Image: Bradley, Richard · Public domain
The Country Housewife and Lady's Director
- Year
- 1727
- Era
- 18th century
- Origin
- England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- English pre-1800
The Country Housewife and Lady's Director, compiled by Richard Bradley and first issued in 1727, addresses the management of a rural English household, encompassing dairying, preserving, brewing, gardening produce and seasonal cookery. Issued in two parts and frequently sold separately, the work draws on correspondence from country gentlewomen, lending it documentary value as an early printed gathering of regional domestic practice by a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Cooking from this book
To Stew Carps or Tench
A characteristic Georgian fish stew from Bradley's 1727 housewifery manual, using the freshwater pond fish that filled the stews of English country estates. The pairing of claret, anchovies and beef gravy with the fish's own blood was the orthodox sauce for carp in the period.
Take a brace of live carp, scale them, gut and wash them, and bleed them in the tails, so that the blood be not lost; for according to all the receipts for stewing this kind of fish, the blood, however small the quantity is of it, must make part of the sauce.
Lay these in a stew-pan with the blood, a pint of beef-gravy, a pint of claret, a large onion stuck with cloves, three large anchovies, a stick of horse-radish sliced, the peel of half a large lemon, pepper and salt at pleasure, a bunch of sweet herbs, two or three spoonfuls of vinegar.
This liquor should nearly cover the carps; so that if the gravy and claret mentioned above be not sufficient, add equal quantities of each till you have enough. Cover this close, and set the stew-pan over a gentle fire, till the lower side of the fish are stewed enough; then turn them, and keep them stewing as before, close covered, till they are enough.
After which, lay them in a dish upon sippets of fried bread, and strain off the sauce to be thickened and browned with burnt butter. This must be poured over the fish, and the dish garnished with the roe or milt, barberries, and lemons sliced.
The same method is also used for stewing of large roach, dace, and chub; but a tench stewed this way is much better than a carp.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
To Roast or Broil an Eel, from the Crown at Basingstoke, 1718
Bradley records this dish from a Hampshire coaching inn, where the silver eel was stuffed under its own skin with a forcemeat of bread, hard yolks and anchovy before being spitted or grilled. A vivid example of early eighteenth-century English inn cookery, best suited to a moderate fire or grill of around 180 to 200°C.
Take a large eel, rub the skin well with salt, then gut it and wash it well; cut off the head and skin it, laying by the skin in water and salt; then lay your eel in a clean dish, and pour out about a pint of vinegar upon it, letting it remain in the vinegar near an hour.
Then withdraw your eel from the vinegar, and make several incisions at proper distances in the flesh of the back and sides, which spaces must be filled with the following mixture:
Take grated bread, the yolks of two or three hard eggs, one anchovy minced small, some sweet marjoram dried and powdered (or for want of that, some green marjoram shred small); to this add pepper, salt, a little powder of cloves or Jamaica pepper, and a little fresh butter, to be beat all together in a stone mortar till it becomes like a paste.
With which mixture fill all the incisions that you cut in the eel, and draw the skin over it; then tie the end of the skin next the head, and prick it with a fork in several places. Then tie it to a spit to roast, or lay it upon a gridiron to broil, without basting.
The sauce for this is butter, anchovy, a little pepper, and lemon-juice.
Reproduced from the public-domain text via Project Gutenberg. Spelling lightly modernised; the headnote is editorial.
