Surprises in Colonial Era Advertising

I always find it interesting coming across mentions of topics in Colonial Era newspapers that would be taboo today.

Here is an example of an advertisement from 1870 for cure-all cream called 'Holloway's Ointment':

Advertising. (1870, June 11). Southern Argus (Port Elliot, SA : 1866 - 1954), p. 4. Retrieved August 22, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article96875838

Fistulas are a common, and horrifying, complication of childbirth without the help of modern medicine. Most people these days in developed countries haven't heard of fistulas, despite the fact that women in first world countries still experience them, and yet here they are on p. 4 of the Southern Argus nearly 150 years ago.

"The Horror, The Horror" Vegetable Stew; and What Rich People Think the Poor Should Eat

Despite having a truly chef-worthy name, Adolphe Smith (the author of today's recipe) was not a cook. In fact, he was an early radical socialist whose best known work was the written element of the photojournalism book Street Life in London (1877), which offered the middle classes an insight into just how grim poverty could be.



"The Old Clothes of St Giles." Or, where poor people bought their clothes.
Street Life in London (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London, 1877) by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/streetlifeinlondon
 

So why, in 1870, was Smith writing to the Food Journal with an article on vegetarian recipes?

Well, like many middle class people before and after him, Smith wanted to help the poor, and he thought a good place to start would be to address the fact that they obstinately wouldn't feed themselves nutritious food.

"To remedy these evils [poor nutrition among those living in poverty], good teachers and willing pupils are wanted: but in England the poor decidedly object to learn, and no one has had the courage to attempt to teach them."  

Vegetables Better than Nothing. (1870). Food Journal, 1, 125-125. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1XgBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA524&dq=food+journal+1870&hl=en&sa=X#v=onepage&q=%22undoubtedly%20great%20sustenance%22&f=false

It all rather reminds me of that classic bully move, where the bully hits their victim with their own fist, while saying "Stop hitting yourself!". Yes, poor people, "Stop starving yourself!"

In any case, after some half-baked political theories Smith goes on to offer three vegetarian recipes, which form the portion of the Food Journal article that were excerpted in the Melbourne Leader later in 1870.



'The Horror, The Horror' Vegetable Stew.
I fed this to my toddler and she looked like she had feasted on the blood of her enemies.

Today, we turn to the first of the three recipes, root vegetable stew (or, 'A Medley of Out-of-Season Vegetables You Can't Afford'). The first defining characteristic of this recipe is the sheer variety of vegetables involved. And as anyone who has ever been poor knows, 'variety' is the watchword of frugal eating. The second defining characteristic of the recipe is beetroot, so consider yourself warned.

Here is the original recipe, as it appeared in the Leader:

COOKING VEGETABLES.— For a cheap; yet tasty and substantial dish let me suggest that the housewife grate two carrots, two turnips, one parsnip, a little beetroot and artichoke, into one   pint of split- peas, boiled in two quarts of soft water for two hours. The whole might then be boiled with three teaspoonfuls of Indian, wheaten,   or Scotch meal, mixed in cold: water, leaving it to simmer for two hours more ; a little parsley, mint, and thyme will flavour the dish. More     water might be added if necessary. This some what complicated : ' hodge-podge' would well satisfy a middle-class family, and cost less, at     any rate, than a joint. It would not do, perhaps, every day, but might occasionally save the   meat, and avoid the horror, of stinting at dinner.

RECIPES. (1870, September 3). Leader (Melbourne, Vic. : 1862 - 1918), p. 5. Retrieved August 18, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196691504

Ingredients

1 large carrot

1 turnip

1 small parsnip

1 small beetroot

1 small artichoke

250g split peas

1.5l water

2 T cornflour

¼ cup chopped parsley

¼ cup chopped mint

A few springs of thyme

Cooking Time

2 and a half hours, most of which will not require your presence.

Yield

4 serves filling enough to get you through a cold night on the streets of Victorian London

Method

Grate all the vegetables, and put them in a large saucepan with the split peas and water. A food processor with a grater attachment makes quick work of this – although when you put the beetroot through it will look like you’ve blended some small hapless critter, so prepare yourself for the gore. Seriously, we’re talking blood spatters here reminiscent of a promotional poster for Dexter.

Bring the water to the boil, and then turn down to a simmer. Cook for one hour.

In a cup, mix the cornflour with a dash of cold water. Stir it into the soup.

 

Cook the soup for a further hour, stirring to prevent it sticking.

 

Ten minutes before serving, add the parsley and mint, and the leaves stripped from the thyme.

Add more water at any point if the vegetables rise above the water line.

Season with salt and pepper before serving.

Don't wear white while eating this dish. Or any clothes that you like. Maybe eat it naked.

Corruption and Theft at the Colonial Bakehouse

As every reader of Melbourne Punch knew, working class people were shifty.

ANSWERED. (1884, March 6). Melbourne Punch (Vic. : 1855 - 1900), p. 10. Retrieved August 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article174561736

In my last post, I explained that many people in the colonial era bought their bread from a baker, rather than baking at home, because they didn't have an oven or couldn't afford to run it. For the same reason, they also sent roasts and other main meals to be cooked in the baker's oven.

Knowing this, I'm sure you will find the following account of one baker's dishonesty as alarming as the original readers would have in 1829:

CONFESSIONS OF A JOURNEYMAN BAKER.    

Mr. Maton was apprenticed, in the year 1792,   to a person in Salisbury, who was miller, baker,   &c., and who had some army contracts ; he afterwards came to London, and entered the service   of a baker, where on the first Sunday, he got initiated into one branch of the business, that it,   of managing the dinners sent to be baked.  

'As   I was an underman,' he says, ' it became my duty to take the dishes out of the shop into the bakehouse ; the second hand, as the cant phrase is,   shaves the meat (that is to say, cuts as much off   from each joint as he thinks will not be missed) ; the foreman drains the water off, and puts the   dishes into the oven until they require to be turn-   ed : after which, the liquid fat is drained off   from each dish, and the deficiency is supplied   with water ; this fat is the master's perquisite! Here is a pretty particular way of robbing Sunday   dinners, as our friend Jonathan would say.  

While   living with this master, Mr. Maton acquired a knowledge of the trade of dealing in ' dead men,'     or charging loaves to the customers which they   never had ; this is another lucrative branch of   the business, in which master and man strive   which can get the monopoly. Such at least was   the case in this place, and Maton kept a check   on his master. He found that four shillings per   week, with the spoils of the ' dead men,' was more profitable than sixteen shillings per week,   with lodging, bread, beer, a Sunday dinner, bro-   ken victuals, and the spoils of a ' sharp knife in   the bakehouse, which would shave off a dinner   to a hair's breadth.'  

This baker, who appears to have been a terrible plunderer, used to send a peck of flour four pounds short of the proper   weight.— To be continued.    

CONFESSIONS OF A JOURNEYMAN BAKER. (1829, August 24). Launceston Advertiser (Tas. : 1829 - 1846), p. 4. Retrieved August 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article84776238

So when you next enjoy a store-bought loaf, spare a moment to be thankful for modern health and safety laws and consumer protection bodies!

The Idealised Past; Home-Baking Edition

This may be the greatest slogan ever for a baker: "Staff of Life at a fair and equitable price".

Classified Advertising. (1803, September 18). The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 - 1842), p. 4. Retrieved August 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article625784

The internet is full of people justifying their choices by referring to an idealised version of the past - whether the Palaeolithic period or the 1950s. The choice to bake bread at home is often justified by the belief that this is the way bread has been baked from time immemorial up until just before the wretchedly decadent present day.

It may surprise you, then, to read the opening lines of the following article from 1870:

THE BEST WAY TO MAKE HOME-MADE BREAD.-Some of our readers who may reside in the country, at a dis- tance from a good baker, may not be unwilling to try a method of making bread, which can be confidently re- commended from many years' experience of its excellence.

Household Recipes. (1870, August 27). Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1907), p. 21. Retrieved August 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article70461620

There are two reasons why many people in the colonial era chose to outsource their bread production to the local baker.

The first was that many poorer households didn't have an oven, or the fuel to run their oven just to make bread. The second was the sheer amount of labour that went into running a household in the era before vacuum cleaners, washing machines and dishwashers. Women welcomed any way of reducing the burden of keeping everybody fed, clothed and clean. If you want to know just what could be involved in making bread without instant yeast, take a look at the recommended process in the article quoted above.

So does this mean that you shouldn't bake your own bread, because your great-great-great grandmother probably didn't?

Of course not. There are many reasons to bake your own bread, including having control over the ingredients, producing a superior loaf to your local branch of Baker's Delight, or enjoying the chance to take out some of your frustrations during the of the kneading process. I'm a big fan of a home-made loaf myself. But, unfortunately home-baking friends, we cannot claim that we are replicating a lost era where everyone shared our craft.

Did Anyone Really Make this Stuff?

Sometimes, when confronted with a colonial era newspaper recipe for a truly overwrought French dessert, which would challenge even the most accomplished modern cook equipped with a KitchenAid stand mixer, I find myself thinking "Did anyone ever make that? Ever?" It seems even more implausible that anyone whipped it up in a remote bush kitchen.

Being the sort of morose writerly type to get caught in a spiral of self-doubt, this thought then leads me to wonder if anyone was cooking any of this stuff; or if Australia in the 1860s was full of people who every week nearly killed themselves laughing at what The Australasian thought they should cook for dinner.

You'll be pleased to hear that my spirits have been buoyed by finding at least one person who, if not actually cooking the darn things, at least made the effort of snipping them out of the paper and pasting them in a personal recipe book.

From the collection of Museum Victoria is the recipe book of Eliza Duckmanton, which includes handwritten recipes and recipes she found in newspapers. You can see a sample page, complete with a rather charming doodle here:


Eliza Duckmanton (Maker) (1870). Book - Recipe & Remedy, Eliza Duckmanton, 1870. Museum Victoria

It turns out that the creation of a personal recipe book was actually a common practice among literate middle-class Colonial women, as one of the museum curators explains:

It was common for literate colonial women to create their own household management guides to suit their new country. Hand-written recipe books were sometimes even part of a bride's trousseau. This was because few cookery and household management books were available in Australia until the 1890s, and those that did exist were more suitable for English ingredients and kitchen facilities, being either imported from England or being locally produced imitations. Mrs Beeton's 1861 Book of Household Management was one of these; recipes were also published in imported magazines. Cookbooks were also usually aimed at city dwellers rather than country women, who had far less access to many ingredients. 

 Museum Victoria (2011). "Statement of Significance", Book - Recipe & Remedy, Eliza Duckmanton, 1870. http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/407598/book-recipe-remedy-eliza-duckmanton-1870


Obviously women in Colonial Australia wouldn't have had access to recipes on the internet, but it was a revelation to me to realise that they also didn't have access to climate-appropriate cookbooks, or in many cases the transmitted knowledge from older female relatives. As a consequence, it seems probable that newspaper recipes were a major source of information for these early colonial cooks.

If you'd like to try one of Eliza's recipes, Museum Victoria blogger Kate C.  has given her Queen Cakes a whirl. You can read all about it and see the recipe here.

Finally, I've got a challenge for you, cookery friends. I haven't been able to locate any of Eliza's clipped recipes on Trove. If you have better luck, I'd love to hear from you!

"Captain Cook's Cook"; or, What Did They Eat on the Endeavour?

The dirty old chook himself.

Captain Cook's Cook. (1929, January 30). The World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), p. 5. Retrieved August 15, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131483890

Captain James Cook was, right up until the 90s when I went to school, hailed as the man who discovered Australia. Of course, European Australians have since realised that you can't 'discover' somewhere that is already full of people; and what's more, Cook wasn't even the first European to visit.

But Cook, and his famous voyage on the Endeavour, still loom large in Australian history and culture. (For instance, I remember from the same 90s school-years a rhyme that began "Captain Cook is a dirty old chook..." and went downhill from there). Cook's reports about Australia certainly provided some of the impetus and information for British colonisation, which I believe puts him at the beginning of the 'colonial era' that this blog covers.

A 1929 review of Professor G. Arnold Wood's booklet The Voyage of the Endeavour sheds some interesting light onto what Cook and his crew would have eaten while at sea:

"Mr. Joseph Banks, who had eaten the best dinners in London, thoroughly enjoyed Thorn- son's porridge at breakfast, says that a shark cooked by Thomson was so good that everyone 'from the Captain to the swabber, dined heartily upon it,' and describes a soup made by Thomson out of a cuttle-fish as 'one of the best soups I ever ate.'"  

Captain Cook's Cook. (1929, January 30). The World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), p. 5. Retrieved August 15, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131483890

Cook and his men feasting on shark. I wish I could get my hands on Thomson's recipe!

Captain Cook's Cook. (1929, January 30). The World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), p. 5. Retrieved August 15, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131483890

I found it fascinating to see how much use the ship's cook made out of fish caught along the way. This also highlights how important a variety of historical sources are when trying to answer a historical question: out of these food items, only one (the porridge) would have appeared on the ship's manifest on departure.

So if you'd like to follow in the footsteps of Captain Cook's cook, and eat as the did on the Endeavour, flake (gummy shark) and calamari rings wouldn't be a bad place to start!

Madras Curry, and What it Means to be 'Authentic'

 

‘Authentic’ is a one of those words that’s thrown around a lot, but is surprisingly tricky to pin down. We want our recipes and restaurants to be authentic, in part I think because it demonstrates that we are discerning, educated consumers of food. We don’t often give much thought to the concept of authenticity because, to paraphrase United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous quote about pornography, “we know it when we see it”.

But authenticity is a bit more slippery than that. It depends on culture – the culture of the person making the judgement, and the culture of the period and place they are comparing the item to. This might sound like I’m flinging us into the murky waters of complete subjectivity, but really I’m just asking for a bit of pedantry: be specific. An authentic bolognaise in Australia (real parmesan cheese!) might be somewhat different to that in Bologna.

With all that in mind, if I told you that today’s recipe was for Madras curry, which is a hot red curry which has its origins in the 1600s in the city of Madras in India, the word “authentic” would no doubt spring to mind. But what about if I told you that it was a recipe for a curry that was probably a British-Indian dish – and what’s more it evolved in Britain rather than India? Your enthusiasm might dim a bit, as the words ‘derivative’ and ‘authentic’ don’t sit comfortably together in our modern conception of food.

As a17th century Indian curry, Madras probably isn’t authentic. But as a British-Indian dish, Madras curry is a genuine cultural artefact.  British-Indian cuisine has been around for over 400 years, which for comparative purposes is as long as the Italians have been using tomatoes, and twice as long as European settlers have been living in Australia.

The popularity of Madras curry in Australia can be attested to by the fact that, to this day, you can purchase both curry powder and Madras curry powder from iconic brand Clive of India in Australian supermarkets. If you live in a country without the lingering supermarket-selection influence of the British Empire, you can make your own Madras curry powder by using one of these recipes.

This particular recipe produces a slightly tart curry of moderate heat. If you would like to try it but prefer a milder curry, you can slather it with yogurt, which is my wife’s go-to method of eating curry.

Here is the original 1896 recipe:

MADRAS DRY CURRY.—Cut 1lb. of meat into small pieces, slice one onion and fry it in butter to a light brown, then add one table - spoonful of Madras curry powder, one teacup- ful of water, one breakfastcupful of gravy, the juice of one lemon, and a little salt; stew all together till nearly dry, and send it up quite hot.    

RECIPES. (1869, March 6). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), p. 7.

Ingredients

450g of beef

1 large onion, sliced finely
2 t butter to fry
1T Madras curry powder
500ml stock
Juice of 1 lemon (4T)
Pinch of salt
 

Cooking Time

40 minutes. Put the rice cooker on 10 minutes in if you’d like some rice on the side (and who wouldn’t?)

 

Yield

2 hearty serves, with rice and veg
 

Method

Cut the meat into 1 inch cubes.

Melt the butter in a fryingpan, and when it begins to bubble add the sliced onion and beef.

Fry until both are light brown.

Add the madras curry powder, and stir it for a minute until aromatic. If you’re worried about burning it, you can take the pan off the stove for this step. (Burnt curry powder will go bitter. Now that I’ve said that, you’re probably worried about burning it, even if you weren’t beforehand. Sorry.)

Add the stock, lemon juice and salt, and stir to remove the fond from the pan. The fond it’s the delicious crispy bits of flavour that have stuck to the base of your pan. Unless you’re using a non-stick pan, in which case you’re seriously missing out.

Cook, stirring regularly, until the sauce has almost evaporated, and has stuck to the beef.

As in my second illustration, you can serve it with rice and some veggies. I steamed carrots, and then tossed them with 1 t honey and ½ t cinnamon. Then I attempted to ‘plate’ the dish like they do on Masterchef.  Needless to say I’m a better food historian than food stylist.

 

Yellow Flummery

Gaze upon my flummery!

Flummery. What a majestic word.
 

When I read the recipe below, I walked around for a good five minutes saying in delight, “Flummery. Flummery. Flummery.” My wife’s reaction to this excellent new addition to my vocabulary was to say drily: “It sounds like a word for writing your name in pee in the snow. Y’know – ‘I was walking home and saw some dirty so-and-so had committed flummery’.” Right.
 

Well, cookery friends, you can rest assured that flummery has nothing to do with urination in the snow, or anywhere else for that matter. It is in fact a wobbly custard and booze dessert-pudding that flourished in Britain from the 1600s to late 1800s (the period from which our particular specimen is drawn).
 

However, unlike many other dishes from this period, flummery is still rattling around. When I mentioned it to a fellow-foodie friend she said airily that she’d eaten it almost exclusively a few weeks back after a dental operation. Wild Colonial Grandma remembers eating it as a child (and despite the pseudonym I’ve given her, she isn’t actually from the Colonial era!).

 

Interestingly, both my friend and mother report that flummery is made with berries and beaten when partially set. The Oxford Companion to Food reveals that Victorian-era flummery (the wine and custard pudding which is the focus of today's recipe) is in fact the second dish to hold the name, and the modern dessert the third. Originally, flummery ('llymru') was a Welsh peasant dish that involved making a jelly from soaked oats or oat bran.

Even more interestingly, my 1935 edition of the Edinburgh-printed Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary defines flummery as the oldest of the three dishes mentioned above: "an acid jelly made from the husks of oats: the Scotch sowens". Clearly two, if not all three, of these uses for the term were doing the rounds concurrently. (The dictionary goes on to say that flummery can also refer to "anything insipid: empty complement", which I thoroughly encourage you to use in everyday conversation.)
 

It’s fair to say, though, that even the more modern version of flummery has somewhat fallen off the culinary radar. The food bloggers at Savouring the Past humorously recount their efforts to make a 1760 recipe work. Damn you, fish swim bladders! Learning from their tribulations, I went straight for gelatin as a setting agent, with pleasing results. My flummery was perfectly set, but deliciously wobbly, and had a pleasantly tart taste of dry white wine and citrus.
 

 

Please note that the cooking process will not remove all the alcohol from the dish. If you, or someone you are planning on serving this dessert to, doesn’t drink, then consider a different option or an ingredient substitution.

Flummery. Don't you just want to wobble it?

Here is the original recipe:
 

YELLOW Flummery.-Boil 2oz. of isinglass in a pint and a half of water till it is dissolved, and then add a pint of white wine, the juice of two and the outside of three lemons, the yolks of seven eggs well beaten, and sugar to your taste. Mix the whole together and set it on the fire till it boils, stirring it continually; strain it into a basin, and stir it till it is almost cold, then put it into the moulds.
 

Recipes. (1866, September 22). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), p. 5. Retrieved July 27, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article138049214

 

Ingredients

2 teaspoons powdered gelatin (or as much as the packet suggests will firmly set 500ml of liquid)

300ml of water

200ml white wine

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Peel of 1 lemon

Yolks of 2 large eggs, beaten

¼ cup sugar
 

Yield

Easily enough for six dessert serves
 

Cooking Time

Half an hour, plus allowing it to set overnight
 

Method

Select an appropriately sized mould – the closer to 500ml volume it has, the easier it will be to turn out the flummery. I used an old Bundt tin from Aldi, so don’t feel like you need to rush out and purchase a special flummery receptacle.

Combine the gelatin with the water, following the packet instructions.

Combine the white wine, lemon juice, lemon peel, egg yolks and sugar in a saucepan. Slowly bring to a simmer, while continuously stirring. The sugar should have dissolved, and the whole should be a uniform light yellow colour.

Remove the mixture from the heat, and strain into a bowl to remove the lemon peel and any stray pieces of overcooked egg.

Continue to stir and as you do, pour in the gelatin. Stir to thoroughly combine.

Pour the flummery into the mould. Once it has cooled completely, refrigerate

The next day, gently turn out your flummery onto a flat plate or serving tray. If you’re serving it as part of special dinner, decorate it with edible flowers – a popular Colonial era method of presentation. If you’ve just made it for your own enjoyment, then I strongly recommend jiggling the plate back and forward while saying “Flum-a-lum-a-lum-a-lum-ery” in time to its wobbles.

 

Creamy Pumpkin Wastersupper for the Invalid

Sometimes I doubt if I have the true grit and crazed single-mindedness to be a writer. But not today. For today I looked at my sick wife and toddler, both suffering from the same cold I myself had, and thought, “This is the perfect chance to test some invalid cooking.”

Invalid cooking, if you’re not familiar with it, is cooking for the sick – more specifically, the perpetually or terminally sick. It's not a chapter you'll find in a modern cookbook, but no Victorian era cookbook was complete without it. Though it’s tempting to say that it’s because people don’t care for their ill or disabled family in their home any more, statistics show this isn’t the case. It’s certainly not because modern medicine has done away with long lingering deaths. If anything, modern medicine does an even better line in long, lingering deaths than its Victorian counterpart.

I think the fall of ‘invalid cooking’ probably came about because of changes in attitudes towards the disabled and ill, who are no longer seen as a different species (at least not in the circles I travel in). When my wife’s mother was dying of cancer, she ate whatever she damn well chose, which was mainly Twisties.

Invalid cooking was still rattling round the margins of our society until relatively recently. At her blog I Taught them How to Cook, Jenny Ridgewell recounts the horror of trying to excite cookery students in 1970s London about the prospect of serving a tasteless aspic on a starched white cloth to a sick person in bed. An even more recent appearance, from my own bookshelf none the less, is in the 1997 edition of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union Cookbook – a work of rural cookery so classic that even Wild Colonial Grandma uses it, despite having views on religion that make Richard Dawkins look like a lily-livered moderate. The good old PWMU suggests such invalid cookery classics as barley water, beef tea, and steamed chicken. It's selections are notably light on flavour, body, or crunchy bits.  

This takes us neatly into the issue of what made the cut as invalid cooking: essentially, the thinner, less flavoursome, and less nutritious, the better; as Victorian ideas about illness posited that people in their weakened state couldn’t handle anything that took too much digesting. (You can read more about the Victorian understanding of illness at this great page from the Victoria and Albert Museum).

Of course doctors still believe that diet can play a role in health, but in the modern era dietary recommendations are usually specific to the condition. For instance, as I speak my household labours under a diet to prevent my wife’s prediabetes getting too big for its britches and turning into the full-blown kind.

So considering all this, you might wonder why I decided to subject my sick family to this fossil of a food genre. Apart from my newly-found overweening literary ambition, that is.

Well, in addition to being easy on their presumably fragile digestive system, a lot of invalid food also had an element of comfort about it. Warm broths, creamy porridges, soothing teas – just the sort of thing to help a modern person through the horror of the common cold.

The recipe that I chose to attempt was selected purely on the basis that we already had all the ingredients at home. I had, after all, been up the night before at 3AM trying to breastfeed a toddler whose entire being seemed geared towards the production of snot and misery. But it turned out to be a happy selection. Not only does this recipe have interesting things to tell us about colonial Australian food culture (more Germans than you’d perhaps expect); not only did it produce a dish unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a modern cookery book or tasted in a modern restaurant; it also turned out to be one of those rare recipes that work so well on their first go that they become an instant family favourite.

So here it is: pumpkin soup, of a kind you’ve never even considered. Made with four ingredients and almost zero cooking technique, it’s a beautiful pale yellow, and creamy without being heavy – a sort of airy savoury custard. Containing a glass of milk and about 200g of completely hidden veggies per serve, we’re talking about a health food here, but if anything it feels like a sweet treat. For people feeling nauseous, or too tired to operate a knife and fork, this is the sick-bed meal for you.

Yes, I realise I’m raving, but I’m 90% sure it’s not the sleep deprivation talking. I can say in all honesty that when I’m sick in the future, this is what I will cook.

 

Here is the original recipe:

Waster Supper, or water soup, is a term they apply to all kinds of soup which re- quire no wine or stock. They are very nice for invalids. I will give a very pala- table one.  

Pumpkin Soup. - Cut the pumpkin in slices and throw the rind away, Boil it in milk until soft, and add a little butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Pass it through a cullender before serving.

DOMESTIC COOKERY. (1873, May 2). Portland Guardian and Normanby General Advertiser (Vic. : 1842 - 1876), p. 3 Edition: EVENINGS. Retrieved August 3, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65430054

 

Creamy Pumpkin Soup for the Invalid.
(Photo taken by an invalid - be kind!)

 

 

 

Creamy Pumpkin Wastersupper for the Invalid

Ingredients

450g pumpkin (weight without skin)

570ml milk

1 t butter

A few shakes of cinnamon per bowl or mug

Cooking Time

Half an hour or less, depending on how thinly you slice the pumpkin

Servings

2 hearty bowls, or three pathetic man-flu soup mugs

Method

Slice the pumpkin as thinly as you can without getting fussy about it. The thinner the slices, the quicker it will cook, but don’t stress – you are ill, not auditioning for Masterchef.

Put the pumpkin and milk in a small to medium sized saucepan. You’ll know you’ve got it about right if the milk almost or completely covers the pumpkin. If it doesn’t, add another dash of milk. Now is no time for dirtying two saucepans, and the recipe is pretty forgiving.

Bring to the boil, and then turn down to a low simmer. Put the lid of the saucepan on ajar, and cook until the pumpkin is starting to break up. If you cut it nice and thin, this will happen in about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Remove from the heat and blend until completely smooth.

Return to the heat, and add the butter. Stir until the butter has melted, and is thoroughly combined in the soup.

Serve in bowls or mugs, with a shake of cinnamon on top.

It’s sweet already, but if you want it super sweet stir in a teaspoon of sugar or your favourite alternative sweetener.

Enjoy, you sad, sick specimen.