Mary Tilson lived in the early – mid 18th century. In 1732, she married Henry Wise, second surviving son and namesake of Royal gardener Henry Wise and his wife Patience. ...
The Warwickshire County Record Office has, naturally, a vast array of recipes within its archive. Mary Wise’s cookbook is well-known, but there are many other culinary delights dating from the 16th ...
WARNING: Please do not attempt this recipe at home, it comes with a risk of some very nasty (and potentially fatal) bugs – especially if you follow the original recipe’s ...
This recipe, which was kindly chosen for me, is from a recipe book in the Eleanor Archer collection1. Although the book itself is believed to have belonged to her mother, ...
I signed up for the heritage cooking challenge as I like cooking, and I thought I’d be able to give it a decent attempt…
Looking through the list, I thought I would ...
My heritage recipe challenge was to tackle this delightful invention found in the Wise family records.1 The 18th century writing is clear and the instructions quite simple and not too daunting. ...
It isn’t Christmas without a mince pie and once upon a time it wouldn’t have been a mince pie without the addition of actual minced meat. When the Warwickshire County ...
I approach this task with quite a few misgivings. I can do the silver dish (standard saucepan) and sourcing the ingredients is fine; I have apples on the tree in ...
As the autumn season continues, and the air feels a bit fresher, it seems an apt time to introduce the fourth recipe in our Heritage Cooking Challenge. Taken from an early ...
So we got to the stage of making the pie…
As you may recall, one of the major challenges was hunting for the artichokes in the first place! Tinned seemed a ...
I’d like to say it was a dark, stormy night, as all good stories begin… In actual fact it was a sunny Saturday afternoon in August.
According to reliable websites, the Globe ...
So the first problem was actually reading the recipe…
Having overcome that, the next problem was overcoming the language. A chance conversation saved me doing something overly stupid, maybe. I wondered ...
When looking for a recipe to try for this project, I gazed wistfully over the choices, bemoaned the fact cheesecakes had already been taken (I do like a good cheesecake, ...
No, this isn’t an episode of Breaking Bad, and metheglyn isn’t some illicit substance! It is, in fact, a name for spiced mead which derives from two Welsh terms for healing ...
Having done our prep, we started the mead-making process in earnest. This will be fairly familiar to anybody who has made wine before, so I won’t go into detail here, ...
In keeping with a seasonal theme, what could be better for a cold winter’s day or night than a slice of Carrot pudding from an 18th century recipe? The recipe ...
Having made a name for ourselves with the pickled pigeon, my partner and I decided to try our hand at historic sausage-making. This is an early 18th century recipe for ...
It’s what you’ve all been waiting for! The results of the pickled-pigeon extravaganza, for your delectation and delight. I was challenged by my colleagues to attempt one of the grimmer-sounding recipes ...
The first archive recipe in the Heritage Cooking Challenge comes from one of Warwickshire County Record Office‘s most famous collections, the Waller Family papers. This collection includes the well-known recipe book belonging ...
I love food, I love to eat and I love to cook, so it is perhaps no surprise then, that when thinking of an object that connects me to the history ...