every food in: Anne of Avonlea
Anne of Avonlea by LM Montgomery
Originally published 1909
Doing things a liiiiittle bit out of order here - I had listed the Anne of Green Gables foods in a notebook initially, but my dog ate it! So I’ll have to skim back through and redo it. In the meantime, I really wanted to get the Anne series started in time for warmer weather, because to me it’s such a summery feeling series.
Anne of Avonlea hasn’t yet embarked on the really intense religious direction that becomes really apparent by the time of House of Shining waters a few books later, and I have to say I was not expecting it when I read these + The Story Girl as a marathon reading session last summer. It’s not that it’s a bad direction per se but Anne completely changes as a character into an entirely different person by the end of the series. It’s honestly kind of jarring to have her going from an energetic kid who loves writing and learning and wants to have a career to “proud pastor’s wife and mother.” I can’t help feeling like young Anne would seriously side-eye older Anne.
But anyway. On to the food.
Davy and Dora, the orphans that Marilla takes in, are allllll about sweets and bread. Lots of bread. I know that bread and cocoa or milk was a normal elevenses or breakfast for children in 1909, but even by that measure, they don’t really seem to want to eat much else. (Fun fact: bread with milk heated and poured over it is where we get the phrase “milquetoast.” It’s a lot more delicious than it sounds.) I thought next that It was meant to signify that Anne and the Cuthberts were financially strained by taking in more children but that can’t be right either, since Anne plans and serves several elaborate dinners. I eventually just had to conclude that they’re picky eaters because they’re kids, and it’s probably not as deep as I think it is this time..
This will come up often on this blog, but pink icing was the only type of icing that existed for awhile - it’s colored with cochineal, which is made of ground up bugs! And we still use it.
Plum cake doesn’t necessarily contain plums! Plum cake actually refers to any cake with dried fruits or fruits included, around this time. “Extra plums” means it was heavily loaded with fruit, which would’ve been pretty luxurious for Anne.
Paradoxically, plum puffs do usually have plums in them. I was pretty sure they were similar to cream puffs, but the official website instructed you to put jam in store-bought puff pastry. I did my own research and found that most of the early 1900s cookbooks with recipes for fruit puffs treated them a bit like popovers, or a non-savory gougere. I don’t think I’ve tried anything like it before, and I’m excited to test them out.
Anne and Marilla would have canned their own peaches, most likely.
Cowcumbers are just cucumbers. It’s an old fashioned way of saying it, even for Anne’s time, dating back to when cucumbers were considered fit only for animal feed. There’s a fantastically entertaining bit of 1600s-era fake news in Samuel Pepys’ diary where he declares that “Mr. Newburne is dead of eating cowcumbers, of which the other day I heard of another, I think.” Nobody, of course, normally dies from cucumbers, unless they are allergic, or the cucumber has been cross pollinated with a wild variety - Mr Newburne probably suffered from toxic squash syndrome, which sounds hilarious but is alarmingly very real.
New-made bread is possibly my favorite phrase from when making your own bread was more common, and I hope it comes back into fashion. It just means that the bread was made freshly that day, or in this case, for the meal.
Chapter 1
Tea (unspecified accompaniments)
Nut cake, iced with pink icing and topped with walnuts (2)
Chapter 3
Tea, bread-and-butter( 1 ), canned peaches (5)
Chapter 8
Plum cake “with extra plums” (3)
A plain tea of bread and milk
Chapter 12
Nut cake “wrapped in blue and white striped paper”
A cup of tea and plum puffs (4)
Chapter 13
Lunch, unspecified
Lemonade
Chapter 14
“Baked beans, donuts, pie and so on.”
Yellow plum preserves
Chapter 16
Bread and butter
Cream of onion soup, roast fowls, peas, beans, creamed potatoes, lettuce salad, lemon pie with whipped cream, coffee, cheese, lady fingers (Anne’s dinner menu)
Chapter 17
Strawberry preserves and whipped cream
Chapter 18
Bread and butter with “cowcumbers” (6)
Chapter 19
Shortbread, a dish of preserves and tea
Bread and jam
Chapter 20
A cold ham bone and some fried steak
Light new bread (7), butter and cheese, fruit cake, preserved plums floating in golden syrup, a carved and jointed chicken
Chapter 21
Chicken, sponge cake, doughnuts, biscuits, tea
Chapter 23
Tea with “something nice and indigestible”
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Bread and jam
Chapter 27
Pudding with syrup
Doughnuts, mince pie, fruitcake
Milk, bread and butter
Strawberries and cream with tea
