[Instrumental music]
[On a page filled with faded, blurred old-fashioned text, paragraph titles include ‘Brown bread ice cream’, ‘Plain ice cream’ and ‘Pistachio ice cream’. Holding a yellowed document, Greg Gerrand, a dark-haired main, sits on a table among shelves of thin white boxes.]
Greg: ‘Brown Bread Ice Cream. Take a slice of bread, browned in the oven, half a pound of sugar, half a pint of milk, two sponge biscuits, one pint of cream...’ It’s a recipe from a man named James Harrison. This pamphlet is an attempt to teach people how to use ice.
[Greg holds a stained pamphlet page titled ‘Ice, natural and artificial’]
Greg: Harrison introduced the world’s first commercial ice-making machine in the mid 1850s.
[Greg carefully takes a large volume from a box]
Greg: I got very interested in what other recipes might actually be in the collection. One that I did find was a collection of menu cards and recipes from Sir Redmond Barry.
[A black-and-white photo shows a portly man wearing a judge’s wig and gown]
Greg: Most people would know Sir Redmond as the judge who sentenced Ned Kelly to hang.
[Greg smiles and looks through a volume of large yellowed pages covered with columns of text]
Greg: And from the amount of menu cards and recipes in this collection, he was also a bit of a foodie.
[Greg reads out a recipe written with elaborate penmanship]
Greg: ‘Four ounces of butter. Simmer one onion till browned, and then squeeze the onions and take them out.’ His handwriting is truly terrible. ‘Stew that for 20 or 30 minutes until done.’
[Greg laughs as he leafs through the pages of the heavy volume]
Greg: It’s a fairly buttery curry.
[Standing among shelves, Greg holds a small, black book]
Greg: ‘General rules for puddings. Mix the ingredients thoroughly. Well grease the pudding basin. See that the water is boiling before the pudding goes into the saucepan. And do not bang the oven door.’
[Inside the cover is a colourful coat of arms featuring a kangaroo; a boat; bare, curled tree branches and shields covered with writing. Greg laughs.]
[Text onscreen: State Library of Victoria. Produced by Renegade Films. Music by Kevin Macleod. Copyright State Library of Victoria 2011.]
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