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Diana Astry

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Diana Astry
Portrait of Diana Astry, courtesy of the Orlebar family
Portrait of Diana Astry, courtesy of the Orlebar family
BornDiana Astry
Died4 December 1716
Podington, Bedfordshire, UK
SpouseRichard Orlebar
(m. 1708–1716; her death)
ParentsSamuel Astry, Elizabeth Astry

Diana Astry, (baptized 2 January 1671 - 4 December 1716) was an English diarist and compiler of a recipe book containing 375 recipes acquired from a number of sources including family and friends.[1]

Biography

Astry lived at the Great House, Henbury, Gloucestershire, with her parents, Sir Samuel and Lady Elizabeth Astry, and her siblings, Elizabeth, Ann, Arabella, Luke and St John. Her father died in 1704, and in 1707, when their widowed mother married Sir Simon Harcourt, Diana Astry and her sister Arabella moved to Pendley, Hertfordshire.[1]

In 1708, Astry married Richard Orlebar. She was an heiress with a fortune of £7000 who inherited even more money when her mother died 20 days after the wedding. The couple moved back to Henbury until the completion of their home, Hinwick House at Podington in Bedfordshire, in 1714. Diana Orlebar died childless two years later. Richard Orlebar, who was High Sheriff for Bedfordshire in 1720, was buried beside his wife in St Mary the Virgin, Podington when he died in 1733.[1]

Recipe book and notebook

Most of the 375 recipes Astry collected, before and just after her marriage, are of a practical nature, including general culinary, pickling, preserving, and medicinal entries. The sources of the recipes and tips are acknowledged and reflect not only the lifestyle of the upper middle classes in England and housekeeping knowledge required to run a country house, but also Astry’s wide circle of influential friends and acquaintances.

The book includes recipes for 239 food dishes, 52 wines or cordials, 21 medicinal remedies, 25 pickles and 38 preserves.[2] Among the sources mentioned are: Lady Drake, Lady Churchill, Lady Holt, Lady Torrington (whose recipe for "orange water" included "2 leaves of gold"),[3] Lady Terret, Lady Chick(h)eley and Lady Fane. Where only initials have been recorded, the source may be a housekeeper; like the Orlebars’ Hannah French. Three men have contributed recipes: Mr Clark – "To make red strake sider"; Captain Rider – "An orange pudding"; and Dr Culpeper – "Dr Stephens' water (for use in childbirth)". Culpeper's recipe was one of many for "Dr Stephens' water" circulating in seventeenth-century texts.[4]

Astry’s vellum-bound recipe book is mostly written in her hand, although the writing deteriorates towards the end and a few recipes are written by another. The recipes are not in any particular order though there are more medicinal recipes towards the end, including for the plague and dog bite. The cordial with more than 80 herbs and spices "will cost 50 shillings a quart to make it".

"Her recipes are vague as to quantity...and timing...and rich in content. A good soup is made with a leg of beef, veal, mutton, a cock, lean bacon, a pigeon, cheese, ginger, mace, cloves, onions, carrot, turnip, horseradish, anchovies and sweet herbs".[5] A venison pasty takes a side of venison, 14lb of flour, 6lb butter, 10 eggs + 6 whites. There are recipes for freshwater fish: carp, pike, eels, lamprey and tench. Sugar of various grades e.g. brown sugar candy, white sugar candy, brasile sugar, refined sugar, double refined sugar, is used for sweetening. Honey is mentioned in only three recipes for mead. There is a recipe for catchope/ catchop/ ceachup (ketchup) utilising white wine vinegar, 6 anchovies (‘unwasht’), cloves, mace, bay leaf, bunches of rosemary and sweet marjoram, and a little balm, to be coloured with claret. Alebaster (alabaster) was used for fining elder wine. Red hot brass farthings were put in white wine vinegar with salt to make a solution to green any sort of pickle. A powder of earthworms is recommended "for the yellow jaunders (jaundice)".

Astry’s vellum notebook/ pocket book, dated 1706, contains a record of meals eaten at various dinner parties and venues (1701–1708) and a note of her weight as 4 score and 14 lbs (6 stone 10 lbs) on 8 October 1705. In her 2003 book The British Housewife, Gilly Lehmann comments that "There is not much evidence of French dishes in this notebook" even though "Astry's own collection of cookery receipts contained many fricassees and raggoos". She considers that at "a supper in London in 1706" where the dishes were "set on the table one at a time, imposing the order of consumption, was worthy of notice. She also notes that this supper started with a sweet posset.[6]

Personal life

Diana and Richard Orlebar did not have any children. In 1709, Simon Harcourt wrote to Richard Orlebar "hoping to hear the young ffox hunter thrives apace, & that you’l soon have occason to demand my promise of making it a Christian" (being godfather).

In 1710, after believing she was pregnant, Diana Orlebar wrote to her sister Elizabeth about her longing for a child.[7] Of Diana Astry’s three sisters, Elizabeth (died 1715) married Sir John Smyth (Smith) of Long Ashton, Anne (died 1703 in childbirth) married Thomas Chester IV of Knole, and Arabella (died 1722) married Charles William Howard, 7th Earl of Suffolk.

References

  • Diana Astry’s Recipe book is in a private collection. It is published in full in Bedfordshire Historical Record Society Vol. XXXVII 1957, as is Diana Astry’s Notebook/ pocket book. The Notebook is kept at the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service (BLARS). (Source: Appendix, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society Vol. XXXVII, [p168]. (See online catalogue for references).
  1. ^ a b c Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48925. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help) (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ Paul Glennie; Nigel Thrift (12 February 2009). Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300-1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 397. ISBN 978-0-19-160852-0.
  3. ^ Kathleen P. Long (2010). Gender and Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Culture. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 211. ISBN 978-0-7546-6971-5.
  4. ^ Doreen Evenden (2 November 2006). The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London. Cambridge University Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-521-02785-4.
  5. ^ History of Bedfordshire 1066-1888, Bedfordshire County Council, 1969, Joyce Godber
  6. ^ The British Housewife – Cookery books, Cooking and Society in 18th Century Britain Gilly Lehmann, Prospect Books 2003. p354.
  7. ^ The Orlebar Chronicles 15531733 Vol.1 Frederica St John Orlebar, 1930, London: Mitchell Hughes and Clarke (Facing p193, there are portraits of Diana Astry and Richard Orlebar)

Further reading

  • English wills, 1498-1526, edited by A. F. Cirket and Diana Astry’s recipe book c. 1700, edited by Bette Stitt. Combined volume published 1957 by Bedfordshire Historical Record Society. OCLC 500246082
  • "Astry and Orlebar correspondence from two Ashton Court papers (1709-1721)", by Margaret McGregor, in Bedfordshire historical miscellany: essays in honour of Patricia Bell, published 1993 by Bedfordshire Historical Record Society. ISBN 085155055X
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