Joanne Ginley
STOMACH churning recipes for stewing sparrows and cooking pigs are to be found in an amazing collection of cookery books in Yorkshire given international recognition.
Leeds University's cookery collection, which includes hundreds of cookery books from as far back as the 15th century, is among five of its archives which have been commended for their importance.
According to A Booke of Cookry, published in 1584, the best way to stew sparrows is to bring some ale to the boil over a fire before adding the birds.
Once you have removed the scum from the broth you add onions, parsley, thyme, rosemary, pepper and cloves.
The Art of Cookery, written by Hannah Glasse in 1747, includes a section on important rules to be followed when roasting meat. According to Mrs Glasse, the best way to judge when a pig is done is "when its eyes drop out".
Cooking skills came to the fore during the Second World War when as much as possible had to be made from scarce ingredients.
In Wartime Cookery, by Mrs Arthur Webb, published in 1939, the chapter Something for the Children advises skimmed milk can be a valuable food with housewives able to replace the missing fat by adding beef dripping or margarine.
Other items in the cookery collection include Mrs Beeton's famous Book of Household Management.
Chris Sheppard, the university's head of special collections said: "They enable you to see the history of cookery, but they are also very important for other kinds of history, such as economic and social history.
"They show what people were eating and the technology of food.
"It's a collection of cookbooks and books about food generally, mostly British, but there are French and other foreign cookery books as well and they date back to the 15th Century."
In all, five of the library's premier special collections have been awarded 'designated' status' – which rewards collections of outstanding international importance – by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).
The university has the only designated collections in Yorkshire.
The MLA said: "All of the collections are worthy of designation by virtue of their value to scholarship and research, their range and depth and their diversity and uniqueness."
In addition to the cookery collection, the university's English literature collection; its Russian archive; the Liddle Collection and the Romany collection have also been recognised.
The literature collection includes the iconic first edition of Shakespeare' s plays (1623) and rare books and thousands of original handwritten manuscripts by writers including Dickens, Oscar Wilde and T.S. Eliot.
Yorkshire writers are a special feature, from leading poets who have worked at the university to novelists Arthur Ransome and Barbara Taylor Bradford.
The Leeds Russian archive is one of the world's leading collections for studying Russian history and culture outside Russia. It includes the huge personal manuscript archive of Ivan Bunin, the first Russian winner of the Nobel prize for literature (1933).
Over 6,000 manuscripts relating to those involved in, or affected by, the First World War, make up the Liddle Collection.
It documents the wartime lives of servicemen and women in lower ranks and families struggling on the Home Front.
Its Romany collection of rare books and manuscripts celebrates the culture and history of travellers.
It includes German government edicts of the 17th century, modern novels, learned Victorian linguistic treaties and traveller's stories.
joanne.ginley@ypn.co.uk

According to the Art of Cookery, the best way to judge when a pig is done 'is when its eyes pop out'