Vintage Book Review - Heritage Cookbook
May 18th 2010 03:13
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Book Review
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Heritage Cookbook
The Australian Family Circle Heritage Cookbook
I remember being given the book back in 1988 and cooking some of the recipes from it such as Creamy Mushroom Chicken and their Creme Caramel recipe.
Somewhere, however, in my hedonistic twenties while I was travelling overseas and my belongings were placed in storage, this book went missing.
I was sad to realise it was missing, when I came back to settle down, as it had some beautiful images and great recipes in it and was a comprehensive chronicle of the development of the Australian kitchen.
Apple Marmalade Pie could have been a typical dish of the early era of white settlement in Australia.
Now in my sensible forties, my husband and I were browsing through a book exchange the other week when I came across this same recipe book for only $5. It looked so familiar to me I half expected the inscription (from my grandmother - I think) to be on the inside cover. It wasn't.
The book is divided into two main sections. The first is called 'The First Hundred Years' and the second, obviously is called 'The Second Hundred Years'.
The first section of the book contains very English based recipes showing the influence of the mother country to the young nation's cooks. Instructions on how to cook Oxtail Soup, Shellfish Vol-au-vent (ok, a bit of French influence too) and Roast Goose adorn the pages.
There is even a recipe showing the influence of the early Chinese settlements called Mr Lee's Stir-Fry.
In the second section, the move away from stodgy puddings and heavy cream-based dishes is evident and a more polyglot of cultures can be seen.
French Onion Soup, a recipe in the cookbook
Turkey Tetrazzini, Italian Lemon Chicken, Jambalaya and Milk Chocolate Mousse are recipes that speak volumes about how the Australian cuisine has developed and become more accepting to the variety of different dishes that were being prepared in ethnic-based homes that weren't necessarily from 'the mother country'.
The beginning of the book has a wonderful detailed account of how the first white settlers struggled through the 'hunger years' trying to live off the paltry stores that they brought out with them from Britain while awaiting more supplies from England. Meanwhile the local Aborigines scratched their heads in wonder at why these strangers were starving when there was an abundance to eat around them.
That's probably why there are no recipes for goanna, snake and wallaby in the book. Despite travelling thousands of miles to the other side of the world, these unwilling adventurers couldn't literally stomach the cuisine of the indigenous locals.
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