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We're here at Collectorfest cookbooks in September in Canberra
and I'm talking to Dr Adele Wessell,
who is one of our special speakers for the occasion.
Adele, what is your interest in cookbooks?
Well, I have a scholarly interest.
Fortunately I also enjoy looking at them.
But I use them as a record of change
and also I will use them to look at
how cookbooks actually produce historical change as well
and occasionally I cook with them.
Do you have a favourite cookbook?
That's a difficult question for historians
because they tend to actually do different things.
I have a series -
am I allowed to cheat and do that? Yes, you are.
We're here to talk to Margaret Fulton today,
and I think that her cookbook is really important
because it is so popular
and it also popularised lots of things now
that we tend to take for granted -
women working,
recipes from other countries,
using fresh local produce - that kind of thing.
The fact that it's still in print 40 years later
suggests that it still has a lot of relevance,
so that's important.
My other kind of series of favourites
would be the domestic science cookbooks
and Flora Pell's Our Cookery Book in particular
which was first published in 1916.
And I have written about that
with Alison Wishart from the Museum.
That's particularly important because
she also had a kind of a commitment to the nation
and to the idea that housekeepers could wield tremendous influence.
So in some ways it also prescribed a different kind of role for women
which was quite powerful.
So that would be an important one.
And the other series of cookbooks for historians that I think are particularly important
are the community cookbooks
because often they were tried and tested
and they were produced by contributions
from people that were in the community.
So they provide a bit more of an accurate record than a lot of cookbooks do
of what people were actually cooking and eating
because historically there are lots of cookbooks –
as there are even now –
that aren't necessarily used to produce meals
but for a whole range of other things.
The community cookbooks are important.
As a cook, do you use recipes from any of the cookbooks you study
and, if so, do you have a favourite recipe -
maybe a Flora Pell?
I do use the recipes partly because I think it's a practical way
to experience the past as well.
And although you can't actually reproduce things
that are exactly the same
and they will be tasted quite differently
than they are now,
I still use them because I think it's a way of
kind of tasting and experiencing the past
which is quite different.
I do tend to use recipes mainly for things like cakes
because there's a bit of chemistry involved in cooking cakes.
You do need to get the ingredients just right.
But mostly I use them kind of for inspiration
as much as anything else.
I might make certain changes to the recipes as well.
And do I have a favourite recipe?
Alison actually cooked Belgian pound cake
from the Flora Pell cookbook, which was fantastic.
Part of the reason why it was so good
she used quite a lot a lot more butter than was in the recipe.
Yum.
It was really good.
Adele, this is a Collectorfest so can I ask:
do you collect anything?
I do collect cookbooks.
Cookbooks - a lot of people will like quite pristine cookbooks,
people who collect cookbooks who were professional
would be looking for first editions and so on.
I like cookbooks that have lots of stains
and kind of writing in the margins that would give a record I guess
of how people were using them. So I do tend to do that.
I have a whole series of books.
I have the Davis gelatine cookbook that was produced in the early 1900s.
I actually won a cooking recipe
with the pea salad that was in gelatine.
It was quite amazing.
It actually did taste good,
because you cooked it with vinegar and mint
so it was tastier than you would imagine.
That was one of the first cookbooks that came out that were colour.
So I have that.
I have a few of the domestic science cookbooks.
I still have my Commonsense Cookery Book
from when I went to school in the 1970s,
which I still use,
and peoples will tend to give me cookbooks as gifts.
I don't cook necessarily from all of them
but I do enjoy reading them. Thank you very much, Adele.