From Chapel Kitchens to Caffs

Jon Gower

Fish gravy! A Victorian-era Wesleyan minister called Thomas Thomas was apparently a dab hand at establishing chapels but he was also the author of a popular Victorian self-help book, which had lots of sage advice for working in the kitchen. Llyfr Pawb ar Bob-Peth (The Book for Everyone About Everything) appeared twenty years after Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and indeed some of her recipes mysteriously migrated into Thomas’ tome.

Sin-averse, Thomas freely admits the borrowings in the introduction, stating that much of his material is secondhand, or gleaned from reading other books. But one thing seems painfully clear. He didn’t know his audience, because it’s hard to imagine the Welsh chapel-goer who would need to know how to roast twenty five pounds of venison haunch or have it spelled out how to make a ham sandwich. And then there was his gravy...for fish.

For this sad, mad mismatch you had to fry garlic, onions, carrots and maize until they formed a glutinous gum. Then add water, mushrooms, our and sherry. It was clearly not a sauce for dayboat fish, caught that morning but, rather a lumpen experiment in how not to do it. While some unexpected ingredients work well with fish – think gooseberries with mackerel – this was definitely not the sort of thing to plaster over, say a fresh turbot.

One of the books shortlisted for this year’s Wales Book of the Year award is an account of the Welsh love of food. In order to write Lobsgows, the author Ruth Richards has sought out Welsh language cookery books from the past and one of those was the Reverend Thomas Thomas’ inept guide. But she also encountered more serious contributors to kitchen wisdom, such as Minwell Tibbott. Tape recorder to hand, she travelled the breadth and length of Wales gathering and indeed preserving recipes, including, of course, many recipes for preserving produce.

Minwell Tibbott

Tibbott was a pioneer in the eld of women’s domestic history in Wales, a gatherer of oral accounts and heirloom recipes, many of which found their way into her Amser Bwyd (Food Time) published in 1974. This not only included recipes but atmospheric photographs too. There is Mrs May Davies preparing oat cake in her kitchen in Llansaint, Carmarthenshire and Mrs Patti John from Mynachlog-ddu in Pembrokeshire baking bread in a pot. Most of the women wear patterned aprons while their kitchens gleam with polished copper utensils, black-leaded surfaces of open hearths and arrays of dishes for all occasions.

As author Ruth Richards tells us, many of the early recipes were born of poverty and necessity, aimed at appeasing hunger. One such was slotyn, which was nothing more than a slice of bread boiled in water with salt and pepper while another, siot was made up of oat-bread spread with butter-milk.

The book also captures social history, such as the arrival and spread of Italian cafes which brought new names to the high street – Antoniazzi, Sidoli, Conti, Forte – and, supreme among them Bracchi, which became a sort of generic name, Bracchis, for such cafes in general. But we also had our indigenous caffs, too, such as the slightly Stalinist-sounding National Milk Bars. These were founded by a dairy farmer from Montgomeryshire, Robert William Griffiths and grew to become a chain of twenty such bars in mid and north Wales, although only one now remains and that, for some reason in Ellesmere Port.

There’s certainly more than a whiff of nostalgia about Richards’ book as she recollects the days of turkey twizzlers or school milk, thick with cream and drunk from bottles before the blue tits picked away the tops. The history of Welsh language recipe books considers volumes which fair match the times, such as the 1960s' Ffenest y Gegin, which helped the burgeoning middle class arrange parties featuring such items as minestrone soup with boulettes. Twenty years later O Gawl i Gawl reflected the busy 1980s which allowed for the use of powdered potato Smash or even Dream Topping if time was tight. Richards has found the right ingredients for a good book, which brings the past to life and shows us how so much has changed, even if our love of food remains undiminished.