The food diary Louisa M Alcott might have written back in the 19th cent

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL June 27, 2014

13breadjamreadingWhat might Louisa M Alcott have liked to eat? Buzzfeed’s flight of imagination – a food diary the famous 19th century author might have written – is quite extraordinary. It imagines Ms Alcott, who’s best known for ‘Little Women’ and its sequels – ‘Good Wives’, ‘Little Men’ and ‘Jo’s Boys’ – behaving like a character in one of her novels.

“…recuperating from a passing fever”, she is described as overcome “by something of a fit, waking at dawn to sit at my desk and scribble away at my pages, often unmoved by the task of eating until the sun is set.” It gives her a broth before she partakes of roast chicken and cake for supper.

Ms Alcott was, of course, from New England – Concord near Boston, so I turned to Fannie Merritt Farmer’s ‘Boston Cooking-School Cook Book’, first published in 1896 and regularly reprinted till 1936.

It offers a selection of cheese soufflés, Florentine eggs in casseroles, lobster stews, stuffed eggs, Macedoine salad and tiny hot rolls, among other things.

Jack Kerouac

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
– Jack Kerouac