Christian Isobel Johnstone and The Cook and Housewife’s Manual by Meg Dods

Abstract

Christian Isobel Johnstone was a remarkable figure in an age of remarkable Scots, not least the inhabitants of Edinburgh. There she edited Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, rival to the legendary Blackwood’s. Her politics were radical and she was the only woman to edit a major British periodical before the 1860s. She was also Meg Dods who wrote the best-selling and quite off-beat The Cook and Housewife's Manual (1826). This article looks at her biography and the content of her magnus opus, a cookbook that combines stringent social satire, delivered through plot, dialogue and characterization, with the kind of material normally encountered in cookbooks -- recipes.