Dr Jacqui Newling
Assistant curator
Jacqui brings over ten years of ‘visitor first’ interpretation experience to her role as a curator at SLM. She specialises in place-based social history and heritage, bringing meaningful stories from our past to contemporary audiences through various forms of media, from exhibitions to interactive opportunities for visitors in our museums.
Jacqui has a PhD in history and is a graduate of the Le Cordon Bleu Master’s Degree in gastronomy. Specialising in food culture and identity in colonial and settler-colonial contexts, her doctoral thesis examines food and food security in the founding of colonial New South Wales. Jacqui brings Sydney’s rich food heritage to life, adding flavour to SLM’s historic houses. She co-curated the ‘Eat Your History: A Shared Table’ exhibition at the Museum of Sydney, is the ‘Cook’ in the blog, The Cook and the Curator and is author of the award winning book Eat Your History: stories and recipes from Australian kitchens.
In addition to her food heritage projects, Jacqui curated the Enchanted valley digital interactive at Museum of Sydney and the End of Transportation exhibit at the Hyde Park Barracks.
Stories
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‘Truly an enchanted valley’
A stunning new installation at the Museum of Sydney reimagines the Haven Amphitheatre at Castlecrag, a much-loved place of magic and mystery for Marion Mahony Griffin. -
Preserving our culinary heritage
Autumn is the time when families like the Rouses of Rouse Hill House & Farm preserved the last of the warmer weather’s bounty to enjoy in the months to come. -
Expansion
Convicts played a crucial role in the new colony’s rapid spread, which dispossessed and displaced Australia’s First Peoples, and indelibly altered their lands. -
A musical tour back in time
Soprano Nyssa Milligan describes the experience of performing at Elizabeth Bay House in the recent collaboration between Sydney Living Museums and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. -
Aunty Tot's lemon biscuits
Family histories recall Auntie Tottie cooking these biscuits, cut into fingers, on large baking trays in the fuel stove at Meroogal. -
Gingernuts
Most recipe collections include a classic ginger bread, cake or biscuits creation, such as the handwritten gingernuts recipe that was found tucked inside a book belonging to Nina Terry (nee Rouse). -
Don’t forget your homework
In a simple ruled exercise book, with margins drawn neatly in red ink, are over 60 pages of handwritten recipes, cooking rules and techniques, recorded by 12 year old Jenny (Dolly) Youngein, 104 years ago. -
On the Macarthurs' menu at Elizabeth Farm
At Australia’s oldest homestead, you can visit the 1820s kitchen and the gracious dining room to get an idea of what was on the Macarthur’s table. -
Regency cheesecakes
Baked cheesecakes made with fresh ricotta-style cottage cheese appear in many cookery texts from the early 19th century. -
Mrs Sarantides’s shortbread biscuits
The Sarantides kitchen as you see it today at Susannah Place Museum is furnished according to the oral histories of Dorothea Sarantides’s grandchildren, Kay Kallas and her brother George Adaley. Kay has passed on some of her grandmother’s recipes, including these delicious Greek biscuits. -
Meroogal sponge
According to family tradition, the tea table at Meroogal was not considered complete until it was laden with the family’s ‘signature’ sponge cake, which was baked in a loaf tin and served perfectly plain. -
Reviving an heirloom recipe
Wedged between the pages of an old family cookbook is a manuscript recipe for Meroogal Sponge. In the early 1900s the tea table at Meroogal was never thought to be complete without the family's 'signature' sponge cake, baked in a loaf tin and served perfectly plain. -
A manuscript cookbook from Meroogal
Among the many cookery books in the Meroogal collection are several notebooks containing handwritten recipes. This one was compiled by Helen Macregor, who lived at Meroogal in the early 1900s. Some of the recipes have been edited with tips, comments and adjustments added over time. -
Eat your history: the book
Sydney Living Museums and our resident gastronomer, Jacqui Newling, have published 'Eat your history: stories and recipes from Australian kitchens', a beautifully curated book to read and cook from. -
The art in eating artichokes
Artichokes are in their prime at the moment. They are a member of the thistle family, and have been popular in the Mediterranean region since antiquity, but to many Australians they still seem very curious and foreign -- partly because we're not quite sure how to prepare and eat them. We're more likely to buy [...] -
Hannah’s long lunch
A recent fundraising event at the historic gold mining town of Hill End in regional New South Wales celebrated colonial hotelier and cookbook author, Hannah Maclurcan. -
A fond farewell
This week we raise our glasses to our colleague Alysha, who has been a central part of The Cook and Curator team since the very beginning, and is leaving us for new adventures. When we first sat down some 3 years ago to start discussing what form this blog would take, Alysha Buss was a [...] -
Please cheese me
This week at Elizabeth Bay House artisan cheese maker Kristen Allan hosted a workshop as part of our Colonial gastronomy series. Kristen is rather enamoured with the cellars under the house, which have their own unique environmental conditions which contribute to the cheese being made and stored there. Domestic cheese making Cheese making in its [...] -
How high?
How 'traditional' does something have to be before it becomes tradition? High tea, as an entity, has been around for over 150 years, but the 'traditional high tea' that we enjoy today, with delicate sweet and savoury morsels, bears little resemblance to high teas 100 or even 50 years ago: it was a meal, usually [...] -
‘At home’
On the first Monday of each month the Thorburn sisters, Belle (Annabella), Kate (Jessie Catherine), Georgina and Tot (Kennina) entertained 'At home' at Meroogal. 'At homes' were something of an institution from the 1880s and survived well into the 1920s. Even ladies clubs, such as The Queen's Club in Sydney which offered accommodation and a [...] -
The ritual of tea, 1930s style
My research into domestic life in regional Australia has led me to some personal memoirs of late, including Barcoo Rot and other recollections, a transcript of oral histories taken from Jean Thomas (nee Bertram), about her early life in remote Queensland and later, northern Tasmania in the early 1900s. -
Home baked bread
With our current focus on bread baking, it seemed fitting to include a recipe to make bread in our modern kitchens that uses a traditional technique - and this is the best one I've found yet. Good recipes that really work find themselves being recommended and passed on to others. I have Real Food Projects' Kate Walsh to thank [...] -
Our daily bread
One of my greatest challenges in presenting our culinary past to museums audiences is working out what form foods took – what they looked like, their colour, shape and texture – when we only have written accounts to go by, and many of those offering only scanty detail. Using your loaf Sometimes we can be [...] -
Insider stories
My current research project (the outcomes of which will be revealed in the coming months – watch this space) has seen me revisit some wonderful personal accounts from Australians who lived ‘ordinary’, but to us, extraordinary, lives. I recently made mention of the diaries of free settler, George Wyndham (1801 – 1870), who chose the Hunter Valley [...] -
[Am]bushed by shrubs
All that’s old is new again, including the ‘rediscovery’ of shrubs, or vinegar based beverages. You may have tried making the raspberry vinegar cordial which we published quite a while back on this blog. Taken from Maria Rundell’s A new system of domestic cookery, 1816, its original title was simply, ‘raspberry vinegar’ or ‘raspberry vinegar water’ in [...] -
Anzacs in civvies
It’s Anzac week and as Sydney and surrounds grapple with a third day of wild rain storms, we can barely complain when we think of what conditions front-line soldiers endure for weeks, sometimes months, on end. Many of us take added comfort on Anzac Day, from baking Anzac biscuits, which fills the kitchen with inviting [...] -
Suet-able for the modern table?
With the weather cooling and rain keeping our family (happily!) indoors for much of the Easter break, I seized the opportunity to revisit some old fashioned comfort foods. The nip in the April air inspired me to make some traditional suet ‘crust’ recipes. I had the good fortune to be given some already cleaned and [...] -
Farewell Dr Rowland, a rural village tribute
Much fun and fascination was had in the historic hamlet of Carcoar, New South Wales on the weekend, when local volunteers from the Carcoar Hospital Museum captured a moment in time in the town’s history, presenting an evening of entertainment based on an actual event held in the town’s Victoria hotel in 1867. We the [...] -
Colonial traipsings
I had the decidedly good fortune to be in Tasmania last week, taking in some of the convict and heritage areas around Hobart. With so many Georgian buildings, Hobart itself offers a glimpse of what the Sydney Cove settlement would have looked and felt like in its very early days. Early autumn is a perfect [...] -
Handle with care: the prickly pear
The Curator’s recent story, Of palings, palisades and prickly pears, times perfectly with prickly pear fruiting season. Be very careful when harvesting the fruit, to avoid the spiny needles on the plant’s ‘paddles’, which can pierce even the most protective gardening gloves. Their ‘prickle’ comes from the fruit themselves, its minute, seemingly invisible filaments leaving you [...] -
Dress to impress
It’s not often you find a poet in the kitchen, but recording recipes as poems was not an uncommon practice in the nineteenth century. ‘Mother Eve’s pudding‘ is included in Edward Abbott’s English and Australian Cookery Book (for the many and the upper ten thousand), Thackeray wrote an ‘Ode to curry’, but I digress… More pertinent to [...] -
Salad days
As the new year kicks in and the temperature rises, January is salad time for most Australians, as a meal in itself or along side anything that can be barbequed! The refreshingly crisp iceberg lettuce that I grew up with is enjoying a bit of a come-back at the moment, and we are spoilt for [...] -
Christmas cookery
T’is the week before Christmas – and egads! I’d better get on with the festive fare. It’s not too late to make a pudding, for the family table or as a gift for friends, or home made treats that follow long-standing Christmas traditions. The ubiquitous Christmas plum pudding According to Mrs Beeton (1861), making the Christmas [...] -
A sobering thought
‘The inhabitants of a beer-drinking or spirit drinking country will never possess the vivacity of those who live in a wine producing land’ Phillip Muskett, 1893 Visiting Orange during Wine Week encouraged me to reflect further on colonial wine culture. The Australian wine industry started with the first fleet, which arrived with grape vine cuttings in [...] -
History on the menu: colonial tastes in food and wine
How can one refuse an invitation to a wine festival? Colonial gastronomy headed west to picturesque Orange, New South Wales, to support their Villages of the heart: telling rural stories project. Renowned as central New South Wales’ food bowl, the Orange district also boasts a vibrant ‘cold climate’ boutique wine industry. The community in Orange [...] -
Beating ’round the bush
We’re all aware of food fads and trends, especially these days on our quest for anything new, different or with newly identified health attributes (hello kale!). But sometimes food trends are the result of changing technologies, enabling a particular dish or cooking technique to be widely accessed rather than be reserved for restaurants with commercial [...] -
The best laid plans…
“Nothing is worse than stale eggs” states Isabella Beeton, “… stale, or even preserved eggs, are things to be run from, not after.” I can imagine having to run after chickens but not eggs, but needless to say, fresh is always best. Traditionally, most households would keep a few chooks to ensure a regular supply [...] -
“The lighter they are the quicker they fall”
When I was a child my dad would confuse me by asking “do you say the yolk of an egg is white or are white?” But it is their yin-yang, rich-light; oily-dry duality that makes eggs such a versatile food. While the sun shines in the yolk it is the whites that bring light to [...] -
The old boiler
In this, the KFC and BBQ’d chicken age, where even good quality cooked chooks can cost less than a fresh chicken to prepare at home, it seems extraordinary that on the most elegant tables in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was an open preference for boiled fowl. And for those of us who savour the [...] -
How to host a Regency breakfast
We recently hosted a Regency-style breakfast in the grand dining room at Elizabeth Bay House as a “money can’t buy” experience for the literacy charity, Room to Read. The offer included a personalised gastronomy-focused tour of the House followed by a breakfast which was based on the menu plan given to Maria Macarthur by her godmother, Mrs [...] -
“One might have danced a Reel between the dishes”
Can you just imagine light-footed dancers skipping across the governor’s table, mindful not to upset a glass or tread in anyone’s dinner… “We yesterday dined at Government House, at a farewell dinner given to Colonel and Mrs Paterson. – It was but stupid – Mrs Macquarie has not the art of making people feel happy [...] -
The de Maliez mystery – in search of the governor’s French cook
Historical research is a curious thing. You find a fleeting reference or snippet of information that prickles your interest about a place, a person, an object or an incidence, then find yourself chasing leads that might shed more light on the subject. In this case, it is the mystery of Governor Arthur Phillip’s ‘French cook’. First [...] -
Ladies who lunched
Nicola Teffer, curator of the Celestial City exhibition, is our guest blogger this week, giving us an insight into the ‘ladies who lunched’ in the late nineteenth century… Sydney in the 1870s was no place for a lady. Not only were there no public toilets for women, the city offered few places where they could [...] -
Quong Tart’s famous tearooms – and scones!
Quong Tart, celebrated in the Celestial City: Sydney’s Chinese story exhibition currently showing at the Museum of Sydney, played a significant part in Sydney’s colonial history. The exhibition explores many aspects of Quong Tart’s life, but he is famously remembered for his tearoom establishments, which helped revolutionise casual dining in the city in the late 1800s. Exhibition curator, [...] -
The hare and the … kangaroo
But of all dishes ever brought to table, nothing equals that of the steamer. No one can tell what a steamer is unless it has been tasted: it indeed affords an excellent repast. Australia, Henry Melville, 1851. Following Scott’s cry of Tallyho! last week, and the focus on wild game, we salute the kangaroo (yet [...] -
Rouse Hill recipes
Through most of the nineteenth century, Rouse Hill House was the social hub of the district and the Rouse family regularly played host to many events. -
Curry Culture