Image: Eliza Acton · Public domain
Modern Cookery for Private Families
- Year
- 1845
- Era
- 19th century
- Origin
- England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- English 19th C
Modern Cookery for Private Families, issued in 1845, established a new standard for domestic cookery writing in English by setting out ingredients, quantities, and timings in a systematic form at the close of each receipt. Predating Mrs Beeton by some fifteen years, Acton's work was widely drawn upon by later compilers and remains regarded by many historians as the finest English cookery book of the nineteenth century.
Cooking from this book
Superlative Hare Soup
Eliza Acton's celebrated hare soup is a rich Victorian game soup, dark and full-flavoured, traditionally served at the start of an autumn or winter dinner. A modern cook should plan on a long, slow simmer of around three hours and use a heavy lidded pot over very gentle heat.
Cut down a hare into joints, and put into a soup-pot, or large stewpan, with about a pound of lean ham, in thick slices, three moderate-sized mild onions, three blades of mace, a faggot of thyme, sweet marjoram, and parsley, and about three quarts of good beef broth. Let the whole stew very softly, after it has been brought slowly to a boil, and been well skimmed, for an hour and a half; then take out the back, fillets, and legs of the hare, and let the remainder continue to boil gently for another hour and a half: strain the soup, let it cool, take off all the fat, add to it nearly half a pint of port wine, a dessertspoonful of salt, and half as much cayenne, and the flesh of the hare finely pounded with the soft part of a French roll, soaked in a little of the soup; rub these through a fine sieve, give the whole one boil, and serve it very hot.
Hare, 1; ham, 1 lb.; onions, 3; mace, 3 blades; bunch of savoury herbs; beef broth, 3 quarts: 1-1/2 hour. Back, fillets, and legs of hare taken out: 1-1/2 hour. Port wine, 1/2 pint; salt, 1 dessertspoonful; cayenne, 1/2 as much.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
Mincemeat (Author's Receipt)
Eliza Acton's own mincemeat is a classic mid-nineteenth-century festive preserve, packed with fruit, suet, spice and brandy, ready to be sealed into jars for Christmas pies. Pack into clean jars, cover closely, and keep in a cool place; it improves with a few weeks' maturing.
To one pound of an unsalted ox-tongue, boiled tender and cut free from the rind, and from all gristle and fat, and weighed afterwards, add two pounds of fine stoned raisins, two of beef-kidney suet, two pounds and a half of currants well cleaned and dried, two of good apples, two and a half of fine Lisbon sugar, from half to a whole pound of candied peel according to the taste, the grated rinds of two large lemons, and two more boiled quite tender and chopped up entirely, with the exception of the pips, two small nutmegs, half an ounce of salt, a large teaspoonful of pounded mace, rather more of ginger in powder, half a pint of brandy, and as much good sherry or Madeira.
Mince these ingredients separately, and mix the others all well before the brandy and the wine are added; press the mincemeat into a jar or jars, and keep it closely covered in a cool place.
Ox-tongue, boiled and trimmed, 1 lb.; stoned raisins and minced apples, of each 2 lbs.; suet and currants, of each 2-1/2 lbs.; sugar, 2-1/2 lbs.; candied orange, lemon, and citron peel, 1/2 to 1 lb.; boiled lemons, 2 large; rinds of 2 others; nutmegs, 2 small; pounded mace and ginger, of each 1 large teaspoonful; salt, 1/2 oz.; brandy and sherry or Madeira, each 1/2 pint.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
