Want to try Jane Austen’s favourite cheese toastie? Now you can
In celebration of a 1799 h’appeny Mrs A found in our flowerbed, which I reflected was old enough to have been in Jane Austen’s purse, I thought in a wet characterless May, that this story of 18th century comfort food might cheer you up. It tells us:
“Grate the Cheese & add to it one egg, & a teaspoonful of Mustard, & a little Butter,” advises Martha Lloyd, a close friend of Jane Austen, in her recipe for one of the author’s favourite meals, “Toasted Cheese”. “Send it up on a toast or in paper Trays.”
This recipe is part of the “household book” written between 1798 and 1830 by Lloyd, who lived with Austen, her sister Cassandra and their mother (also called Cassandra) for years. The four women lived together in a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where Jane wrote, revised and had published all of her novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
Lloyd’s handwritten book, in all its blotched and crumbling glory, is set to be published in a colour facsimile for the first time, giving readers a new glimpse into Austen’s home life. Bodleian Library Publishing is releasing it in June, under the title Martha Lloyd’s Household Book.