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I have been doing some historic research on the internet, and on one of my favourite sites I found a book of collected traditional Manx Recipes, published in 1890something. This appears to have been a very early version of the charity recipe books we see nowadays - the recipes were collected from local women and a local doctor and the book was sold for the benefit of the parishioners of the church in Peel.
It doesn't say a lot for the diet of the Manx in the nineteenth century that the first half dozen recipes were all for porridge, and the next dozen or so were for other ways of cooking oatmeal which were basically porridge made with stock as a savoury meal 'good for working men', and then there were recipes for porridge made with toasted oatmeal and meat stock, for very special occasions!
More than half the recipes seemed to include oatmeal in one form or another - and many of the rest of them were for the thing I remember being told was the horror of my Grandfather's youth - Binjean - milk warmed and set with rennet. The only addition, if you were lucky, was a sprinkle of sugar.
There were at least two recipes which basically said 'split a barley loaf, fill it with butter and a boiled herring' - and the special version, where you filled it with a herring and a boiled potato.
There was a recipe for gingerbread - this was probably the fanciest thing in it, and also a recipe for haggis - which it said was a very traditional manx dish! This of course contained a lot of oatmeal, but there was also a haggis variation containing potato instead - that would probably have had Rabby Burns turning in his grave!
So had I been born 100 years earlier than I was, I would have lived on oatmeal porridge, barley bread, herrings, potatoes, and milk. I only noticed any vegetable other than onion or potato in one recipe - it had a turnip in it. I wonder whether I would have been more or less healthy?
It doesn't say a lot for the diet of the Manx in the nineteenth century that the first half dozen recipes were all for porridge, and the next dozen or so were for other ways of cooking oatmeal which were basically porridge made with stock as a savoury meal 'good for working men', and then there were recipes for porridge made with toasted oatmeal and meat stock, for very special occasions!
More than half the recipes seemed to include oatmeal in one form or another - and many of the rest of them were for the thing I remember being told was the horror of my Grandfather's youth - Binjean - milk warmed and set with rennet. The only addition, if you were lucky, was a sprinkle of sugar.
There were at least two recipes which basically said 'split a barley loaf, fill it with butter and a boiled herring' - and the special version, where you filled it with a herring and a boiled potato.
There was a recipe for gingerbread - this was probably the fanciest thing in it, and also a recipe for haggis - which it said was a very traditional manx dish! This of course contained a lot of oatmeal, but there was also a haggis variation containing potato instead - that would probably have had Rabby Burns turning in his grave!
So had I been born 100 years earlier than I was, I would have lived on oatmeal porridge, barley bread, herrings, potatoes, and milk. I only noticed any vegetable other than onion or potato in one recipe - it had a turnip in it. I wonder whether I would have been more or less healthy?
