Although perhaps not as well known today as Mrs Beeton, Eliza Acton preceded her by more than 15 years, with her first cookbook released in 1845. Although Acton was English and the book was published in London, it was soon available in the colonies.

The first edition rejoiced in the title of Modern Cookery in All Its Branches: Embracing a Series of Plain and Simple Instructions to Private Families and Others, for the Careful and Judicious … From Practical Observation and Experience.  A subsequent edition was retitled with the even more verbose:  Modern Cookery, for Private Families: Reduced to a System of Easy Practice, in a Series of Carefully Tested Receipts, in which the Principles of Baron Liebig and Other Eminent Writers Have Been as Much as Possible Applied and Explained.

While the book was intended for private families, it was likely that the families she had in mind employed a cook or, at least, a housekeeper or housemaid. In an introduction to the later edition, Eliza Acton writes:

It is not, in fact, cookery-books that we need half so much as cooks really trained to a knowledge of their duties, and suited, by their acquirements, to families of different grades. At present, those who thoroughly understand their business are so few in number, that they can always command wages which place their services beyond the reach of persons of moderate fortune. Why should not all classes participate in the benefit to be derived from nourishment calculated to sustain healthfully the powers of life? …Efforts in the right direction are already being made, I am told, by the establishment of well-conducted schools for the early and efficient training of our female domestic servants. These will materially assist our progress; and if experienced cooks will put aside the jealous spirit of exclusiveness by which they are too often actuated, and will impart freely the knowledge they have acquired, they also may be infinitely helpful to us, and have a claim upon our gratitude which ought to afford them purer satisfaction than the sole possession of any secrets—genuine or imaginary—connected with their craft.

In early colonial times, even middle-class families often employed at least one domestic servant and, particularly when convict labour was no longer available, the search for reliable staff was a common topic of conversation. But in Australia, the book’s use wasn’t restricted to family kitchens. It was on sale here by the 1850s and even made an appearance on the gold fields of Ballarat.  In the Sydney Living Museums blog The Cook and the Curator, Jaquie Newling writes of gold miner William Howitt’s 1853 letter to the Acton, describing how he adapted her recipes to local conditions and ingredients.

Eliza Acton was the first cookbook author to include a list of ingredients and cooking times for her recipes – an innovation which soon became a convention. It was also the first English cookbook to include recipes for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. Many of her ingredients are familiar today, and Acton’s clear writing style makes the recipes easy to follow. Some are daunting, though. The recipe for Soupe des Galles begins:

Add to the liquor in which a knuckle of veal has been boiled the usual time for table as much water as will make altogether six quarts, 29and stew in it gently sixpennyworth of beef bones and sixpennyworth of pork-rinds. When the boiling is somewhat advanced, throw in the skin of a calf’s head; and in an hour afterwards, or when it is quite tender, lift it out and set it aside till wanted.  

Try asking your butcher for a calf’s head these days and he’ll certainly look at you askance. And if you do obtain one, are you up for skinning it? Those 19th-century cooks were braver than we are.

The full text of the Eliza Acton book is available online via Project Gutenberg. Running to around 650 pages, it is worth many hours of happy browsing.