If you’re sick and convalescing in bed, the last thing you need is something that looks good and tastes great, right? That was the prevailing wisdom of early Kiwi cookbooks, where it was thought food that overexcites the senses was a no-no. Sick-room dishes like tripe fricassée, and white soup washed down with a slug of barley water were the penance you paid for being ill.
Author and cultural historian Alexa Johnston has a collection of cookery books that traces the history of Kiwis in the kitchen, from the austere dishes of the afflicted, to the tasteless, fat-free fare of the 1990s.
She has an extensive collection of New Zealand Women’s Institute Home Cookery Books, along with League of Mothers, and church fundraising tomes. She also has various issues of the iconic Edmonds Cookery Book dating back to the fourth edition in 1923, so she was well placed to do an extensive rewrite for the relaunch of the book last year.
“We are creatures of our time and the Edmonds is a creature of its time,” Alexa says. To get the book up to date required extensive editing with a number of recipes dropping out, many old ones returning and Alexa adding 70 new recipes of her own. One recipe that came full circle was the venerable crumpet, but only after a decent makeover. “The original recipe was not a good one because there was only one raising agent – they’re better with yeast and baking soda so you get the tiny little holes.”
Crumpets are most certainly back on trend here, as evidenced by food truck Kraken Crumpets selling their freshly made spongy bread discs with toppings like banana and salted caramel, salmon and cream cheese, or beetroot and feta.
Coconut bread is another recipe that had been dropped, but with coconut products all the rage right now, it made sense to put it back in.
Author and cultural historian Alexa Johnston.
“I also left in crazy things like mock whitebait fritters and curried sausages. They’re quite funny – I do have some affection for that old-fashioned style of cooking. But I thought it should still be good.”
One of her observations of home baking is that skills have declined over the years as people have found less time for baking and greater access to readymade foods. Alexa says it began happening in the late 1970s and 1980s when women began to work outside the home in greater numbers and we needed two incomes to run a household.
Fear of fat led to major cookbook upheaval in the 1980s and continued into the following decade.“A great Christmas pudding recipe, made with suet, dropped out of Edmonds in 1986. That’s back in, as well as recipes with all the butter that disappeared in the 1990s,” Alexa says.
“Now we’re going through a phase of adding as much butter as we like, but we can’t have any sugar.” We’ve always been keen on mock things in New Zealand, like ‘colonial goose’ made from mutton, mock chicken sandwich filling made out of egg and mixed herbs (to remind you of stuffing), and mock whitebait fritters made from grated potato with not a sliver of seafood to be seen.
Mock cream is another example, made with butter, icing sugar and a little bit of boiling water. You wouldn’t think we’d need it in a dairy-rich country, but in the days before refrigeration it kept a lot better. “I included it in one of my earlier cookbooks as it is a tradition – but it’s very tricky to make; it’s easier to use whipped cream,” Alexa says. “When you’re whipping it together, first it curdles then it comes back together. There’s no way it’s cream; it’s very sweet with a lot of sugar, but it was a New Zealand thing.” It was often found on top of the classic sponge cake along with some homemade jam.
“For a long time it was the sign of a great baker, to do a lovely, towering sponge sandwich.” That’s a cooking tradition that could happily make a comeback; everyone loves a good sponge cake.
There was an historical frugality to a lot of Kiwi cooking and eating, despite the fact that we were a country rich in produce. “At school in the late 1950s, kids who had luncheon sausage in their sandwiches were rich and all the other kids had jam or Marmite and lettuce. Ham was something you only had at Christmas, and chicken was expensive so one roast chicken fed six people with leftovers.”
Photography by : One Shot.
This was first published in Taste magazine.
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