Trifle, Plague Water, and “Stayabed Stew”

by Graham Burt | Library Associate

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a cookbook as “a book containing recipes and other information about the preparation and cooking of food,”and at their most rudimentary level, cookbooks do serve this purpose. But this has never been their sole function. Cookbooks are invaluable historical documents that give a pertinent view not only into culinary history and culture, but also into politics, economics, religion, class, ethnicity, and gender. The Archival and Special Collections (A&SC) in McLaughlin Library holds over 20,000 culinary books and ephemera dating from the sixteenth century to the present day. Spanning centuries and continents, the following cookbooks illustrate the evolution of thought concerning women and their attitudes, rights, and roles within marriage, the home, and the public sphere. This evolution of thought was, and is, inherently situated within the kitchen; food and feminism, as seen through the pages of these books, have been intimately linked for centuries.

Women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote books not merely to share recipes but also valuable skills and medicinal advice. The Queen-Like Closet: or, Rich Cabinet was originally published in 1670 by the English writer and physician Hannah Woolley (1622–c.1675). It includes culinary recipes for items such as gooseberry fool, orange and lemon chips, trifle, and hot chocolate, but also contains medicinal recipes and incorporates methods to cure smallpox and create “snail water [to cure] consumption,” “a cordial to cause sleep,” and “plague water.”

Similarly, The Young Ladies School of Arts, published in 1766 by Hannah Robertson (1724–c.1860), alongside culinary recipes, provides instructions on how to paint, create shell-work and filigree, and produce home-made cosmetics — hobbies generally associated with well-to-do women in the eighteenth century. By writing to “all Scotswomen,” especially “young women who have no fortunes or may be left in low circumstances,” Robertson hoped that this knowledge might provide opportunities for women of all classes to learn new skills and create new sources of income. Robertson was speaking from first-hand experience. The illegitimate granddaughter of Charles II of England, Robertson was forced to make a living writing and selling books after her husband squandered her family’s wealth.

Woolley’s medicinal receipts and Robertson’s artistry instructions illustrate the prerogative of many women to improve the health and welfare of their families through nutrition, medicine, and creativity. By collecting and sharing their knowledge, Woolley and Robertson not only helped fellow women expand their culinary reservoir but also to become scientists, community caretakers, craftswomen, and wage-earners.

Cookbooks in the nineteenth century, however, gave women fewer opportunities. Around 1818, the English writer John Armstrong published The Young Woman’s Guide to Virtue, Economy, and Happiness with the purpose of “promot[ing] the honour and happiness of women” by providing “instruction to the Fair Sex” on cooking and other household responsibilities. The gaiety of women, according to Armstrong, was inextricably dependent upon their “just performance of the various duties of their sex.” Indeed, Armstrong argued that women could attain true happiness only when the satisfactory execution of their household duties rendered them “most respectable and most amiable in the eyes of the other sex.”

It was not just male authors who promoted these attitudes, though. In her book The Ladies’ New Book of Cookery (1852), Sarah Josepha Hale (1788–1879), an influential American editor and writer (known most famously for writing “Mary Had a Little Lamb”), reinforces stereotypical Victorian-era gender roles. “Cookery,” Hale writes in her introduction, “is an art belonging to woman’s department of knowledge.” When cooking was done well and the table was “wisely ordered with economy, skill and taste,” Hale believed it brought “great honor” and “social and domestic happiness” to women. Unlike Armstrong, however, Hale does elevate the value of a women’s domestic role: “The husband earns, the wife dispenses; are not her duties as important as his?”

By the early twentieth century, women-led organizations in Canada became increasingly popular and influential. In a more pronounced way than ever before, women used their culinary connections and expertise to raise money for, and awareness of, germane social and political causes, including women’s equality. One example is The Spartan Cook Book (1902) which was compiled by “The Ladies of The Sparta Woman’s Temperance Auxiliary,” an offshoot of the Canadian Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. The women of Sparta, a small hamlet located just southeast of St. Thomas, Ontario, produced this cookbook to raise money in order to buy the Sparta Hotel — the hamlet’s last drinking establishment — and stop the sale of alcohol within their community.

In The Woman’s Book (1911), editors Rita Strauss and Florence B. Jack recognized that although women had begun to be afforded greater political, social, and economic involvement in society by the early twentieth century, there was still much work to be done. They wrote: “It is a matter for congratulation that so many new spheres of usefulness have been opened for women within recent years; but we look forward to the time when capacity for work will be the only test of competence to undertake it. To have the work well done — that is the end to be aimed at, whether it be done by men or by women.”

Cookbooks from the mid-to-late twentieth century were altogether different. Take American humourist Ruth “Peg” Bracken’s The I Hate to Cook Book (1960), for example. “Some women, it is said, like to cook. This book is not for them,” Bracken wrote. “This book is for those of us who hate to, who have learned, through hard experience, that some activities become no less painful through repetition: childbearing, paying taxes, cooking.This book is for those of us who want to fold our big dishwater hands around a dry Martini instead of a wet flounder, come the end of a long day.” The I Hate to Cook Book, the manuscript of which was rejected by six male editors before finally being accepted by a female, offered women quick and easy recipe options, which ultimately gave them, as Margalit Fox wrote, “a taste of liberation from the oven, broiler, and stove.” The book also contains entertaining recipes such as “Stayabed Stew,” which could be left to cook by itself and was perfect for “those days when you are en negligee, en bed, with a murder story and a box of bonbons,” and “Skid Road Stroganoff,” which instructed the cook to mix the ingredients, stir, and let cook “while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink.” More than containing amusing recipes, however, Bracken’s book offered a contrary and indeed revolutionary insight into the acceptance of the role of women in domestic spheres. Bracken challenged previous portrayals of a singular women’s domestic experience and showed that not all women necessarily derived fulfillment from domestic tasks.

Cookbooks offer an almost palatable glimpse into the changing lives, attitudes, and ambitions of women throughout history — both in and out of the kitchen. All of the books mentioned in this article are on display on the 2nd floor of McLaughlin Library, and readers are welcome to search and consult any item in our culinary collection in A&SC’s Reading Room.