I have several facsimile reprints of very old cookbooks purchased from Acanthus Books
Some of them were written very seriously but the way they sound today is often hilarious.
One that was reprinted again in 1994 is The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie
You have to think that some of these cooks were very adventurous because they were taking things that sounded really odd
and were preparing extraordinary dishes from them.
One British friend who is about my age, born just before WWII, said that when she began reading old cookbooks from the 19th century, she wondered, "what the hell happened?" because ordinary homemakers a hundred years earlier were cooking much more interesting dishes than when she was a girl. Of course she was growing up during a time of strict rationing in the British Isles. Still, she said it seemed to carry on for much longer afterward than was necessary. People had gotten used to canned foods and were suspicious of many "foreign" foods.
