Grizzly fate at feasts
Fine dining... Georgian style. John Vincent looks at unusual recipes from the kitchens of centuries ago – and some unsavoury medicinal advice.
It is enough to make the modernday conservationist recoil in horror... and land the chef in court. But back in the early 18th century, diners were free to feast on such delicacies as baked badger, potted otter, swan pie, roasted peacock and puffin.
As we tuck into leftover turkey today, spare a thought for the kitchen staff who may also have been called on to serve up fried lamb’s brains as well as pluck, eviscerate and cook birds such as bustards, bitterns, herons, larks, plovers and godwits.
Nothing was too exotic for the early Georgian gourmand: otters and even young bears were all killed for the pot. Recipes for cooking and serving these now-protected birds and animals are contained in a rare firstedition book by chef Charles Carter, published in 1730, which was sold at Bonhams in 2002 for £2,500.
Now another batch of antique books of recipes, dietary advice and medicinal aids through the ages, assembled by hotelier, broadcaster and food writer Ruth Watson, has surfaced at the same auction house. Some of the handwritten manuscripts are the most fascinating. Take the 1668 tome started by Sarah Turner (£15,000) which includes how to make
“ye Spanish natas”, also “black Hoggs pudding” and “Snaile water to Purge wormes and Slyme in Children” – plus Mrs Hudson’s special cordial said to be “good to expel the plague, measles, smallpox or any other infectious matter... good for women in labour”.
Then there’s Joan Ellison’s manuscript started in 1745 (£1,400) which includes instructions “to make a pudding in a hare’s belly” and the way to prepare “Powder for the teeth & how to fasten them and make them white”. A manuscript by early 19th century
East Anglian Quakers (£7,560) features a recipe on how “To Kebab a Loyn of
Mutton” and a concoction “for any fitts (of ) madness or an extreme pane in ye head.”
Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent (15821651) deserves a mention for her Choice Manual ,or Rare Secrets on Physick & Chirugery, published in 1687 (£890), if only for medicinal advice commending “the dung of a peacock for convulsions and powdered earthworms for jaundice”.
Then there was The Queen’s Royal Cookery of 1713 (£2,295), giving instructions for the “Dressing of all Sorts of Flesh, Fowl, Fish, Either Baked, Boiled, Roasted, Stewed, Fryed, Boiled, Hashed, Frigasied, Carbonaded, Forced, Collared, Soused, Dried etc”.
Finally, back to 18th century chef Charles Carter, who cooked for the Duke of Argyll, Earl of Pontefract and Lord Cornwallis, and his endorsement of bear meat. “A young Bear is certainly as good Meat as the World affords, no flesh is Sweeter, of a better Relish or finer Colour,” he observes.
Space prohibits full cooking instructions but suffice to say it involves baking as one would venison – with the addition of a vast amount of bacon, butter and lard.