War over the breakfast table!

Silverplate eggcup cruet from Elizabeth Bay House.

Silverplate eggcup cruet. Sydney Living Museums EB95/1-8. Photo © Paolo Busato for Sydney Living Museums

We often recreate breakfast scenes in our houses, evoking a time when the first meal of the day certainly wasn’t grabbed at a takeaway or drive-through. Here’s a tale of googy eggs, egg cups and bloody war at the breakfast table! Continue reading

The old boiler

Celebration meal, part of the recreation of a symetrical a la Francaise setting, filmed for the Eat Your History exhibition

Boiled fowl, part of a meal filmed for the Eat Your History exhibition. Photo © Sydney Living Museums

In this, the KFC and BBQ’d chicken age, where even good quality cooked chooks can cost less than a fresh chicken to prepare at home, it seems extraordinary that on the most elegant tables in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was an open preference for boiled fowl. Continue reading