Among the recipes in 19th century cookbooks, you’ll often find advertisements for hats and gloves, ovens, groceries, jewelry, horse accessories and more. Between the ads and the recipes, you could get a sense of a gilded life in the city, full of consumer longing and delicious viands. What is easy to forget- especially with the recipes distracting you with rich gravies and dainty cakes- is that in 19th century life, death loomed large.
Stories of disease, food poisoning, criminal and accidental violence are splashed across the “local matters” in old newspapers. In the back pages of many old cookbooks you will find the dark shadow of “pure historic cooking” in the form of home remedies for cholera, broken bones, and even cancer. An untested recipe for cake could lead to disappointment and waste. An untested recipe for “cure for Dysentery” could lead to death.
Many scholars have been careful to point out that this familiarity with death did not lessen the grief and trauma that people experienced. A family plot in Greenmount cemetery filled with little granite lambs reflects a life of tragedy and human endurance.