On 6 October 1915 Vera Prior Hick married William Clayton-Joel at her parent’s home in Williamstown.[1] Vera was the youngest daughter of Alexander White Hick and his wife Emma (née Box). The extended Hick family were long-time, prominent residents of Williamstown, and, entwined with other local families through marriage, had significant business interests in the town. The Hicks were also active in the local community. Vera’s father was secretary to the Williamstown Cemetery, a founding member of the Williamstown Bowling Club and the family had strong connections to the Methodist Church. Alexander’s obituary described him as ‘one of Williamstown’s most respected residents’.[2] Her husband also came from an established Williamstown family. William Joel was the son of William Clayton-Joel and Elizabeth (née Clark) and worked in his father’s electrical engineering company.[3] The newlyweds made their home at 45 Railway Place, Williamstown and Vera brought with her a copy of the newly-published The Common-Sense Household Cookery Book, compiled by the New South Wales Cookery Teacher’s Association, which she proudly emblazoned with her new name and address.[4]
Given that she came from a very comfortable middle-class family it is possible that Vera had little domestic experience or culinary skill. A note pinned to the final page of her cookbook providing guidance on ‘Serving Dinner’:
Have 3 extra plates hot in the oven, 1 for baked veg., 1 for joint of meat, 1 for carved meat.
Prepare boiled veg for serving.
Take up meat and baked veg, & replace in oven.
Make gravy.
Carve meat on 1 plate (leaving rest on plates in oven).
Distribute meat and veg on the different plates & put back in oven for a few minutes.
tends to support the notion that she was perhaps a novice in the kitchen. If so, then the simple recipes and straightforward instructions in the Common-Sense Cookery Book would be particularly useful.
It is often suggested that the best way to determine favourite recipes is to look for stains and splodges on the pages in cookbooks to which reference was regularly made. Vera’s book is now over one hundred years old but shows remarkably few signs of this sort of wear and tear. That the book is well preserved does not of course mean that it was not used and valued. At some time, a neat hole has been bored through from front to back and a loop of string inserted, presumably so that the book could be hung up somewhere convenient in the kitchen. In fact, the absence of staining may well indicate that the text was treasured and carefully protected from spills and splatters. There is also clear evidence that Vera did refer to certain recipes and that she was interested in adding to her culinary knowledge.
Throughout there are notes which Vera has made. Many recipes have been annotated in one way or another. Some have ingredients highlighted others have an alternative recipe pencilled alongside. For example, the ‘First stock for clear soup’ recipe calls for 1 doz. Cloves and 1 doz. peppercorns but Vera’s notes round this down to 2 cloves and 3 peppercorns, and either in addition to, or instead of, the bouquet garni in the original recipe she includes marjoram and parsley. Next to the recipe for ‘Sago Pudding’ are pencilled directions for an alternative process and alongside the instructions for 'Banana Custard' is a note to cool the custard before pouring over the bananas. Other reminders include the notes made beside the recipe for ‘Jam Sandwich’ – ‘light bottom gas when starting – top gas when eggs and sugar are finished’. Substitute recipes for 'Lemon Tart', 'Suet Crust', 'Quickly-made Apple Pudding', 'Liver and Bacon' (Vera’s recipe adds onions) all suggest experimentation, corrections made which reflect knowledge gained from experience, and alternatives better suited to her own skills and her own tastes.
These new ideas came from various sources. A note on page 13, under the heading 'Stocks and Soups', says ‘See also PWMU Soups’ which suggests that her kitchen shelves housed the recipes put together by the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria.[5] She sourced recipes from newspapers – a hot water pastry for Steak and Kidney Pie, instructions for making 'Egg Sandwiches', 'Vanilla Slices', 'Orange Cake', 'Baked Bananas' and for cooking a 'Tough Fowl' – have been neatly cut out and firmly pasted onto appropriate pages. No doubt others were recommendations from friends - an added recipe for 'Flaky Pastry' is headed ‘Mrs Stubb’s recipe’. The recipe which appears to have given Vera the most trouble is that for 'Cream Puffs'. Here she has made several changes to the quantities of ingredients, made amendments to the method, and pasted in a recipe supplied to the women’s page of the Argus.[6] Of course, there is no way of assessing Vera’s success in the kitchen or her enthusiasm for cooking but tracing these newspaper clippings confirms that Vera, a regular reader of the Argus, continued to add to her recipe collection at least until the mid-1920s.[7]
While Vera’s book does not reveal much information about what meals she may have prepared her additions to the text do give a glimpse of her interests and her domestic role. For example, Vera’s kitchen was also the place for concocting home remedies. Like most recipe collections of the period the Common-Sense Household Cookery Book provided a section of recipes suitable for invalids, which included light dishes like steamed fish and savoury omelette, and nourishing fare such as beef tea and chicken broth. To the two published recipes for 'Barley Water', Vera added two of her own which may indicate this was a ‘medication’ often invoked. She also added remedies ‘for warding off colds’ which include a treacle posset (1-2 tablespoons of treacle added to 1 pint of boiling milk), 'Onion Gruel' (to be taken hot ‘when in bed or not going out’, and the recommendation to ‘put feet in hot mustard and water when retiring’. How efficacious these treatments were is not recorded.
Nothing if not thorough, the Common-Sense Household Cookery Book provided step-by-step directions for preparing cocoa, tea (‘Use a food quality tea, and an earthenware teapot’) and coffee. It appears that Vera was unaccustomed to making coffee since, along with the notation ‘1 dessertsp. coffee to 3 cups of liquid (weak), 1 dessertsp. coffee to 2 cups liquid (strong)’ she transcribed three sets of directions for preparing coffee to drink, the most obscure of which was clearly designed for making large quantities. The ingredients are listed as:
1/2 lb (approx. 250 g) coffee, (whether ground or beans is not specified)
3 qrts (6 pints or approx. 3.5 litres) milk
copperful water (without knowing the exact volume of a laundry copper this would probably amount to around 20 litres or perhaps more)[8]
The directions involve putting the coffee into a muslin bag, placing the bag in the copper with the water, along with an unspecified amount of salt, and bringing the water to the boil before adding the milk. Again there is no record of where, when or why Vera ever had recourse to making coffee on this scale.
William retired from the family business in 1953 and died in 1961 at the age of 73.[9] Vera died in 1990, aged 98. Unfortunately there is nothing to confirm that Vera ever master the making of cream puffs.
[1] Argus, 18 December 1915, p. 3.
[2] Williamstown Chronicle, 22 October 1938, p. 4 “Death of Mr A.W. Hick’.
[4] Vera inscribed ‘Vera P. Joel’ on the front cover and her name and address on the title page. The Common-Sense Household Cookery Book, compiled by the Cookery Teacher’s Association of New South Wales (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, nd 1914/15?).
[5] The P.W.M.U. Cookery Book of Victoria (Melbourne: Brown, Prior & Co. first published 1916) Before 1916 the PWMU publication was titled Home Cookery for Australia.
[6] The recipe request by ‘Beate’ of Green Lakes was published in Argus, 26 June 1918 (p. 12, ‘Women to Women’). The recipes for ‘Pastry for Pies’, ‘Whipped Cream’ and ‘Orange Cake’ also came from this edition of the Argus.
[7] ‘Baked Bananas’, and ‘Vanilla Slices’, Argus, 25 December 1918, p. 8; 'Egg Sandwiches', Argus, 11 January 1922, p. 5; ‘To cook a tough fowl’, Argus, 6 January 1926, p. 6.
[9] Age (Melbourne), 21 May 1953, p. 13; Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages index.