The general impression of the middle class Victorian home, especially in London, normally includes a servant or two. If a family had a single servant, she was a “maid-of-all-work” – a general purpose helper who would primarily give the lady of the house a hand with all the menial tasks of running the home. Tasks such as laundry involved full days of hard labor. Cleaning a carpet was an affair involving damp tea leaves and a stiff brush. Generally, life was still tough, even with a maid.
It’s not too difficult to imagine what life was like back then, especially with excellent programs like 1900 House, which detailed what it was like for a modern family to be dropped into a charming little home with no electricity or modern appliances.
After my misadventure with Mrs. Beeton’s Omelet, I got even more curious about the particulars of Victorian era cookery. From our modern perspective, it seems that Victorians were hell-bent on making things difficult for themselves. For the most part, fruit was not served fresh. Our old friend Mrs. Beeton suggested grapes as a cure for constipation, but only after they were seeded and had the skins removed. I don’t know about you, but if I didn’t have electricity, peeling grapes sounds like a stupid thing to waste time doing.
Everyday fruit was stewed or baked within an inch of its life. In fact, just about any food you can imagine was thought to be improved by cooking it until it no longer resembled the original foodstuff. Much of the current distaste for “British” food comes from the idea that everything is stewed into oblivion, even though London is now one of the centers of the food universe, second only to New York City.
One of the main things I discovered which surprised me was that modern “take-away” meals were alive and well during the Victorian era. Though Mrs. Beeton and others suggested the familiar “meat plus starch” meal for the whole family, historic texts and diaries often reveal that the families “sent out” for dishes like lobster or steak. This often occurred because the food which had been targeted for that day’s meal had spoiled. The complete lack of refrigeration techniques necessitated each housewife to take stock of the leftovers from the day before to see what was still suitable for service that day.
The preparation of things so simple as butter involved scraping off the rancid outer layer and coating the block in salt to maintain it for use. When needed, the salt layer would be scraped off, it would be served, then coated again for later use. Even that staple of life, bread, was in question. Most middle class households sent out for their bread or had it baked in a communal bakery.
Unfortunately, those bakeries were not the clean and tidy places we imagine them to be today. Government inspectors found that the ceilings of these places were covered in cobwebs which became heavy with the flour of the operation, then dropped down into the dough being prepared. No effort was made to contain this problem. Once baked, the bread was left in large holding bins which ran through with rats and other beasties. Part of the skill in buying bread in Victorian London was to keep the baker “honest” by rejecting the loaves brought to be delivered which had already been chewed.
The service of meals themselves was also quite a production. If a home had only a maid-of-all-work, she would need to change clothes before serving the meals. To illustrate, the maid would do the morning work (fire lighting, lamp cleaning, breakfast preparation) then change into service clothes – then she’d continue to clean (carpets, breakfast dishes, laundry) then change again for lunch, do further work in the afternoon, then change again for dinner. This could mean that a single servant dressed and undressed six to seven times per day to keep up a “tidy” appearance while serving meals. Considering the dirty work done in between, I almost can’t blame the mistresses for all that trouble.
Even opening a can was a pain in the neck. The can opener wasn’t invented until 1858. It is described in the books of the times as “part bayonet, part sickle” – yet it was also described as being easy enough for a child to use.
The food that was consumed was unsafe in the extreme. The “Food Adulteration Act” wasn’t passed until 1860, but it was roundly ignored until 1872, when the government began to enforce it. Even worse, before 1885’s “Sale of Goods Act” there was no regulation that forced products to even be what they said they were.
Bread was filled with alum or potato starch, butter and milk were diluted with water up to 50% and one sample of tea at the time was found to contain 45% “sand and dirt.” The practice was so common that advice books of the time advised housewives to soak "suspicious" bread in water over heat for several hours. When the water was poured off, the common bulking agent – plaster of Paris(!) – would settle to the bottom and the water-logged bread could be (urp!) consumed.
The coal which was most commonly used to fuel Victorian stoves left “blacks” in the food – small pieces of burnt ash speckling anything emerging from the Victorian stove. Temperature suggestions in cookery books often said, “A drenching heat” – “A comfortable oven” – or “A warm chamber.” The measurement of heat in degrees in an oven was not in practice until well into the 20th century. Even today, British recipes call for a “hot,” “medium,” or “moderate” oven.
Knives were also substandard in the extreme. Stainless steel did not come into use for decades after the era was over. Women were counseled to never “wash” knives. They were taken apart and placed, handle down, in a pitcher of water and soda powder, swished around then rubbed with sand and a clean cloth.
It’s not hard to imagine the inconvenience of being deprived of modern appliances. Dishwashers, mixers, blenders, electric or gas stoves and ovens, even tile flooring, was years away. Victorian kitchens were nests of dirt, disease, vermin and decomposition. Gas or water came, not in a steady stream, but rather sporadically depending on the time of day.
The corsets may have been pretty, but the custards certainly were not. Studying the cookery practices of other times makes me wonder how much we are getting in our own way in our time. Mankind survived prehistorically because we ate the vegetables and fruits as they grew and roasted meat that was freshly killed.
The primary problem in Victorian England was the use of technology. Meat and dairy products brought in on trains was spoiled and infected. Fruits and vegetables cooked too long lost their nutritional content. Perhaps the lesson to be learned by Victorian cookery practices is to get out of our own way and cook food as freshly (and as little) as possible. We may be moving in that direction, with the locavore and slow food movements. But, at least our bread doesn’t have rat droppings in it – does it? (::Ahem!::)
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~Jane Austen
T&D - Ohhhhh... ICK!
JK - I'm all about the fat and salt delivery devices.
Typo - Sorry about that. Hee hee hee
(coke used to have real cocaine in it)
Owl - I'm lazy - I couldn't even deal with keeping the front doorstep clean. They cleaned it and painted it white EVERY DAY. That's just wrong.
fda.gov
Some of these traditions live on in the South. I have recipes from my mother that call for me to "cook in a moderate oven until done." No temperature, no time. And the older generations in my family boiled the vegetables to death. My mom always thought I undercooked everything because it wasn't tasteless salty mush.
Great quote!
~R
It's difficult for us to understand how labour-intensive the pre-industrial world actually was. We snicker at the idea of only bathing once a week, but tend to forget the amount of work required to get buckets of water from a well and heat them on a wood-burning stove. A weekly bath was a very decent effort at cleanliness.
I love the 1900 House, boy oh boy did the women get the short end of the stick back then, but some things never change.
And I've heard rat droppings make the dough rise. no?
He had to call up and tell the front end of the plant to put in more tomatoes!
And another story, regarding my very British Grannie Dodie, who could cook wonderfully - as long as it was something traditional that she had been taught by her mother to cook. She came to California in the 1920s - and you know what she did with an avocado, the very first time she had one to prepare for dinner? Yep, she boiled that sucker for 40 minutes!
She was teased for decades, over that.
I had read somewhere (wish I could recall the reference) that their dinners (which were taken in early afternoon and not evening) often lasted for several hours and the preparation took hours as well. The same source noted that the furniture in the dining rooms were the most elaborate pieces in the household as the surroundings for these dinners (as well as their presentation) reflected the homeowner’s status. As an Austen devotee, I’m fascinated by this time period, though I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to live during it, particularly as I feel confident I would have been one of those servants.
susan - I agree that the boiling of things continues here in the south. As someone who is routinely forced to eat in restaurants south of the Mason-Dixon line, I would heartily vote for the banning of the "vegetable medley."
Sharon - Yes! My mother used to tell me that I'd get a stomach ache from my "raw" green beans and trichinosis from my unburnt bacon. Yet - I LIVE!
Fusun - That's something that there isn't much of down here in Florida. I will make a point to jump at the chance should it arise, though.
Norwonk - That is my understanding about sauces, as well. Many things we currently take for granted arose due to poor refrigeration practices. The basic salting of meat, pickling and even cheese arose from the inability to throw anything in the "fridge." (She says as she eats some more homemade beef jerky.)
Chuck - It's a shame that the misguided practices of the time are the first thing people think about British food. It's really not like that anymore - we've come a long way!
Stellaa - That PBS show, 1900 House had the little girls try to make a birthday cake for their mother. It was shocking. The ability to simply have an oven which maintains an even temperature is a luxury!
Dear reader - I wonder what we will be amazed we couldn't live without in 20 years, though? I'm hoping for a replicator.
kipouros - Now I'm really curious...
L&P - Stewed pears are one of the first things I remember eating as a kid. They were disgusting. I'm all about Lyle's Golden Syrup, but ICK!!!
Ablonde - It makes me want to hug my mop.
BOKO - Yeah, we had a little tiff over here in Boston about tea. These things happen. I'm waiting for the Great Krispy Kreme riot.
Gabby - Plaster of Paris. Seriously! How does something rise with Plaster of Paris in it??? We have a 100-year-old knife sharpener nailed to the wall at my husband's family's house. I thought someone had nailed a piece of a door hinge to the wall. How odd.
voicegal - There was a lady named Hannah Munby who worked as a "maid-of-all-work" back then. She found a nice young man who had a fetish for servants. She shared her story with him in journals and, ::cough:: orally. Eventually, they married in secret. If you can find the book - she's fascinating.
Sgt. Mom - My first husband's dad was a USDA inspector for a chicken processing plant. He *delighted* in shutting down the line. He was a pain to eat dinner with, though. Invariably, we'd sit down, I'd get a nice forkful and I'd hear, "Do you know what's in that?"
Yuck!
Totle - The absolute BEST book I have ever read on the subject of real life inside Victorian homes (and a major source for this particular blog) is Inside the Victorian Home : A Portrait of Life in Victorian England by Judith Flanders. It analyzes the home room by room, detailing the processes, furniture and social constructs using historical texts and government documents.
You can also find Mrs. Beeton's book for free in its entirety online here. She's a riot!
And actually, rodent and insect bits are allowed into our food, and are there quite commonly. Eating processed food means eating all kinds of creepy crawlies and whatnot. So says the FDA handbook on such things.
Yum! :\
By brother, now a government veterinarian, was in his younger days the junior guy in a private practice. They had a government contract to inspect chickens at a large processing plant. One foreman there took great delight in trying to browbeat this young college boy into passing stuff that was dubious. He made huge fuss one day when my brother condemned a big batch for what he saw as E. Coli contamination. "Nothing wrong with those birds, nothing at all." He sat down to his lunch in the factory canteen, and my brother walked up to him, removed his plate, and set a roast chicken in front of him. "Eat it, and I pass the whole lot." The guy got up and walked out, and never hassled him again. And not a person told the guy my brother ate the chicken, which was delicious, and not from the suspect batch at all.
:-)
Gourmet Goddess - Oh, believe me, I know. I'm a food writer and critic by trade and as stated above, my first husband's father was a USDA inspector. I know entirely *too* much about what's in our food. (Thus the "Ahem!" after that last statement.)
But, the shocking truth about today's food supply is just how safe it really is. Most of the time, the "stomach flu" is actually food poisoning and/or pathogens, but unless you come across E-Coli, you're probably not going to die from it.
There are no "acceptable" levels of fatalities in my book, but if you think about the fact that we feed over 400 million people each year with minimal food related fatalities, we're doing pretty well. I'd like to see us do much, much better, but compared with Victorian times, you could lick the floor of a public bathroom with less risk than drinking a glass of milk in 1900. (I know! ICK!)
Today's problems come from the processing of the food. You're unlikely to keel over and die because of a foodborne pathogen, but rather to cumulatively die of heart disease, diabetes or stroke from the stupid artificial crap they put in our food.
wildmarjoram - Thank you!
Gee Bee - It's probably wrong that my only reaction to that is, "Mmm... Jammie Dodgers!"
Rob - I'd sell my mama on eBay for some laudanum. My dear and sainted Grammy still has paragoric in the medicine chest. She offered me some while I was pregnant. I had to seriously think that one over. And let me just mention how pleased I am to see you, sir! It gives me the vapours!
" But, at least our bread doesn’t have rat droppings in it – does it? (::Ahem!::)"
uh, you do know about the fed regulations that allow so many rat hairs and other debris in tuna, peanut butter and the like, don't you?
I'll just add that seeing the recent doc, "Food Inc" will make you question how much better things are now! It's very hard to eat any meat not raised on small farms after watching it.
Some things are universal, I guess?
Ah well, it evens out, doesn't it? A carpet that looks dirty under an electric light may look okay by lamp and candlelight. Especially when you have to clean it with a stiff brush and damp tea leaves.
But darling, not peeling your grapes must be a sign of lax household standards. =o) It's a form of domestic surrender.
Lord, thank you for making me a 21st century woman!
We had a large cooler and bought ice blocks once a week. Meat lasted 2-3 days. Eggs don't actually need to be refrigerated and the butter you buy in tins doesn't melt even on the hottest days. I baked all the bread by hand, but we only had it once a week and it lasted for about 3 days. Luckily, we had no appearances to keep up in the middle of the jungle.