Victoria's Home Companion: Or, The Whole Art of Cooking: A History of 19th Century Foods

Rating:
Summary: Victoria's Best
Review:
Victoria's Home Companion

There are myriad cook books that claim to accurately represent the preparation of Victorian cuisine yet fall as flat as a soufflé on close inspection. There are also numerous tomes on life and culture in 19th Century America; however, no other book captures the breath of domestic life in the United States of the 1800's as fully as Victoria R. Rumble's marvelous Victoria's Home Companion. This work is a must for any student of cultural and domestic history and de rigueur for writers of historical fiction. It is the definitive work on American material culture and other treatises pale by comparison.

Victoria's Home Companion was first brought to my attention when I was in the midst of researching a manuscript that is set in 19th Century Boston. I was in need for information on Victorian American cuisine, domestic customs and the kitchens of the period. I contacted a noted chef in Los Angeles who immediately steered me to Mrs. Rumble's website and thankfully, Victoria's Home Companion. I found the book to be full of colorful facts that were not confined simply to cooking. There were regional recipes, information on planting, a marvelous chapter on edible plants that were consumed in the 19th century, methods of preservation and preparation of meat and fish. Mrs. Rumble also gives a detailed list of canned foods that were available in the 19th century in addition to an authentic examination of American kitchens and what went on in them from the pre to post Civil War era. The book is also replete with descriptions of period cooking tools; for anyone interested in cultural history, the book is remarkably free of anachronisms.

There are a plethora of recipes, all totally authentic and presented in their original format, before Fanny Farmer revolutionized the cookbook with her accurate measurements. A recipe for Pepper Pot illustrates the authenticity of the recipe. "Stew gently in four quarts of water till reduced to three, three pounds of beef, half pound of lean ham, a bunch of dried thyme, two onions, two large potatoes, pared and sliced; then strain through a colander, and add a large fowl, cut into joints and skinned, half a pound of pickled pork, sliced the meat of one lobster, minced, and some small suet dumplings the size of a walnut. When the fowl is well boiled, add half a peck of spinach that has been boiled and rubbed through a colander, season with salt and cayenne."

In addition to recipes, there are chapters on specific foods replete with historical information. The chapter on bread was filled with anecdotal information about the staff of life and the pages overflow with jewels of information gleaned from memoirs, journals, and letters. It was a joy during the Christmas holidays to sample some of the instructions for beverages including a festive gin-punch and an 1858 recipe for eggnog.

Perhaps some of us view the "good old days" through the lens of rosy nostalgia but this marvelous work enlivens the past in a manner that illuminates and entertains.



Rating:
Summary: Love the book
Review: A glimpse of daily life in the 19th Century through the food they ate and how it was prepared. Very well written with easy to read narrative and clear / concise recipes. More remarkable is the history of where the foods came from. For example, I was surprised to learn Oranges were native to Asia and first grown in the United States in the 1850's. From grits to Molasses Pie, the book is filled with interesting and great tasting looks at our past.

Rating:
Summary: Everything you always wanted to know about food is here
Review: If you're tired of looking up information on the internet or in libraries when you have a question concerning foods, this is the book to have in your collection. If you need to know where watermelons originated and what year Americans started growing them, you'll find the information here.

Mrs. Rumble has recipes for all types of foods and how to cook them over the campfire, in the hearth and on the conventional stove. All of the recipes have been tested and proven and ingredients and cooking instructions are listed for both 19th and 21st centuries.

Of course this book would be an excellent resource for anyone that likes to cook but would also be a great reference for anyone in school that needs information about foods and their origins.

This is not just a recipe book for 19th century cooking but is pertinent for today's busy cooks. In my opinion, the best thing about the book is all of the research that was done to document the origins of foods.