For centuries, residents of the British Isles have found culinary comfort in the mysterious golden chemistry of the Yorkshire pudding.
The versatile doughy pockets have been used as an accompaniment to a variety of dishes, but they are best known as a vital component of the traditional Sunday roast.
With their deep puffy hollows and gilded crenellations, the Yorskhire pudding’s success lies in its simple magic – wrought from nothing more than flour, eggs and milk, the batter is bunged into the oven, and what emerges is a lumpen, crispy beacon of British cookery.
They first became popular after wheat flour began to become commonly used in the production of cakes and puddings, and there were various recipes from the 18th century which advised on how to create them at home. Early variations included a 1737 recipe for “dripping pudding”.
But the Yorkshire pudding surged to fame and gained its name ten years later, with the 1747 publication of the book The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, by Hannah Glasse.
Glasse, who has previously been described as “the first domestic goddess”, and even “the mother of the modern dinner party”, saw immediate success upon the publication of her book, which saw a reprint in its first year, and then remain in print for almost a century in over 20 editions.
The book’s cover did not reveal Glasse as the author, but instead mysteriously stated it was “By a Lady”.
Despite the success of the work, Glasse did not prosper for long after the initial publication. In 1754, she became bankrupt and was forced to auction her most prized asset – the copyright to the book.
In 1757 she was consigned to debtors’ prison, but released later that year, when she registered shares in a book she’d written in 1755 The Compleat Confectioner – it was also reprinted several times, but did not enjoy the same levels of success as The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy.
Glasse died in September 1770 aged 62. Her contribution to the success of the Yorkshire pudding has been recognised in a Google doodle.
If the thought of Yorkshire pudding and gooseberry fool makes your mouth water, you have Hannah Glasse to thank for making these two delectable dishes staples in English cuisine. Born on this day in 1708, Glasse was a pioneering English cook and author of the most popular cookbook of the 18th century. Published in 1747, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy was unique; it was one of the first cookbooks written in a simple and conversational style, which meant that any English speaker and reader – regardless of their class – could learn how to cook.
Glasse’s cookbook was popular not only because it was easy to read, but also because of its massive scope. It included a whopping 972 recipes, covering everything from puddings and soups, to what to serve at Lent, to preparing food for the sick.
Today’s Doodle features Glasse whipping up a batch of classic Yorkshire puddings. Her recipe for Yorkshire pudding, among many others, is one of the earliest known ever published.
Happy 310th birthday, Hannah Glasse!
Illustration by Matthew Cruickshank
HANNAH Glasse is hardly a name synonymous with celebrity chefs - but the British cook was one of the first.
Here's why the cookbook author is being celebrated with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 310th birthday.
Google Hannah Glasse’s 310th Birthday is marked by this Google doodle
Who was Hannah Glasse?
Born on March 28 1708, Glasse would go on to be a English cook who penned and recorded for the first time the most popular dishes of the 18th century in a pioneering book.
It was published in 1747 and was called The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.
But it wasn’t just any recipe book - it was one of the first designed for normal people.
It’s easy-to-read conversational style made it a bestseller.
And it has remained a significant piece of work because it contains one of the earliest recipes for Yorkshire puddings - a staple of the classic roast dinner.
The book has seen Glasse described as "the mother of the modern dinner party" with her book remaining in print for nearly a hundred years.
Glasse lived to the age of 62, and despite the success of her book suffered severe financial difficulties for much of her life.
Hannah Glasse was born 310 years ago and has been further immortalised for a day
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What is a Google Doodle?
In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message to that they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.
The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.
Google Google celebrated the Autumn Equinox with a themed doodle
In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.
Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.
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Hannah Glasse, whose 310th birthday is the subject of today’s Google Doodle, is part of the reason we have The Joy of Cooking today. That’s because in 1747, Glasse popularized the modern English-language cookbook as the author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy.
“I believe I have attempted a branch of Cookery, which nobody has yet thought worth their while to write upon,” the first page begins.
At the time, cookbooks were mostly for fancy professional chefs, and mostly French, but Glasse wrote her cookbook for housewives and domestic servants of the new middle class. With her help, Glasse writes in her preface, “I dare say, that every servant who can but read will be capable of making a tolerable good cook, and those who have the least notion of Cookery cannot miss being very good ones.”
That idea, plus or minus an assumption of hired help, is more or less the concept that brought us The Joy of Cooking in the 20th century: Anyone can make something edible with help, and most people can make something pretty good, as long as you have a book to show you the way. And like Joy, The Art of Cookery is essentially a household encyclopedia, clocking it at over 400 pages in its facsimile edition. Most of the recipes aren’t original — many of them were taken whole cloth from contemporary sources — but Glasse’s clean, crisp instructions rendered them usable to any literate person of her time, not just trained chefs.
Glasse doesn’t just stop at food. She also offers recipes and techniques for soaps, medicines, cosmetics, and keeping a clean and vermin-free household, all of which she approaches with salt-the-earth gusto. For bedbugs, she advises mixing mercury with egg whites and anointing the bedstead with the resulting concoction. “It is a certain cure,” she concludes, “and will not spoil anything.” (PSA: Do not smear mercury over your bed.)
Looking over the book today, it can be tempting at times to try to use The Art of Cookery as a modern cookbook. Glasse’s assumption that her readers will be butchering their own animals and then thriftily using every part has a certain nose-to-tail trendiness, and quite a bit of her advice for best cooking practices holds up today. “Most people spoil garden things by over-boiling them,” she remarks. “All things that are green should have a little crispness, for if they are over-boiled, they neither have any sweetness or beauty.” Too true, Mrs. Glasse; too true.
But what makes The Art of Cookery most charming to read in the 21st century is what Anne Shirley would describe as its “scope for imagination.” You might not necessarily want to make or eat this recipe, but isn’t it fun to imagine Glasse’s “everlasting syllabub”?
Take five half pints of thick cream, half a pint of Rhenish wine, half a pint of sack, and the juice of two large Seville oranges; grate in just the yellow rind of three lemons, and a pound of double-refined sugar well beat and sifted; mix all together with a spoonful of orange-flower water; beat it well together with a whisk half an hour, then with a spoon take it off, and lay it on a sieve to drain, then fill your glasses: these will keep above a week, and are better made the day before. The best way to whip syllabub is, have a fine large chocolate-mill, which you must keep on purpose, and a large deep bowl to mill them in: it is both quicker done, and the froth stronger; for the thin that is left at the bottom, have ready some calf’s foot jelly boiled and clarified, there must be nothing but the calf’s foot boiled to a hard jelly; when cold take off the fat, clear it with the whites of eggs, run it through a flannel bag, and mix it with the clear which you saved of the syllabubs; sweeten it to your palate, and give it a boil, then pour it into basins, or what you please: when cold, turn it out, and it is a fine summery.
All those lush, colorful food words rendered unfamiliar by 300 years; those run-on imperative sentences that briskly conclude by advising the reader to “pour it into basins, or what you please”: it’s like reading a bossy tone poem, or a tiny and beautiful short story. You don’t even have to know anything about syllabub beyond the fact that it is fun as heck to say to enjoy reading it.
(Syllabub, incidentally, is an old-fashioned English dessert made by combining dairy and alcohol so that the dairy curdles. You can learn how to make a modern version here, but it seems that no one has yet improved upon Hannah Glasse’s technique of whisking by hand to get the proper texture. Maybe if you find a fine large chocolate mill that you can keep on purpose?)
The Art of Cookery can be a sheer sensuous pleasure to read — and it’s also the godmother of the books that taught the rest of us how to cook. Happy 310th birthday, Hannah Glasse, and thank you for helping us feed ourselves for all these years.
