In article ,
Jaques d'Alltrades writes:
|
| I presume that a lot of the poorer people used thes cookery books.
| Elizabeth Craig certainly didn't talk down to 'her public', and on a
| quick glance through I have found two recipes which are still commonly
| used in the Highlands, and no doubt I shall find more.

They did, and I didn't say that there was no overlap. You can do
a fairly good test, however, by looking for things like soup, stew
and colcannon (bubble and squeak to you foreigners - I am going
all Cornish :-) ).

In particular, using significant quantities of meat or named cuts,
cooking all ingredients for the dish (rather than using leftovers)
etc. means that the recipes are NOT a description but an example.
I lived (briefly) in Cornwall in the early 1950s, and it was (and
is) a very deprived area.

| I didn't say that such descriptions didn't exist, whereas I would
| say the same for any date before (say) 1750.
|
| Well, I would guess that the information is there somewhere, but
| no-one has thought it worth searching for, collecting, collating and
| publishing.

I based my statement, not just on my own limited experience, but
on the experience of people who have tried doing precisely that,
sometimes as a proper research project. Your guess is wrong.

Whether there is more information to be found is unknown, but it
assuredly the case that quite a few people have looked pretty
hard and failed to find anything significant.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.