"Shall we go through?"

-- or, how to eat according to a 19th century cookbook

I, like many people who enjoy books, tea, and sitting on porches enjoying both in the rain, am in love with period dramas.

It’s always been this way.

“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel?” Love it. The Keira Knightley “Pride and Prejudice?” Seen it at least a dozen times. The BBC miniseries of “Emma?” You betcha.

But the one that I have watched more than any others is undoubtedly “Downton Abbey.”

I’ve watched it, enthralled, sitting on the couch with my mom. I’ve watched it while I cook and clean. I’ve watched it while I write. I’ve listened to it to help me fall asleep.

I’ve always loved history. But the part I’ve loved the most was understanding what it was like for people to go about their everyday lives.

Perhaps that’s why, in my own fiction writing and reading, I’m typically drawn to stories that focus on people who are in a time other than my own.

One of my absolute favorite parts of writing my novella, “No Regrets,” was pouring over scanned copies of ancient newspapers, sifting through records of goods-sold and their prices that were meticulously kept by local libraries and shops, and talking to my grandparents about what they remembered from their childhood.

But one of the things that I have always been the most interested in was what it has been like to eat throughout the ages.

Also, I love old cookbooks.

One of my most prized possessions is a cookbook that belonged to my grandfather’s grandmother. My own grandmother gave it to me when I told her that I was planning to write this newsletter.

It isn’t written like normal cookbooks, with a cut and dry recipe on each page. It reads like a story or a diary of everyday life. It’s called “The Every Day Cookbook” by Miss E. Neil, and on the spine it is described as “Economical, Reliable, Excellent. Price $1.50” It was published on January 1 of 1892.

It includes sections titled things like “Hints on Marketing,” meaning, of course, buying one’s groceries. It has sections on how to carve different slices of meat, which include elaborate illustrations for the proper ways to cut a tongue and a calf’s head. And my personal favorite section “Rules for Eating.”

It lays out three rules, the first of which I quote below —

1. Never sit down to a table with an anxious or disturbed mind; better a hundred times intermit that meal, for there will then be that much more food in the world for hungrier stomachs than yours; and besides, eating under such circumstances can only, and will always, prolong and aggravate the conditions of things.

This is an idea that I think we have strayed too far from. As the sage Julian Fellowes shows us in “Downton Abbey,” people of high society used to change clothes for dinner every single day. Dinner was just that — a dining experience. There were several courses and a different wine paired with each. There were rules about talking to the person on your left as long as your hostess did and starting up a conversation instead with the person on your right when the hostess turned.

The job of a hostess was a large one for much of history. You were required to understand the wants and needs of your guests ahead of time and seat them according to who had the most in common with whom. It was your job to decide when the co-ed conversation had reached its natural end and to then say to the ladies of the table “Shall we go through?” so that the guests could get some, often much-needed, time to discuss more personal and private things with each other without the bothers of the opposite sex.

While I realize that many of these ideas and rules sprung up around the often-oppressive British Class System, I think that we’ve been a little too hasty to throw them out the window.

Have you ever truly enjoyed a meal that you ate standing up in a rush? I certainly haven’t. Have you enjoyed a meal that was slap-dashed together and served without a thought to flavor? I haven’t.

All of this is a long-winded way of me saying that I think people would benefit from slowing down and thinking of food as something to be savored rather than scarfed.

I find it interesting to note that the latter half of the book includes recipes to provide relief for inflamed feet and restoring someone from getting struck by lightning (“Shower with cold water for two hours; if the patient does not show signs of life, put salt in the water, and continue to shower an hour longer”).

Cooking used to be seen as a way to restore life, emotionally, physically, and spiritually to those you loved.

I think it should be again.

Below I provide a very simple recipe for the proper way to make tea, as taught to me by a professor who had spent many years studying at Oxford. I hope you enjoy it and that you sip it very slowly, sitting down, with a good book or a person you love very much for company.

Proper Tea

You will need:

1 bag English Breakfast tea (Twinings makes a very respectable one)

1 teaspoon white sugar

A splash of whole milk or cream

Boiling water

What to do:

Boil the water and put a splash of milk at the bottom of your favorite mug (I usually fill it about half an inch high). Then stir the sugar into the milk. When the water is done boiling, place the tea bag gently into the mug on top of the milk. You do not want the tea bag to fall into the milk. Very slowly pour the hot water onto the tea bag to the top of the mug. If you are successful, the steeping tea should sit, separated, on top of the milk. Let steep for 3-5 minutes. Stir together and enjoy your perfectly-made cup of tea, which, thanks to the milk at the bottom, should also be the perfect temperature.

That’s all for this week. I hope to share more from Miss. E. Neil in the future. Some of her recipes really are a window into another world. Paying subscribers can check in next week for a delicious recipe for Coconut Macaroons. Thanks, as always, for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks,

Juliana Nicewarner