Gingerbread from Elenor Mundy’s Cookery Book

This is a guest post from Library Assistant Safiya Williams. We’re only a few days into the beginning of Autumn Term and already I am thinking of falling leaves, woollen knits and of course gingerbread. Traditionally flavoured with ginger, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon – gingerbread is a perfect warming treat as the temperature drops. Upon …

Elenor Mundy’s Cookery Book: Cracknells

This is a guest post by Library Assistant Safiya Williams. Like many during these strange and uncertain times I have found comfort in food, faced with shelves empty of my everyday food staples – pasta, rice, yeast – I found myself flipping through cookbooks and notebooks trying to make do with what I have. I …

Recipe of the month: Stewed rump of beef ‘the Welsh way’

The large quantities of herbs and spices used in 18th-century recipes are thought by some to have helped to disguise the taste of old meat, as preservation of fresh food before the invention of reliable refrigeration techniques was difficult. However, rich families with access to their own livestock, or the money to buy quality food, …

Recipe of the month: Cheese rolls

A recipe for dinner party canapés, not from the 1970s, but from somewhere around the 1770s, this recipe for puff pastry Cheshire cheese rolls come from an undated recipe book in the collection attributed to the Willoughby family of Aspley and Cossall. Cheese Rolls (MS 87/1, p. 2) A quarter of a pound of Chesire …