[BITList] A compiler of recipes

[John Feltham]

G'day Folks,

 It’s not often that I get stuck on the meaning of words. But this short article has quite a few. It is not too long so see if you get stumped on the same words as I did. 

You might find Mr. Google and Wikipedia useful in your task.



ooroo





To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2017-06-04



Blencowe  [née Wallis],  Anne, Lady Blencowe  (1656-1718), compiler of recipes, was born on 4 June 1656, the elder daughter and second of three surviving children of John Wallis  (1616-1703), Savilian professor of geometry at the University of Oxford, and his wife, Susanna Glyde (1622-1687). Since her father set such store by education, it is reasonable to assume that Anne was well taught; she certainly spent her youth surrounded by his learned friends. A fine portrait of her, richly dressed and holding orange blossom in her hand, judged to be by an artist in the circle of Michael Dahl, was probably painted on her engagement in 1675. On 23 December that year she married Sir John Blencowe  (1642-1726), a barrister at the Inner Temple who the previous year had inherited the family estate at Marston St Lawrence, Northamptonshire. They had three sons and four daughters, of whom two girls died young; the eldest daughter, Mary, was said to have been educated by Wallis, who also taught cryptography to the third son, William Blencowe  (1683-1712).

After nearly twenty years of keeping house, Anne compiled a recipe book, dated 1694. It was not arranged in any orderly way, except for separating the medicines at the end from the food recipes. Her first food dishes suggested a greater interest in fruit, puddings, and cakes than in meat and fish, but these featured in the middle and were more numerous towards the end. It was written in a conversational style, with care taken to explain all stages in cooking procedures; some recipes strongly suggested that she herself did the cooking. The whole offered an excellent sample of dishes which had established themselves as staples among gentry in the second half of the seventeenth century. The preservation of fruit in sugar for winter use was firmly on the agenda; so was the pickling of vegetables and walnuts; that of meat was beginning.

Anne plainly had a dairy and a cheese press, but she did not use much butter except for sealing and preserving food. She had an alembic for distilling plant essences and sweet waters. She was as keen as the rest of her generation on making wine from plants-from sage, clary, cowslip-as well as from currants and raisins. She showed herself in the vanguard of some fashions: making stock cubes by the long cooking of meat until it became a glue which would keep for many months; and making piccallilli, with many spices recommended to her by Viscount Kilmorey. Other high-ranking friends had given her recipes, but she was content with the buns that followed a Marston village recipe. She almost certainly had a well-stocked garden and orchard, for in addition to large quantities of apples, she expected to lay her hands on cherries, apricots (large enough to be cut into eight pieces), peaches, and green stuff of many kinds. Barberries were a favourite in her store cupboard for sharp flavourings, and somewhere she could obtain morrels and truffles and buy potatoes. Like most women of her class, she set great store by making her own medicines to cure common diseases.

Anne died at Marston St Lawrence on 6 April 1718, survived by her husband, who requested to be buried beside her at Marston at his own death in 1726. Her manuscript was published without explanation in 1925 in a limited edition of 650 copies by Guy Chapman, a former freelance editor who had set up the Adelphi Press. A light-hearted but learned introduction, brimming over with literary reminiscences, and occupying eight pages, was written by the retired literary scholar and historian George Saintsbury, who had some celebrity in gastronomic circles.

Joan Thirsk 

Sources  The receipt book of Mrs. Ann Blencowe, ed. [G. Saintsbury] (1925) + J. W. Blencowe, ed., The Blencowe families of Cumbria and Northamptonshire and their descendants (2001) + C. J. Scriba, 'The autobiography of John Wallis', Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 25 (1970), 17-46
Archives priv. coll., recipe book
Likenesses  circle of M. Dahl, oils, 1670-79, priv. coll. [see illus.] · oils; Phillips, 13 Sept 1995, lot 125




========================================================================
©    Oxford     University    Press,    2004.    See     legal    notice:
http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb/legal/

We hope you have enjoyed this Life of The Day, but if you do wish to stop
receiving   these   messages,   please   EITHER   send   a   message   to
LISTSERV at WEBBER.UK.HUB.OUP.COM with

signoff ODNBLIFEOFTHEDAY-L

in the body (not the subject line) of the message

OR

send an  email to  epm-oxforddnb at oup.com, asking us  to stop  sending you
these messages.