Mrs Macpherson's cookery class, Australasian Sketcher, 20 December 1879.
The rules of how a cookery instructress should look and behave had been established well before Harriett Wicken began her own career in Australia and reports of her classes suggest that she conformed to what was expected. Good instructors were practical but not didactic, they had a conversational, simple and easy way of explaining what they were doing. In the case of Mrs Macpherson, giving demonstrations in Brisbane, the audience was treated as ‘not being utterly ignorant of the elements of good cooking’ but were shown ‘how they may do it quickest and best, with the greatest economy and the most satisfactory results’.[1]
Cooking lectures and demonstrations were hard work. Often conducted in crowded and hot conditions with limited equipment a successful demonstrator relied on physical stamina to maintain her schedule and an authoritative voice coupled with a certain amount of charisma to engage her audience. Reports of Wicken’s classes suggest that she had all the necessary qualifications. She was praised as an ‘efficient and painstaking teacher’, with an ‘admirably lucid manner’ who explained ‘minutely and clearly all her methods of making up’. [2]
All cookery demonstrators, walking the fine line between forging a public identity for themselves and reinforcing domestic values, needed to appear, like Mrs Macpherson, as represented on the front page of The Australian Sketcher, confident, efficient and businesslike while ensuring that they also remained ladylike and feminine without being frivolous.[3] Macpherson was described as appearing on the platform ‘exactly as if, as the lady of the house, she had just run to her kitchen to put the dinner on the way, and had hastily donned an apron and a pair of sleeves to save her dress’.[4] Mrs Wicken similarly fronted her classes ‘arrayed in a neat print frock with a large apron and a coquettish little cap.’[5] Neatly and dainty clad, sporting snowy white linen aprons, demonstrators ranged from attractive young women like Ramsay Whiteside, described as ‘most agreeable and winsome’[6] to the motherly and matronly, like Mrs Davis, demonstrator of gas stoves in Melbourne, who was referred to as ‘plump of person, rosy of countenance and beaming with good nature’.[7]One attendee of a class given by Mrs Fawcett Storey described her as the ideal of an instructress of cookery: ‘a pleasant, well-preserved little woman, apparently well aware of what she is about and what she is going to do, whose appearance is that of a strongly-marked intellect, combined with kindly decision of character and who has a facile power of conveying her knowledge to others, but who looks anything else but one’s preconceived ideas of a cook.’[8] Moreover it was evident that Annie Fawcett Storey had not commenced her education in the kitchen ‘and one feels thankful chance did not direct it to a scientific laboratory, where, no doubt, the mastering of her subject would have been equally certain but would have spoiled the “woman”.’ A cookery teacher needed to demonstrate that a scientific approach to cooking, and to household management in general, was neither antithetical to whatever might be considered appropriate womanliness, nor was cooking a menial task suited only to the servant class.
Various strategies were employed to illustrate that preparing economical meals was a suitably lady-like occupation - clean, orderly, simple and straightforward, in no way onerous and as far removed from household drudgery as possible. Overall the impression should be ‘that the kitchen is a deal nearer the drawing room than it is to the scullery’.[9] To that end demonstrators tended to use a limited number of pots and pans to show that cooking required no specialist equipment or an extensive, expensive array of utensils.[10] Mrs Macpherson ‘ostentatiously’ limited herself to ‘the machinery to be found in the humblest cottage’.[11]
At the beginning of the class everything was laid out in front of the instructor in a neat and orderly fashion and all the equipment was, of course, spotlessly clean. Cooking was made to look effortless and in no way time consuming. Teachers were praised for their lissom, nimble fingers and dextrous handling of the materials they used,[12] their deft and dainty methods producing ‘dainty’ dishes that could be quickly made with simple materials. Emphasis was placed on garnishes and ‘the very effective look’ of the finished preparations, in some cases made from ‘the simple and ordinary remains of household food’.[13] Mrs Macpherson’s chief aim was ‘to show the dainty possibilities that lurk unsuspected in the despised scraps that to the thriftless cook seem not worth saving’.[14] The results were both economical and aesthetically appealing and the sort of dishes that a lady, and responsible housewife, might be expected to prepare, be happy to serve and also to eat. Daintiness represented the essence of how women should act.[15] Mrs Wicken and her ilk were the personification of modern, domestic feminism - intelligent women using modern technology to prepare dainty dishes while dressed in dainty clothes and demonstrating ‘dainty cleanliness’. [16]
Wicken’s publications – Fish Dainties, Australian Table Dainties and Appetising Dishes and later Dainty Foods – all capitalized on notions of daintiness, not just in the sense of femininity, but also the idea of something ‘dainty’ as a delicacy, requiring thought and care to prepare. [17] Dainty dishes, according to Wicken, required ‘dainty preparation’ and should be daintily served so that they looked appetising.[18] Dainty fare was also simple, easy to prepare, economical and easy to digest. [19] Daintiness implied something light and tasty, as distinct from something that was hearty, heavy or filling. These delicate and delectable dishes were more often associated with afternoon tea, the quintessential female activity, and breakfast or luncheon, the meals of the day most associated with women and children, rather than dinner, the meal presided over by the man of the house and designed to suite masculine tastes and appetites.
In his gastronomic history of Australia, One Continuous Picnic, Michael Symons argues that the concept of daintiness was used by modern food companies to coax housewives to adopt ‘profitable frills’ like jelly and custard powder, co-opting lightness, prettiness and gentility as ‘part of a long campaign to twist the traditional caring concerns of women into petty materialist preoccupations’.[20] In Wicken’s Dainty Foods she does suggested chopped jelly as a garnish which ‘improves many sweet dishes’ and proposes the use of both jelly crystals and French gelatin, along with recommending a range of Fountain brand products. But Wicken’s favouring of French gelatin, for example, was not about promoting a particular brand. Before commercial gelatin was available making jelly of any sort was a tedious, messy, multi-stage process starting with calves’ feet which meant that jellies were only produced in kitchens employing large numbers of workers, either commercial establishments or wealthy homes. The use of French gelatin was part of producing light and dainty dishes, and making available something previously only a luxury, the feminizing and democratizing of day-to-day food production in the home. While the concept of daintiness was later harnessed to commercial concerns, for Wicken it was tied chiefly to the gentrification of the kitchen craft and the promotion of a nutritious diet. [21] A mainstay of all Wicken’s publications was the economical use of leftovers, to produce light, tasty dishes and equally the use of fresh fruit, vegetables and fish as wholesome ingredients which were quick and easy to prepare. Moreover these dainty dishes were ideally suited to the Australian kitchen.
[1] The Telegraph (Brisbane), 7 May 1880, p. 2, ‘Mrs Macpherson’s cookery classes.’
[2] Ballarat Star, 19 November 1887, p. 2, ‘No title’; Robertson Advocate, 31 August 1906, p. 2 ‘Cookery classes at Bowral’; Darling Downs Gazette, 18 January 1896, p. 4, ‘Mrs Wicken’s cooking classes’.
[3] The Age (Melbourne), 18 February 1899, p. 13 ‘Cooking classes’ describing Mrs Ross demonstrator for the Metropolitan Gas Company as not appearing ‘neither super business-like nor frivolous.’
[4] The Telegraph (Brisbane), 7 May 1880, p. 2, ‘Mrs Macpherson’s cookery classes.’
[5] Australian Town and Country Journal, 17 March 1894, p. 35, ‘At a cookery lecture’; Darling Downs Gazette, 22 January 1898, p. 7, ‘Cookery lectures’; Evening Courier (Freemantle), 13 May 1903, p. 3 ‘Freemantle technical and evening classes.’
[6] Evening News (Sydney), 4 March 1880, p. 3 ‘Demonstrations in cookery.’
[7] Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 9 February 1895, p. 4 Billy Nutts ‘At a cookery lecture.’
[8] Letter to the editor from ‘XYZ’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 8 March 1886, p. 7, ‘Cookery at the School of Arts’.
[9] Letter to the editor from ‘XYZ’, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 8 March 1886, p. 7, ‘Cookery at the School of Arts’
[10] The Telegraph (Brisbane), 1 May 1880, p. 2, ‘Mrs Macpherson’s cookery classes.’
[11] The Queenslander, 15 May 1880, p. 60 ‘Instruction in cookery.’
[12] Australian Town and Country Journal, 17 March 1894, p. 35 ‘At a cookery lecture’; Armidale Express and Newcastle General Advertiser, 16 January 1891, p. 3 ‘Advertising.’
[13] Darling Downs Gazette, 18 January 1896, p. 4, ‘Mrs Wicken’s cooking classes’; West Australian, 19 March 1903, p. 3 ‘Social notes.’
[14] The Queenslander, 15 May 1880, p. 620 ‘Instruction in cookery’.
[15] Sherrie A. Inness, Dinner Roles: American women and culinary culture (Iowa: Iowa University Press, 2001) pp. 54–55. ‘
[16] Annmarie Turnbull, ‘An isolated missionary: the domestic subjects teacher in England, 1870–1914,’ Women’s History Review 3, no.1 (1994), p. 84
[17] Harriett Wicken, Fish Dainties (Melbourne: The Mutual Providoring Company Limited. 1892); 1897 Australian Table Dainties and Appetising Dishes (Melbourne: Ward Lock & Co., 1897); Dainty Foods (Sydney: Progressive Thinkers Library., 1911)
[18] Wicken, Dainty Foods, introduction.
[19] Wicken, Dainty Foods, preface.
[20] Michael Symons, One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia. 2nd ed. (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 2007), p. 160.
[21] Gelatine was heavily promoted as ‘dainty’. Davis Gelatine, Australian manufacturers, published Davis Dainty Dishes beginning in 1922 and available up until at least 1955. For the craze for gelatine, and Jell-O and the democratization of daintiness in America see Sherrie Inness, Dinner Roles: American women and culinary culture (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press) pp. 63–68. For the connection of daintiness and creativity to the plethora of cake recipes in Australian cookery books see Barbara Santich Bold Palates (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2012) pp. 187–200.