In
1747, a young British wife of an Irish soldier wrote and published what would
become a most popular book.
Her
name was Hannah Glasse and the book was The
Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. It
was reprinted twenty times by the end of the 1700s and could be found in just
about every kitchen in the English countryside and the American colonies.
It
is considered one of the first collections of rural recipes, designed for the
home and the hearth instead of the court and the castle, and written in plain
English to help and instruct wives and domestic servants instead of chefs,
hunters, butchers and gourmets.
It
was the first cookery book to take into account a house’s purse and economy,
favoring the local herbs, fruits and wild game that could be found and hunted,
for free or for cheap, in the typical rural village, out in the street markets
or along the country roads.
This,
in itself, was revolutionary. The
subtitle of the book says it best: far
exceeds any Thing of its Kind yet publifhed.
At
the end of her introduction, Hannah Glasse states her simple mission: only hope my Book will answer the ends I
intend it for; which is to improve the servants, and save the ladies a great
deal of trouble.
Flipping
through the table of contents, there are recipes for every sort of occasion and
audience. Chapter Four is entitled: To
make a number of pretty little dishes fit for a supper, side dish, and little
corner dishes for a great table. Chapter
Ten contains recipes under the heading, Directions
for the Sick, and Chapter Eleven is written For Captains of Ships.
There’s
even a recipe for moonshine, plus directions on how to make homemade wines
using raspberries, quince, cherries, elderberries and dandelion.
She
cooked with a whole different menagerie of animals. Sure, you got the usual proteins of beef,
pork, poultry, mutton and eggs, plus salmon and carp and cod, anchovies and
mackerel.
But
then there are recipes for tame ducks, teal, wigeons, woodcocks, snipes,
partridges, pigeons, lark and eel.
One
of her most famous recipes is for traditional jugged hare. We would call it rabbit stew except, when
making jugged hare, you stuff the hare in a jug and place the jug in the pot of
simmering broth.
That’s
a technique that hasn’t survived into the twenty-first century but I’m not
complaining. In the end, Hannah’s
directions are to just pick apart the meat from the bones of the hare and add
it to the flavorful broth, serve hot.
Skipping
that step seems okay. Saving trouble was Hannah’s goal, after
all, and in today’s modern kitchen, actually jugging a hare seems like a whole mess of trouble.
But
what about the first step of her recipe?
Go catch ye a
hare.
We've made it pretty easy to skip that step too.
Well,
not me.
Not
this time. Not now, especially not now.
Citybillies,
these are the days and nights of the Strawberry Moon and there is plenty of
food out there for the taking, just ripening on the vine, ready to be plucked
and picked from the mean streets of the city grid and into the warm kitchen of
the urban cabin.
So,
in the great tradition of Hannah Glasse, I humbly present Cookery with Jon Spruce…
…wherein
I will forage and prepare one of spring’s best recipes, featuring two of my
favorite Strawberry Moon ingredients.
“OUR DIET MUST
ANSWER TO THE SEASON…”
First
step in this recipe?
Fetch
ye some honeysuckle.
