256 pp; H x W 216 x 138 mm; hardback 
ISBN 0907325 309 £25

Most early cookery books originated in London; for example, there is only one Scottish cookbook earlier than Elizabeth Cleland’s. Her text, therefore, is of great interest for what it says about the state of Scottish cookery at the time. Although in fact dependent on English practice and fashion, Cleland’s language and vocabulary makes her Scottish origins clear. 

Cleland’s text covers all the main categories of recipe, including those needed in the kitchen, the brewhouse, and the pickling and preserving still-room. There are many pie and pasty recipes as well as a few notes of medicines and cures. The print is clear and handsome. 

This edition is published jointly with the Paxton House Trust, a country house designed by Robert Adam near Berwick-upon-Tweed, now open to the public. The copy which has been used for the facsimile has definite links to the house. These are explained, as is something of the domestic organisation necessary for production of this style of food, in an introduction by Peter Brears, one of Britain’s foremost experts on historical kitchen equipment and famed for his reconstructions of early English cookery (for instance at the kitchens of Hampton Court).

Published in Edinburgh in 1755, Elizabeth Cleland’s New & Easy Method of Cookery is one of our most important sources regarding the culinary history of mid eighteenth century Scotland. Her’s was not the first recipe book to be published here, that honour going to Mrs McLintock’s Receipts for Cooking and Pastry-work, Glasgow, 1736, but it is by far the most extensive. Within over two hundred pages, it includes almost seven hundred recipes covering every aspect of food preparation, from traditional broths to the most fashionable of desserts. This made it one of the most successful Scottish cookery books of its period, second extended editions being separately printed by C.Wright & Co, by W.Gordon and Wright in Edinburgh, and by a London printer in 1759, a third edition by R.Fleming and W.Gray appearing in 1770. As its title states, it was chiefly ‘intended for the benefit of the young ladies who attend [Elizabeth Cleland’s] school’ which she presumably held at her house in the Luckenbooths adjacent to St.Giles at the head of Edinburgh’s High Street.

In 1755, the social; and economic life of this capital city was slowly beginning to revive after a hundred and fifty years of decline. This period had seen the departure of its royal court in 1603 and its parliament in 1707, the massive financial losses of the disastrous Darien expedition to Panama, and the disruption of the 1715 and ’45 Jacobite campaigns. It remained a major centre of social life and culture however, with every modern amenity, including a university, schools, infirmary, library, playhouse, concert and assembly rooms. There too were professionals offering legal, medical, publishing and architectural services, craftsmen offering numerous high quality goods, and shops the widest range of both everyday and luxury goods. This mass of activity was still constrained within the high medieval walls and gates of the Old Town, since the glories of the New Town lay years into the future. To the informed visitor, Edinburgh’s most notable features were the multi-occupancy buildings, often from six to fourteen stories in height, and the volleys from chamber pots which rained down from them, leaving pedestrians no option but to wade through the piles of excrement. The houses of the nobility in the Canongate and Cowgate were considered paltry and mean by London standards, but they provided essential accommodation for the landed families wishing to enjoy the city’s numerous facilities. It would be these families that provided the bulk of Elizabeth Cleland’s pupils, since it would be considered essential that their daughters should have a sound culinary education. If they married well, their knowledge would enable them to order their households’ meals with style and taste, while if they had to earn their own living, it would qualify them to serve as efficient housekeepers in major houses. It is interesting to note that first editions of A New and Easy Method of Cookery have been found in the library at Wedderburn Castle, and also in Sir Walter Scott’s library at Abbotsford, a clear indication of the gentry status of Mrs Cleland’s clients. In 1755, Anne Rutherford, daughter of the Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, was still living in her parental home in College Wynd, Cowgate, only a short walk from the Luckenbooths where Mrs.Cleland was then operating her school of cookery. We may reasonably assume that she attended Mrs Cleland’s classes here, and bought her recipe book in preparation for her marriage in April 1758 to Walter Scott senior, Writer to the Signet, who lived a short way up Cowgate, in Horse Wynd. Over the following years, she kept his house, and bore him twelve children, the first six of whom died in infancy. Then followed Robert, John, Anne, and, in August 1771, Walter, who was to become one of the greatest Scottish writers and patriots, and the foremost author of his age. It is interesting to realise that the recipes printed here were probably the very ones which nourished Sir Walter Scott in his formative years.

In the eighteenth century, there were three very distinctive culinary traditions operating in Scotland. At the highest level came the cooking of the great noble families, who required the very finest of international cuisine. Their cooks were their best paid and most respected servants, autocrats of extensive kitchen departments, and men of great taste and education. Joseph Florence, French chef to three Dukes of Buccleuch was typical of this elite tradition, his painting by John Ainslie, now at Drumlanrig, being one of the most impressive and memorable of all servant portraits. Through his master, he became a friend of Sir Walter Scott, creating Potage ‡ la Meg Merrilies de Dercleugh for him after the publication of Guy Mannering. J.Rozea, cook to the Earl of Hopetoun at Hopetoun House, demonstrated superb levels of skill and his knowledge of the Classics in his Gift of Comus or, Practical Cookery published in Edinburgh in 1753. Only two of the proposed twelve parts were ever printed, but in their 160 pages they just got as far as preparing the stocks on which the subsequent dishes would depend. Only nobles with bottomless purses could afford such gastronomic excellence, and very few recipes from their cooks ever found their way into lesser kitchens.

 Next came the cookery of the gentry and merchant classes, usually supervised by an experienced female cook or cook-housekeeper, or even the mistress of the house. This was the tradition which Mrs Cleland knew best, one which was extremely practical, wholesome and varied, including both everyday dishes and more luxurious ones for special occasions. It’s kitchens, utensils and recipes will be discussed later, based on the information provided in her text.

 The remaining type of cookery was that used by the country’s working populations, its agricultural, fishing, weaving and industrial communities. Economically limited, they made the very best use of locally available ingredients, fuels and utensils. These restrictions gave rise to considerable ingenuity, however, thus producing a highly individual tradition of true Scottish cookery, one of the most interesting of all Europe’s national cuisines. Anyone wishing to read more on this theme should refer to F.Marian McNeill’s The Scots Kitchen of 1929, and the numerous works of Professor Alexander Fenton.