Old cookbooks are a window into our past

As the Nancy Keesing Fellow for 2014 I am very lucky to be able to spend time over the next 12 months exploring the wide and diverse collection of Australian cookbooks at the Mitchell Library in Sydney. The John Hoyle Cookery Collection contains over 600 hundred Australian cookbooks.

One of my personal favourites in the collection is The Antipodean cookery book and kitchen companion by Wilhelmina Rawson, first published in 1894.

Mina Rawson

 Mina Rawson is one of those great characters from our nations past. She was the first female cookbook author in  Australia with the publication of Mrs Lance Rawson's Cookery Book in 1878. Not only was she the author of over half a dozen cookbooks she also wrote fairy stories, worked as a newspaper editor and was the first female swimming teacher in Queensland. You can read more about her and her work here.
A strong advocate for the consumption of native fauna and plant species, Rawson gained much of her knowledge from local Aboriginal people. She wrote appreciatively of the wild mushrooms and of the edible young shoots of the wild rough-leaved fig which had been pointed out to her by Aboriginal women in the Maryborough area. And, in the Antipodean Cookery Book, Rawson clearly stated that: ‘I am beholden to the blacks for nearly all my knowledge of the edible ground game’.

I will be posting a lot more over the coming months highlighting some of my discoveries at the Mitchell Library .