Audiobook · read by volunteers
How to Cook Fish
Myrtle Reed (1874–1911)
Read by Denny Sayers (d. 2015), Carol Goode, Robin Cotter, Scott Walter, Laurie Anne Walden, Gesine, Hugh McGuire, Sean McKinley, Mochan42, Lee Ann Howlett · 43 chapters · 10 h 02
About the book
Before there were celebrity chefs, there was Olive Green, and her cookbook How to Cook Fish is a thorough, cheerful guide to the subject. She starts with the catching and choosing of fish and goes on to seasonal advice, court bouillons, frying, baking, sauces and a wide range of recipes for shellfish and freshwater species. The author, in fact, was Myrtle Reed, who wrote over thirty books and hundreds of articles in a short life, and whose lively voice shows even in a cooking manual. The book makes a fascinating window onto the kitchens of the early twentieth century. Denny Sayers, Carol Goode, Robin Cotter and seven others read its forty-three chapters in about ten hours.
Introduction
Myrtle Reed (1874-1911) was an American author who published under her own name and under the pseudonym Olive Green. She wrote more than thirty books and a great many magazine articles and pamphlets during her short lifetime. She was best known for romantic novels, often built around themes such as lasting or unrequited love, ironic revenge and mystery, and she also wrote lighter books on household subjects.
How to Cook Fish appeared in 1908 under the Olive Green name and belongs to a series of practical books on food that she wrote. Like other cookbooks of its time, it assumes a household with a wood or coal stove and a cook who is prepared to spend time on preparation. It begins with chapters on the selection and preparation of fish and then provides recipes arranged by type. Measurements are often imprecise by modern standards, and some of the ingredients and methods will surprise today's cooks.
The recording has forty-three chapters and lasts about ten hours. Many LibriVox volunteers take part, among them Denny Sayers, Carol Goode and Robin Cotter. A cookbook may seem an odd choice for listening, yet this one has charm and period flavour, and it is full of practical wisdom as well as dated notions. It will appeal to anyone interested in the history of food, and to those who simply enjoy hearing how people cooked a hundred years ago.
Public domain
Myrtle Reed died in 1911: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text