A hive of industry, and busy as a bee – the work of the humble ‘bumble’ and ‘honey’ bee is extraordinary – their efforts providing honey and bees wax, highly coveted for candles in our colonial past. But more importantly, bees are integral to agriculture, and it was quickly recognised that in order for introduced crops to thrive in Australia, European bees were needed to pollination.

Join us in this video, made for Sydney Living Museum’s Spring Harvest Festival, where you can join us in the kitchen garden for a guided honey tasting with Doug Purdie from The Urban Beehive, who looks after the bee hives on the Vaucluse House Estate.

Noble intentions

Bees are often used symbolically (especially by the French) as is the domed skep (shown at the top of this page, and below) which acts as an inherent symbol for them, to represent ‘industry’ and productivity, a notion that directly relates to their association with agriculture and harvests. The first official government seal for the colonies of New South Wales depicted a traditional woven bee skep, which you can just make out in this wax impression from 1792 (below), to the left of ‘Industry’, seated on her bale of goods (below).

The original seal was described when it arrived in the colony:

On the obverse were the king’s arms, with the royal titles in the margin; on the reverse, a representation of convicts landing at Botany Bay, received by Industry, who, surrounded by her attributes, a bale of merchandise, a beehive, a pickaxe, and a shovel, is releasing them from their fetters, and pointing to oxen ploughing and a town rising on the summit of a hill, with a fort for its protection. The masts of a ship are seen in the bay. In the margin are the words Sigillum. Nov. Camb. Aust.; and for a motto “Sic fortis Etruria crevit.” The seal  was of silver; its weight forty-six ounces, and the devices were very well executed. 
David Collins 1792.

‘A hardy and thrifty set’

When you think that bees had to spend four months sea-voyaging across the equator, it is little wonder that the few that arrived on our shores found difficulties surviving in the settlers’ gardens. Some success was found in 1822,when ‘seven hives of bees – recently arrived from England’ were put up for auction by Simeon Lord [2]. Four of these were purchased by Mr Parr, of George Street, Sydney, and according to the Sydney Gazette and Advertiser, their inhabitants were ‘a hardy and thrifty set.’ The article paints a picture of delight as these new creatures adventured in their now locale:

As soon as the dawn appears, the little animals issue forth from the rest they have enjoyed during the night, and commence their aerial journey over their newly-acquired land; and one squadron no sooner returns heavily laden with spoil, than another troop may be viewed winging away for some favored spot that seems perfectly congenial to their prosperity and nature.
Sydney Gazette and Advertiser, Friday April 12, 1822. p.2

A sweet sensation

In 2016, Doug Purdie from the Urban Beehive installed hives in the kitchen garden at Vaucluse House, and the honey harvested from the hives is sold at the gift shop at the museum or online. For our Spring Harvest Festival we filmed Doug in the kitchen garden, to take us through a guided honey tasting.

Lost romance

Much of the romance of bees seems to be lost  (but none of their mystique – what does go on inside their hives?) with the advent of the more practical layered wooden box-hives in general use today, but the classic dome shape of the traditional skeps is retained in decorative honey pots, tea cosies and bee-hive ‘hair-dos’! Just like all the sugar loaf mountains, the historical nomenclature outlasts the actual namesake.

A sweet tooth

This Honey Toffee recipe, which is similar to a caramel or butterscotch lolly, was found inside a small children’s book that belonged to Kathleen Rouse of Rouse Hill House. Since it had no instructions for actually making the toffee, I’ve had to consult other recipes to come up with a workable method. It’s defining feature is the honey, having more character and piquancy than a sugar-based alternative.

This post has been adapted from ‘All a-buzz in the kitchen garden’ published in October 2016.

Sources and further reading:

[1] Barrett, Peter. The immigrant bees 1788 to 1898 : a cyclopaedia on the introduction of European honeybees into Australia and New Zealand. 1995

[2] Sydney Gazette and Advertiser March 15, 1822 p.2

[3] Sydney Gazette and Advertiser 12 April 1822 p.2

[4] Collins, David (1756-1810). An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales [Volume 1]. 1798.

[5] Sydney Gazette and Advertiser January 23, 1823 p.3

The dining room used by the Wentworth’s at Vaucluse House takes us back in time from the present to the 1830s — not just for dinner for the many generations of families that lived here, but also the longer history of Vaucluse House as Australia’s first house museum.

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A phrase you’ll often hear in a historic kitchen is batterie de cuisine. Though the term today is not often heard outside of professional kitchens and house museums, every household has one. It simply refers to the moveable collection of pots, pans and equipment used in a kitchen, though not the stove or large appliances.

With the growing interest in historic life ‘below stairs’, boosted by television period dramas featuring accurately recreated kitchens (you know which one I mean), house museums now take great pride in their kitchens and associated spaces.  If you’ve ever been to Petworth, a historic house in England, you’ll have seen the famous kitchen with its vast collection of gleaming copper pots.

The Vaucluse House batterie de cuisine

Vaucluse House has an extensive batterie de cuisine of 137 pots, pans and jelly moulds. Though not provenanced to the Wentworth family, it represents a typical collection for a large colonial Victorian household. They are made of copper – an excellent and even heat conductor – lined with tin – which stopped any food being poisoned by excessive contact with the copper.  Several pieces show signs of repair by a tinker, an indicator of their value and the expense of replacing them.

At Vaucluse House the pots were cleaned in the scullery at a low slops sink where the scullery maid would kneel; the sink then emptied towards the nearby creek. The heavy scouring on the Vaucluse pots suggests that at some stage salt, sand or a similar coarse abrasive was used to clean them. To bring up the gleaming colour, lemon juice was used as a polish – definitely not kind on the hands while you do the dishes.

The much-quoted sage of the Victorian kitchen, Isabella Beeton, gave the following advice as to the care and use of kitchen pots and pans:

As not only health but life may be said to depend on the cleanliness of culinary utensils, great attention must be paid to their condition generally, but more especially to that of the saucepans, stewpans, and boilers…  Soup-pots and kettles should be washed immediately after being used, and dried before the fire, and they should be kept in a dry place, in order that they may escape the deteriorating influence of rust, and, thereby, be destroyed. Copper utensils should never be used in the kitchen unless tinned, and the utmost care should be taken, not to let the tin be rubbed off. If by chance this should occur, have it replaced before the vessel is again brought into use. Neither soup nor gravy should, at any time, be suffered to remain in them longer than is absolutely necessary, as any fat or acid that is in them, may affect the metal, so as to impregnate with poison what is intended to be eaten… Mrs [Isabella] Beeton, Book of Household management. Chapter III: ‘arrangement and economy of the kitchen’ 1861.

But how could even a large household possibly use so many pots?

The answer lies in the increasing specialisation of the 19th century kitchen, with inventors of kitchen paraphernalia including Alexis Soyer and Count Rumford, and with the influence of highly trained French chefs who had begun to move to England after the French Revolution. This influence peaked during the reign of George IV, who attracted the ‘superstar chef’ Antonin Carême to his court. Coupled with the invention of the flat topped ‘closed range’ cooking stove on which to place them, soon there were an ever growing range of pots for highly specialised uses: for poaching a specific fish, creating a myriad of complex sauces, for boiling, braising, stewing, frying and fricasseeing.

The list went on – and the washing piled up.

This post was originally published as ‘The cook’s arsenal’ by ‘the Curator’ Scott Hill, in 2012