Archive.org has a host of old cookery books (from mid-19th to mid-20th Century) available in many formats and on a host of topics. I happened across a few in my Pinterest feed and gone completely down the rabbit hole in this treasure trove of information. Sure some ideas might be out of date, but you never know what you might find when you explore these books. I’ll be sharing more books as I find them in the coming weeks. –Douglas
Old Christmas by Washington Irving (1908)
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Wherever an English stage-coachman may be seen, he cannot be mistaken for one of any other craft.’ (Page 17)
IN the course of a December tour in Yorkshire, I rode for a long dis- tance in one of the public coaches, on the day preceding Christmas. The coach was crowded, both inside and out, with passengers, who, by their talk, seemed principally bound to the mansions of relations or friends to eat the Christ- mas dinner. It was loaded also with hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of delicacies; and hares hung dangling their long ears about the coachman’s box presents from distant friends for the impending feast. I had three fine rosy- cheeked schoolboys for my fellow-passen- gers inside, full of the buxom health and manly spirit which I have observed in the children of this country. They were returning home for the holidays in high glee, and promising themselves a world of enjoyment. It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans of pleasure of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats they were to perform during their six weeks’ emancipation from the abhorred thral- dom of books, birch, and pedagogue. They were full of anticipations of the meeting with the family and household, down to the very cat and dog ; and of the joy they were to give their little sisters by the presents with which their pockets were crammed ; but the meeting to which they seemed to look forward with the greatest impatience was with Bantam, which I found to be a pony, and, according to their talk, possessed of more virtues than any steed since the days of Bucephalus. How he could trot ! how he could run ! and then such leaps as he would take : there was not a hedge in the whole country that he could not clear.
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