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
Blandfordia grandiflora ['Christmas bells']. Detail of a watercolour by Gertrude Lovegrove, c1888. Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums
For our Christmas card this year we’ve looked to a beautiful exhibition held at the Museum of Sydney: The Artist & the Botanical Collector – The lost works of Lovegrove & Bäuerlen [13 August – 20 November, 2016]. Continue reading
The annual Christmas Fare at the Hyde Park Barrack. Photo © James Horan for Sydney Living Museums
As we delight in the edible joys on offer at our annual Christmas artisan food fare at Hyde Park barracks, it is interesting to reflect on what our colonial counterparts were putting on their tables for Christmas. Continue reading
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!
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…