Amy Cotler - The Secret Garden Cookbook, Newly Revised Edition: Inspiring Recipes from the Magical World of Frances Hodgson Burnetts the Secret Garden

Inspiring Recipes from the Magical World of Frances Hodgson Burnetts The Secret Garden

Newly Revised Edition

Frances Hodgson Burnetts The Secret Garden is about the magic of making things come alive. Mary, Colin, and Dickon all help the forgotten secret garden to grow again. But Mary and Colin come alive too, through hard work, friendship, and good, nourishing food.

When Mary Lennox first arrives at Misselthwaite Manor from India, she is thin, sallow, and unhealthy looking. But as she goes outside, skips rope, and works in the garden, her appetite grows. Colin, too, is sickly, until he learns the secret of the garden. By the end of the novel he is enjoying food as much as Mary. Pails of fresh milk, dough-cakes with brown sugar, hearty porridge, fire-roasted potatoesMary and Colin cant get enough of them!

The children of The Secret Garden grew up during the reign of Queen Victoria, who ruled from 1837 to 1901so long that her reign became commonly known as the Victorian era. During this time there were those who pleaded to abolish her position, because the monarchy cost the nation a lot of money while many English people went hungry. By the last half of her reign, though, Queen Victoria herself became quite popular. She was titled Empress of India in 1876, and her golden jubilee in 1887, which marked her fiftieth year as queen, was a national celebration.

In those days, food took a long time to cook and serve. Thus, even households that did not have a lot of money employed one or more servants to cook meals, as having a cook saved a great deal of time.

The Frances Hodgson Burnett Memorial Fountain, depicting Mary and Dickon from The Secret Garden, in Central Park in New York City

Eh! you should see em all, Martha said. Theres twelve of us an my father only gets sixteen shilling a week. I can tell you my mothers put it to get porridge for em all. They tumble about on th moor an play there all day an mother says th air of th moor fattens em. She says she believes they eat th grass same as th wild ponies do.

The Secret Garden, Chapter 4

While food was time-consuming to prepare, it was also often fresher than it is today, at least for those who had access to vegetable and fruit gardens. All the children in The Secret Garden lived primarily on food grown close to home in kitchen gardens. Misselthwaite had a large kitchen garden, and most likely a greenhouse for out-of-season produce. These would have been attended to by several servants: the head gardener, Mr. Roach, and his undergardener, Mr. Weatherstaff, for example. In addition, the manor probably raised chickens and dairy cows, or purchased fresh poultry and milk from local farmers.

Wealthy children like Mary and Colin were well fed and had a wide variety of meats, dairy products, and vegetables to choose from. By contrast, poorer children often went hungry. Dickons family, which lived a few miles away from Misselthwaite, was crowded into a tiny four-room cottage. With fourteen hungry mouths to feed, there often wasnt enough to go around, and what there was was never wasted. This is why Martha was so shocked when Mary refused to eat her porridge! Luckily, like many country folk, Dickons family was able to supplement the simple and scanty diet of oatmeal and bread with whatever Dickon could grow in the garden, such as potatoes, turnips, and carrots.

I think we shall have to eat it all this morning, Mary, Colin always ended by saying. We can send away some of the lunch and a great deal of the dinner. But they never found they could send away anything . I do wish, Colin would say also, I do wish the slices of ham were thicker, and one muffin each is not enough for any one.

The Secret Garden, Chapter 24

Despite the almost fairy-tale-like feeling in The Secret Garden, nineteenth-century England was in a period of great turmoil and poverty and hunger and change. The countrys population grew to four times its size, so there were thousands of new mouths to feed. Many of these new mouths belonged to children, who were forced to leave the land and move to industrial towns to look for ways to earn a living. There they worked long hours in factories, which were springing up all over the place. They had no access to fresh vegetables, fresh milk, or fresh meat; sometimes they could not find fresh water to drink. Often their only meals were bread and jam.

Perhaps because of this time of great change and great hunger, Burnett imagined a world in which everyone has access to fresh foodand plenty of it. Even Mrs. Sowerby, Dickons mother, though she must feed fourteen people, manages to find a little extra food for Mary and Colin when they experience the joys of eating.

In her book, Burnett celebrates the wonders of good appetite, good food, and good health. I hope that this cookbook, with recipes inspired by the foods and culture in The Secret Garden, will pay tribute to Frances Hodgson Burnett, as well as provide an antidote to our own age, when we often disdain those with good appetites and a hearty appreciation of good food.

After a few days spent almost entirely out of doors Mary wakened one morning knowing what it was to be hungry, and when she sat down to her breakfast she did not glance disdainfully at her porridge and push it away, but took up her spoon and began to eat it and went on eating it until her bowl was empty.

Tha got on well enough with that this mornin, didnt tha? said Martha.

It tastes nice today, said Mary, feeling a little surprised herself.

Its th air of th moor thats givin thee stomach for tha victuals, answered Martha.

The Secret Garden, Chapter 5

Just as Mary, Dickon, and Colin are characters in The Secret Garden, so too is Yorkshire, located in the north of England. In the beginning of the story, when Marys carriage first pulls her across the Yorkshire moor, the land appears endless, bleak, and desolate. In fact, though, the moors are covered with low-lying shrubs, such as heather, that bloom a carpet of purple in the summer, and bilberries, which resemble blueberries. They are also inhabited by a menagerie of wild animals, such as the ponies and foxes and rabbits that Dickon befriends.