I love cooking. And even more than that, I love the history of food and cooking. And, of course, I love books. All of which means that I collect old cook books (mostly pre-1890) and read them cover to cover. Sometimes I even have a go at some of the recipes, though there’s generally quite a bit of guesswork involved in that as most of them don’t use measurements.

So the other day I was leafing through Soyer’s Modern Housewife (1851), a book of “Nearly One Thousand Receipts.” It was written by Alexis Soyer, a French chef who worked in England, primarily at the Reform Club in London (yes, the same Reform Club that features in Jules Verne’s Around the World In 80 Days). Soyer was an innovator who came up with many concepts that we now take for granted, like cooking with gas, refrigerators and ovens with adjustable temperatures. In addition to all of this, he wanted to widen the horizons of British housewives and teach them how to cook properly.

The result is a book that goes from the mundane, such as barley lemonade, to dishes that only the wealthiest houses would be able to afford, such as lobster and turbot. It also has sections of advice on cooking and running a household written in the form of letters between two imaginary ladies, some of which are obsolutely priceless:

Mrs. L. But what surprises me is to see everything so well done and clean with so few servants; you seem to have but two maid servants, a cook, a housemaid, and a coachman.

Only five servants! How could she possibly cope?

Still, the main thrust of the book is cooking, which brings me to the recipe in question, which is speactacularly, artery-cloggingly bad for you. It’s in the Pastry section and is called Pastry Cream Sautéed and Fried.

Now, I like pastry cream. It’s absolutely lovely in all sorts of things, but sautéed and fried? What the… !? My first thought was that it would be something along the lines of deep fried Mars bars, and I wasn’t too far off. Here’s the recipe:

Put the yolks of six eggs in a stewpan, with two good tablespoonfuls of sifted flour, mix quite smooth with a wooden spoon; then add a pint of boiling milk or cream, stir in by degrees, and place it over the fire, keeping stirred until it thickens; add an ounce of butter, six ounces of sugar, two ounces of crushed ratafias, a little orange-flower water, and three whole eggs, mix the whole well together and stir it a few minutes longer over the fire until the eggs set; then pour it out upon a sautépan previously oiled, and when quite cold cut it into pieces one inch wide and two and a half long, dip them in eggs and bread-crumbs twice over, the same as for croquettes, sauté them in the same manner, dress upon a napkin as high as you can, with sifted sugar over; they may be flavoured also with vanilla or lemon. They may be varied in shape according to fancy, and may also be fried in a quantity of lard.

It might be worth pointing out, at this point,  that Chef Soyer popped his clogs at the relatively tender age of 48, and I can’t help but suspect that a lifestyle that regarded “may also be fried in a quantity of lard” as a reasonable suggestion for a dish that already includes 10 eggs, sugar, butter, almond biscuits and breadcrumbs might juuust have had something to do with it.

Having said that, as fat-laden as this is, I’m perfectly prepared to believe that there are worse things out there, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

In the meantime, maybe I should have a go at making it…it could be the taste sensation of the century.