Welcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and today I have something exciting,
it's new to me but it's very old ... it's called Domestic Cookery by a Lady. Now if
we have a look inside we can see it was given to a beloved wife in 1845. The first edition of
this book was printed 216 years ago and they cost a lot of money to get a first edition,
this is actually a 67th edition and it's dated 1843 so this one is nearly 180 years old.
So who wrote it? Early editions just say 'by a lady' which was common at the time
and to give you some insight into that let me read you this ... while man has been characterized as
a cooking animal the capabilities of a woman to undertake even the minor branches of the culinary
art have been doubted and denied all gastronomes of a refined grade unite in denouncing she-cooks
and M Ude when he wishes to express his contempt for any commonplace dish says a woman can do it.
An observation of Dr Johnson shows up on how very low scale that learned person rated the culinary
talents of the sex women he remarks can spin very well but they cannot write a book of cookery.
Well I'd like to disagree with that one 🤨 and even this excerpt goes on to disagree with it. Women
have written more extraordinary things since his time and Mrs Rundle's excellent work a work which
far surpassed all its predecessors shows that the doctor did not do justice to feminine ingenuity.
They were having to defend the fact that the cookbook was written by a woman! This book
actually sold more than half a million copies in her lifetime and if we go back a page it actually
says that this little work would have been a treasure to herself the author when she first set
out in life and therefore she hopes that it may prove useful to others in that expectation it's
given to the public and she will receive from it no emolument (now that means no profit she would
not get paid for this book) so she trusts that it will escape with no sense here or no disapproval.
So she gave this book of recipes to a friend John Murray who was a publisher and he published it and
put himself down as the copyright owner. Extra recipes have been added into this book with each
new edition but original ones are still marked by ER if they were by Mrs rundle so let's make one of
those let's try this lemon sponge. To a pint of water put an ounce of isinglass. Isinglass comes
from the air bladder of fish. Flat fish like this pomfret don't have one but bony fish like this
schnapper do. If we take off the fillet then lift up the ribs and pull this bit out of the way oh
i don't really like raw fish, i'm sorry it's a bit gross but this is the air bladder here
and it's used by fish to control their buoyancy so they can stay at a depth that they want to
without floating up or sinking down and that makes swimming a lot more efficient for them.
I'm going to cut two of these up i'm not really sure how much i should use here. Sturgeon fish
are the most commonly used ones for isinglass and it's still used today in beers and wines to make
it clear to clarify it and so why do we need them for this dessert? Well it's going to help it set
so we put them in a pot with some water and simmer it for several hours until only a small amount of
the liquid is left and we'll just strain that into a bowl. After leaving it in the fridge overnight
you can see it sit like a very firm jelly. Now I'm not sure if they were making this using
fresh like I just did or using dried so that makes the quantities quite tricky but it does say we
need the rind of a lemon the juice of three half a pound of sugar and the isinglass. I'm going to
have to warm that up again just to melt it again in the recipe they just had it warm from the
beginning they didn't let it set in the fridge but I wanted to show you that it sets like gelatin.
Now we need to add the white of one egg and whisk until it's white and thick. The vintage
egg beaters that some of you might be familiar with were not invented for another 40 years so
we're just stuck with a whisk! Electric beaters would be another 40 years after that because
there was no electricity yet. Once that is white and thick I guess we just tip it into a glass
now I've also repeated this recipe but used gelatin instead of the fish air bladders so
that we can compare how they set. What else can we make? This one caught my eye
egg mince pies it just sounds weird it has ER there so we know it was by Eliza Rundle...
it says boil six eggs hard and cut them small. Now i've boiled these and let them cool i've never
seen a dessert recipe with boiled eggs in it and that's why i thought this would be interesting. It
said to cut them small so hopefully that is small enough. I've weighed the eggs
so i could then measure double the quantity of chopped suet which is what it said we needed next
this is sewage so it is fat from red meat like lamb or beef. This really seems like a
lot of meat fat for inside a pie. Then it says add a pound of currants half a pound of chopped
raisins and the peel of a lemon grated. Okay so let's chop some raisins and add those in
next the currants and some grated lemon rind. I do wonder if the currants were not dried
currants like nowadays if you see currants in a recipe it does mean dried currants but back then
I'm wondering if they meant the berries like red currants. Next it says add half a nutmeg a
teaspoon of allspice and a little salt. That's the grated nutmeg the allspice and a pinch of salt.
Now it says we need sugar candied lemon peel and two glasses of sweet wine.
It didn't actually say how much sugar to add so i'm just guessing here and there's no quantity
for the candied lemon peel either so i'll just put some in it's a bit bitter so i won't put
too much on and then the two glasses of wine and that's it. It doesn't say what to do with this
but it is in the section of pies so i assume we mix it all together and then line a pie dish with
pastry and tip it in. I can't help but think that once all this suet melts it's going to be an oily
mess but perhaps it's supposed to be served cold once it's baked so maybe i'll try that. I did
some research on Mrs Rundell and there's not a lot about her that has been recorded. I couldn't even
find any portraits of her, she's a best-selling cookbook author and there's no information.
She was born Maria Eliza Kettlebee in 1745 she was an only child and she was described as a woman of
wealth. When she was 21 years old she married a surgeon called Thomas Rundell which is where
she gets her last name obviously. Rundell was one of 16 children and one of Thomas's brothers
worked at a jewelers in London and he borrowed money off Eliza and Thomas
to buy into the store with his business partner Bridge. Maria and Thomas went on to have two sons
and three daughters and when she was 50 sadly her husband passed away. She then apparently traveled
and lived with her daughters and obviously wrote books. It says here the authoress Mrs Rundell,
sister of the eminent jeweler on Ludgate Hill was afterwards induced to accept the sum of
2000 guineas from the publisher. With inflation that's equivalent to about 188,000 pounds today
which is a lot of money and it sounds so nice when it says she was induced to accept it when in fact
she took the publisher to court when she was 74 years old over the rights to the book and as a
result of that he had to pay her the money. One of their sons ended up working at the jewelry store
on Ludgate Hill with his uncle so it was renamed Rundell and Bridge and Rundell. The store was
the principal jewelers and goldsmiths for the royal family making everything from crowns to
candelabras this was a very successful jewelers and it may have so outweighed the success of
the cookbook that there's more written about the jewelry store than there is
about Eliza Rundell. Estate Diamond Jewelry in New York who specializes in rare vintage rings
have sent me a very old ring for this video. The ring is actually from England originally i don't
think it's from Rundell and Bridge but i'll get a close-up so you can see the hand carving on the
side which is indicative of its age this was very common in that period. Vintage rings like this
are one of a kind there isn't another one that looks the same as this because it is handmade.
You can see on the inside it says 1854 but to be honest anyone could engrave a ring so you really
need an experienced jeweler that you can trust to be able to date old jewelry like this for you.
Let's make one more recipe and then taste them all ... here we have a sponge cake by
Mrs Rundell and it says we need eight eggs half the whites three-quarters of a pound of sugar
half a pound of flour a quarter of a pint of water and the peel of a lemon and mix as follows.
Now, this is interesting to me because this is the first old recipe i've seen that
has the ingredients listed first and then the directions usually it's all just mixed through.
Overnight pare a good sized lemon thin and put the peel into water
and when about to make the cake put the sugar into a saucepan and pour the water and the lemon
peel into it and let it stand by the fire to get hot. Break the eggs into a deep earthen vessel
that has been made quite hot whisk the eggs for a few minutes with a whisk that has been well
soaked in water. I'm not quite sure why the whisk was supposed to be wet
but you might be able to tell me in the comments. Make the sugar and water boil up and pour it
boiling hot over the eggs and continue to whisk them briskly for about a quarter of an hour, wow!
This is really hard work even swapping between Dave and me, a quarter of an hour whisking is a
long time 😰 or until they become quite thick and white which is proof of their lightness. Have
flour well dried and quite warm from the fire and just stir it lightly in and put the cake into tins
lined with white paper and send them immediately to be baked in a moderately hot oven. These have
so much air in them that they didn't need baking powder they rose up nicely as they cooked but then
shrunk back down a little. Well I think it's time to taste all these goodies ... Here we go...
It's a bit sort of chewy and dry, um, flavor is okay
but yeah just the texture's not quite it's not quite Ann Reardon. It's almost as if you took a
regular sponge and you left it out overnight and then you came back to it the next day like it's
not bad and it's not stale but it's definitely a bit too tough and also maybe slightly less sweet
than what I would expect from a sponge cake but it's certainly edible. And now
on to the boiled egg and suet fruit pie. This looks possibly more dangerous...
Um, all right I'm just delaying because I don't really want to eat it...
I don't mind it's sort of fruity and it's got a little bit of a different texture to it
but it's quite pleasant, feels a bit um sort of sticks to the top of your mouth
a little bit sort of oily or buttery. It kind of tastes how it looks it's just
a lot of raisins in some pastry it might be better hot could I taste can I taste it warm?
Well it's kind of falling apart now that it's hot. What is in here, is it actual mince?
I liked it better when it wasn't hot. 😂 Mix them with double the quantity of
chopped suet ... oh so it's like just pure fat. Meat fat yeah.
What are you doing with the eggs cause it doesn't really taste like egg. It's got hard-boiled eggs
chopped up that's what those white bits are. Maybe that's why it tasted worse when it was hot.
The lemon dessert settled out into two layers with the froth on the top and
the lemony bit down the bottom the one set with the air bladders of fish settled out
more so than the one with the gelatin the foam was a bit more stable on the gelatin one.
All right so this is the 200 year old traditional lemon sponge did you say that's what they
called it okay let's have a little taste I'm hoping for a lemon meringue pie type of vibe.
Anything from 200 year old can be a little scary
it's, it's kind of liquidy I'm not sure if the setting agent really worked that well...
It tastes fine. That's not bad lemon meringue pie-ish minus the pie.
If there's something weird if they've blended peasant's feet in there or something I
can't taste it. I can't imagine having more than about two or three teaspoons before I just turn
into a sugary mess. So in that dessert they used the air sacs from fish as the gelling agent.
Okay. Oh yeah well it still tastes fine I would eat it. Air sacks and fish...
no I didn't taste that but it's pretty unappealing the thought of it. But the
thought of gelatin in itself is unappealing that's made from bones and ... Yeah true
true. So so if you didn't taste fishy it's an improvement ... Sure it's an improvement,
it's an improvement until you find out what's in it. If you'd like to see more recipes from
this book be sure to like comment share and watch more of the 200-year-old episodes.
With thanks to my wonderful and amazing patrons for your support
and encouragement it means so much to me make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday 💕