By Ana Bittner and Charles Horn

Initial Transcription and Conversion Into Modern Measurements

Reflections and Insights

This bready, and not overly sweet, cake offers an interesting way to begin to grapple with complex themes of femininity, domesticity, and colonization. By analyzing the ingredients from both the recipe and book writ large, insight can be gained into the life of Mrs. M. H. Turnbull and what structuring events affected her life. Specifically, analysis can lend itself to answering questions regarding the distinction between private and public spheres, descriptions of certain types of labor as gendered, the effects of colonization on English cooking, and how recipe books became an essential tool in forming female kinship networks. Each element of discussion lends further context to premodern English kitchens and the new ingredients and techniques introduced as a result of British imperialism and colonization of South Asia.

The tying of women’s labor to childcare meant women were responsible for tasks that would keep them within, or close to, the home and thus able to assist the children when needed. While the marital status and socio-economic location of Mrs. M. H. Turnbull were unknown, the cake incorporated a multitude of elements that would have been central elements of a woman’s life in the early modern countryside. Women were often entrusted with the care of small animals, preparing dairy products such as butter, and cooking and baking foods such as the cake found in this recipe. Fruit cakes were often served at celebrations, such as weddings and holidays, and gradually grew more common as ingredient prices dropped making the enormous quantities of ingredients required more accessible. Interestingly, the roots of fruit cakes such as the one baked here are explicitly feminine, with it first being called a “bride cake” upon its introduction to the British middle class.

While ingredients may have grown more easily available, cakes remained a laborious endeavor. Each ingredient required significantly more preparation than today’s equivalents, whether it be the washing, drying, and stoning of fruit or the often half-hour prescribed beating of eggs, while the cooking methods of wood-fired ovens or fires proved especially difficult to control. The use of yeast also dated the cake, as English fruit cakes before the 18th-century frequently used yeast. Yet, yeast itself was used less and less by bakers in the mid to late 18th century, before becoming almost entirely replaced by baking powder.

Britain's imperial expansion allowed Mrs. M. H. Turnbull to experience ingredients and cultures that she incorporated upon her return to the Isles and within her cookbook. While the currants listed in the recipe were not unknown to Europeans, they were just one of the many exotic ingredients that lend themselves to analyzing how colonialism shaped the diets of Europeans. Red currants became increasingly prolific over the course of the 19th Century, with their incorporation into bread making termed “hydropathic pudding,” as it was offered at health resorts that had prohibited pastry in order to preserve idealized corporal femininity, before becoming known as the now-familiar summer pudding.

While the recipe book was useful for observing how colonialism impacted foodstuffs and recipes, this piece can be used to observe the kinship and educational networks that recipe books enabled. The knowledge contained within recipe books helped proliferate new ingredients back in England, as well as glamorizing and mysticising the foreign lands that Britain had seized. In the British colonies, recipe books allowed women to adapt to their new South Asian or American homes. Recipe books were shared, with the authors noting not just recipes but also tips for dealing with new climates and pests, such as the instructions on how to combat white ants (termites) contained in Mrs. M. H. Turnball’s book.

For all that the recipe contains in historical information and possibilities for discussion, it does lack a bit in flavor (would recommend picking one of the other recipes if you are wishing to actually enjoy your recreation).

Bibliography

Herbert, Amanda, "Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain", (Yale, 2014)

Mason, Laura. "fruit cake." In The Oxford Companion to Food, edited by Tom Jaine. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2014. http://go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/oupof/fruit_cake/0?institutionId=583

"summer pudding." In The Oxford Companion to Food, edited by Tom Jaine. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2014.

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., Woman and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Pages from the Recipe Book of Mrs. M. H. Turnbull Courtesy of the Wellcome Library London