You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO request comes from Laura, who is hoping to find one of the first romances she read:
I’ve been looking for one of the earlier romance books I ever read. If I recall correctly, it was in a box of books my mom found in the garage when we moved into the house I grew up in, so it would have been published before 1985. I might be wrong about that, but I read it in the 90s, so it’s definitely not a recent publication. This book was brought to my mind by a conversation about gothic novels and heroines stuck in foreboding old mansions.
So, here’s what I remember: there is a foreboding old mansion. Why is the heroine stuck there? I have no idea. There is a brooding hero, and I think he feels like the heroine is a generally helpless and useless person. But here are the details I actually remember, for some reason.
In an effort to prove that she is neither helpless nor useless, the heroine decides to bake bread. The kitchen is a dark, cold room (I feel like it was maybe even in a basement?) and the heroine proves herself wrong because she doesn’t realize that bread needs warmth to rise. If I remember correctly, she has been watching the cook work and thinks she has all the steps down, but doesn’t realize that there’s a reason why the cook always puts the dough in a certain (warm) spot to rise. So she covers her bowl of dough with a towel and goes off and leaves the dough to do its thing, then comes back to find a cold, sad, dingy lump of dough. Naturally, she is embarrassed by her failure, so she goes out to bury the evidence, I think under a tree. Also naturally, the hero comes upon her burying the evidence and makes fun of her. I think I remember this because I thought she was pretty dumb to not know that you have to put rising dough in a warm place. Young me was judgey.
Somewhere, Redheadedgirl is feeling bothered and she doesn’t know why.
no idea…
Judith McNaught’s Almost Heaven comes to mind, but it might be too new. There’s a whole story about how Elizabeth can’t cook. She can do everything else, but can’t cook.
If the hero really loved her he’d stick a branch in the ground and hang rolls on it for her to find in the morning.
Ahahahaha, Marissa!
I’ve read this book, but it was a long time ago. Oddly, though, I also have a vivid memory of the scene with the heroine trying to bake the bread and then burying the dough that refused to rise. I don’t have the book to verify it, and the Amazon listing doesn’t offer much help, but I’m pretty sure it was a Phyllis A Whitney book, possibly Thunder Heights.
Hi, it’s Laura here. I’m hoping that Amanda is right and somewhere, Redheadedgirl feels a disturbance in the force.
Thanks, Karen McCullough, you might be right. I looked at the book cover for Thunder Heights, and it looks familiar. Sadly, my local library doesn’t have it, so I’ll have to order it. Isn’t it funny how we both have such a memory of the bread-baking debacle? It’s such an odd thing to remember, but that’s the one detail I’m sure of in what little I remember of that entire book. I would have been about 13 or so when I read it, and I remember thinking she was SO DUMB. Knowing the genre, she probably did all sorts of TSTL things as well in the book, but what do I remember? Not understanding how yeast works.
@Marissa
As I recall, at the time of the bread funeral, he was still in the “you’re a useless idiot” stage of their True Love Story. If he had redeemed himself later with bread though, that would be awesome!
There’s an online library where you can check out older ebooks. Can’t remember the name! Openlibrary maybe?
Ha! My memory is better than I thought!
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15154980W/Two_novels_by_Phyllis_A_Whitney
@MaryK
That’s amazing, thanks so much! I didn’t even know this was an option–I can’t wait to scan through their list of available titles.
@LauraN – I think the scene is a powerful bit of storytelling. That little incident says a lot about the heroine, in a very literal and vivid way, and if I recall it right, it also changed the way the hero viewed her. And honestly, as someone who grew up in suburban NYC, in a family where bread came out of a plastic bag from the grocery store, I suspect that at the same age as the heroine I would’ve had no idea about yeast either.
@MaryK – What a fantastic resource. And an awesome time-sink! You’ll find me digging through the list as well.