But wait - there's more

I'm a lucky girl. My sister purchased this book for me from the Brotherhood of St Lawrence on line. Who knew you could op shop on line?

Mrs Beeton's Simple Cookery in Colour from 1978 not only has glorious colour pictures of interesting foods. It is also in metric. No more tricky conversions - if I want to make something simple. This book was also published by Ward Lock & Co. which led me to some wikipeding to see what I could find about them.

Yep, there they are. Apparently publishing since 1854 when it was founded by Ebenezer Ward and George Lock (you just don't see enough Ebenezers about these days), Ward Lock & Co opened their Melbourne office in 1888. The company is still in existence and its imprint is still used by Penguin Books.

Ward Lock & Co boast such authors as Mrs Beeton, as well as Nigel Tranters early works, Dornfold Yates and Thomas Hugnes and published the revised edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

However, my copy of Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book was printed by Foy & Gibson. It's a special edition. Foy & Gibson (also known as Foys) was one of Australia's earliest department store chains, modelled on Le Bon Marché in Paris and other European and American Stores of the period. Interestingly, their first store was in Smith Street, Melbourne, which is not more than 3 major roads from my house, and their warehouse/factory was also nearby. So actually, my little book hasn't travelled very far from where it was created (well, sold at the very least.)

I presume it was some kind of collarboration between Ward Lock & Co and Foy & Gibson to release a special edition. But definitely requires further investigation.

Sadly, Foy & Gibson no longer exist.
But the warehouse in Collingwood still stands. So I can see it when I ride my bicycle up to the supermarket nearby.

It's growing!

my collection of Mrs Beeton books that is...

I just acquired this darling copy of Mrs Beeton's Cookery book. This time it was my mother-in-law who supplied the goods... she was showing it to me knowing that I have the other book Actually, she thought I had the same book. I asked if she would leave it to me in her will... so she just gave it to me, although I guess technically it should still belong to Gran in case she wants to pickle anything in the nursing home. (Apparently the sister-in-law gets to have Gran's recipe collection instead.) So this is my husband's Gran's copy of Mrs Beeton... allegedly again given as a wedding present.

However, here I come across the same quandary as I have with my nana's copy. It appears to be a lot older than a wedding present would suggest. This one seems even older than the All about Cookery, and a quick google gives it an approximate date of early 1900s to 1910ish. All very puzzling.

And, intriguingly, this book has lots of different recipes to the other one. Some things that were popular when this book was printed had evidently fallen by the way side by the time All about Cookery was published.

So I'm looking forward to even more adventures with Mrs Beeton.

From the back of my cupboard

to the front of my mind...


Last night at my parent's house whilst looking through the cookery books I came across Mrs Beeton's All About Cookery. It was my nana's book, given to her one Christmas, allegedly by Uncle Albert, with the inscription on the back of the gift tag for her to "don't kill Perc off with the enclosed".

This was the first time I crossed paths with Mrs Beeton but considering my developing passion for vintage housewifery it is surprising that I had not come across her before. According to Wikipedia, which is the font of all knowledge, she is "one of the most famous cookery writers in history." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Beeton

I am endeavouring to get to know her further and explore the knoweldge that she imparted to housewives for almost 100 years...