ANCIENT KITCHEN SECRETS REVEALED
The Museum Talks series, organized by the Halesworth and District Museum got off to a great start with nearly sixty people coming to listen to John Bennett talk about ‘The Southwold Railway: its Past and Future’. The wonderful new layout of the United Reformed Chapel in Quay Street proved to be a fine space for talks of this sort.
We hope for a similar interest when sometime Halesworth-resident Moira Coleman returns to the town in May to talk about ‘The Kitchen Secrets of an Elizabethan Country Lady’ based on her researches into the recipes and household accounts of Lady Catherine Tollemache of Helmingham Hall. The records she left behind enable us not only to recreate the style of the dishes and meals served up at the Hall to its stately residents and guests but also where, in the days before local shops and on-line deliveries, she got her ingredients.
As well as an avid collector of other people’s recipes, many of them historic even in her day, she was also skilled herself in preparing medicines and perfumery.
All this you can hear about at the United Reformed Church, Quay Street, at 7.30 on Thursday 16 May. £3 admission (£1.50 for Friends of the Museum). Refreshments available. Or you can buy her book on the subject, ‘Fruitful Endeavours’, from the Halesworth Bookshop for £15.