There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
(Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1838)
Whilst the men spent their days labouring in the fields and around the farm, many Victorian countrywomen spent most of their time working in the kitchen. There the food was prepared and eaten, the laundry washed, ironed and mended, and the children entertained. Compared with today’s modern workspaces, the mid-Victorian cottage kitchen was a basic affair. The walls were rough brick or lime washed, whilst the only soft furnishings gracing the bare wooden floorboards or cold stone floor might be a small rag rug.
Rag rugs were created in the evenings using scraps of old fabrics from worn-out clothes, which were poked through a backing cloth using a skewer of bone or horn, to make a simple pile. This lack of floor covering also reflected the hard wear and tear the kitchen floor received, with the constant tread of dirty boots, dripping clothes and cooking spillages; it needed to be swept at least twice a day.
It is important to note that this would also have been the only room in the house heated by an open wood fire, or range, and this was another incentive for the family to spend most of their time there. For those able to afford one, the range consisted of a cast iron fire/oven combination, requiring black lead polishing on a regular basis to keep it clean. Lit every morning, it took a while to reach a high enough temperature to provide water hot enough for washing and cooking. Several family members might be spending long hours working the land, so soups and stews were prepared. Left to simmer away on top of the stove or over the fire, they provided a hot meal no matter what time the workers returned home. The residual heat from the range warmed the room so the kitchen would often be covered by wet clothes which could not be hung out to dry in the winter months, or on rainy days.
Before the introduction of gas lighting, candles – made from beeswax, or tallow, a rendered form of beef or mutton fat – rush lights and oil lamps were the only means of illuminating cottages once darkness fell. Trimming wicks and preparing oil lamps was just one of the many jobs on a housewife’s long list of chores. Perhaps surprisingly, rush lights were still in use in rural England right up to the end of the nineteenth century. With 20 sold for a penny, their light was dim, yet steady. Households could make these artificial lights themselves by soaking the dry pith of the rush plant in grease or fat, before igniting it for a soft glow. William Corbett, an English farmer, journalist and staunch opposer of the Corn Laws, commented that, ‘this rush light cost almost nothing to produce and was believed to give a better light than some poorly dipped candles’.
The annual Medieval tradition of performing ‘rush bearing ceremonies’ continued well into the Victorian era, before declining in popularity towards the end of the nineteenth century. This custom required rushes to be gathered and strewn over the earthen or cold stone floors of the church, to purify the air with their sweet aroma.
Rural families often had very little in the way of decoration for their homes, so would retain images from illustrated newspapers to adhere to the walls. In the BBC adaptation of Lark Rise to Candleford, this practice has been captured perfectly in the cottage kitchen of the Timmins family. By the late 1880s, mass production put novelty items and ornaments within the reach of the working man’s wage and so small trinkets, and later, perhaps even a clock began to be displayed around the home.
In June 1893, long after the Corn Laws had been abolished, Maud Morrison, a writer for The Girl’s Own Paper, imagined an idyllic cottager’s life in Sussex:
My wants … are very few, and except flour and a little grocery, the cows, poultry, and garden supply all our food. An array of beehives, twenty or thirty of them, painted of diverse colours, stand among the fruit trees. These I manage entirely myself but … have help … in straining, bottling and packing the honey for market.
The villagers have almost given up gleaning now, bread is so cheap; but we find that it decidedly lightens our bill for poultry food. Wheat, oats, barley – nothing comes amiss to the fowls; and the straw goes into the pigsty.
She notes that animals are fed on leftovers: ‘Two little black pigs, eagerly devour a supper of potato parings, and such scraps boiled in buttermilk’. Even the garden is well thought-out, providing food for both family and livestock. Alongside ‘large strawberry beds … a good sized plot was devoted to Mangold Worzel for the cow’s winter provender, and between the rows of potatoes were cabbages, newly planted for the same purpose’.
Maud highlights the need to keep poultry as, not only did they provide a regular supply of eggs, but once their laying days were numbered, the roasted bird would feed the family. Allowed to roam free within the garden, scratching in the dirt and living off seeds and scraps, a chicken was an essential purchase that would reward its owner with very little wastage.
The American novelist, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s comic description of ‘Aunt Chloe’ in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin must have applied to many a housewife when it was time for one of her fowls to meet their end:
A cook she certainly was, in the very bone and centre of her soul. Not a chicken or turkey or duck in the barn-yard but looked grave when they saw her approaching, and seemed evidently to be reflecting on their latter end; and certain it was that she was always meditating on trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living.
Despite this, the keeping of hens was surrounded with folklore and superstitions. ‘Old beliefs die as hard as old practices, and in country places, not so very remote either, the most foolish and unfounded notions often flourish and are likely to flourish for many a day’, wrote countryside expert, James Mason in an 1889 article on food folklore. Customs and superstition played a large part in the lives of our Victorian ancestors, and despite the era being known as a period of enlightenment, it is surprising how slow attitudes were to change.
As hens and their eggs were a vital part of the countryman’s diet, much importance was placed upon them. Over in the West of Ireland it was believed that eggs laid on Good Friday would never go stale, whilst in some areas the first egg laid by a pullet was given to a young man to present to his sweetheart, in the belief that this was the luckiest gift he could give her. Those desiring to know more about their future, their likelihood of attaining wedded bliss, or the domestic skills of a potential wife also turned to a new-laid egg for an answer.
A noted Victorian expert on country customs, the Rev. Thomas Firminger Thistelton Dyer, explained the process of egg divination to those with a quest for knowledge:
perforate with a pin the small end of an egg, and let three drops of the white fall into a basin of water, which soon defuse themselves on the surface into a variety of fantastic shapes. From these the fortune teller will predict the fortunes of the credulous one … the character … and a variety of particulars concerning his domestic happiness.
Egg divination, known as ‘Oomancy’, was performed not only in Victorian Britain, but also in many other cultures around the world. The methods carried out to complete each type of egg reading were passed down within families and used to find answers to physical or medical problems. The occult nature of the prediction injected an element of fear into the results forecast.
A news item reported in the Stamford Mercury of October 1852 reveals the extent to which some Victorian country folk adhered to superstitions surrounding eggs. The reporter tells ‘the tale of a person in want of some eggs’, who had called one evening at a farmhouse in East Markham. The visitor asked the woman of the house if she had any eggs to sell, and she replied that she had a few scores to dispose of, to which the man asked if he could take them with him.
She answered, ‘You are welcome to the eggs at a proper hour of the day; but I would not let them go out of the house after the sun is set on any consideration whatsoever’. This strange reasoning originated from the conviction that it was a bad omen to bring eggs in or out of the house after dark.
The giving of eggs at Easter also has an important spiritual connotation. Religious festivals and gatherings were an integral part of Victorian life, with annual fêtes marking notable dates throughout the countryside calendar. At Easter, Christians believed that the egg represented the future, as a symbol of the Resurrection. In the days after the abstinence of Lent was over and festivities began, eggs were decoratively stained in a variety of colours and distributed as an emblem of the return of life after death.
The Victorians continued the traditions of their forebears, and despite their forward-thinking ideals, retained strong beliefs in the mystical. Accepted by Victorians from all walks of life, a whole variety of superstitions were deemed to predict a believer’s fortune, fate and future. For the country-dweller, not only the egg was capable of revealing important answers to their questions, but the behaviour of the chickens also had the potential to provide guidance.
In Scotland, it was said that ‘whistling maids and crowing hens are no canny about a house’, the sentiment thought to suggest that masculine qualities in a woman were not desirable; an attitude shared in France, where a crowing hen is considered unlucky. Cock crowing was thought to signify a warning and, along with announcing the break of dawn, it was believed to banish any ghosts, fiends or sprites. Even Shakespeare wrote about this phenomenon when his ghost in Hamlet ‘faded at the crowing of the cock’. This tradition was particularly welcome at Christmas, when a crowing cock would drive away any malignant spirits and signal a peaceful start to the year ahead. Held in high regard, the cockerel symbolised protection; keeping evil at bay, its image was often used to adorn the tops of church steeples to ‘watch over’ the congregation within.
How to ‘Coddle’ Your Eggs
Working class Victorians enjoyed their eggs simply boiled or poached, but in middle and upper class families, a ‘coddled’ egg was often preferred. Coddling, a method similar to poaching, allowed an egg to be cooked very briefly and enabled the yolk to stay soft. Beautifully decorated egg coddlers, in the form of small pots with tight-fitting lids, were commercially produced by nineteenth century pottery and kitchenware manufacturers. The coddler was smeared with butter and the egg poured gently into it, before being lowered into a pot of boiling water for five to six minutes. The coddled egg was then eaten directly from the pot or slid on to a plate and served – often for breakfast – with small pieces of bacon, salmon flakes and other savoury items.
Despite the majority of the Victorian household income being spent on food, the variety of food consumed by many was minimal. A few ounces of tea, sugar, cheese, and a small amount of meat and vegetables comprised the daily menu for most, with bread making up the bulk of the meal. Bread has been the focus of our lives for hundreds of years and, whilst compiling her recipe book Modern Cookery for Private Families in 1845, even Eliza Acton had to admit: ‘Without wishing in the slightest degree to disparage the skill and labour of bread makers by trade, truth compels us to assert our conviction of the superior wholesomeness of bread made in our own homes’. In short, fresh home-baked bread tasted better.
For our ancestors, bread was simple to make and only required four ingredients – flour, water, salt and yeast – yet many families’ lives revolved around earning enough money to buy the flour, then bake their bread, before the cycle started all over again. The cost of bread was the most important item in a family’s weekly budget, yet during the nineteenth century bread prices fluctuated considerably.
Initially, the Napoleonic Wars had made it impossible to import corn from Europe. To rectify this Britain had expanded her wheat farming ventures, but in doing so the price of bread rocketed. Legislation was passed in the form of the Corn Laws, which favoured the landowning farmers, increasing their profits at the expense of the general public, who were paying greatly inflated prices for a single loaf. When the Irish potato crop failed in 1845, the government was forced to reconsider their decision to boost wheat prices, as thousands of people succumbed to famine and starvation. In 1846, the duty on oats, barley and wheat was reduced to one shilling per quarter, which had a significant knock-on effect on the prices paid by the consumer.
Wheat prices may have fluctuated, but Britain still required a way of processing the crop into flour. ‘Earning a crust’ is a term still used to describe the act of working to acquire a wage that derives from the early nineteenth century, when hundreds of thousands of people were employed as millers, millwrights, engineers and milling craftsmen. Despite this extensive workforce stretching the length and breadth of Britain, when mechanised milling methods were introduced during the Industrial Revolution the demand for cheaper white bread saw the gradual demise of the traditional mill.
A Baker’s Dozen
Buying flour from the local miller allowed women to bake their own loaves at home, while those living and working in towns and cities usually bought bread direct from a baker. We have all heard the term a ‘Baker’s Dozen’, referring to a quantity of 13 rather than the usual 12 in a dozen, but did you know its origins?
As far back as the twelfth century, the price at which bakers sold their bread was regulated according to the price of wheat. By the 1850s, the government was well aware of the importance of bread in the nation’s diet, so the penalty was severe for bakers cheating customers with short measures or bulking them out with additives. Fines were known to have been imposed, short prison terms issued, and even transportation to Australia was considered for those flouting the law. For fear of incurring any penalties, bakers added an extra loaf when selling batches of 12 loaves, to make 13, giving us our phrase a ‘Baker’s Dozen’.
The Victorian Pantry
Before the invention of the refrigerator, the pantry reigned supreme in both humble cottage kitchens and in the large scale kitchens of great stately homes. The pantry was a walk-in store cupboard, with a stone floor and stone or slate shelves, which helped to keep perishable items cool. The low temperature ensured that the food inside remained as fresh as possible, even on a hot sunny day. If the pantry was large enough to accommodate a small window, then this would be covered with a wire mesh to deter flies, yet still allow the air to circulate.
In modern fridge freezers we are aware of cross contamination and avoid placing raw food above or alongside cooked items to prevent the spread of bacteria. A similar method was used in the pantry, with the bottom shelf reserved for raw meat and the middle shelf for freshly-picked vegetables. The top shelves were used for dairy products, with a bowl for new-laid eggs, jugs of milk and cream covered with weighted, beaded cloths to keep the flies at bay, and an area set aside for pats of butter. This was often made with milk from the family’s own cow, churned outside the cottage door and paddled into shape on the kitchen table. A wedge of cheese might be found nestling beneath a lidded ceramic dish – a staple food to accompany home-baked bread and a slice of home-grown onion. Cooked foods, such as pies and pastries, and a bread bin, covered with a lid to keep the bread fresh, would also occupy this area.
Depending upon the size of this store cupboard, it may have housed extra wooden shelves, where home-made preserves, pickles and bottled fruits and sauces could be kept, alongside dry ingredients, such as flour, salt and sugar which would have been needed on a daily basis. Hooks were screwed into the ceiling of the pantry to enable cooked hams to be stored out of the way. These were also useful for suspending game birds. With so much effort going into smoking, salting and preserving foods, it was important to create the right conditions to keep them in. It was essential to avoid dampness and condensation at all costs, and instead create a cool, dry environment to keep the supplies in the best condition possible.
Just like the kitchen garden, the well-stocked pantry also made good use of available space and, as the saying goes, in an organised household, there was ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’. Pedlars, hucksters and gypsies travelled the country lanes, selling baskets and brushes on the doorstep. Many housewives used these baskets to store fruit, vegetables and grain on the floor of their pantry.
Vinegar: A Store Cupboard Favourite
For the Victorian cottager, shop-bought cleaning products were few and far between, but one simple home-made product had a myriad of uses: vinegar. The creation of vinegar does not require a detailed recipe with numerous steps to follow, as any liquid containing sugar will automatically turn to vinegar when exposed to air for a certain length of time. By leaving wine, fresh juices, or uncooked cider uncorked for about a week, the combination of alcohol in the liquid, bacteria and exposure to oxygen will trigger a chemical reaction, which provides us with vinegar in its simplest form.
By the nineteenth century, vinegar was essential for pickling and preserving vegetables, and as spices found their way into British homes, the addition of pepper, cayenne, and allspice only helped to infuse the mixture further. Its acidic qualities made it ideal for cleaning glass, removing stains and deodorising smells, forming an early kitchen sanitiser which could kill moulds and fungus, and ultimately destroy germs.
With very few medical supplies then available, a bottle of vinegar was not only a culinary favourite, but vital for family ailments. Its antiseptic qualities helped speed up the healing of wounds and soothed rashes and insect bites. When mixed with honey, vinegar was used as a cough suppressant and believed to dissolve warts. Herbal-infused concoctions were created using vinegar as a base to cure all manner of health problems. Some believed that a small tot of cider vinegar a day would even promote vigour and longevity.
Written by Karen Foy in "Life in the Victorian Kitchen - Culinary Secrets and Servants' Stories", Pen & Sword History, UK, 2014, chapter 2.Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa