The History of Recipes

Some of the recipe books from my collection

Yesterday I placed some of my recipe books in a pile on the dining table and photographed them. While doing this many memories came flooding back. Oh, I remember; this one was bought in a fundraising project at my son's school. Where did I get this book? Mmm, I muse as I page through another.( I actually love to read recipe books.) And this one? Oh yes, it was given to me as a farewell gift when I left the diamond mines in Namibia. Oh, and here is the latest addition to my collection, “Hunger for freedom” which post you can read about here.

Of course, having a blog is a wonderful vehicle to record my reminiscing and share my recipes with you. As a matter of interest, I popped onto Google and looked up the history of recipes.

It is possible to trace the history of recipes as far back into ancient history, as the Egypt of the Pharaohs. Practically though, these old records were just simple pictorial instructions for food preparation. The oldest recipe found, according to Professor Solomon Katz, is a collection of tablets in ancient Sumerian describing the preparation of bread.

As our culinary historical trip moves to more modern times we have a couple of interesting books which were published in the 1300s : one book entitled `Forme of Cury`, and another, similarly entitled `Curye on Inglish`. The titles are a little misleading though, these books are unconnected to the Indian food that is popular today, but rather accounts of the types of food enjoyed by the rich people of that period.

In the 15th century, knights returning from the crusades brought back many foods and herbs from the Middle-East, including spices such as basil and rosemary. The introduction of these new tastes created a torrent in recipe manuscripts, many of which still exist in private cookery archives. Over the ensuing centuries, the upper-class families of Europe competed with each other to serve up the most extravagant meals, and as a result chefs and their collection of recipes were greatly in demand.

It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that fine cookery and recipe collections became really popular. Mrs Beeton in the UK, and the equally well-known Fannie Farmer in the USA, dedicated years of their lives to collecting, trying out, and recording popular recipes of the day.

With the arrival of the twentieth century, cooking books were in great demand. This was primarily as a result of increased literacy, leisure time and prosperity.

The introduction of television opened up the avenue TV cookery programs and the demand for the accompanying recipe books.

Which brings us to the present day and the internet where you can look up a recipe online!

Water Gardening

I realised today that I haven’t done a gardening post for ages! My excuse is that I’m in the garden most of the day and... well, I'm gardening! Even though we’ve had a few more showers of rain since the first drizzle last week, the weather is incredibly hot. When I do eventually come indoors and wash the soil and grime off my hands (and feet, face, legs, clothing!) I am rather exhausted and cannot stay awake in front of the computer.

However, a couple of weeks ago, John (one of my gardeners) and I decided to do a spot of housekeeping in the ponds which I’ve blogged about here.

Several water plants had become thick and overgrown, which prevents them from flowering properly so we had to separate them soon.

We lifted the rootbound plants from the water and seperated them creating a whole lot more

We lifted the plants out of the water and with great care divided them into many more plants. What I originally thought were bog irises, turned out to be some kind of [day] lily. The roots were long and tangled so we also cut off all the excess tentacles. Just as carefully we replaced them in the water. The species photographed above and below, just grow in the water whereas the species in my large pond and which feature in my blog header, had to be re-potted.

An iris by another name or a day lily?

Within a few days, the "pot-less" lilies rewarded me with beautiful new blooms. I’ve photographed the flower of one and hope someone out there can help identify the plant.

The beautiful Orange River Lily (Crimum bulbispermum), a bog loving plant which no water garden should be without

The waxy-looking white bloom with pink in- and undersides (photographed above), is the indigenous Orange River Lily (Crimum bulbispermum) and graces the edge of my large pond.

(Note: The Orange River, where this lily gets its name from, is South Africa's major and longest river. It rises in the Drakensberg in Lesotho, where it is known as the Senqu and flows westward for 2200km into the Atlantic Ocean at Alexander Bay.)

Down memory lane in the kitchen

Cheese puffs risen and baked to perfection

Cheese puffs are still a firm favourite with my husband

As a young girl while dating my boyfriend, (now my husband) I was allowed to visit him at his parent’s home on a Sunday afternoon. Apart from his younger brother, there were always at least three or four friends visiting at their house at the same time. Being the only female, I would normally be convinced to make something for the guys to snack on. Before I married, I was not a keen or very good cook. This particular day, though,to impress my boyfriend, I thought I’d try my hand at cheese puffs.

Asking permission from my boyfriend’s mother to use her handwritten recipe book and ingredients (and mess her kitchen!), I began to gather all the items I would need to bake cheese puffs. I also set the boys to task: one to sift the flour, another to grate the cheese and so on. I beat the eggs into a bowl, adding milk and flour alternatively. By this time I was feeling very grown-up amongst all these clumsy, but dear sweet boys. I added the baking powder and salt and then rescuing the bowl of grated cheese from under one lad’s elbow, I added this last. This was a big mistake. Even though I managed to drop blobs of batter into the patty pans (which my boyfriend greased and floured beautifully – he was the oldest and most mature, after all!) the consistency did not look as good as I imagined it should. Once in the oven, the puffs tried their best to rise but they were not a success. The texture was heavy and the puffs were stodgy and inedible.

Fortunately my boyfriend’s mum came into the kitchen (chased all the boys out!) and said she’d help me to make a new batch of cheese puffs. As I did that day and down the years after she became my mum-in-law, I watched carefully how she did it. (A while ago I did a post about learning to cook at my mum-in-law’s elbow – you can read about it here) She sifted the flour, salt and baking powder together. She added the grated cheese (oh, I seeee...) and then she added beaten egg and milk until the consistency of the batter was correct. Oh yes, she added half a teaspoon of mustard powder (to bring out the flavour of the cheese, she said) and sprinkled cayenne pepper over the dollops of batter in the patty pans.

Cheese Puffs
2 cups flour
½ cups grated cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs beaten into 1½ cups milk
2 tablespoon melted butter
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon mustard powder
Cayenne pepper for sprinkling
Finely chopped spring onion (green part/leaf only)

Method
Sift flour, baking powder, salt and mustard powder together in a bowl.
Add grated cheese
Blend in beaten egg/milk mixture
Drop spoonfuls into greased patty pans
Sprinkle with cayenne pepper
Bake at 240 ° C for about 10 minutes