My friends, when searching Hathi, IA, WikiSource, Perseus, DPLA et al gets frustrating, here you go - an easy to use, odd, kind of self-indulgent but not at all stupid, free E-BOOK site for all your ancient/medieval/renaissance/etc. eras up to about 1920? reading needs!
Add it to your digital library links NOW.
It was while I was at Fifty Words for Snow I found this:
...with my apologies to Mr. Peenee for taking so long to provide the link. (Let's test his memory.)
It is a cookbook centered around what arguably could be called the first 'fad' appliance - a chafing dish. Basically you were young, single, poor and living in the big city for the first time in some horrible little crappy room. But we got you fam! Here! Have a chafing dish!! You can cook in that squalid little room in a pretty little pot OVER A FUCKING CANDLE FLAME OMGWTFBBQ *running in circles like a chihuahua* - although a spirit lamp is the official line (what else can I do with this sentence?) and thus your ass will save money all over the place and will accrue all kinds of other benefits, including the ability to cure scabies by laying on hands like a monarch of the realm, which I made up.
Our author writes with such cheerful aplomb it's enough to make you laugh out loud, which I did several times, although I admit that in such matters I am a cheap date. Still, never have I enjoyed reading a cookbook so much! And there's footnotes! And outside links! And commentary by the owner of this site!
GEEZE JUST READ: The Cult of the Chafing Dish
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Look what arrived three days ago!
Industrial Explorings in and Around London, by “R. Andom”: "An 1895 travelogue of a dozen very different factories in the London area, copiously illustrated by T. M. R. Whitwell". Sounds like a must-read to me!
ReplyDeleteA chafing-dish, a "fad" item? Oh, fuck! Once the Madam reads about it, we'll have another "labour-saving device" cluttering up our cupboards...
Jx
PS I'm sure if you ask nicely at the barbers or a dentist, they'll let you use their sterilising cabinet on the toxic hazard that is those shorts.
As much as I am tempted to open "Fifty Words for Snow" I think I'll just hold on to what I learned from Simila's Sense of Snow many moons ago. The joys of chafing dishes, sweetpea! They only meant fine dining experiences at my mother-in-law's dinner parties. Yeah, we're bougie like that. LOL xoxo
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