Elizabeth Farm. Photo © Christopher Shain
Happy New Year from all at The Cook and The Curator! With any luck, everyone’s had a good lie down to recover from a week of festivity and puddings and, in the finest January tradition, is now setting about breaking resolutions that were really a good idea at the time but in hindsight seem, well… Continue reading
Advertisement for Christmas fruits, The Sydney Herald, 20 December 1832, p4. Retrieved 29 November 2012 from http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/12845940
Sydney’s newspapers from the 1840s indicate that there was no shortage of good fare for the festive table, advertising plenty of both imported and local produce. Cooks, on the other hand, could be hard to come by. Continue reading
Mince pies illustrated in Mrs Isabella Beeton, Book of household management, Jonathan Cape, London, 1968, p658. Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Historic Houses Trust
Mince pies were exactly that; they were made with minced meat or, more traditionally, minced ‘neat’s’ (ox) tongue, enriched with spices and sweetened with dried fruit. Eliza Acton (1845) clearly had a preference for tongue – ‘boiled tender and cut free from the rind’ – in her ‘Mincemeat receipt’, nominating the ‘inside of roasted sirloin’ as an alternative.
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Preparing the pudding, Elizabeth Farm kitchen. Still from video © HHT
In December, the principal household duty lies in preparing for the creature comforts of those near and dear to us, so as to meet old Christmas with a happy face, a contented mind, and a full larder; and in stoning the plums, washing the currants, cutting the citron, beating the eggs, and mixing the pudding, a housewife is not unworthily greeting the genial season of all good things.
Isabella Beeton, Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861
Christmas in Australia (detail), Frederick Grosse, 1865. State Library of Victoria
The festive season is upon us, and we’ll be busy celebrating with all sorts of activities, including Carols by candlelight at Elizabeth Farm on December 8, Christmas by the Bay at Elizabeth Bay House on December 14 and Carols under the jacaranda at Meroogal on December 15.
Meanwhile, true to Mrs Beeton’s advice, we will be making a traditional and surprisingly easy Christmas pudding and will also be decking the halls, giving tips on colonial Christmas decorations you can try at home. Continue reading
Pineapple and melon jam in the kitchen at Vaucluse House. Photo © James Horan
What happens when you partner the ‘King of Fruits’ with a ‘rogue melon’? A delicious marriage of flavour and texture which also craftily extends the expensive, exotic pineapple with the more easily sourced jam melon.
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Spot the imposter! An uninvited intruder in Janet Tavener’s ‘Out of the Mould’ installation at Vaucluse House, 2010. Photo Jacqui Newling © HHT
Jellies were often savoury dishes, used to extend and preserve offcuts and left over meats. Brawn and presswurst are remnants of this craft. Jelly was also used to ‘sculpt’ sweet and savoury dishes, formed into whimsical shapes to look appealing at the table.
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Oyster loaf. Photo Jacqui Newling © HHT
Oysters have been enjoyed since ancient times for their unique texture, flavour and perceived nutritive properties. In coastal Sydney oysters were a staple for local Aboriginal people, to which their many middens attest, and European settlers consumed them with gusto.
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Vaucluse Bay, Port Jackson, James Wallis, artist; Walter Preston, engraver, 1820. Reproduced courtesy Beat Knoblach collection, photograph Jenni Carter
This 1820s engraving is annotated:
Oysters of a delicious flavour cover the rocks about here, as well as those in every part of Port Jackson…