Posts in the category: Hyde Park Barracks

One thing I love about food

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Edible kitchen gardens.

Edible kitchen gardens. Photo Jacqui Newling © Sydney Living Museums

One thing I love about food is that over time so much changes and at the same time so little changes.

Jared Ingersoll, 2013

Guest chef Jared Ingersoll and his mates at Studio Neon teamed up with Kate Walsh from Real Food Projects to host a truly original Farm to Table dining experience at Hyde Park Barracks as part of our feast of Eat your history programs. It was a thrill to be a part of! Jared worked really hard to ensure the food had historical integrity, working from colonial menus and heritage cookbooks, yet maintained his own style and commitment to using local, sustainable produce. Continue reading →

The convicts’ vegetable garden

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Unearthing vegatables grown in a kitchen garden.

Kitchen garden. Photo © Stuart Miller

It was the government’s responsibility to house, clothe and feed the convicts who were lodged at Hyde Park Barracks.  Their rations consisted of meat, flour (baked into bread), maize meal cooked into ‘hominy’, tea and sugar. The rations were to be supplemented with fresh vegetables, but one convict named Charles Cozens wrote that in 1840, the barracks’ soup only contained ‘a slight sprinkling of cabbage leaf’. Continue reading →

Blood on the tablecloth

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Detail of a set table, showing a a plate, cutlery and glasses.

'Supper table' (detail) in Mrs Isabella Beeton, Beeton's every-day cookery and housekeeping book, Ward, Lock & Co., London, [ca.1895]. Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection, Sydney Living Museums

Servant ‘butchers’ dinner guest!

In putting on the dishes and taking them off, I shall observe to you a few things, as many accidents have occurred through inattention and want of care. Thomas Cosnett, The Footman’s Directory, and Remembrancer; or, The Advice of Oneimus to His Young Friends. (London, 1835)

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A convict’s breakfast

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Cooking over the fire at 'Redcoats and Convicts' at the Hyde Park Barracks.

Cooking over the fire at 'Redcoats and Convicts' at the Hyde Park Barracks. Photo © Leo Rocker

Breakfast at the barracks

While Sydney’s ‘toffs’ tucked into a leisurely breakfast – anything from freshly laid eggs to kedgeree, smoked ham or cured tongue, sometimes as late as 11am, the convicts at the Hyde Park Barracks would have had to settle for a dish of dreaded hominy, a porridge made from maize, or corn meal, doled out in the mess halls just before dawn (see recipe below). Continue reading →

Repasts from our past – events in July

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Two women cooking at 'Redcoats and Convicts' at Hyde Park Barracks.

Cooking at 'Redcoats and Convicts' at Hyde Park Barracks. Photo © Leo Rocker

While we continue fine dining with the Macleays at Elizabeth Bay House, other activities at Sydney Living Museums this month whet the appetite with a chance to experience convict life at Hyde Park Barracks, a glimpse of Sydney’s domestic underbelly at the Justice & Police Museum, and a taste of early Parramatta and colonial gastronomy at Elizabeth Farm. Continue reading →