Eggs for Easter – in the time of Jane Austen

I recently came across a couple of curious egg cups, they bear the inscriptions, ‘[A] Trifle from Ramsgate’ and ‘A Present from Clifto[n]’. They date from the early nineteenth century and are tourist souvenirs.

Then, as now, Ramsgate was a seaside resort on the Kent coast, and so was an obvious place from which a souvenir might be sent. Clifton was a fashionable part of Bristol (I believe it still is) and was where Jane Austen moved with her mother and sister after her father’s death. It was also just above the Hotwells, a spa which had a certain popularity, Catherine Morland missed out on a trip there in Northanger Abbey, but it never seriously rivalled Bath and was in decline by the 1820’s.

Egg production, was unusual in British agriculture, it was essentially a female pursuit. In The Lady’s Country Companion, the indomitable Mrs Louden tells her correspondent;

My hints for teaching you how to enjoy a country life would be sadly deficient if I were to omit poultry, as the duties of attending on them are so completely feminine, that even in farm-houses they are entirely under the care of females; and, indeed, few artists or authors would think a picture of rural life complete, if they did not introduce into it the image of a fair young girl feeding poultry.

She then quotes a few paragraphs from a popular novel, before returning to her usual style.

I must now, however, return from the region of poetry to plain matter of fact.

And goes on to discuss the correct methods of heating a hen house, and ways of looking after chickens.

As poultry rearing was such a feminine occupation it is hardly surprising that Lady Lucas was concerned to know about her married daughter’s, ‘health and poultry’, whilst it was the theft of Mrs Weston’s turkeys that finally precipitated Emma and Mr Knightly’s marriage.

Stephens curing a sick chicken by hunting it round the yard – Harriet and Diana looking on.
An unusual method of curing a sick chicken, drawn by the talented Diana Sperling, and published many years ago as Mrs Hurst Dancing.

Eggs were semi seasonal, in that far fewer were laid in the winter than in the summer, recipes abound for preserving eggs, and for testing that they were fresh. Indeed it was around Easter time that hens began to lay well again, and the price of eggs dropped. Eggs for breakfast were commonplace.

After seeing William to the last moment, Fanny walked back to the breakfast-room with a very saddened heart to grieve over the melancholy change; and there her uncle kindly left her to cry in peace, conceiving, perhaps, that the deserted chair of each young man might exercise her tender enthusiasm, and that the remaining cold pork bones and mustard in William’s plate might but divide her feelings with the broken egg-shells in Mr. Crawford’s.

And they were cooked in similar fashion to today.

Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else; but you need not be afraid, they are very small, you see–one of our small eggs will not hurt you.

Actually Mr Woodhouse is right to praise Serle, as to successfully soft boil an egg in days before egg timers took quite a bit of skill.

An if you want to enjoy chocolate in the manner of Jane Austen, you will have to wait until after dinner – and drink it.