The Importance of Preserving Food Traditions, and My Surprisingly Strong Feelings about Baking Powder

"AN UNEXPECTED RISE. Bob Sliprail, a Free Settler, having purchased some tins of Hunt's Baking Powder, is horrified at the result of his first experiment in making a pudding."
While this is supposedly an extract from Punch, it appears in the newspaper archives only alongside advertisements for Hunt's Baking Powder in regional papers.

EXTRACT FROM "SYDNEY PUNCH.". (1895, November 23). The Hay Standard and Advertiser for Balranald, Wentworth, Maude...(Hay, NSW : 1871 - 1873; 1880 - 1881; 1890 - 1900), p. 4. Retrieved September 27, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article144647766

As a historian, I realise that nothing lasts. I even know it on an emotional level. After the death of a childhood friend I forced myself to walk the length of the Paris Catacombs repeating the thought that everyone I had ever known would die. Since then I haven't been too troubled by our mortal nature. But it turns out that seeing my culture pass away turns out to be a different kettle of fish entirely.

You see, cookery friends, I consider baking powder a pantry staple. You know - like yeast, plain flour, treacle ... that's just me then? In any case, a recent trip to the supermarket to stock up on baking powder brought about a minor personal crisis. This is because, instead of having pride of place on the eye-level shelf, baking powder was tucked away on the bottom shelf. At first glance, I hadn't even seen it.

Wild Colonial Grandma, who was there riding herd on my toddler, said with equanimity that baking powder probably wasn't very popular any more; and did I know that the Norwegians use ground antler as a rising agent (I didn't - I thought ground antler had gone out in the 1600s). But could baking powder be going the way of ground deer antler, and soon be the sort of thing you ordered from a speciality online store? Surely not!

I'm not the first person to experience this kind of ingredient-related angst. When researching candied Angelica for a colonial recipe, I found an upwelling of British grief for lost Christmas traditions. Angelica, in case you didn't grow up in England in the 50s, is a herb that until relatively recently could be bought candied by the tin and used for decorating cakes.

Candied Angelica was a particular favourite on top of traditional English Christmas cakes, and it's sudden disappearance from British supermarkets a few years ago came as a very nasty surprise to those die-hards still using recipes in which it featured. Though you can substitute other candied fruits in terms of taste, there is really no visual substitute for the neon green logs. The first page on Google for "candied Angelica" is largely filled with people hoping to keep the tradition alive by making their own. 

All of this flashed through my mind in the supermarket. I had the sudden feeling that I was a bit of a culinary fuddy-duddy. Which, for a 29-year-old, is a hard pill to swallow. For me, baking powder is essential. For most other people? Apparently not so much.

Baking powder, to me, means hospitality. With baking powder on hand, no unexpected guest or tradesperson need go hungry at morning or afternoon tea time, because a tray of hot scones can be produced in 20 minutes. My great-grandfather, on seeing people coming down the road to his farm, would put on a kettle of tea and scones in the oven. Both would be ready by the time his guests sat down at his kitchen table. One of my strongest food memories from my childhood is my mother taking a tray of scones from the oven, including a knobbly customer she called the "chef's scone" which was made from the last few offcuts of dough. We, and our guests, would eat her scones with jam and cream if it was a special occasion. For everyday use they were split while steaming hot, and a knob of butter was sat on each half and allowed to melt down into the soft crumb. Scones, and the baking powder that made them possible, meant that no guest went away feeling as if they had gone unnoticed in our home.

Back at the supermarket, I tried briefly to console myself by thinking that this was the way of the world - new ingredients replacing old. Baking powder, as the go-to raising agent, had superseded bicarbonate of soda; which in turn had knocked off saleratus; which saw off ground up deer antler in the early 18th century. I'm sure each had its fans who grumbled when it was superseded. But one glance at the shelves of packet cake mix and pre-made icing on the supermarket baking shelf put paid to that idea. Glumly, I worried that the answer to the question "What comes after baking powder?" might be "Nothing".

Though I have accepted that I will die, as will my wife, my parents, and even my child, it turns out I cannot accept that the same fate awaits my culture. I will rage against the dying of the light, and continue to buy baking powder as long as there is still one specialist online retailer who will sell it to me. And when guests come over unexpectedly, I will feed them with a tray of freshly-baked scones.

Readers, please help me in my quest to preserve this part of our food culture! If you've never tried baking with baking powder before, give it a go. You can use 1 teaspoon to a cup of plain flour or 2 teaspoons to a cup of wholemeal flour, to instantly produce self-raising flour. Entry-level recipes that use baking powder include pikelets and cupcakes. If you live in Australia buy heritage Australian brands such as Anchor and Mackenzies (neither of whom sponsored this post in any way).

Australia's Love Affair with Beef; and a Topical Recipe

Beef Braised in Vinegar (recipe below)

I have an ambiguous relationship with beef. I know, I know - for an Australian, that's like saying I've never really been keen on oxygen. But it's the truth.

For some reason, my family were avid lamb consumers with a strong sideline in pork and chicken, while beef was often left languishing at the butchers. After an unfortunate stint as a vegetarian (no offence, vegetarian friends!), I found myself further plunged into an even more unpleasant stint as a genuinely poor person to whom meat was a luxury. The upshot of this is that I only learned to cook a steak this year. Grim indeed.

I feel the nation's love affair with beef can best be seen in the slightly forlorn advertising campaigns of its two competitors: pork and lamb.




Please eat our pigs. Our lean, lean pigs. Not that nasty, fatty beef. Please!

Image from http://www.pork.com.au./

We love our lamb. Really!

Image from http://www.youneverlambalone.com.au/

If you're the scientifically-minded type that prefers hard data, this table shows the amount of each meat the average Australian puts away each year. (On a related note, I think the average Australian might need to cut down.)

As you can probably tell from the darker 'chicken' line, this data is from the Auustralian Chicken Meat Federation. Beef consumption is still a lot more than that of its direct rivals, pork and lamb. I have no idea why. Has no one else in Australia tasted pork crackling?

This graph is interactive, by the way. You can play with the original over at http://www.chicken.org.au/page.php?id=4

The population of Australia was actually engineered to be fairly carnivorous. Early Australian activist and social engineer Caroline Chisolm used the promise of three meat meals a day to lure settlers over, making us a self-selecting sample of steak eaters.

The popularity of beef can also be seen in the fact that it is the second largest category of Colonial main meals I have collected (behind vegetarian, strangely enough). Admittedly, my spreadsheet of recipes is drawn from newspaper archives and selected on the basis of what I might conceivably get a family member to taste test for me. But I think it's safe to say that beef was darn popular in the Colonial era too.

That brings us to today's recipe. Despite a rather Italian ingredient list including garlic, onion and bay leaves, this end result is thoroughly English. Thankfully it still went well with polenta and sautéed green beans.

Will this recipe convert vegetarians? Possibly not. But it will make a perfectly acceptable weeknight meal, even for the beef sceptics among us.

Here is the original recipe from 1866, which appears to quote a cooking class lost to the mists of time (perhaps this one in New York?):

BEEF WITH VINEGAR. - For this, a piece of almost any kind of beef that is tender, and has little or no bone, may be used. The piece used for this lesson weighed two and a half pounds, and was nicely tied, put in a pan with four tablespoonfuls of fat, the same of broth fro the "Alphabet Kettle", and fried upon all sides until slightly brown, but not cooked. The broth and fat were then poured off, and a gill and a half of vinegar added, also two cloves, two bay leaves, one stalk of thyme, one onion, and one clove of garlic. After being fried in these seasonings for a few moments, a little over a quart of broth from the "Alphabet Kettle" was added, and the whole left to gently simmer for an hour; at the expiration of which time the meat was placed on a plate in which it was to be served, and the sauce after being thickened with flour and water was strained over it.

Recipes. (1866, June 16). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), p. 6. Retrieved April 16, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article138047302

Beef Braised in Vinegar

Ingredients
600g stewing steak, or other bone-free cut of beef
2 tablespoons oil
550ml stock, divided
100ml vinegar
2 cloves
2 bay leaves
1 stalk thyme
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tablespoon flour (optional)

Cooking Time
1 1/2 hours

Yield
Serves 4 for dinner, with a vegetable and carb side

Method
Heat 600ml of stock in a small saucepan.
On a moderate stove, heat a large saucepan or a casserole dish with a heavy base.
Add the oil, and sear the beef on all sides.
Remove the beef, and sit it on a plate.
Tip off the oil.
Add a dash of stock from the smaller saucepan to deglaze the large one.
Add the vinegar, cloves, bay leaves, thyme, onion and garlic. Stir well, and cook for a minute until aromatic.
Put the beef back into the large saucepan, and add the rest of the stock.
Simmer for an hour, with the lid on. Add a dash of boiling water if necessary.
When cooked, the beef should be tender and in an aromatic sauce.
Remove the meat, and set it aside while you finish the sauce. (Don't worry - it will only take a minute or two so your meat won't get cold).
Strain the onion and other seasonings out of the sauce. They have done their dash.
Thicken the sauce either by sprinkling in a tablespoon of flour, and stirring vigorously until there are no lumps; or by reducing the sauce at a roaring boil until it is the desired consistency.
Season the sauce with salt and pepper before pouring it over your beef to serve.

Cookery friends, which is your favourite meat? Is it the same as your nation's?

Cultural Cringe and the Unbearable Brownness of Colonial Cooking

My recent foray into Pinterest has revealed a startling trend, cookery friends. Almost every dish I make from the Colonial era is brown. Brown stews, brown pastries, brown puddings and preserves. Yesterday, I even managed to produce a brown drink.

Quite frankly, it's all a bit grim.

Looking at that page of browness, I had a mild existential crisis. All of a sudden, my Pinterest page seemed a terrible metaphor for everything Australian: not just our food, but our culture, our history, and even the vast tracts of suburbia in which I live. What if we, as a nation, could be summed up in that one unremarkable yet slightly grotty colour?

This feeling of rising revulsion at one's own country is what social studies types like to call "cultural cringe". It's a nagging suspicion that one's country isn't much chop, especially when compared to other contenders. The term was invented by my fellow-Melburnian A. A. Phillips in 1950, but the sentiment goes back to the Colonial era, and quite possibly to the settlers of the First Fleet who hopped off the boat and suddenly thought that London wasn't that bad after all.

(You can read about Phillips' essay here, if you too live in a post-colonial nation and want to thoroughly depress yourself.)

After stewing on my concerns all day, I was cringing hard. Lying in bed at night, I suddenly burst out that I was afraid that no one would ever read this blog because of the subject matter - that Australian culture was in fact an absence of culture, and that this condition stretched back to colonisation making Australian history empty of value as well.

My wife, who had been trying to sleep, commented that I was having some type of hormonal shift which she was sure would pass soon.

As I pondered the brownness of my Australian existence, a phrase from an 1865 recipe kept rattling around in my head. That phrase, to describe America in comparison to New South Wales, was "the elder colony". New South Wales was only 77 years old at the time . Compared to America's 258 years, New South Wales (site of the first European settlement in Australia) still had that 'new colony' smell.

Of course, Australian history doesn't start with British colonisation. But Australian culture is unfortunately another story. There are a few hundred Indigenous nations whose continuous history goes back around 50,000 years; and who have members that survived European colonisation. But in effect, the brutality of that colonisation ensured very little cultural continuity between those nations and the one that now inhabits their lands. Colonial Australians did their best to obliterate the Indigenous cultures they interacted with, and as a result our nation missed out on the chance to be rooted in an older culture. I believe that it is as consequence of this that we are very young, an awkward tween to America's swaggering 21-year-old.

Lying in bed with that phrase rattling around in my head, I started to think that perhaps Australia's browness isn't a cultural vacuum, but is instead the awkward national equivalent of a twelve year old trying to decide if they're a goth or a preppy. We're just beginning to realise that we can shape our own identity. It is only natural that as part of that process we are agonising over each similarity and difference between us and our parents.

I came to a conclusion. Instead of being a hopeless case, writing about Australian history and culture (brown though it may be) was an exciting opportunity. Perhaps, in my small way, I could help Australian food culture inch towards an appreciation of its history, even as it discovered its adult identity.

I felt elated, and full of the importance of historical recipe reproduction.

Well, either that or I'd had another hormonal shift.

Culinary Traditions and the Curse of the Stegosaurus Cake

You may have noticed, cookery friends, that for the last week I haven't been around plumbing the depths of Colonial era cooking for your amusement. Don't worry - it's not because I've reached my limit on the number of pudding recipes I can tolerate reading, or developed a sudden and profound hatred of White Sauce.

It is, instead, because my every waking moment has been dedicated to the creation of this beast:



Behold, the Stegosaurus cake!

I love my wife a lot despite, or perhaps because of, her occasional childishness. You can probably tell how much I love her, in fact, when I reveal that it was for her that I laboured over this Frankenstein's dino.

In Australia, every child for the last few generations has held a reasonable expectation that on their birthday they would be presented with a cake in the shape of something their mum thought they liked. And, at some point in the week before they coughed up said cake, the mums turned to The Australian Women's Weekly birthday cake book. You can read a charming and detailed post about this key work in Australian food culture (complete with retro family photos) at Cate's Cates.

But aside from the fact that childhood Women's Weekly cakes are probably in large part responsible for my wife's request, those books feature only briefly in today's tale of triumph over adversity. That is because I own both the slim 1980s original, and the encyclopaedic 2000 reissue, and neither of the damn things have a Stegosaurus cake in them.

I was bewildered, betrayed, and generally cheesed off. Why had I devoted limited shelf-space to a cake book that couldn't even produce a Stegosaurus in my hour of need? What made it worse is that I know that there's an AWW one out there somewhere, because here it is:

According to the original caption, it can be found in the Bumper Book of Kids Cakes. That's nice.
Image from Women's Weekly online [http://www.aww.com.au/how-to/expert-qa/the-death-of-spearmint-leaves-21183]

Undeterred, I decided to strike out on my own, modelling it on this drawing my wife had found on the internet. With grim determination, I set out to bring it to cakey life:

My wife's dream Stegosaurus.
Image from Kids Dig Dinos [http://kidsdigdinos.com/Dinosaurs/stegosaurus.htm] 

In a whirlwind before carting my toddler to her twice-weekly stint at crèche, I grudgingly used the Quick Chocolate Cake recipe from the back of the AWW cake book to fill both of my cake tins in the vague hope that between them there would be the makings of a dino. [My hint for getting cake in two very differently shaped moulds to be roughly the same height (for evenness of Stegosaurus), is to use a skewer to measure the depth of the batter in each mould until it's roughly the same depth.]

My feeling of smug accomplishment was soon wiped out by the fact that my one month old dishwasher promptly kicked the bucket and refused to work. Perhaps it had seen the cake explosion in the kitchen and had simply given up on life. In any case, after some swearing I lugged my toddler to the car with a final vengeful look at the dishwasher.

As I explained to the lady who took my crèche payment, this Stegosaurus cake was cursed.

I arrived home in a somewhat calmer mood. Two hours of uninterrupted writing and a large latte will have that effect on a person.

My mood soon soured when faced with the reality of the situation. I had a circle and square of cake; three hours before my wife came home from work; and a toddler whose hunger for the aforementioned cake was only rivalled by her hunger for my undivided attention.

Even as a woman of 29, I am not ashamed to say I called my mother.

Wild Colonial Grandma arrived. She, who had made many a novelty cake for me as a child. She who, despite starting life in a dirt-floored shack on a share farm, had studied sculpture at University. She, who looked at the picture, and my two geometric slabs of cake, and rolled up her sleeves with relish.

What followed was one of the most pleasurable times I have ever spent cooking with my mother. My panic dissipated with each of her assured instructions: freeze the cake, it will cut easier; make the icing thinner than you expect it should be; sit the knife in a cup of hot water when you're not using it.

Though she and I had cooked together when I was a little girl, those times had often ended in frustration for both of us. Her direct tone and my extreme sensitivity were not a good combination, often resulting in furious tears on my part and utter confusion on hers. But this week, something slid into place and we worked side-by-side with perfect focus and companionship.

While the AWW cake books had let me down, my mother had not. Together, we defeated the curse of the Stegosaurus Cake, to the praise of our family and friends (and one lady walking her dog past our picnic table at my wife's party). It was a true victory, and even if the cake had turned out ugly and unrecognisable, it still would have been because of those three hours where my mother initated me into the venerable Australian tradition of shaped cakes.  

Stay tuned, cookery friends. A new vista of shaped cakes has opened up for Wild Colonial Grandma, who has now requested a Whippet cake for her birthday.

Hopefully, she will be happier with the results than this actual Whippet.
Image from Corbis [http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/42-17039412/whippet-with-birthday-cake]

Victorian Era Tattoo Designs - Which Will You Choose?

When my great-great-great-grandfather John Lawson came to Australia from Sweden, he proudly sported an anchor tattoo as a memento of his life as a sailor.

John Augustus Lawson, in his later years as a lighthouse keeper. Yeah, he had a pretty good life.

You might be surprised to learn that it wasn't only sailors who were getting inked in the Victorian Era. This article from The Guardian about the increasing respectability of the modern tattoo also includes a potted history of tattooing in England. (Apparently Winston's Churchill's mum had a tatt of a snake on her wrist. Cool.)

While I was researching "Oriental" things that Colonial era people liked (for this article), I came across a great article from 1892 that included four illustrations of tattoos by Hori Chio, a famous Japanese tattoo artist.

Here they are, for your enjoyment.

Oriental Tattooing. (1892, October 1). Evening News (Sydney, NSW : 1869 - 1931), p. 1 Supplement: EVENING NEWS SUPPLEMENT. Retrieved September 9, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article113316312

And here's a bonus quote from the text of the article:

"A young American woman conceived a strange idea and had a monster crab etched upon her shapely calf. The secret got out at a bathing resort."  

If you use one of these designs, drop me a line in the comments. I'd love to see a Colonial tatt on a modern arm.

Candied Ginger: A Tale of Orientalism, Isolation and Recipe!Fail

Let me begin by saying that Colonial Australia was as racist as Donald Trump singing "Kung Fu Fighting" while wearing blackface.

As a society, we were steeped in the fascinated revulsion with other societies that Edward Said would later describe as "Orientalism": a loathing of the 'other' coupled with an adoration of the fashionably exotic. (If you want to read more about this concept, you can do so here, here or here - where people have more time to write eloquently about theory and are presumably not being pestered by a toddler to peel in succession every piece of fruit in the fruit bowl).

In any case, the Colonial Australian attitude to China can be fairly summed up in the following two images.

Chinese people are scary, slimy monsters. With claws.




The caption of the original cartoon reads, "Hi Yah! Me teachee you. Plenty muchee." I could not make this up.

[No heading]. (1896, July 16). Quiz and the Lantern (Adelaide, SA : 1890 - 1900), p. 9. Retrieved September 9, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page19469619

Chinese culture (when used by other white people in ways we're comfortable with) is sooo pretty! And exotic! Oooh, a vase!

From the original article: "Its shape is that of an Oriental water bottle or Carafe".

THE DORE VASE. (1893, December 30). The Bacchus Marsh Express (Vic. : 1866 - 1918), p. 1. Retrieved September 9, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article88191994

So what does any of this have to do with cooking?

Well, despite the fact that Colonial Australia was home to many migrants from all over Asia, including many Chinese cooks, Chinese recipes were not a common part of cooking columns in newspapers.

This made it all the more surprising when I came across a letter from a woman calling herself Hebe (the Greek goddess associated with youth), asking to be initiated "into that Oriental mystery" of making preserved ginger.

Sir, - I have for along time to get a recipe for making preserved ginger. I never thought of writing to you; neither, after   being advised by a friend, did I care to trouble you about such an insignificant thing, but hav- ing utterly failed in my endeavours to find it out myself, I now appeal to you. My great difficulty has been to make the ginger swell,   and if you would be so kind as to initiate me and all your lady friends into that Ori- entail mystery, you will greatly oblige

Aug. 10 HEBE

PRESERVED GINGER. (1868, August 22). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), p. 25. Retrieved December 14, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article138057871

What struck me most about this letter - aside from a hint towards the deep current of Orientalism in Australian society - was how frustrating and lonely life must have been in the pre-internet age for people whose intellectual curiosity could not be satisfied by their immediate social circle.

I am just old enough to remember the tail-end of this era myself, and how thrilled I was when I realised that I could answer almost any question within seconds using the internet. This excitement arose even though I had been lucky, and my mother (the town librarian) had also put together a large and meticulously organised library in our home.

Despite the fact that Australian society, even in the Colonial era, was largely urban, I think that it still would have been possible to feel isolated in the middle of early Melbourne or Sydney, if you had a question about ginger that nobody could answer for you.

Well, cookery friends, we live in an era where questions can be answered, and I am here to answer the question that is no doubt on your lips by this point: "Did the recipe work?"

Things were initially looking good. My wife, who doesn't like candied ginger, cruised past the jar and said darkly that they looked exactly like the ones from the shop. For a few days, I left the jar on the bench, and snacked on these little bites of gingery goodness as I went about my day.

But after about a week, I noticed something ominous. The ginger was changing colour, and a pool of sugar syrup was gathering in the bottom of the jar. As the old saying goes, with this recipe I managed to snatch failure from the jaws of success. My candied ginger looked and tasted great, but unfortunately didn't keep very well. Which, for a preserve, presents a fairly fundamental problem.

I'm going to give you the recipe as I made it anyway, because if I'd known they weren't going to keep I would have cheerfully eaten the whole tray of these hot, sweet little bundles of sugar on the day. Modern recipes that may prove more fruitful can be found here, here and here.

It all looked so promising at this stage.

Here is the original recipe from the editorial team of The Australasian:

[Green ginger is far the best, and ought to be used for this purpose, but if not to be had simmer the required quantity of dry ginger until tender; then put it to soak for a while in cold water. When quite soft take it out and drain thoroughly. When dry, take sugar of good quality, or better still sugar candy, of equal weight; melt slowly over the fire, and add the ginger before the sugar is too hot.

Then simmer slowly until the sugar has quite penetrated the ginger. With green ginger the process is simple, but great care must be used to make a good preserve with dry ginger.] ED.

 

PRESERVED GINGER. (1868, August 22). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), p. 25. Retrieved December 14, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article138057871

There may have been some wastage in my approach to cutting ginger into 1cm chunks.

 

 

"Oriental Mystery" Preserved Ginger

 

Ingredients
Fresh ginger, cut into 1cm chunks
An equal weight in white sugar
1/4 the weight in water (for water, millilitres and grams are the same)

Cooking Time
1 1/2 hours

Yield
This depends on how much ginger you use.

Method
Slice the ginger, and pat it dry.
Dissolve the sugar in water over a low heat, until the sugar crystals are completely dissolved but the mixture is not yet very hot.
Add the ginger, and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer.
Cook until the sugar syrup has thoroughly soaked into the ginger. This takes about an hour. The syrup will have almost completely dissolved (it will coat the ginger as it cools). If you’re unsure, take out a thicker piece of ginger and cut it in half – it should be dark and glossy all the way through. If there is a lighter bit in the middle it’s not done yet. It should also taste slightly sweet all the way through when done.
Allow the ginger to cool a little in the pot, until the syrup is starting to clump around the pieces.
Tip it all out onto a lined baking tray or chopping board, and separate the pieces quickly using two forks (or your fingers, if you have asbestos fingers)
The ginger is significantly stronger and hotter than modern crystallised ginger.  

A complete waste of a good jar.

So in summary, Australia has always had a problem with racism; life was rough for the intellectually curious before the advent of the internet; and the "oriental mystery" of preserving ginger still eludes me.

What is your experience of Orientalism, cookery friends? Have you had any success with preserved ginger?

'The Sky is Falling', Easter Edition

Colonial bun mass-production: The Abel and Company Wholesale Pastry-cooks factory in 1897 Sydney, which at Easter processed (at least according to their advertising copy) "the quantity of Hot Cross Buns...almost too stupendous for belief".

ABEL AND COMPANY, LTD., WHOLESALE PASTRYCOOKS. (1897, October 30). Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1907), p. 29. Retrieved April 2, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71279734

Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day on which Hot Cross Buns are traditionally baked and eaten (which may come as a surprise to those readers who now enjoy them from the beginning of February).

However, don't feel bad if you buy your buns rather than baking them. The commercialisation of Easter, and the mass manufacture of Hot Cross Buns, is almost as old as people bemoaning the impending loss of the tradition of eating them.

From 1854, the editor of the charmingly named Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer advises that the worth of Hot Cross Buns is more than their taste. It is, in fact, their often-forgotten meaning:

"Who eats of 'Hot Cross Buns,' remembering their origin and the lesson they convey, will be
a wiser and a better man." (1)

Twenty-five years later, in 1879, the social column in the Adelaide Observer  had this to say about the tradition of eating Hot Cross Buns:

"The simple fact is that they have lost their popularity in losing their significance. We may continue for a few years to eat [them]... if we like them, but we shall not have the appetite for them that our ancestors possessed." (2)

136 years later, we are still scoffing them down in their thousands each year - even if some of those are decidedly non-traditional choc-chip. Happy Easter, cookery friends. Enjoy being part of the living history of the Hot Cross Bun.


1. BELL'S LIFE IN SYDNEY. (1854, April 15). Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (NSW : 1845 - 1860), p. 2. Retrieved April 2, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article59758533
2.Social. HOT CROSS BUNS. (1879, April 19). Adelaide Observer (SA : 1843 - 1904), p. 19. Retrieved April 2, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article160119907

Australia's Italian History; or 'Just What is an "Italian Warehouse" Anyway?'

In an earlier article I noted that the history of Italians in Australia extends back well beyond the post-WWII wave of immigration.

Here is an advertisement from The Sydney Morning Herald in1850 that offers us a glimpse of Australia's early Italian history:



Advertising. (1850, June 13). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), p. 3. Retrieved March 19, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12918673

In what way was the warehouse Italian? Other than the fact that it sold ham, I have no idea! If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

A Glimpse at the True History of Pasta in Australia

My mind has recently turned to pasta, because my Lady Love and assorted family and friends banded together to get me a pasta attachment for my Kitchenaid for Christmas. Needless to say we are all now in a near-constant carbohydrate coma in the Colonial Cottage.

This led me to wonder if Australians were enjoying the many delights of pasta back in the Colonial Era. Conventional wisdom holds that pasta was introduced by the wave of Italian migrants that arrived after World War II. Wild Colonial Grandma has memories of living in a farming settlement that was all Italians and Cornish (she was Cornish) for a little while growing up, and attests that pasta was a big part of the migrant cuisine. But was there pasta in Australia before that?

One important thing that I soon discovered was that before the modern era 'macaroni' was a catch-all term in English for all types of pasta. It was also a slang word for a dandy, which might clear up any confusion you have about just what's going on in the song "Yankee Doodle".



Macaroni Wheats. (1900, March 24). The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1871 - 1912), p. 682. Retrieved January 13, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article165302182

If we look for 'macaroni' rather than 'pasta' in Australian newspapers, we find that it was definitely in circulation, and from a very early era.

An advertisement from Sydney in 1823 indicates that one J. Tawell of 18 Pitt St had for sale macaroni, as well as many other items including Spanish liquorice and German sweetmeats. (Classified Advertising. (1823, September 18). The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1803 - 1842), p. 4. Retrieved January 12, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2182216)

As the following article indicates, though, it does not seem to have achieved the status of a staple in Australian cooking:

"MACARONI.   THIS nutritious and wholesome article of food is little used in this country. In Italy, however, its use is universal, often constitute- ing the principal food, or taking the place of fish, vegetables, and the desert generally in the regular dinner. It is also sold and eaten in the streets as freely as fruits are with us. Its use is extensive in France and Germany.

It consists of pure gluten, which element constitutes only three and one-half per cent. of wheat flour, and is wholly wanting in rye and oatmeal. The gluten, when wet, is a tough, elastic mass, of a yellowish brown color, and is obtained by dissolving out the starch and other constituents of the flour with cold water.

The process is as follows: The flour, having been made up into a soft dough, is placed on a fine sieve, over a vat of water, and is kneaded-in Italy with the feet --as long as the water which falls on it in a spray, runs through milky. The tenacious nature of the gluten prevents its passing through. Starch is manufactured from the contents of the vat.

The long, hollow tubes are formed by pressing the gluten through a peculiar shaped opening in a metalic plate; and this tubular form, so important to it in cooking is indispensable to the ... moist, rapidly tends to decomposition.

Counterfeit macaroni is made from flour, instead of from its gluten. It has, moreover, a starchy appearance; is more smooth and glossy than the genuine; is apt to be mouldy inside; is not as elastic; when broken, does not show the glossy fracture of the former; and in cooking becomes pasty, and does not preserve the tubular form. The genuine also -as the counterfeit does not- swells up to more than double its original thickness.

It would be a gain to our cookery if macaroni were in more common use among us."

MACARONI. (1879, June 21). The Bacchus Marsh Express (Vic. : 1866 - 1918), p. 4. Retrieved January 12, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article89702126

 Australian readers, what memories do you have of pasta growing up? Overseas readers, is pasta part of your food culture? If it is, when did it arrive?

"We know our duty...we perform it faithfully": Freedom of Expression, Even in 1856

The reason that newspaper archives provide such an excellent source of information about everyday life is in large part due to the newspaper editors' commitment to freedom of expression. While books are usually edited to appeal to the largest possible audience, a sizeable group of newspapers have always held themselves to a higher moral standard, and in doing so have preserved the culture of their day, warts and all.

In response to criticisms of letters they had published, the editors of the Freeman's Journal in 1856 angrily wrote:

"On the contrary, were we to refuse insertion to such letters, we should be arrogating to ourselves NOT the privilege of Editors, but the duties of censors. We are true friends of a free press, and as such must allow freedom of expression to our contributors. If we may not insert certain communications on account of their bad tone, it is equally certain that we have no right to ' dish them up,' — to emasculate them — to cut a sentence out here, and insert another there — to render a rough bushman's right, sturdy, and honest letter something nice — recherche — fit for elegant ladies to rend. We know our duty, and we think moreover, that every man of sense will acknowledge that we perform it faithfully."

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. (1856, January 19). Freeman's Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1850 - 1932), p. 2. Retrieved January 9, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article115563300

In light of the recent terrorist attack at the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, I think it is worth celebrating those editors, journalists and cartoonists who publish the unpopular, the controversial, and even the offensive.  They protect our liberty in the present day, and a more robust view of our culture in the historical record.

"Land Hunger"; or The Great Australian Dream

Commentators often note that the Australian obsession with home ownership is a cultural peculiarity. In Europe and Britain, where a great deal of Australians originated, renting is not seen as a financial black hole that will ruin your life, as it is here.

In Australia, every man's (or woman's) house is their castle. In the case of this 1860s house near Colac, it helped it that looked like an actual castle.

Image: THE RESIDENCE OF W. ROBERTSON, ESQ., NEAR COLAC. (1868, February 4). Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers (Melbourne, Vic. : 1867 - 1875), p. 5 Supplement: SUPPLEMENT TO THE ILLUSTRATED AUSTRALIAN NEWS

Reading very early newspaper articles from the Colonial Era gives interesting impressions about the reasons people came to the colony. The shared interests of these early colonists shaped the culture of our nation, and by all accounts one of the great draws of coming to Australia was owning property.

The following excerpt is from an advertisement for land in Colac, near Geelong. The language, though of course intended to persuade the reader, nevertheless used gives a clear idea of just how passionate the average colonist may have felt about the Great Australian Dream of land ownership:

"There is now no impediment to the gratification of land hunger to the extent of a man's means, and to all who covet a portion of the earth's surface, who wish   to try Sir Waiter Scott's recipe   for an appetite—" walk a mile or two on your own land before breakfast"; who wish to stamp their heel on the ground and say " this is mine from the surface to the centre

of gravity," now is the time."

 

THURSDAY MORNING, NOV. 15, 1860. (1860, November 15). Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 - 1924), p. 2. Retrieved January 7, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article148887775

 

It is also interesting to note that the view that one could own land was the basis for many misunderstandings between the European colonists and Indigenous Australians who see themselves as custodians rather than owners. When Indigenous people were offered goods by colonists to buy their land, they often thought they were being given a gift to allow the colonists safe passage through their tribe's territory. It must have been a nasty surprise indeed when the colonists began to set up a homestead instead of passing through.

 

Having said that, I fully admit to being a product of my culture. The day my wife and I bought our cottage was the culmination of a dream I have cherished since childhood. When I walk up the driveway of my cottage today, I may just give a little stamp, and say "this is mine from the surface to the centre of gravity".