Tainted food, 1852 edition

Coffee, fragrant and refreshing, has almost become a myth...

...with foreign roguery and home roguery, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the sore temptations to cheat the customs, the chances are twenty to one against us, that the brown powder we are at so much pains with, once flourished at the end of a blue flower, on a long stalk under our own hedges, being known where it grew under the name of wild endive, christened in trade chicory, and being in reality a tall and aristocratic sort of dandelion, possessing too the medicinal properties of dandelion, and none whatever of the properties of coffee. But even if people be taken with a liking or this dandelion tea instead of coffee, they cannot even have it pure, the chicory itself is far too costly to content the avaricious roguery of a number of dealers, and so the chicory itself is adulterated with roasted corn, parsnips, manglewurzel, beans, Egyptian lupin seed, biscuit powder, burnt sugar, roasted carrots, oak bark, tan, acorns, mahogany sawdust, and no little sand, the result of the original dirt judiciously left as a make-weight upon the root of the chicory itself.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

Even the fake coffee wasn't real!

The author goes on to tell us that:

-Mustard was just flour and husks with turmeric.
-Milk might contain ground-up bits of plaster.
-Green tea was black tea coated with a poisonous dye to look green.
-Brown sugar contained dirt.

If someone said your cookies "taste like dirt," they might just be on to something. Of course if you were offended, you could always make them some green tea.

Mac 'n' cheese, 1852 edition

--CHEESE MACARONI.

Take a quarter of a pound of macaroni, a pint and a half of new milk, put it in a stewpan, and let it stew till quite tender, take half a pound of Parmesan, grate it, add it to the macaroni, quarter of a pound of butter, pepper and salt, and a little cayenne, according to taste, mix them well together, and let them stew ten minutes, brown with a salamander, and serve.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

This sounds delicious and rich. By the way, salamanders were blobs of metal you could heat up in the fire and hold over food to brown it. Much like chefs might use a butane torch today.

Science reporting, 1852 edition (with translations)

With this oxygen our life is in some sort a continual battle; we must either supply it with especial food, or it will prey upon ourselves;--a body wasted by starvation is simply eaten up by oxygen. It likes fat best, so the fat goes first; then the lean, then the brain...

A human is like a fire, you have to keep throwing fuel on it or it goes out.

The reason for this hungriness of frosty air is simply that our lungs hold more of it than they do of hot air, and so we get more oxygen a fact that any one can prove, by holding a little balloon half filled with air near the fire, it will soon swell up, showing that hot air needs more room than cold.

How fast the human fire burns is entirely dependent on the amount of oxygen that comes in contact with the lungs. Since there is more oxygen in a volume of cold air than warm air your body needs more fuel when it is cold. Put a balloon near "the fire" if you don't believe me.

The Englishman in India provokes a make-believe appetite for meat; he has no notion of changing his home-habits because he has left home a few thousand miles away; he goes to war with sun and air, eats meat abundantly; in short, stops up the grate with throwing on fuel where there is but little of the fiery oxygen to consume it, grows sickly yellow, and so pays in suffering the common penalty of ignorance.

If you move from a cold (high oxygen) environment to a warm (low oxygen) environment you need to cut back on cold weather foods, like meat. Otherwise 'fuel' will build up in your body, you'll turn yellow, and die.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

So far we have these "modern" ideas:

-The food you're eating can make you sick.

-Toxins can build up in your body.

Later on in the book they tell you the ideal food (human milk) and provide a nutritional chart to help you match it. They recognized two main nutrients, the flesh producing and the warmth giving, but you had to navigate an elaborate ratio system (each food has its own ratio of nutrients) if you wanted to eat in a healthy manner.

Easy as pie, 1852 edition

--MARROW PUDDING.

Take half a pound of beef-marrow finely chopped, a few currants washed and picked, some slices of citron and orange peel candied, a little grated nutmeg, a table-spoonful of brandy, and the same of syrup of cloves, and half a pound of Naples biscuits; strain to this a quart of new milk boiled with cinnamon and lemon peel; allow the mixture to cool, and then add the yolks of eight eggs, and the whites of five. Bake it in a dish with a puff-paste round it.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

Most pies were meat based and recipes for sweet pies were mixed in with recipes for savory ones. They would even make free-standing pies, which almost sounds like an alien idea to me:

Desperate Housewives, 1852 edition

Her first and imperative duty is to make herself acquainted with the extent of her husband's income, its resources and its limits, and to resolve with firmness to regulate her household with such prudent and proper economy as not to exceed it.

From this resolution, as she hopes for the maintenance and continuance of a happy home, unshaken by creditors, unthreatened by poverty, let no consideration, no ridiculous pride, no assumption of a position beyond her means, suffer her to depart; her future welfare, and that of her husband and children, depend in a great measure upon her perseverance in this determination.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

Reading this book and seeing what kind of ideas would be going through a traditional housewife's mind, I'm wondering if the housewife-dissing feminists were really feminists at all. From the perspective of 1852, they kind of sound like stuck-up rich people.

By the way, the stove pictured was an economy model and took a pound of coal an hour to keep going. It could cook for a dozen people, and was considered portable.

Spam, 1852 edition

--VENISON POTTED.

Put the venison into a pan, and pour red wine over it, and cover it with a pound of butter, put a paste over the pan, set it in the oven to bake. When done take the meat out of the gravy, beat it well with the butter that has risen to the top, add more if necessary, season with pepper, salt, and mace pounded, put into pots, set them in the oven for a few minutes, take them out; when cold cover with clarified butter.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

To preserve meat, you'd cook it, mash it up with fat and spices, and then cover it with clarified butter. There were many recipes for 'potted meats' as they were called and even suggestions on how to deal with meat that didn't smell good any more. Potted meat is still made today.

Education problems, 1852 edition

Unfortunately, although much has been said and written in the subject, domestic economy does not form one branch of the education of a young lady; she learns, of course, French, German, Italian, Music, Dancing, Drawing, takes Calisthenic exercises, &c.--accomplishments, with one or two exceptions, of which she rarely takes advantage after her marriage...

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

They spend hours and hours every day teaching children information they never use. And I can't understand why they spend time in gym when they don't have the basic skills needed to survive in the world.

Beef, it's what's for dinner, 1852 edition

--BEEF STEAKS—À LA FRANÇAISE.

Take a fine steak and dip it into cold spring water, let it drain a few minutes, lay it in a dish and pour over it sufficient clarified butter hot, and cover it; let it remain twelve hours, then remove the butter, and roll the steak with the rolling-pin a dozen times rather hardly, let it lie in front of a clear fire ten minutes, turning it once or twice, put it into a frying-pan, with water half an inch in depth, and let it fry until it browns.

Mince some parsley very fine, chop an eschalot as fine as can be, and season them with cayenne, salt, and a little white pepper, work them with a lump of butter, and when the steak is brown take it from the pan, rub it well with the mixture on both sides, and return it to the pan until enough; dish it, thicken the gravy in the pan with a little butter rolled in flour if it requires it, and pour it over the steak and serve.

--From The Illustrated London Cookery Book--

Other than their habit of keeping meat at room temperature for long periods of time, their recipes sound pretty good. By the way, many of the recipes called for prodigious amounts of meat; ten or twenty pounds. Obviously soups would always be going, to handle the leftovers and extra bits.

Celebrity Chef, 1852 edition

The Illustrated London Cookery Book

by
Frederick Bishop
Late cuisinier to St. Jame's Palace, Earl Grey, The Marquis of Stafford, Baron Rothschild, Earl Norbury, Captain Duncombe, and many of the first families in the Kingdom

...to give to the public receipts [recipes], which shall enable them to place excellent and even high-class dishes upon their table, without putting them to a great amount of expenditure.

Now, you too, can eat like the rich and famous, but at a fraction of the cost!