Food and Cookery in the 18th Century

Olivia and Sophie

Background Information

Poverty• Poor harvest=family struggling to pay for food

• 1 in 10 below the “breadline”

• “Sink or swim”

• Throughout the 1700s, charities relieved the poor and they did this through;

• Awarded charity in the supply of clothes, fuel and loaves of bread- this was means tested

• Meat and soup charity established in metropolis

• Another alternative for the poor was to work in a work house for stability

• Poor relief in the work house, offered jobs, shelter and food

• However some were worse than others e.g. uniforms or badges to demean status, prison like structures, “rather starve than go in there”

Curry Recipe - 1747

G.A.P

• Genre :“The Art of Cookery” • Audience :Designed for lady of the house,

’Fend it to table.’ • Purpose : This was seen to be an instruction

manual for servants ,’ The poor girls are at a loss to know what they mean’.

Hannah Glasse• She was the first woman to write a well

written cookery book – • • “Lower Sort” – Preface

• Best seller for 100 years

Pragmatics

• “Over the fire in a clean shovel”- Technology advance

• “Beat them to powder”- Labour intensive

• “Piece of fresh butter, about as big as a large walnut”- No standard measurement

• ‘India way’- people were travelling to different countries

Lexis

• “Spoonful”- Fully written, not abbreviated

• “Pint of water”- Imperial, now would be metric

• “Fowls”- narrowed meaning

• Currey- new word come into English vocabulary from India

Grammar

• The long “S” sound- shows its age

• “Table”, “small Onions”- Capitalisation of nouns

• “Salt if it wants it”- Colloquial, personification/accent

Discourse

• Paragraphing, rather than bullet points

• Method and ingredients put together

Graphology

• There are no photographs as technology hadn’t advanced

• Black and white• Typed rather than written

British Advert for Curry Powder - 1747

Industrial Background

• By 1700s there was a massive influx of food from abroad e.g. chocolate, coffee and Asian cuisine such as curry powder

• Accessibility - local shops and ‘taverns’

• Printing press evolved

G.A.P

• Genre: Cookery Advert• Audience: ‘Persons of rank, Traders to all

nations and servants’

• Purpose: To advertise curry powder

Pragmatics

• ‘’Blood naturally free in circulation’’- They have knowledge of the effect that food has on the body.

• You can buy this spice from more local places easily, ’’Perfumeries’’

• ‘’Any person can make up a dish of curry’’- easy to make• ‘’Cheap fair pay for dealers’’ at a time where labourers

were in poverty from poor wages• ‘’Directions of how to use it’’ ‘’descriptions of the

various virtues’’ It reflects how new it is to recipes in this time period

Lexis

• “Proprietors”, “Booksellers”’’ Perfumeries’’ – old fashioned

• Most words are the easily translated today as language that we use today

• Persuasive ‘’ sumptuous’’ ‘’exceedingly pleasant’’ ‘’healthful’’ ‘’invaluable’’ ‘’rich’’

Grammar • Capitalisation of nouns- “Ingredient”

• ‘’;’’ Not used in modern day recipes as the sentences are less complex.

• Commas are more frequently used than now because sentences are shorter

• ‘’-’’ Parenthetic dashes which are used to break sentences can be used instead of colons, or pairs of commas that mark off a nested clause or phrase. We would find it unusual now because this is less common in advertisement writing. We would use bullet points or shorten sentences.

• Word limits could suggest the use of punctuation and material available at the time

Discourse

• Written as a paragraph • Now we would have : a website address,

telephone number etc. rather than a description- focus was on product rather than a company brand