BEFORE THE EXISTENCE of Big Pharma, households had to look after their medicinal needs with what they could find in their presses.
The milk of an ass, mint leaves, honey, brandy and other items were mixed into concoctions that were through to heal various ailments, including urine sharpness, piles and tumours.
Unfortunately, most of these recipes are no longer with us. As families began to rely on paracetamol and antibiotics, the need for hand-me down remedies diminished.
But a Dublin-based published has unearthed a very rare gem. Deirdre Nuttall found Hannah Alexander’s Book of Cookery “almost forgotten at the back of a drawer for generations”.
She had come upon upon the fascinating document from the 1680s which shows how some people ate, drank and recuperated at the time.
She told TheJournal.ie, “The book was written from the 1680s by a lady called Hannah Alexander who lived on Ship Street, just beside Dublin Castle. She gave it to her daughter, also called Hannah, who lived on Aungier Street.”
It has 200 pages of recipes in two sections – a large section of food recipes and a smaller section of medical recipes.
Surprisingly, there is just one mention of potatoes.
“The foods are heavily spiced, full of things like mace, rosewater, anchovies,” says Nuttall. “A lot of food is actually yummy, and I do use the book in my own kitchen, but the medicines are usually less inciting.”
In her introduction to the book, Jennifer Nuttall (nee Alexander) begs the reader to try Orange Fool – “it is easy and delicious and features regularly on our dinner tables”.
Here are a couple of sample recipes from the book:
Take the lungs of a fox as soon as they come out of the fox, wash them in faire water from all the blood, then lay them in white wine vinegar all the night. Take them out and dry them in an oven. Beate them to a pouder, then mingle the pounder of ffox lungs with the pouder of liqourish, Anniseeds, ffennel seeds and caraway seeds of all the like quantity. Let your pouder be froathed well, and mingle them with so much sugar candy as may make them fitt for your taste. You may take this pouder in the morning fasting, dry or in what you please, and at any time of the day as often as you can.
Take the pike and Garbush & Scale it. Cutt the chinebone cleare out, put it in a deep dish, take a quart or three pints of vinegar as your pike is in bigness boyle them with salt and pure it boyling hott on the pike, let it Lye in it 3houres. Boyle it with salt and water and the Liquor it was soaked in and a Lemon pill, when it is boyled drayn the water well from it and dish it, have for your sauce a pound of fresh butter beaten and good store of Horse raddish scraped very small, 3 rootes of Ginger, the Juice of a Lemon, two spoonfulls of Gravey, beaten well together, and thickened with the yolk of an egg and poure it upon the pike, haveing fixed tosts in the bottom of the dish and Garnished with lemons and send away.
Take of the dry stuff that divides the Lobbs of the kernels of Wallnutts. Beate them to a powder and of this give about halfe a dram at a time in a draught of white wine or possett drink made with or in any other convenient Liquor.
Take one pound of English Liquorish the greatest and thickest, scrape the Ryme, clean off it, cutt them into small pieces and put them into a little pipkin close, and lett it on hott Embers to infuse (but not boyle) all night. In the morning, scrape the Liquor out and stampe the Liquorish in a clean mortar to gett all the vertue out of it, then strayne them very hard into a clean dish and sett the dish on a fire on a Chaffing dish of coales stirring it continually to prevent sticking on the sides of the dish. Let it waste and evaporat away but not boyle til it come to a jelly. Then, having ready a pound of double refined sugar with 8 grains of muske or Ambergreese beaten amongst it very small and sifted through tiffony, then take part sugar and part jelly and work them with musk. Labour in a mortar to a paste, and so by degrees work the paste into what fashioned cakes you please or like best, keep them in boxes in allesect[?] or store near the fire till they be thorough dry, when you take a little bitt of the cake, lett it dissolve leisurely in your mouth and by doing so you will soon abate the vigour of the great cold. PROBATUM This was the Queens own cake by which see found such good, that it is said shee had allways some of them about with her.
Take chickens or rabbits and quarter them, breake the bones very well and let them boyle in a little liquor and put them into a frying pan with some of the same liquor and take a shallott or an union, and a little parsley, and mix them very small, and strew them into your frying pan, then take cloves and mace beaten, a small quantity of salt, and mix them altogether and so season your meate in the pan, shake it in the pan over the fire, take some sweet butter and wash it, take some sweet breads, and beate 2 or 3 eggs with a little flower, and so dipp your sweet breads into your butter with some drippings into another pan and make the liqour hott, and so put in your sweetbreads and frye them brown, and take some great oysters and do them in the same way as you did the sweet breads and fry them. Take 2 or 3 eggs, and beate them with a glass of clarett, then putt your butter into the pann, and afterwards putt in the eggs and wine and shake them well together till they grow thick, and put them into your dish, here a sweetbread and there an oyster as your fancy pleaseth, and grate a crust of bread round your dish and so serve it up.
As you can see from the recipes, the family involved had some wealth. Jennifer says:
“The Alexanders were lucky enough to have enough money to cook and enjoy rich food at a time when many went hungry. Given the amount of butter, sugar and alcohol in the recipes in the book, one hopes that they didn’t eat like this every day.”
She notes that most of the recipes are “lavish”, even to modern-day readers.
“Ingredients which seem exotic to us today may have been much less so several centuries ago.”
Jennifer Nuttall wonders if the author Hannah Alexander had plans to publish the book because it was so well presented and indexed.
“Maybe [she] passed the task of finding a publisher on to Hannah Dorothea [her daughter],” she muses.
“But Hannah Dorothea didn’t publish it, and because she had no children we know very little about her – there was nobody to pass on stories of her likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams.
We can only imagine most of the details of the lives of the women who wrote this book and left it for us to find.
Hannah Dorothea died in 1773, aged 87. That was nearly 100 years after her mother began writing the book. She is now buried in St Mary’s Churchyard in New Ross (where she had moved when she was widowed).
Concluding her thoughts, Jennifer says: “Given her great age, a lifetime of wining and dining had clearly done her no harm whatsoever. Let that be an example to us all.”
Want to read more? Find out more about the publisher here and buy the book here.
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