This week is a belter. It is a very rare old cookery book; one I have acquired only quite recently. ‘The Practise of Cookery’ by Mrs Dalgairns was printed in Edinburgh in 1831, which makes it almost 200 years old. I find this staggering, holding this book in my hand. It reveals so much about life back then. A time when there was terrible poverty, and yet this book has recipes for lobster and a calf’s head soup recipe.

Back then, a lot of folk couldn’t read and had basic manual jobs, but of the few who were educated well and could read, some were sent to a cookery school of which there were several here in Edinburgh in the 1800s.

This book was a real find and will be an investment I am sure, and the condition of it is incredible. It is from a time when you were sent off to learn how to be a cook and a lady and have a knowledge of how to run a house. This isn’t just a cookery book; this will instruct you in to how to clean your mop heads and brushes and how to make all sorts of wine. The word catsup instead of ketchup is used a lot, and tomata for example, bizarre spellings of things.

Considering this was printed not too long after the war with France there are quite a few nods to French-style cookery terms, and it is very concise, with a very good number of chapters about preserving. So being thrifty was a necessity back then. How to pickle and what to do with eels and how to make red herring, all very interesting. Some very good Scottish dishes, and lots of recipes for cakes and biscuits. It is a very good book indeed, one I am very chuffed to have found. If you see one in one of those old bookshops you stumble across, buy it.