While researching 69传媒鈥檚 history in preparation for our 150th anniversary celebrations, I came across a fascinating YouTube video produced by . The video, recorded during the COVID 19 lockdown, shows two museum staff members cooking soda scones using a recipe from a book in their collection, The Edinburgh Book of Plain Cookery Recipes.
Watching this video led me to reach out to Museums and Galleries Edinburgh and make an appointment to visit some of the objects in their collections from students who attended 69传媒. This short blog post focuses on some of the key texts that students would have engaged with and provides some reflections on what they can tell us about Scotland in the late 19th Century.
This book, originally published in 1879 and then reprinted again in the 1930s, was published by the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy. The Book of Plain Cookery was in part a textbook for students and in part a commercially available recipe book. It was intended to offer the reader as the editor noted, either a 鈥渉ousewife鈥 or 鈥渃ook鈥, recipes 鈥渟uitable for home use鈥 that were 鈥渨ithin the reach of moderate incomes鈥.
The Edinburgh School of Cookery at Atholl Crescent, established in 1875, was, of course, founded with a pioneering mission of social reform to enhance opportunities for the education of working-class women. Graduates were to be evangelised on the benefits of improved diet and practices that would enhance health and hygiene in the home.
Improving health was an increasing necessity in Victorian Scotland. The nation had urbanised fast, resulting in a population boom in cities such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee. As larger numbers of workers took up employment opportunities in the city, this led to overcrowding. The tenement flats the poor occupied within Edinburgh鈥檚 Oldtown and Cowgate were notorious for their uncomfortable and unpleasant conditions where large families would share cramped living conditions. Homes were frequently dark, damp and unsanitary, while contagious diseases and environmental influences resulted in sickly children and high infant mortality. Conditions in the one and two-roomed tenements of the capital were notorious for poor ventilation and lack of privacy. As one Scottish social reformer would later write, 鈥淲hen Scotland brought the tenement house from France, she neglected to bring the concierge.鈥
The diet of working class Scot at this time had little in the way of nutrition either. Families relied mostly on porridge, broth and potatoes to sustain them. Starchy foods were overrepresented, protein intake was low, and dairy was absent. This resulted in vitamin deficiencies, particularly in children. Mortality rates for infants and mothers were thus high. The Book of Plain Cookery aimed, therefore, to offer a range of recipes that were simple, economical and nourishing, especially for children.
By the late 19th Century, domestic service was increasingly the source of employment for many young women in Scotland. Second only to textile manufacturing, domestic service was seen as a respectable career choice for young working-class women prior to marriage. An expanding middle class meant an increased need for servants to cook, clean, wash and maintain the ideal Victorian home. While hours were long and wages were generally low, female domestic servants were afforded a degree of independence, as they tended to marry later.
Indeed, the array of recipes contained within the book is suggestive that the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy intended to equip its graduates with the knowledge and skills that would assist them in easily finding employment in service to households in Scotland and beyond. The recipe book and the teaching that accompanied it would equip young women with an understanding of how to make those essential elements of the Victorian diet: soups, stocks, sauces, breads, cakes and puddings. It also instructed the future domestic servant how to keep store cupboards and larders clean, avoiding mould and insects. While also providing a detailed range of recipes suitable for the 鈥渟ick room鈥 such as 鈥渞estorative soup,鈥 鈥渂eef tea鈥 and 鈥渢oast water.鈥
Despite its description as 鈥減lain鈥 the cookery book demonstrates the sophistication of the late-Victorian diet of the middle-classes and the influence of the British Empire on ingredients and flavours. Recipes including curries (fish, cold meat, veal or eggs) Kegeree, or sweets such as 鈥渃oconut pudding,鈥 or 鈥渕armalade and vermicelli pudding,鈥 a British take on the Indian sweet Semiya, are indicative of the influence of the Indian subcontinent on Victorian taste buds. Domestic servants in possession of the Book of Plain Cookery would certainly enter employment equipped with a diverse repertoire of recipes that would provide both flavour and nutrition to the families they served.
By the late Victorian period, there was growing discussion amongst the better classes about the 鈥渟ervant question,鈥 how to obtain qualified, dependable and obedient servants. Cleanliness, experience and most of all a good character were therefore essential to obtain employment in domestic service. A qualification from the Edinburgh School of Cookery would thus certainly reassure mistresses looking for staff as students would be instructed in the steps to both cook, clean and launder. Instruction at the college thus paid particular attention to the cleaning of rooms and metals as well as the washing of fabrics and the removal of stains.
In the social and cultural context of late 19th Century Scotland, there was an increasing vigilance over the lives of working class women. Social reformers were concerned regarding what they saw as ignorance amongst the working classes and the risks posed to them by the corrupting influences within urban society, most notably alcohol and vice. As health reformer JB Russell noted in his Life in One Room: 鈥渋f the child has only the dark lobby and the stair to play in then, then man and woman will find amusement only in the dram shop, the music hall and the dancing saloon鈥. The establishment of the Edinburgh School of Cookery intended partly to remedy the challenge if deprivation preset in urban Scotland.
