A Novel Recipe for Ginger Pudding.

I cannot resist giving you my serendipitous find for the week – ‘a novel recipe for ginger pudding’, found whilst I was browsing the Australian newspaper archives for something far more important. There may be an element of political incorrectness in giving this recipe, appearing as it does to take some of its novelty value from poking fun at the educational standard of the cook. I have chosen however to see it as a paean to several hundred years’ worth of cooks (mothers, grandmothers, aunts …) who, despite lack of education or access to cookbooks, just kept on cookin’ good food anyway, and sometimes left behind a treasured legacy of scribbled, badly-spelled recipes.

The recipe appeared in The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld) on Saturday 25 April 1896.

A Queensland correspondent writes to the “Australasian”:- Whilst visiting a friend who has a most excellent cook, I tasted some ginger pudding which was “positively ambrosial”. The cook wrote the recipe for me as follows:-

Gingar Puddin’

Won cup of Flor

Won cup of Brad Crums

Won spoonful of gingar

Tree ounce of suit

Half-cup of trackel

Won cop of shugar

Won cup of sor milk

Won pinch of spise

Won pinch of sode.

Quotation for the Day.

Hell is a place where the motorists are French, the police are German, and the cooks are English.
Anon?