Another year gone

The year in review from the Cook and the Curator. For individual image credits see related stories within the blog

As 2016 reaches its crescendo and we confront the past week’s washing up pile, we’ve had a look at the most popular posts for the past year. Can you guess what topped the list? Continue reading

Sharing the joy – with pudding.

Mrs. Macpherson's cookery class: the Christmas pudding [detail]. Alfred May and Alfred Martin Ebsworth. Australasian Sketcher, December 20, 1879. State Library of Victoria. A/S20/12/79/145

Judging by the fashionable dress of the women in Mrs Macpherson’s plum pudding class shown above, the traditional plum pudding was a standard requirement, if not the centrepiece, on all the best tables. But in the true spirit of Christmas, our archives tell us that the less fortunate were also tucking in to the classic plum pud!

Continue reading

Common sense cookery

Fort Street Public School - [cookery class], 1 Jan 1910, State Archives NSW, Digital ID: 15051_a047_005338

Thanks to the generosity of family descendants of Jenny ‘Dolly’ Youngein, who lived at Susannah Place in the early 1900s, we’ve been able to take a closer look into Dolly’s school cookery homework book, from 1912. We had previously only had a tantalising glimpse…

Continue reading