Photo © James Horan for Sydney Living Museums
One of my greatest challenges in presenting our culinary past to museums audiences is working out what form foods took – what they looked like, their colour, shape and texture – when we only have written accounts to go by, and many of those offering only scanty detail. Continue reading
Cabbage in the kitchen at Vaucluse House. Photo © James Horan for Sydney Living Museums
We’re gearing up for our FREE! Autumn Harvest celebration at Rouse Hill House and Farm this weekend, and we’ve been foraging through the Rouse Hill family cookery books and manuscript recipes to bring you a taste of life at Rouse Hill during colonial times and in the early 1900s. Inspired by the Harvest program, resident foodie, Jacky Dalton has been experimenting with tradition the of preserving cabbage Continue reading
Rosé shrub. Photo Jacqui Newling © Sydney Living Museums
All that’s old is new again, including the ‘rediscovery’ of shrubs, or vinegar based beverages.
Baked apple dumplings. Photo Jacqui Newling © Sydney Living Museums
With the weather cooling and rain keeping our family (happily!) indoors for much of the Easter break, I seized the opportunity to revisit some old fashioned comfort foods. The nip in the April air inspired me to make some traditional suet ‘crust’ recipes. Continue reading
Formal table setting (detail) at Elizabeth Bay House. Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums
For the Victorian diner the codified languages of flowers and fans were not the only way to carry on a discreet conversation. Introducing the discourse of dinnerware – the language of cutlery. Continue reading
Two Corellas feasting on bunya cones at Elizabeth Farm. Photo Scott Hill © Sydney Living Museums
As this year’s Bunya season draws to a close it’s time to look at this extraordinary bush food, and its role both in Indigenous societies and in 19th century landscapes – just be careful not to stand too close! Continue reading
Salmagundy salad. Photo © Sydney Living Museums
Salmagundy, salmagundi, salamongundy, solomon-gundy, there are as many name variations as there are versions of the same theme. Salmagundy is a fine example of what we might now regard as a ‘deconstructed’ or more traditionally, a ‘composed’ salad, Continue reading
Skipping Girl Vinegar Sign (detail). Photo © Lisa Gervasoni
It’s not often you find a poet in the kitchen, but recording recipes as poems was not an uncommon practice in the nineteenth century. ‘Mother Eve’s pudding‘ is included in Edward Abbott’s English and Australian Cookery Book (for the many and the upper ten thousand), Thackeray wrote an ‘Ode to curry’, but I digress… More pertinent to our summer salads theme, I recalled Sydney Smith’s salad recipe ‘in verse’ (also in Abbott) penned in 1839. Continue reading
No. 4 (detail) from [Five stages of inebriation, ca.1863-1868] by Charles Pickering. State Library of NSW PXB 503
Happy New Year! In the event that you’re nursing a hangover, read on! It won’t cure your headache, but it will give you an amusing word of the day for later. Continue reading
Christmas rum balls. Photo Jacqui Newling © Sydney Living Museums
T’is the week before Christmas – and egads! I’d better get on with the festive fare. It’s not too late to make a pudding, for the family table or as a gift for friends, or home made treats that follow long-standing Christmas traditions. Continue reading