Author: Kim Connor (page 4 of 5)

November 18, 2014 / 0 Comments

Northern Irish Kitchens

For some reason the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum was never really on my radar while I was living in Belfast, and it wasn’t until this years flying visit that I managed a trip out to Cultra, on the outskirts of Belfast. All I can I say is that if you ever get the chance don’t make my mistake by putting it off! It is a fascinating museum for anyone interested in social history, and particularly special because of its working class focus. You won’t find any grand houses or fancy kitchens here (for that I recommend Castle Coole in Fermanagh) but you will get an unparalleled look at the everyday life of the lower classes in Ireland.

The museum has more than 45 buildings which have been transported to the site on 170 acres of land, to be explored at your leisure. There are costumed guides and interpreters demonstrating traditional crafts and techniques (printing, farming, baking, weaving etc) in some of the buildings, whilst others offer details of daily life, evocative in their banality: a patched quilt, a tiny doll, the smell of a peat fire.

Click on the photos to see larger pictures.

The Old Rectory

Originally built in 1717 in the English Plantation style, the house has been set up as a clergyman’s residence between 1790 and 1810.

: Baking soda bread over the fire.

Ballyveagh House

Built in the 1840’s this tiny farm house has only two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom but was home to four successive generations of the Baird family. William and Margaret who were married in 1875 raised 10 children in this house!

: Ballyveagh House

: Imagine cooking meals for 12 people on that!

: Quilts made from scraps – nothing goes to waste.

: This dresser is over a hundred years old and has recently been restored to its original colour. Dressers like these had pride of place in houses across the country, displaying the family’s best crockery.

Ballyvollen Houses

Dating to the late 17th century this row of houses has been set up to represent the life of fisherman Hugh McGarry and his wife c. 1905. Next door is the basket makers workshop with examples of the type of hand-made lobster pots which fishermen would have used.

: Another lovely dresser.

: And another.

: A hand woven lobster pot.

Bank Manager’s House

A 1920’s family home.

: Making Bread

: A dolly for doing the weekly wash.

Next up, kitchens in France!

November 15, 2014 / 0 Comments

Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!

The Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge for this fortnight was to make a dish that still exists, even if it is in a very different form. For me this was a great opportunity to try out a recipe which has intrigued me for a while now, gingerbread! But before you think “Oh but I make gingerbread all the time”, let me assure you, you’ve never had gingerbread quite like 15th century gingerbread.

The history of gingerbread is extremely complicated and as far as I can tell there is no clear evolution. It probably developed from Roman honeycakes, but in different ways in different regions of Europe. In France gingerbread is called pain d’epices, literally spice bread, but it is really a spiced cake like parkin from Northern England. In Scandinavia there are pepper cookies, and in Switzerland biber are filled with marzipan. Perhaps the most familiar are the spiced biscuits which are still made in Germany and Poland. Called lebkuchen and pierniki (you can see Sabrina Welserin’s lebkuchen recipes from 1553 here) these biscuits were produced by official guilds from about the 13th century.

The biscuit type of gingerbread is often shaped using detailed moulds, such as this one which I saw Volkskunde (Folklore) Museum in Bruges, Belgium. This mould is unusual however because of its scale, it is at least a metre tall!

The biscuit type of gingerbread is often shaped using detailed moulds, such as this 20th century mould which I saw Volkskunde (Folklore) Museum in Bruges, Belgium. This mould is unusual however because of its scale, it is at least a metre tall! To see more gingerbread moulds, check out my Pinterest board.

In England you can now find both types of gingerbread, but the earliest recipes are for a kind of candy made with honey, breadcrumbs and spices. One of the most popular recipes among re-enactors is the recipe from a manuscript written around 1430[1]. It is made from warmed honey and fresh breadcrumbs, and flavoured with spices but no ginger! It’s hotly debated whether leaving out ginger was deliberate or a mistake by the scribe.

A similar 14th century recipe calls for ginger, long pepper, sanders and cloves[2] while later recipes, such as ‘To Make Culler’d Ginger Bread’ from Martha Washington’s cookbook (which probably dates to 1650 or even earlier), use even more spices: cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, nutmeg, liquorice, sanders and aniseed[3]. These heavily spiced confections hark back to a medieval understanding of digestion. Based on Classical sources, doctors explained that cooking was the first step in digestion, and that the cooking process continued in the stomach. In order to discourage overcooking in the stomach it was important to eat things in the correct order, ideally following a series of steps:

An aperitif to open the stomach and kick-start your digestion e.g. wine, fruit, nuts or spices candied in sugar or honey, fresh fruit and salad.
Moderately warm and moist foods (according to the humours) which are easy to digest e.g. boiled and stewed foods, cereals, chicken and kid
Foods that are difficult to digest e.g. cheese and other dairy products, venison, beef and pork.
A digestif to close the stomach e.g. wine, nuts and candied spices (extra points if you can combine these in one recipe like hypocras, a spiced red wine)[4]

In this sense, serving gingerbread at the end of a meal showed your understanding of the latest medical advice, and that you were concerned for your guests’ welfare.

George Flegel, Still Life with Bread and Confectionary, 17th century, [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons.
Here you can see comifts, spices which have been covered in layer after layer of sugar, wine and a moulded biscuit, perfect for rounding off the meal.

It wasn’t until much later that baked gingerbreads came to England, maybe as late as the mid 1600s, but they quickly acquired magical connotations. Miriam Hospodar claims that gingerbread figures were “originally prepared by crones for lovesick women”[5], explaining that women infused the biscuits with ginger because it was believed to be an aphrodisiac and then gave the man-shaped biscuits to the lucky (or unlucky) lover, thereby enslaving his heart forever. Helen Ostovich has also studied the symbolism of gingerbread and witchcraft in Early Modern theatre. Gingerbread in human shapes had especially strong magical associations and Puritans in particular feared their potential for enchantments and their similarity to idols. It’s not a huge leap from the contemporary trials of witches accused of crumbling clay figures of their victims to worrying about similar magic being performed with gingerbread, a substance that was already dangerously tempting and seductive[6].

The Recipe

Gyngerbrede. – Take a quart of hony, & sethe it, and skeme it clene; take Safroun, pouder Pepir, & throw there-on; take gratyd Brede, & straw there-on y-now; then make it square, lyke as thou wolt leche yt; take when thou lechyst hyt, an caste Box leves a-bouyn, y-styked ther-on, on clowys. And if thou woult haue it Red, coloure it with Saunderys y-now.[7]

The recipe is surprisingly straight forward, considering its age. It of course doesn’t give many quantities, but you can essentially spice it to taste. As to whether you should include ginger or not, I think that it’s a matter of personal preference, or you can do as I did and add ginger to half the recipe. I haven’t tried using sanders to colour the paste but it seems to be available online, or you can substitute it with a little food colouring.

I didn’t boil the honey very much at all, I think that the boiling and skimming was probably in order to get rid of any impurities and if you are working with honey that has already been processed then you don’t need to worry about it. Just bring the honey up to simmering point so that it’s nice and liquid in order to absorb the breadcrumbs.

The Redaction

Gingerbread

1 cup of honey

A pinch of saffron

1/2 tsp pepper, finely ground

Approx. 270g of fresh breadcrumbs (remove the crusts slices of slightly stale bread and whizz the bread in a food processor for a couple of seconds at a time until you reach an even consistency, or rub pieces of bread between your fingertips to do it the old-fashioned way)

1 tsp cinnamon, finely ground

1/2 tsp ginger, finely ground

Cloves and bay leaves to decorate*

Heat the honey in a saucepan until it is just simmering. Dissolve the saffron in a little hot water then stir it into the honey with the pepper and cinnamon. Add the breadcrumbs and stir until the mixture has become a coherent mass. The honey should dissolve the breadcrumbs to form a mouldable paste, if it seems too wet add more breadcrumbs.
Use wet hands to spread the paste into a baking tin lined with greaseproof paper or mould into small shapes. Leave in a cool place for several hours to harden up slightly.
Turn the paste out onto a board and cut into squares or diamonds. You can decorate them with bay leaves and whole cloves. Make sure you remind people to remove the decoration before eating.

* The original recipe calls for box leaves but I used bay leaves instead as box leaves are poisonous.

The Recipe: Gyngerbrede from Harleian MS 279 in Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks, edited by Thomas Austin (available here)

The Date: c. 1430

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: 30 mins + cooling time.

How successful was it?: It was very different from modern gingerbread, more like a sweet than a baked good. It was very sweet so you can’t eat too much at a time, but it was pleasantly flavoured by the spices and quite chewy.

How accurate?: It’s hard to tell how much of each spice to put into the mixture, but I was quite happy with the amounts that I used. Next time I would like to experiment using sanders to colour the mixture, and it would be interesting to see how different types of bread change the texture.

[1] Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books: Harleian MS. 279 & Harl. MS 4016 with Extracts from Ashmole MS 1429, Laud MS. 553, & Douce MS. 55 (London: Printed for the Early English Text Society by N Trubner & Co., 1888), pg 35.

[2] Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, eds., “Goud Kokery,” in Cury on Inglysch, English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (London, New York and Toronto: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985), No. 18, pg 154.

[3] Karen Hess, transcriber, Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats (New York and Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 1995), pg 345–346.

[4] Terence Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, 5th ed. (United Kingdom: The Boydell Press, 2005), pg 126–136.

[5] Miriam Hospodar, “Aphrodisiac Foods: Bringing Heaven to Earth,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 4, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 85.

[6] Helen Ostovich, “Gingerbread Progeny in Bartholomew,” in Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage, ed. Lisa Hopkins and Helen Ostovich (England and USA: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2014), pg 203–14.

[7] Austin, Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books: Harleian MS. 279 & Harl. MS 4016 with Extracts from Ashmole MS 1429, Laud MS. 553, & Douce MS. 55, pg 35.

Austin, Thomas, ed. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books: Harleian MS. 279 & Harl. MS 4016 with Extracts from Ashmole MS 1429, Laud MS. 553, & Douce MS. 55. London: Printed for the Early English Text Society by N Trubner & Co., 1888.

Hess, Karen, ed. Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats. New York and Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 1995.

Hieatt, Constance B., and Sharon Butler, eds. “Goud Kokery.” In Cury on Inglysch, English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century, 147–56. London, New York and Toronto: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

Hospodar, Miriam. “Aphrodisiac Foods: Bringing Heaven to Earth.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 4, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 82–93.

Ostovich, Helen. “Gingerbread Progeny in Bartholomew.” In Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage, edited by Lisa Hopkins and Helen Ostovich, 203–14. England and USA: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2014.

Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. 5th ed. United Kingdom: The Boydell Press, 2005.

October 31, 2014 / 0 Comments

Need a pick-me-up? Take a leaf from the gladiator handbook.

I have a really interesting link to share with you this week, it’s a bit earlier than what I normally post about but how can I resist evidence of ‘Gladiator Gatorade’? By analysing the trace elements and isotopes present in gladiator bones from Ephesus, researchers from MedUni Vienna and the University of Bern have been able to identify the main components of the contemporary Roman diet (wheat, barley and legumes) as well as substantial differences in the ratio of strontium to calcium among fighters and non-fighters. The results suggest that gladiators had an additional source of calcium in their diets, possibly a lye drink made from ashes which is mentioned by Pliny the Elder.

You can read NPR’s short version here or the full report in PLOS One here.

October 29, 2014 / 0 Comments

Foods Named After People

When I’m travelling I love tasting the regional specialities and I try to make a point of asking the locals which foods represent their country or area, but when people ask me about Australian food I find it hard to know what to say. Sure, we have some iconic brands like Vegemite, Tim Tams or Milo and there is a range of native foods for the curious to try – lilly pilly, finger limes, kangaroo, emu, crocodile and witchetty grubs – but none of these really represents Australian cuisine.

In 2010 a discussion of the Australian national dish came up with “barbecue, meat pie, sausage sandwich, roast lamb, Vegemite on toast, pavlova, spag bol, lamingtons, chicken parmigiana … and ‘surf and turf’.”[1] Of these dishes, very few are Australian inventions (although the origins of some, like pavlova, are hotly debated). The exception is the lamington, which generally consists of two layers of plain sponge cake sandwiched together with jam and/or cream, rolled in a chocolate icing and desiccated coconut.

This rather unassuming cake has become an Australian favourite and is available in just about every bakery and meat pie shop in the country, but where did it come from? The stories about the invention of the lamington have entered our national myth and every schoolchild has heard that whilst preparing for an important dinner the cook accidentally dropped a sponge cake into a bowl of chocolate. Looking for a way to fix the situation he covered it in coconut and served it forth. Lord Lamington was duly impressed by the cake and when he asked what it was called, the cook replied that it would be named in his honour. The truth of the matter? This is only one of the many alternative stories which explain the lamington. The cakes could also have been named for Lady Lamington, which might make more sense if Lord Lamington really did refer to them as “bloody poofy woolly biscuits”, a statement that is widely quoted e.g. here, here and here, but never referenced.

Governor of Queensland, Lord Lamington, 1899. Image from the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Image no. 184102, public domain.

The Recipe

What we know for sure is that Lord Lamington served as the Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901 and that the first published lamington recipe dates from this period in Queensland. Taken from the Queensland Country Life in 1900 the recipe is as follows:

“Lamington Cakes – 1/2 cup of butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 4 tablespoons milk. Beat butter and sugar; add eggs well beaten with the milk, sift in flour and baking powder; flavour with vanilla or lemon to taste. Bake in sandwich tins, Cut in squares next day.

Icing- 3oz. icing sugar, 1oz. butter. Beat these to a cream and spread between the layers, as jam would be used. For the outside icing – 3oz. icing sugar, 1oz. butter, 3 teaspoons or more of cocoa; vanilla to flavour. The square of cake, when doubled, are in the shape of a cube. Ice all over the cube with the cocoa icing, spreading it with a knife, then dip and roll in desiccated coconut.”[2]

The main difference between this recipe and modern lamington recipes is the icing. In the recipe from 1900 the icing is a basic butter-cream, flavoured with cocoa, whilst modern recipes either dissolve the butter-cream with boiling water (e.g. this recipe) or omit the butter altogether (e.g. this recipe), giving a much wetter icing which is absorbed by the cake. In many ways I think that the modern method is preferable, it is both easier to apply to the cubes of cake and much less rich. I found that the icing from the original recipe overwhelmed the cake and was almost unpleasantly buttery. Nonetheless, I have provided the recipe below if you would like to try it in the original manner.

The Redaction

Lamington Cakes

For the cake:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup plain flour

3 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp milk

Vanilla essence or grated lemon peel to taste

For the filling:

85g icing sugar, sifted

30g butter, softened

For the icing:

85g icing sugar, sifted

30g butter, softened

3 tsp cocoa powder

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Desiccated coconut

Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Grease and line two sandwich tins, running the baking paper across the bottom and up both long sides of the tin and leaving a 2cm overhang on each side.
Beat the butter and sugar for the cake until light and creamy. Whisk together the eggs and milk and gradually mix them into the butter mixture. Sift in the flour and baking powder and gently fold them in before adding the vanilla or lemon.
Divide the batter between the two tins and bake for 20 mins or until risen and golden brown. Leave to cool slightly then, using the overhanging paper, lift the slabs of cake onto wire racks to cool. When cool, cover the cakes and leave overnight.
The next morning cut the cakes into squares 3-4cm long. Beat together the ingredients for the filling until light and creamy. Use the filling to join two squares of cake, one on top of the other, to make cubes.
Beat together the icing ingredients, except the coconut. Place the coconut into a bowl. Spread the icing all over the cubes of cake then roll the cube in the coconut to cover each side. Serve for morning or afternoon tea.

The Recipe: Lamington Cakes from Queensland Country Life (available here)

The Date: 1900

How did you make it?: See above.

Time to complete?: About two and a half hours, plus cooling time, spread over two days.

Total cost: I already has all the ingredients.

How successful was it?: I found them just too buttery and creamy, and the ones I made were quite large but you could only eat half a cake at a time because they were so rich.

How accurate?: Pretty good I think, the ingredients and methods haven’t changed very much so it’s quite easy to recreate.

[1] Barbara Santich, Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage (South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2012), 25.

[2] “Useful Recipes.,” Queensland Country Life, December 17, 1900.

Bibliography

Santich, Barbara. Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage. South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2012.

“Useful Recipes.” Queensland Country Life. December 17, 1900.

October 19, 2014 / 0 Comments

Let Them Eat Cake!

Portrait of 12 yr old Marie Antoinette by Martin van Meytens c. 1767-1768 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This week (the 16th of October) marks the 221st anniversary of Marie Antoinette’s execution at the hands of the revolutionaries. Although she probably never said it, she is arguably most famous for the phrase “Let them eat cake!” so in honour of Madame Deficit this Historical Food Fortnightly challenge is dedicated to cakes of all types.

Of course, just to confuse everyone, the cakes that I made for this challenge would now be considered biscuits. They come from a recipe book called The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight Opened. A courtier, diplomat and intellectual who dabbled in privateering, Digby was also a keen collector of recipes (particularly alcoholic beverages. Who needs 100 different ways to make metheglin?). Many of his recipes reflect his travels across Europe and his noble, even royal, connections. The recipes were compiled and published posthumously in 1669, giving the public a glimpse into the life of the nobility. The word closet in the title refers to a small, private study and by opening Sir Kenelm Digby’s closet for public consumption the compiler (possibly Digby’s steward Hartman) was offering exclusive access to his life.

Portrait of Sir K. Digby from the Wellcome Library London. Line engraving by R.V. Verst after Anthony Van Dyke. [CC-BY-4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Portrait of Sir K. Digby
from the Wellcome Library London. Line engraving by R.V. Verst after Anthony Van Dyke. [CC-BY-4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Recipe

Take three pound of very fine flower well dryed by the fire, and put to it a pound and half of loaf Sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dryed; Three pounds of Currants well washed and dryed in a cloth and set by the fire; When your flower is well mixed with the Sugar and Currants, you must put in it a pound and half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of Cream, with the yolks of three new-laid Eggs beat with it, one Nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack. When you have wrought your paste well, you must put it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, till it be through warm. Then make them up in little Cakes, and prick them full of holes; you must bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards ice them over with Sugar. The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand-breadth and thin: of the cise of the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.[1]

Digby’s recipe raises several interesting conundrums for anyone trying to recreate his recipe. First up, drying the flour in front of the fire. This is a very popular recipe amongst re-enactors but some people have said that they found them too dry and/or too dense. One of the interesting consequences of this has been discussion of the very first instruction in Digby’s recipe “Take three pound of very fine flower well dryed by the fire”[2]. Stone ground flour contains the germ of the wheat and even bolting or sifting cannot remove all of the wheat germ. The germ is oily and leaves the flour with a higher moisture content and a shorter shelf life than modern roller milled flour.[3] Whilst I think that drying the flour before the fire was more likely a way of reducing the moisture content, it’s certainly true that a low protein flour (like cake or pastry flour) is both a) closer to the soft flours grown in the 17th century and b) makes lighter biscuits. I used Lighthouse Cake Flour which is low in protein and, in Australia, available in the supermarket.

The next question is which type of currants Digby was using. I had never really thought about this question before, simply assuming that the dried currants I bought in the supermarket were dried black-currants. In fact, I couldn’t be more wrong. To read about the difference between Ribes and Zante currants I recommend reading this article by the guys over at Savoring the Past (an amazing blog on recreating 18th century food). Essentially the difference is that Ribes currants are blackcurrants (sometimes dried) while Zante currants are a type of dried grape which, at the time, was imported from the Greek islands of Zante and Cephalonia[4].

Ribes currants. By Petr Kratochvil [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Although I think it is entirely possible that Digby was using Ribes currants, I think that it is more likely he was using Zante currants. He uses both types in his recipes, although distinguishing which is meant is quite difficult. Where he specifies red or black currants I think we can be sure that these are Ribes currants. Similarly, when he adds both currants and ‘raisins of the sun’ it seems more likely that they are both dried fruit. In the other cases, it is a matter of analysing the ingredients and methods to find the most likely. In this case, the fact that we need to mix unmelted butter into the dry ingredients suggests that the butter is rubbed in, a process that would burst fresh currants and turn the mixture an unsightly grey colour. This means that it must be dried currants, but which type?

Although Ribes currants would have been local and available, imported Zante currants were extremely popular. At the end of the 16th century they were the most profitable product that the Levant Company was importing and some 2300 tons were being brought in annually.[5] Demand was so great that the Venetian traders increased the taxes exponentially, leading to an English ban on imports between 1642 and 1644.[6] Clearly Zante currants were readily available, and also had a sort of luxury cachet, but I think for me the piece of evidence that makes it most likely that Digby used Zante currants is the instruction “Three pounds of currants well washed and dryed in a cloth”[7]. It seems to fit exactly with the process described in the article mentioned above, which explains that currants were dried in the sun, pressed into barrels with oiled feet and subjected to lots of other indignities which necessitated a good wash before use. I suppose it would depend on the individual case but if you were using local, home dried currants there seems to be less reason to specify washing and drying, it would instead be a matter of common sense. Based on all of that, I used dried Zante currants in the recipe.

The final challenge: how big was a sugar cake sold at Barnet? Presumably this refers to the market at Chipping Barnet (now part of greater London but formerly in Hertfordshire) which was established in 1588. However, I am not aware of any sources which describe the sugar cakes from the fair so we are left with the other instructions: a hands-breadth across and thin. I rolled out the dough thinly and used a cookie cutter about the same size as my palm.

Excellent Small Cakes. Photo courtesy of Sophia Harris.

Photography by Sophia Harris.

The Redaction

Excellent Small Cakes

I have reduced this recipe to a third of its original size but it still make a lot of biscuits. They are so delicious that the quantity shouldn’t be a problem, but you can always halve it again if you are worried, just use the whole egg and reduce the other liquids.

450g flour (low-protein or cake flour if you can get it)

226g sugar

450g currants

226g butter, cold

3 tbsp cream

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 of a nutmeg, grated

1 tbsp sherry or sweet wine

Preheat oven to 180˚C. Mix together the flour, sugar and currants. Cut the butter into 1cm cubes and rub them into the dry ingredients until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Stir in the egg, cream, nutmeg and sherry. Add a little more cream if necessary to form a smooth dough.
Roll out on a floured board until 3/4cm thick and cut circles from the dough using a cookie cutter or the rim of a glass.
Bake on baking trays lined with baking paper for 25 mins or until golden brown.

The Recipe: Excellent Small Cakes from The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened (available here)

The Date: 1669

How did you make it?

Time to complete?: About an hour and a half.

Total cost: About $8, of which half was spent on currants and a quarter on the cake flour. I already had sherry and cream.

How successful was it?: Very successful, I was worried that they would be too dense because I had read on other blogs that they were hard and inedible, hence the low protein cake flour. However, I found that they were delicious and not too heavy at all. This is possibly due to keeping the original proportions whereas many of the other versions I have seen changed them quite a bit.

How accurate?: I used modern versions of all the ingredients and modern cooking techniques, but I did keep the original proportions of ingredients. It’s hard to tell what the original cakes would have looked like, so that’s a bit ambiguous.

Photography by Sophia Harris.

[1] The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened (London: Printed by E.C. for H. Brome, at the Star in Little Britain., 1669), 221.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Alan Scott and Daniel Wing, The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens (Chelsea Green Publishing, 1999), 29–31.

[4] Kevin Carter, “Currant Challenges,” Savoring the Past, July 21, 2014, http://savoringthepast.net/2014/07/21/currant-challenges/.

[5] Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company, New edition edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 1964), 24.

[6] Ibid., 69.

[7] The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened, 221.

Bibliography

Carter, Kevin. “Currant Challenges.” Savoring the Past, July 21, 2014. http://savoringthepast.net/2014/07/21/currant-challenges/

Scott, Alan, and Daniel Wing. The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens. Chelsea Green Publishing, 1999.

The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened. London: Printed by E.C. for H. Brome, at the Star in Little Britain., 1669.

Wood, Alfred C. A History of the Levant Company. New edition edition. Abingdon: Routledge, 1964.

October 12, 2014 / 0 Comments

Historical Kitchens in Scotland

So as some of you know I have been traveling around Europe for the past couple of months. During my travels I have come across historical kitchens of all shapes and sizes and covering about four centuries. Since not everyone has a medieval castle just around the corner I thought I might share some of the pictures that I have taken. First up, two very different dwellings from Scotland.

Provand’s Lordship is the oldest house in Glasgow. Built in 1471 as part of St. Nicholas’ hospital, it later became the house of the Lord of the Prebend of Barlanark and the furnishings reflect this later 18th century period of occupation. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the main cooking fireplace but you can see a good picture of it on the website here.

A small fireplace and griddle.

The dining room, with 18th century furnishings.

An 18th century dresser with pewter and wooden tableware.

The back of Provand’s Lordship and part of the herb garden which would have provided medicinal herbs for the hospital across the road.

The second lot of pictures comes from the spectacularly positioned Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeenshire. Although the promontory has been in use since Pictish times the majority of the buildings which can be seen today date between the 14th and 17th centuries, including the kitchens which are housed in the lower levels of the Palace. Construction of the palace began in the latter half of the 16th century with a basement level for the kitchens and accommodation and living areas above.

The kitchens are comprised of a number of rooms, some with specific functions and others probably for storage and preparation. At the far end of the kitchen range is an enormous fireplace which would have been the central focus of the kitchen, used for roasting and boiling. The most striking thing, however, is the gloom. The windows, where they existed, where tiny and although fires would have helped a bit, the effect of the smoke must have been absolutely suffocating!

The bread oven at Dunnottar Castle.

The entrance of the bread oven at Dunnottar Castle. The fire would be lit inside the oven to heat the surrouding stone, then once the desired temperature was reached the fire would be raked out and the bread quickly put in. The bread cooked thanks to the heat from the stones, and as they cooled a succession of items could be cooked with bread first followed by pies and more delicate items which needed a cooler oven.

Pit for brewing, I think that a large cauldron would be placed on top of the stone walls and a fire lit underneath. Weak beer was safe to drink and provided a large proportion of the average person’s daily calories and nutrients.

Ovens? *Probably not ovens, see the comments below.

The well which provided fresh water for all the residents and workshops inside the castle walls.

Apologies for the quality of the pictures, the lighting was not good at all in the cellars! I hope you enjoyed the pictures, there are lots more to come once I get myself organised.

October 4, 2014 / 0 Comments

In a Jelly

This is just a quick extra post, following up on my promise for the In a Jam challenge to provide the recipe for Lemon Jelly which I made. I had a surplus of lemons and as I was researching marmalade recipes for the challenge a couple of weeks ago I came across several rather intriguing recipes for Lemon Jelly.

It’s a jelly in the American sense of the word, as in a spreadable preserve rather than a semi-solid, wobbly dessert. In preserving terms, the use of jelly instead of jam means that it is made from the juice of the fruit, rather than the pulp which makes jellies much smoother but less efficient than jams. Typically in a jelly the fruit is cooked to release the juices, then strained through muslin for several hours to separate the juice from the pulp. The juice is then re-cooked with sugar until it reaches the setting point before being poured into hot jars.

These recipes are quite unusual, however, because two of them contain egg-whites.^{^[1]} Beacause of the difficulty in interpreting the recipe which I used, and because I would like to try the other recipes first, I have not given a redaction, but if you would like to try making the jelly it should be easy enough to follow my steps with the quantities given.

The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book and Compleat Family Cook (4th ed. 1748 available as a PDF here) by Mrs. Sarah Harrison of Devonshire offers three recipes for Lemon Jelly (like the marmalade it is served in glasses as part of the dessert course).

The first recipe:

“TAKE five large Lemons and squeeze out the Juice, and beat the Whites of six Eggs very well; put to it twenty Spoonfuls of Spring Water, and ten Ounces of double-refin’d Sugar beat and sifted; mix all together, and strain it through a Jelly Bag, and set it over a gentle Fire, with a bit of Lemon-peel in it; stir it all the while, and skim it very clean; when it is as hot as you can bear your Finger in it, take it off, and take out the Peel, and pour your Jelly into Glasses.”[2]

The second recipe:

“TAKE three large Lemons, or four small ones, cut them in half, and take out all the Meat, and put it into a silver Pot; put as much Water as the Skin of your Lemons will hold into them, and let them stand three quarters of an Hour; then take the Whites of four Eggs, beat them very well, and let them stand till the Froth is fallen, strain your Lemons upon a Pound of double-refin’d refin’d[sic] Sugar broke into Lumps, let it stand till it is quite melted, then put in your Eggs well skimm’d being first strain’d through a thin Cotton Cloth; stir it till it will jelly, and take out your Peel before you put it in the Dish. You must see that your Lemons be free from Spots, or else your Jelly will not be white.”[3]

The third recipe:

“TAKE the best Lemons without Seeds, peel off the Rinds, and put the Meat in Quarters, having a Care of breaking the Skins; then take their Weight in double-refin’d Sugar, put your Sugar into a silver Bason [sic], and put it upon the Fire with as much Water as will wet it, and stir it till it comes to a clear Syrup; in the mean Time you must have your Lemon Quarters in another silver Dish upon the Fire, with as much Water as will keep them wet, and let them boil till they are tender; then put them into the Bason [sic] of Syrup, and set them on a soft Fire to heat, but not boil; as soon as ever they begin to simmer the least that can be, take them off, and shake them, and let them not be on the Fire again till they are pretty cold (for if they boyl they are spoil’d); and so continue setting them on and off till the Syrup will jelly; and then either put up the Jelly by itself in Glasses, and put the Quarters on a glass Sheet to dry, or on a Slieve [sic] in the Sun, or glass the Quarters and the Jelly all together, for they will do well both Ways.”[4]

My Process

I used the second recipe which calls for three large or four small, spotless lemons. I cut them in half and spooned out all the pulp that I could. I placed the pulp into a saucepan, filled each half lemon with water and poured the water into the saucepan. I then left this to stand for 45 mins.

Whilst waiting for the pulp to be ready, I beat the whites of four eggs. This for me was the main problem with the recipe, it sounds like you beat the eggs to peaks and then allow them to drop, but does that even work? Or do you just beat it until slightly foamy? I beat it until I had foamy, very soft peaks on top, but after standing for a while there was also liquid underneath. On reflection I think it would be better to whisk it until it was a bubbly liquid, but maybe it is possible to allow it to drop by leaving more time.

Having beaten my eggs I strained the lemon pulp through muslin onto 450g of sugar with a piece of lemon peel (this is mentioned later in the recipe to be removed so I think it’s just missing the instruction to add it in). After gently stirring the mixture over a low heat until the sugar was dissolved I then added the egg whites by straining them through muslin into the saucepan. This is where it quickly became apparent that they were too well whipped. The liquid was easily incorporated into the jelly, as was some of the froth but most was not and had to be skimmed off the top of the jelly. I then cooked it until it reached setting point, removed the piece of lemon peel and poured it into dessert glasses.

Given what seemed to be an awful mistake, the jelly turned out remarkably well. It was one of the most delicious preserves I’ve ever eaten with a flavour similar to lemon-sorbet and the most delightful, effervescent texture. It felt light and bubbly on the tongue, an effect which I think must be because of the egg whites. It really was like Spring for the palate!

Harrison, Sarah. The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book; And Compleat Family Cook. 4th ed. London: Printed for R. Ware, at the Bible and Sun on Ludgate-Hill, 1748.

^{^[1]} Warning: If you are in an ‘at risk’ group (babies, toddlers, pregnant women, elderly people or the immune-compromised) for raw egg please don’t try the recipes containing raw egg.

[2] Sarah Harrison, The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book; And Compleat Family Cook, 4th ed. (London: Printed for R. Ware, at the Bible and Sun on Ludgate-Hill, 1748), 148.

[3] Ibid., 148–149.

[4] Ibid., 149.

September 30, 2014 / 0 Comments

Mashed Potato, Mashed Potato

First up a thanks to Betsy and Melissa over at the Historical Food Fortnightly who were kind enough to feature me in last week’s round-up. You can check out the Transparent Marmalade post here, or click through to the Historical Food Fortnightly page to see some of the food made by the other bloggers participating in each challenge.

Distance view of The Hollow, Mackay ca. 1872. Mina’s first home after her wedding in 1872. Image from the State Library of Queensland.

Back to business now, and this week’s challenge “The Frugal Housewife”. One of my favourite frugal housewives has got to be Mrs. Lance Rawson aka. Wilhelmina (Mina) Frances Cahill. In 1872 Mina married Lancelot Bernard Rawson and she began her married life on ‘The Hollow’, an isolated cattle-station outside of Mackay in northern Queensland. In 1877 the family (by now they had 3 children) moved to ‘Kircubbin’, a sugar plantation near Maryborough, but the plantation went bankrupt just three years later and so the family moved to a fishing station called ‘Boonooroo’. This too failed and by the late 1880’s they were living at ‘Rocklands’ near Rockhampton where Mina became a social correspondent and swimming teacher.

Due to the family’s financial difficulties Mina had a variety of hobbies and crafts which she used to supplement the family income. She made mattresses and pillows (stuffed with seaweed or pelican feathers), kept poultry, gardened, smoked fish and made pelican muffs and necklets. Like Mary Hannay Foot, she also turned to writing; Mina’s first cookbook The Queensland Cookery and Poultry Book was published in 1878 while the family were living at Kircubbin. This was followed by The Australian Poultry Book (second ed. 1894), The Australian Enquiry Book of Household and General Information (1894), and finally The Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion (1895). She also wrote fairy tales for the local newspaper, ‘The Wide Bay News’, and her memoirs were published in a series of articles in ‘The Queenslander’ from 1919 to 1923.

Mina and Winnie milking goats, undated. Image from the State Library of Queensland

Although life on the station must have been incredibly difficult, Mina approached it with a grace, resourcefulness and sense of humour that you can really feel in her writings. The preface to her book The Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion explins why young women should learn to cook, for “The husband is a creature of appetite, believe me, and not to be approached upon any important matter, such as a new bonnet or a silk dress, on an empty stomach.”[1] As well as providing useful advice for young married women, Mina also staunchly advocated the use of native Australian ingredients and remedies, whether dugong bacon, wallaby soup, roasted iguana, parched grasshopper or rosella pickle. She used native vegetables to ward off scurvy and eucalyptus and tea tree leaves to treat various ailments.

The Recipe

Rock Wallaby in Rocks. By Bilby (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Rock Wallaby in Rocks. By Bilby (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons. No wallabies were injured in the making of this recipe!

In spite of the sometimes exotic ingredients, the majority of Mina’s recipes are simple and quick, using only the most basic ingredients. Many also make use of left-overs, perfect for any frugal housewife, and I was struck by several of her recipes which use up mashed potato. Whilst I would like to try her recipe for Potato Cheese Cake which contains mashed potato, butter, eggs, lemon juice, brandy, currants and sugar I have yet to figure out exactly what it is supposed to be. It has no flour nor any type of cheese and it doesn’t seem to be shaped or baked (there are no instructions after heating it all up and adding the flavourings) so I am quite stumped as to why it is called a cheese cake.

Instead I chose the recipe for Potato Corks because I thought “Hey! I can eat potato gems and claim that they are Victorian!”. Sadly it was not to be. Instead of the mouthfuls of crispy, fried, potato-y goodness they were more like Irish potato bread in terms of texture, and quite plain in flavour. I also really struggled to shape them as corks, I added flour to the mixture and rolled the corks in even more flour to try and get them to hold a shape but it was very fiddly and not all that successful.

Potato Corks – Ingredients: 1 pound of mashed potato, 1 ounce butter, 5 eggs, salt, nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoonful sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls cream, flour to roll in. Mode: Rub the potato through a sieve into a basin, stir in the butter, the seasoning, the yolks of the 5 eggs, and lastly the cream. Turn this mixture out on to the floured board and roll it into cork-shaped pieces about three inches long and half as thick. Let them stand for a little while, then fry in butter or good dripping, browning them on all sides.[2]

All in all, although I think that the use of leftover mashed potato is frugal, the time it takes to shape the corks and fry them in batches and the amount of mess it made makes me think that this was less simple that it initially appeared. Nonetheless, it is certainly possible in even the most basic of kitchen shacks.

The Redaction

Potato Corks

450g mashed potato

30g butter

5 egg yolks

Salt and pepper

A pinch of nutmeg

1/2 tsp sugar

2 tbsp cream

Flour

Butter or dripping to fry

Take the mashed potato and push it through a coarse sieve into a bowl.
Stir in the butter (melted if the potato is cold), egg yolks, seasoning, sugar and cream. Stir well. If the mixture is too wet add some flour until it becomes just thick enough to shape (about 1/3 of a cup).
Take small spoonfuls of the mixture and roll into rough cork shapes. Fry in butter or dripping, turning until browned on all sides.
Serve hot.

The Recipe: Potato Corks from The Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion by Mrs. Lance Rawson

The Date: 1895

How did you make it?: See above

Time to complete?: About 40 mins, not including boiling the potato.

Total cost: I already had all the ingredients.

How successful was it?: A bit soft and floury, rather plain. Somewhat similar to homemade potato bread.

How accurate?: I had to change the recipe a bit just to be able to shape the dough, and I also added some pepper which wasn’t listed in the original ingredients, but even with that it was quite plain tasting. Mine were also significantly smaller than the 3 inches by 1.5 inches suggested in the recipe, just because I was struggling to shape them. Other than that reasonably similar, I even used dripping to fry them in.

Mrs. Rawson Links

Read more about Mrs. Lance Rawson here or about the Rawsons and other early pioneer families in Queensland here

You can read most of Mrs. Rawson’s memoirs on Trove, try here or here to start. She also wrote two series on keeping poultry called Poultry Notes and the Poultry Yard , the first installment of which you can read here.

[1] Mrs. Lance Rawson, Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion, Facsimile of 2 Revised ed edition (Kenthurst, NSW: Kangaroo Press Pty.Ltd, 1992), 3.

[2] Ibid., 52.

Bibliography

Rawson, Mrs. Lance. Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion. Facsimile of 2 Revised ed edition. Kenthurst, NSW: Kangaroo Press Pty.Ltd, 1992.

September 19, 2014 / 0 Comments

In a Jam

After discussing the origins of the word marmalade several weeks ago (you can read the post here) the answer to this fortnight’s challenge “In a Jam” seemed obvious. You may remember that the original marmalade was actually a thick, quince paste which was imported from Portugal at the very end of the 15th century. Soon English confectioners and housewives were making their own version of the sweetmeat, using not only quinces but also apples, peaches, plums, damsons, pears and medlars.[1] Early recipes for orange marmalade hark back to these fruit pastes, Sir Hugh Platt’s book Delightes of Ladies published in 1602 has a recipe for ‘Marmelade of Lemmons or Orenges’ which is essentially a flavoured apple past while Gervase Markham in his book Country Contentments published in 1615 offers an orange marmalade which is strained into boxes, suggesting it was much thicker than what we would normally consider marmalade.

Sweetmeat Glass. 1750, Bohemian. Glass. via www.metmuseum.org

The earliest known recipe for marmalade in its modern form was written down by Rebecca Price in 1681, it was her mother’s recipe for a spoon-able jelly with shredded rind. Another early recipe is held by the Scottish Archives, it dates to 1683 and was probably written down by the Countess of Sutherland. You can see a copy of the recipe here, but be warned it is nearly illegible. In published recipe books the change didn’t occur until slightly later, in 1714 with the publication of Mary Kettilby’s A Collection of above Three Hundred Receipts.

Sweetmeat Glass. ca. 1740, German. Glass. via www.metmuseum.org

Jellied marmalades, as opposed to cut marmalades which were the thick pastes popular until the end of the 18th century, came in two basic types: beaten or pounded and transparent. The difference is to do with the treatment of the peel, in a pounded marmalade the peel was pounded together with the pulp giving a cloudy jelly while transparent jellies were a clear jelly containing chips or finely cut strips of peel. Both types were served with the dessert course, alongside a range of other sweetmeats including ice creams, jellies, biscuits, nuts, fresh fruit, flummeries, creams, syllabubs and cakes. Wet sweetmeats like marmalade were served in salvers and ornate sweetmeat dishes, such as those pictured.

The dishes were laid out in symmetrical patterns on the table, arranged around an ornate centrepiece or pyramid of sweets. Hannah Glasse’s advice for young ladies arranging the table is as follows:

“The above middle frame [the centerpiece] should be made either in three parts or five, all to join together, which may serve on different occasions; on which suppose gravel walks, hedges, and variety of different things, as a little Chinese temple for the middle, or any other pretty ornament; which ornaments are to be bought at the confectioners, and will serve year after year; the top, bottom, and sides are to be set out with such things as are to be got, or the season of the year will allow, as fruits, nuts of all kinds, creams, jellies, whip syllabubs, biscuits &c. &c. And as many plates as you please according to the size of the table. All this depends wholly on a little experience, and a good fancy to ornament in a pretty manner; you must have artificial flowers of all sorts, and some natural out of a garden in summer time do very intermixed.”[2]

A later edition of the same book shows exactly how the dishes should be laid out[3]:

A bill of fare for the dessert course from The Compleat Confectioner by Hannah Glasse, 1800.

A bill of fare for the dessert course from The Compleat Confectioner by Hannah Glasse and Maria Wilson, 1800.

The Recipe

Like many recipes books of the time, Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English House-keeper (1769) included recipes for both pounded and transparent marmalade. I used the recipe for Transparent Marmalade as follows:

“TAKE very pale Seville Oranges, cut them in Quarters, take out the Pulp, and put it into a Bason, pick the Skins and Seeds out, put the Peels in a little Salt and Water, let them stand all Night, then boil them in a good Quantity of Spring Water ‘till they are tender, then cut them in very thin Slices, and put them to the Pulp, to every Pound of Marmalade, put a Pound and a half of double refined Sugar beat fine, boil them together gently for twenty Minutes; if it is not clear and transparent, boil it five or six Minutes longer, keep stirring it gently all the Time, and take Care you do not break the Slices; when it is cold, put it into Jelly or Sweetmeat Glasses, tie them down with Brandy Papers over them.

They are pretty for a Desert of any Kind.”[4]

Although at first glance I thought that this recipe was quite similar to modern marmalade recipes, there were a couple of things that tripped me up. First was what to do with the pulp, I cut the oranges into quarters and then removed the peel from the flesh, however that left a lot of membrane on the flesh. I think there are probably two options for what you could do here, either do as I did and leave them more or less intact during the cooking process and then removing the membrane when the flesh has cooked down to a pulp. The other option would be to supreme the oranges which probably gives a slightly better result, but is a lot fiddlier.

The second question that I had to answer was what to do with the pith of the orange. Once again there are two basic options, leave it on because there are no specific instructions in the recipe, or after the peels have boiled you can use a spoon to scrape out the soft white pith. Basically the choice depends on how bitter you want your marmalade to be, with more pith making it more bitter, and on how exactly you want to follow the recipe. Since I’m not a huge fan of bitter marmalade, and because I thought it would make for a clearer jelly, I chose to remove the pith.

Transparent Marmalade in the foreground, and Lemon Jelly in the background. I’ll be posting a recipe for it soon!

Which brings us to the final, and probably most controversial issue. Seville oranges. To make this recipe properly you need Seville oranges. However, if you are like me and have a sudden compulsion to make marmalade with no Seville oranges to hand then don’t panic! Warning, I’m now going to say something that is worthy of excommunication in some circles, nonetheless I stand by the fact that you can make perfectly good marmalade with sweet oranges. It will be neither as intense nor as bitter as marmalade made from Seville oranges, but then in my book that’s not necessarily a bad thing. So if you can’t get Seville oranges/don’t want to, don’t be afraid to do as I did and use sweet oranges.

The Redaction

Mrs Raffald’s Transparent Marmalade

1 kg oranges

1 tsp salt

Sugar

Quarter the oranges and pulling gently at one corner of the quarter, peel the skin from the flesh. If you would prefer to supreme the oranges see the link above but try to keep the peel in large pieces. Place the peels in a bowl with the salt and cover with cold water. Place the flesh in another bowl in the refrigerator, removing all the seeds that you can find, and leave both bowls overnight.
The next day drain the peels, place them in a saucepan and cover them with fresh water. Bring to the boil and boil until a skewer will easily pass through the peels. Drain.
Once the peels are slightly cooled take a spoon and scrape the white pith from the inside of the peels. Discard the pith then slice the peels into thin slivers, the thinner the better.
Add the sliced peels to the pulp and weigh the mixture. Place the fruit in a saucepan and to every 450g of fruit add 680g of sugar. Bring to the boil and boil for 20 mins, mashing the fruit gently so that you can remove the membranes which can simply be lifted out and discarded.
After 20 mins check the set of the marmalade by turning off the heat and placing half a teaspoonful on a cold saucer. If the marmalade separates into a jelly surrounded by a thinner liquid then it needs more time. You should be able to run your finger through the marmalade (but be careful it’s hot!), leaving a distinct channel with a wrinkled surface (if you’re not sure exactly how to test for a set there is a video link at the bottom of the page). If it is not setting then return it to the heat and cook for another 5 minutes before testing again. Continue until you reach setting point.
Once you have reached setting point the marmalade can either be decanted into hot, sterilised jars to keep for several months, or into clean sweetmeat bowls if you want to serve it as a dessert.

The Recipe: Transparent Marmalade from The Experienced English House-keeper by Elizabeth Raffald (available here)

The Date: 1769

How did you make it?: See above

Time to complete?: Probably about 1hr ½ active work, plus leaving it overnight.

Total cost: Maybe $3 for the oranges which I got on special and then the same for the sugar so $6 all up.

How successful was it?: Very tasty, just a hint of bitterness. One of my loyal taste-testers said it was the best marmalade she had ever had.

How accurate?: Well, I didn’t use Seville oranges, and I really need to look into what sugar was like at the time, but I’d say it was probably quite different. I had to make some decisions where the directions were unclear and it’s hard to tell how much that affected the authenticity but I’d say it was a decent approximation.

Marmalade Links

Learn how to supreme an orange here

Watch how to test for a set in jam here

[1] C. Anne Wilson, The Book of Marmalade (Great Britain: Prospect Books, 2010), 28–41.

[2] Hannah Glasse, The Compleat Confectioner (London: Printed and sold at Mrs. Ashburner’s China Shop, the Corner of Fleet Ditch; at Yewd’s Hat Warehous, near Somerset Hous; at Kirk’s Toyshop, in St Paul’s Church Yard; at Deard’s Toyshop, facing Arlington-Street, Piccadilly; By I. Pottinger, at the Royal Bible, in Pater-Noster Row; and by J Williams, opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, 1760), 255.

[3] Hannah Glasse and Maria Wilson, The Complete Confectioner: Or, Housekeeper’s Guide: To a Simple and Speedy Method of Understanding the Whole Art of Confectionary; the Various Ways of Preserving and Candying, Dry and Liquid, All Kinds of Fruit, Nuts, Flowers, Herbs, &c. … the Different Ways of Clarifying Sugar … Also the Art of Making Artificial Fruit … To Which Are Added Some Bills of Fare for Deserts for Private Families (J. W. Meyers, 1800), 232.

[4] Elizabeth Raffald, The Experienced English House-Keeper: For the Use and Ease of Ladies, House-Keepers, Cooks, &c. : Wrote Purely from Practice and Dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton … : Consisting of Near 800 Original Receipts, Most of Which Never Appeared in Print … (J. Harrop, 1769), 201.

[1] Hannah Glasse and Maria Wilson, The Complete Confectioner: Or, Housekeeper’s Guide: To a Simple and Speedy Method of Understanding the Whole Art of Confectionary; the Various Ways of Preserving and Candying, Dry and Liquid, All Kinds of Fruit, Nuts, Flowers, Herbs, &c. … the Different Ways of Clarifying Sugar … Also the Art of Making Artificial Fruit … To Which Are Added Some Bills of Fare for Deserts for Private Families (J. W. Meyers, 1800), 232.

Bibliography

Glasse, Hannah. The Compleat Confectioner. London: Printed and sold at Mrs. Ashburner’s China Shop, the Corner of Fleet Ditch; at Yewd’s Hat Warehous, near Somerset Hous; at Kirk’s Toyshop, in St Paul’s Church Yard; at Deard’s Toyshop, facing Arlington-Street, Piccadilly; By I. Pottinger, at the Royal Bible, in Pater-Noster Row; and by J Williams, opposite St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, 1760.

Glasse, Hannah, and Maria Wilson. The Complete Confectioner: Or, Housekeeper’s Guide: To a Simple and Speedy Method of Understanding the Whole Art of Confectionary; the Various Ways of Preserving and Candying, Dry and Liquid, All Kinds of Fruit, Nuts, Flowers, Herbs, &c. … the Different Ways of Clarifying Sugar … Also the Art of Making Artificial Fruit … To Which Are Added Some Bills of Fare for Deserts for Private Families. J. W. Meyers, 1800.

Raffald, Elizabeth. The Experienced English House-Keeper: For the Use and Ease of Ladies, House-Keepers, Cooks, &c. : Wrote Purely from Practice and Dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton … : Consisting of Near 800 Original Receipts, Most of Which Never Appeared in Print … J. Harrop, 1769.

Wilson, C. Anne. The Book of Marmalade. Great Britain: Prospect Books, 2010.

September 6, 2014 / 0 Comments

The Pudding Bag – A Revelation

England has been famous for its puddings for centuries, and the word is now interchangeable with dessert, but it wasn’t always so. Historically puddings were essentially sausages with a filling stuffed into the stomach or intestines of an animal (the word probably comes from the Anglo-Norman word bodin meaning entrails)[1]. Sometimes they were kind of like dumplings, cooked in the broth with the meat for dinner.

Some of these types of puddings have survived into modern times e.g. black pudding, white pudding and haggis, but many others fell by the wayside because there are several main problems with this technique. Firstly, the ick factor. Secondly, processing the intestines is time consuming and, if not done properly, can make people very sick. Thirdly, fresh entrails are only available when you have slaughtered an animal and even then the quantity is limited.

The result of all this was that sometime in the late 16th or early 17th century realised there was a better way – the pudding cloth! Instead of slaughtering an animal and then spending hours, if not days, soaking and cleaning the intestines all the home chef had to do was butter and flour a piece of tightly woven cloth (calico is ideal). It was easier, faster and a lot less messy, plus the cloth can be re-used over and over again.

The earliest pudding boiled in a cloth that I’m aware of is in John Murrell’s ‘A New Booke of Cookerie’ from 1615. His recipe for a Cambridge Pudding contains breadcrumbs, flour, dates, currants, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, suet, milk, sugar and eggs and most importantly, it’s boiled in a cloth.[2] This however is the only pudding which he recommends using a cloth for, the other boiled puddings are all made in guts or cauls and he offers one fried pudding and one Italian baked pudding. By 1671 though napkins, bags and cloths were much more popular, used in 26 of Robert May’s recipes for puddings.[3]

Image taken from page 23 of ‘Recollections of Old Christmas: a masque. Performed at Grimston. [By Thomas C. Croker.]’ Courtesy of the British Library.

Boiled puddings continued to be popular well into the Victorian era, but over time most puddings have also become sweeter (with a few exceptions such as haggis, see here for a sweet haggis recipe). At first they were starch, offal or maybe meat spiced up with a little dried fruit and some cinnamon but by the Victorian period the only reminder of most puddings’ savoury heritage was the suet. Others were based on eggs, such as the popular Quaking Pudding which I chose to make this week, it’s essentially a boiled egg custard with breadcrumbs or flour to keep it together.

The Recipe

Take a pint of good cream, six eggs, and half the whites, beat them well, and mix with the cream; grate a little nutmeg in, add a little salt, and a little rosewater, if it be agreeable; – grate in the crumb of a halfpenny roll, or a spoonful of flour, first mixed with a little of the cream, or a spoonful of the flour of rice, which you please. Butter a cloth well, and flour it; then put in your mixture, tie it not too close, and boil it half an hour fast. Be sure the water boils before you put it in.[4]

I chose to use Hannah Glasse’s recipe for Quaking Pudding (available here) because I was intrigued by the use of rice flour, which conceivably means it could be made gluten free. The only issue with that is flouring the cloth, for which I used normal flour but I imagine it could be done either with gluten free plain flour or possibly with rice flour.

In the end, the pudding was easy to put together but took a lot longer to boil than the recipe said. Setting up the saucepan etc is also a bit of a faff if you don’t just happen to have a copper boiling for wash day. To top it all off, I found the taste extremely plain and rather eggy, although some of my taste-testers enjoyed its simplicity. To make it a little more interesting I made a quick sauce based on aside on Ivan Day’s site which says it was frequently served with a sauce of melted butter, sugar and rose-water.[5] It helped a bit. If after that glowing endorsement you would still like to try it, my version of the recipe is below.

The Redaction

Quaking Pudding

3 eggs

3 egg yolks, extra

2 cups cream

1/4 nutmeg, grated

1 1/2 tbsp rosewater

Pinch of salt

1 tbsp rice flour

20-30g butter

A couple of tbsp of flour

Slivered almonds to decorate

For the sauce:

30g butter, melted

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tbsp rosewater

You will also need a large piece of unbleached cotton or calico (wash well in hot water prior to use), kitchen string and a very large saucepan.

Fill the saucepan with water and bring to a rolling boil.
Take the eggs and extra egg yolks and beat them with the cream. Stir in the grated nutmeg, rosewater and the salt. Add 1 tbsp rice flour and whisk till smooth.
Lay the clean cloth on a flat surface and rub the butter into the cloth, squidging it in with your fingers to make a waxy barrier. Spread the flour over the buttered cloth, then carefully lift the cloth into a round bottomed bowl.
Pour the mixture into the cloth. Gather the edges of the cloth and tie tightly, leaving a bit of room for the mixture to expand. Place gently into the boiling water and boil for 60 mins.
Using tongs, carefully remove the pudding from the water. Cut the string and very gently unwrap the pudding. If as you begin to unwrap the pudding you find that it is still liquid you will need to carefully retie the string and boil the pudding for longer.
To make the sauce mix the melted butter, sugar and rosewater together. Stud the pudding with the almonds and serve with the sauce.

The Recipe: Quaking Pudding from The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse (available here)

The Date: 1774

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: 25 mins to put it together and 60 mins to boil.

Total cost: About $6 for the cream and the rosewater. Everything else was in the cupboard.

How successful was it?: It did turn out which was one of the things that I was worried about, but it took a lot longer to cook than the recipe indicated. The taste, however, was very bland and very eggy so not that great.

How accurate?: Pretty accurate, although I used thickened cream instead of plain cream which wasn’t ideal.

[1] “Pudding, N.,” OED Online (Oxford University Press), accessed September 6, 2014, http://www.oed.com.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/view/Entry/154127.

[2] John Murrell, A Nevv Booke of Cookerie VVherein Is Set Forth the Newest and Most Commendable Fashion for Dressing or Sowcing, Eyther Flesh, Fish, or Fowle. Together with Making of All Forts of Iellyes, and Other Made-Dishes for Seruice; Both to Beautifie and Adorne Eyther Nobleman or Gentlemans Table. Hereunto Also Is Added the Most Exquisite London Cookerie. All Set Forth according to the Now, New, English and French Fashion. Set Forth by the Obseruation of a Traueller. I.M., 1615th ed., Early English Books, 1475-1640 / 1146:17 (London: Printed for Iohn Browne, and are to be solde at his shop in S. Dunstanes Church-yard, 1615), 37.

[3] KM Wall, “May Pudding Baggage,” Pilgrim Seasonings, May 21, 2013, http://blogs.plimoth.org/pilgrimseasonings/?tag=quaking-pudding.

[4] Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yet Published … (W. Strahan, J. and F. Rivington, J. Hinton, 1774), 219.

[5] Ivan Day, “Some Interesting English Puddings,” Historic Food, N.D, http://www.historicfood.com/English%20Puddings.htm.

Bibliography

Day, Ivan. “Some Interesting English Puddings.” Historic Food, N.D. http://www.historicfood.com/English%20Puddings.htm.

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yet Published … W. Strahan, J. and F. Rivington, J. Hinton, 1774.

Murrell, John. A Nevv Booke of Cookerie VVherein Is Set Forth the Newest and Most Commendable Fashion for Dressing or Sowcing, Eyther Flesh, Fish, or Fowle. Together with Making of All Forts of Iellyes, and Other Made-Dishes for Seruice; Both to Beautifie and Adorne Eyther Nobleman or Gentlemans Table. Hereunto Also Is Added the Most Exquisite London Cookerie. All Set Forth according to the Now, New, English and French Fashion. Set Forth by the Obseruation of a Traueller. I.M. 1615th ed. Early English Books, 1475-1640 / 1146:17. London: Printed for Iohn Browne, and are to be solde at his shop in S. Dunstanes Church-yard, 1615.

“Pudding, N.” OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed September 6, 2014. http://www.oed.com.ezproxy2.library.usyd.edu.au/view/Entry/154127.

Wall, KM. “May Pudding Baggage.” Pilgrim Seasonings, May 21, 2013. http://blogs.plimoth.org/pilgrimseasonings/?tag=quaking-pudding.