

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Recipe books can provide a good insight into social history and are always good fun to have a read through. They can provide a sense of what people considered to be of importance in a culture, they reflect food habits of a population, mark changes in lifestyle, and act as markers of historical events. This is reflected in such things as the use of more expensive\/exotic ingredients, changes in the methods of cooking and changes in how ingredients are measured.<\/p>\n

The recipe book (at least pre 20th<\/sup> century) was also not just a place for food recipes as we might expect nowadays, but also (despite increased availability of purchasable medical care) home to instructions on creating various medical concoctions intended to treat a myriad of ills. For instance, in one recipe book (D-BLX\/F\/36<\/a>) in between recipes for Sweet Biscuits, Baked Apple Pudding, and German Pudding are recipes titled, \u201cExcellent for a cough\u201d, \u201cFor Sickness\u201d, and \u201cFor chilblains\u201d. The efficacy of these treatments is not known but it is not recommended that they be tried out!<\/p>\n

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I did however decide to have a go at a recipe for some ginger cake a recipe given to Ada by a Mrs Jeffers and marked as \u2018very good\u2019. The recipe is as follows:<\/p>\n