Tag: Sweet (page 1 of 1)

February 14, 2024 / 0 Comments

18th Century Pink Pancakes for Pancake Day + Valentine’s Day

A stack of dark pink pancakes sit on a wooden plate, topped with apricots in syrup. A white bowl of apricots sits in the background, with an upturned spoon on the plate.

It’s Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Pancake Day today and Valentine’s Day tomorrow so why not celebrate both by making these 18th century pink pancakes!

Pancakes or crepes are traditionally on Shrove Tuesday, the last day before the beginning of Lent as a final hurrah before fasting. Fancy pancakes made with sugar, spices, wine, eggs, milk, cream, and/or butter would have been a particularly special treat, but even poorer households could afford a simpler version.

18th century painting of a kitchen interior. An older woman sits in front of the fire cooking pancakes, which are being placed on a plate on a table to the right. An older man with a pipe, a young woman, and a boy are gathering around, as if attracted by the smell of the pancakes.

The Pancake Cook, Adriaan de Lelie, c. 1790 – c. 1810, Rijksmuseum. Public Domain.

Eighteenth-century cookbooks have dozens of different recipes for pancakes, from Scotch pancakes to tansy pancakes to rice pancakes. Given that pink is the colour of the season, however, my eye was drawn to this recipe for pink pancakes in Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper (3rd ed., 1773):

To make a pink-coloured PANCAKE
BOIL a large beet root tender, and beat it fine in a marble mortar, then add the yolks of four eggs, two spoonfuls of flour, and three spoonfuls of good cream, sweeten it to your taste, and grate in half a nutmeg, and put in a glass of brandy; beat them all together half an hour, fry them in butter, and garnish them with green sweetmeats, preserved apricots, or green sprigs of myrtle. It is a pretty corner dish for either dinner or supper.

This recipe turns up in dozens of other cookbooks throughout the century and into the next, but this was the earliest version that I could find. It stands out because of it’s use of beetroot to make them pink, and because of the instructions for how to serve them. The remark that this is ‘a pretty corner dish for either dinner or supper’ reminds us that these pancakes weren’t served for breakfast but would have been one dish out of many served together at the main meals of the day. Served as a corner dish, they would have been an accompaniment arranged in a symmetrical manner around larger dishes, often of meat. For more on the arrangement of eighteenth-century meals see my post on A Flanc of Greengages.

These make a very nice pancake that is more similar to a crepe than cakey American pancakes. The beetroot adds a beautifully rich colour but not much flavour. Instead, the taste is dominated by the brandy and the nutmeg, and I recommend halving the amount of nutmeg to start because it can be quite overpowering. Since modern eggs are much larger than those in the past, I used two large egg yolks to get a thin batter consistency.

Pink Pancakes

Makes 5-6 small crepes.

1 medium beetroot
2 large egg yolks
2 heaped tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp cream
1/4 nutmeg, freshly grated
1/4 cup brandy
Butter, to cook

1. Boil the whole beetroot until tender, about an hour. Allow to cool enough that you can handle it and remove the skin and the top and bottom. Quarter and use a food processor to blend to a smooth puree.
2. Mix the pureed beetroot with the eggs, flour, sugar, cream, nutmeg, and brandy in a medium bowl.
3. Heat a frying pan over low heat and add 1/2 tbsp butter. Add a scant 1/4 cup of batter to the pan and spread it into an even circle with the back of a spoon. Cook until the colour changes and the middle of the pancake lifts slightly. Flip, and cook the other side until lightly coloured. Repeat with the remaining batter, adding more butter to the pan after every 2-3 pancakes.
4. Serve warm with butter, sugar and lemon, or preserved apricots.

a view from above shows dark pink pancakes on a wooden plate, topped with preserved apricot halves

October 23, 2022 / 2 Comments

To Make a Sack Cream

brown wooden bowl filled with sack cream beside a pile of ornately patterned biscuits

In historical cooking, many recipes include ingredients that are unfamiliar today. Garum, long pepper, and amydon are no longer common in our kitchens, although we do use similar ingredients like fish sauce, pepper, and cornstarch.

One ingredient which often appears in early modern recipes is sack, a kind of fortified wine. Whenever I’ve come across sack in a recipe before I’ve always just substituted it with sherry or whatever fortified wine I’ve had to hand but when I recently found a bottle of Williams and Humbert’s dry sack I knew it was time for a deeper dive.

The term ‘sack’ starts appearing in English sources during the early 16th century but its origin is disputed. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests it comes from the French ‘sec’ for dry, but sack was a sweet and not a dry wine.[1] Sherry expert Julian Jeffs offers a more convincing etymology from the Spanish ‘sacas’ which referred to export wine.[2] This was a category that included sherry as well as fortified wines from the Canary Islands and Malaga.

But what did sack taste like? Jeffs says “It is difficult to say exactly what Elizabethan sack wines were like; they were certainly fortified, and the methods of making arrope had long been known, but they were seldom matured in the wood for more than a year or two. Even the cheapest wines sold today have to show at least two years’ maturation and the vast majority are older, but perhaps the very cheapest sweet olorosos are not so very far removed from sack.”[3]

Willams & Humbert sack, a blended sherry which is aged in oak casks for six years, is a little too fine then to be an exact substitute and a cream sherry might have been a better choice. Still, now I have a bottle of sack, what can I do with it?

To Make Sack Cream Take a quart of thick cream sett it over the fire and when it boyls take it of & put to it a peice of lemon peil & sweten it well with fine suggar, when it is milk warm put it into the bason you intend to serve it up in and put to it half a lemon juce & nine spoonfulls of sack stiring it in by little & little after that sett it by till ye next day & serve it with waffers round ye dish you may mill it with a chocolate mill & serve it in glases if you please

One popular recipe was a sack cream which was one of the many cream recipes developed in the seventeenth-century. Made from whipped or thickened cream flavoured with fruit, alcohol, chocolate, or spices like cinnamon these creams came to play a central role in the evolving banquet course which was a separate course of sweetmeats often served in private rooms or a detached banquetting house.[4] Stephen Schmidt suggests that the explosion in cream dishes at the banquet from the 1650s onwards reflected the shift from Italianate to French cooking in fashionable English households.[5]

handwritten recipe in a manuscript cookbook, 'To Make a Sack Cream'

Page 28 of the Carr Family Cookbook (1741-1753), Szathmary Culinary Archive, Univesity of Iowa Library Special Collections. Public domain.

I’ve made a chocolate cream before, from Jane Dawson’s manuscript cookbook, and it was thickened by boiling the cream and adding an egg yolk before frothing it with a molinillo. This recipe, taken from the mid-eighteenth-century Carr Family Cookbook also boils the cream but instead of adding egg to thicken it acid is added in the form of lemon juice to just slightly curdle it. The trick here is adding the lemon juice very slowly, and then refrigerating the cream overnight. I did not try frothing it with a molinillo, but it would be interesting to know what effect that would have. It makes a rich, sweet dip for serving with biscuits which is good in small quantities.

[1] “Sack, n.3,” in OED Online (Oxford University Press, September 2022), https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/169485.

[2] Julian Jeffs, Sherry (Durrington, UK: Infinite Ideas, 2016).

[3] Jeffs.

[4] Peter Brears, Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England, 1st edition (London: Prospect Books, 2015), 84–90; 519–79.

[5] Stephen Schmidt, “Italian Cooking: What, Exactly, Was the Tudor and Stuart Banquet?,” Manuscript Cookbooks Survey, August 2019, https://www.manuscriptcookbookssurvey.org/category/italian-cooking/.

Sack Cream

1 1/4 cups cream

Sugar, to taste

2 pieces lemon peel

1/3 tbsp lemon juice

2 1/4 tbsp sack or dry sherry

Bring the cream to a boil then take off the heat and add the lemon peel and enough sugar to sweeten to your taste.
Allow the cream to cool to just warm then add the lemon juice and sack bit by bit, stirring well between additions.
Pour into the serving bowl, then refrigerate overnight before serving with plain biscuits (pizzelle or something similar are a good choice). Grate over some nutmeg if desired.

a plate of waffle-like biscuits rolled into tubes sit piled in front of a brown, wooden bowl filled with sack cream

July 24, 2022 / 0 Comments

Making A ‘Flanc’ Of Greengages

One of the lovely things about being in back in California for the summer is fresh summer fruits. I’ve been picking blackberry and roasting plums in red wine and gorging myself on fresh cherries. And recently, I was able to get my hands on some greengages.

Greengages are a type of plum and, as the name suggests, a gorgeous green colour even when ripe. They’re on the smaller side, a sweet, tart mouthful each. Known in France as the Reine Claude, they’re hard to come by in California and even harder to find in Australia but absolutely worth it if you can find some.

greengages for sale in a market stall with prices per kg and per lb

Martinvl, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I wanted to showcase these gorgeous plums with a historic recipe that wouldn’t cook them down too much. In the end I actually didn’t have that many recipes to choose from, in part because greengages were only introduced to England from France in the early 18th century and also I suppose because you could use greengages in most recipes that just call generically for plums.

Alexis Soyer, the Victorian celebrity chef, has recipes for greengage compote, small tarts, dumplings and the intriguing crusts of fruit in his 1850 edition of The Modern Housewife or, Ménagère:

Crusts of Fruit.—Put a quarter of a pound of butter in a sauté- or frying-pan, sprinkle a little sugar over, cut four or five slices of bread a quarter of an inch thick, three inches long, and one and a half wide, lay in your pan; take one dozen of greengages, open them in two, they must not be too ripe, lay the skin part on your bread, put a pinch of sugar in each, put it in a hot oven for twenty minutes; have ready a salamander or a hot shovel, and hold it over it for a few minutes, dish and serve hot or cold; the oven ought to be hot enough to give a nice yellow color to the bottom, which will eat crisp.

He also has a recipe for “flancs”

Flancs, with any kind of fruit, like a vol-au-vent, are more easily made, and are equally as good a side dish. This may be made of half-puff or short paste, and fill with raw cherries and some pounded sugar over: bake together. Greengages, apricots, or any kind of plums, will require a hotter oven than for flour only in it, the fruit giving moisture to the paste; if baked in a slow oven will be heavy, and consequently indigestible.

This is not the first time Soyer wrote recipes for a flanc, in The Gastronomic Regenerator (1846) he has a recipe for ‘Flanc à la Creme Pralinée’ which is for a tart filled with frangipane and almonds. Included in the chapter for ‘Entremets’, surrounded by pastry recipes and following directly after several recipes for fruit flans, at first this seems like a typo or maybe a variant spelling of flan.

But as Soyer explains in the Modern Housewife “AT this part of the dinner there are those dishes which are called Flancs, by which is understood, those dishes whose contents are not so large as the removes and not so small as the entrées, and the Receipts for which may be taken from either of those departments, with this difference;—instead of meat or poultry being cut up, it should be left whole: for instance, a loin of mutton, instead of being cut up into cutlets, should be served whole, with some sauce under it, and a duck, instead of being divided, should be left whole, with some sauce. It is also a great addition in the appearance of the table, and should always be served in a differently-formed dish to the entrées or removes; and are only required when eighteen or twenty persons dine, and four corner dishes are used.”

Sample menu for a two course meal for August from The London Art of Cookery by John Farley (1811) showing the four corner dishes that Soyer refers to. The ‘flancs’ are probably the tartlet and cheese cakes in the second course, and the chicken and French pie in the first course.

The term seems to be more related to the direct translation of the French flanc meaning side reflecting the layout of a meal served à la Française. Unlike in a modern restaurant meal (served à la Russe) where each course is served one after the other with one dish at a time to each individual diner, a meal served à la Française may still have multiple courses but many dishes are laid out on the table at the same time for each diner to take a serving of the different dishes. The layout, and especially the symmetry, of the different dishes was an important part of the meal and for highlighting the hostess’s skill.

Sample layout of dishes for the first and second courses from The Complete Economical Cook, and Frugal Housewife by Mary Holland (1837).

Sample two course menu from The Complete Economical Cook, and Frugal Housewife by Mary Holland (1837). Notice how the second course combines sweet and savoury dishes, and hot and cold.

In these meals, the centrepieces of each course would be placed that the top and bottom of the table, closest to the host and the hostess. These typically consisted of soup and fish in the first course and roast meats in the second course. These dishes could be removed once eaten and replaced by ‘removes’. Laid out around the main dishes during each course were ‘made-dishes’, also called entrées and entremets, which could be sweet or savory but generally became lighter and sweeter as the meal went on. Soyer’s flancs fit into this category as a kind of side dish, normally served cold alongside the more elaborate entrees and the larger meats.

Sample menus from The Cook’s Guide, and Housekeeper’s and Butler’s Assistant by Charles Francatelli (1863) show how seasonal menus for different numbers of diners were still made up of the same elements: soup, fish and roast meat in sequential removes served wtih entrees and entremets. The second course of the dinner for 6 people includes a Flance of pears and rice although unfortunately no recipe is included.

The problem with this theory is that the term flanc nearly always refers to a kind of sweet tart normally filled with fruit but occasionally even with sweet noodles, and it continues in use until the end of the 19th century when dining à la Française had been nearly completely replaced by dining à la Russe. Frederick Vine’s Practical Pastry published in 1894 has recipes for apples, gooseberries, greengages and apricots baked into tarts. A recipe for ‘flanc of peaches’ is included in both Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (1896) and Harper’s Cookbook Encyclopedia (1902) while Mrs de Salis offers a completely different style of recipe in The Lady’s Realm (1897).

So, does ‘flanc’ refer to the type of dish and it’s place within the meal, or is it a sweet tart generally with a fruit filling in a raised crust? I’m not sure, and this isn’t the only thing about the recipes that is a bit of a conundrum.

Glistening fruit tart on a blue and white plate with a metal cake server and some sunflowers in the background

The Recipe

The version I made comes from Mrs Beeton’s The Book of Household Management (1861).

FLANC OF APRICOTS, or Compote of Apricots in a Raised Crust.

(Sweet Entremets.)

INGREDIENTS.—3/4 lb. of short crust No. 1212, from 9 to 12 good-sized apricots, 3/4 pint of water, 1/2 lb. of sugar.

Mode.—Make a short crust by recipe No. 1212, and line a mould with it as directed in recipe No. 1391. Boil the sugar and water together for 10 minutes; halve the apricots, take out the stones, and simmer them in the syrup until tender; watch them carefully, and take them up the moment they are done, for fear they break. Arrange them neatly in the flanc or case; boil the syrup until reduced to a jelly, pour it over the fruit, and serve either hot or cold. Greengages, plums of all kinds, peaches, &c., may be done in the same manner, as also currants, raspberries, gooseberries, strawberries, &c.; but with the last-named fruits, a little currant-juice added to them will be found an improvement.

Time.—Altogether, 1 hour to bake the flanc, about 10 minutes to simmer the apricots.

Average cost, 1s. 6d.

Sufficient for 1 entremets or side-dish.

Seasonable in July, August, and September.

The basic recipe refers to two other recipes to make the pastry case:

1212. INGREDIENTS.—To every pound of flour allow 2 oz. of sifted sugar, 3 oz. of butter, about 1/2 pint of boiling milk.

Mode.—Crumble the butter into the flour as finely as possible, add the sugar, and work the whole up to a smooth paste with the boiling milk. Roll it out thin, and bake in a moderate oven.

Average cost, 6d. per lb.

FLANC OF APPLES, or APPLES IN A RAISED CRUST.

(Sweet Entremets.)

INGREDIENTS.—3/4 lb. of short crust No. 1211 or 1212, 9 moderate-sized apples, the rind and juice of 1/2 lemon, 1/2 lb. of white sugar, 3/4 pint of water, a few strips of candied citron.

Mode.—Make a short crust by either of the above recipes; roll it out to the thickness of 1/2 inch, and butter an oval mould; line it with the crust, and press it carefully all round the sides, to obtain the form of the mould, but be particular not to break the paste. Pinch the part that just rises above the mould with the paste-pincers, and fill the case with flour; bake it for about 3/4 hour; then take it out of the oven, remove the flour, put the case back in the oven for another 1/4 hour, and do not allow it to get scorched. It is now ready for the apples, which should be prepared in the following manner: peel, and take out the cores with a small knife, or a cutter for the purpose, without dividing the apples; put them into a small lined saucepan, just capable of holding them, with sugar, water, lemon juice and rind, in the above proportion. Let them simmer very gently until tender; then take out the apples, let them cool, arrange them in the flanc or case, and boil down the syrup until reduced to a thick jelly; pour it over the apples, and garnish them with a few slices of candied citron.

While making the filling is straightforward enough, the pastry is very oily and I had to press it into the tin instead of rolling it out. Then the recipe says to fill the raw pastry case with flour and bake it in order to blind bake it.This isn’t a technique I’ve seen before, but it seems to be common to several of the flanc recipes including the ‘Flanc de Nouilles méringuées’ (Flanc of Meringue-d Noodles) from The Art of French Cookery (1827) which is the earliest recipe I’ve found so far.

Recipe for Flanc de Nouilles méringuées from The Art of French Cookery (1827)

I was very nervous about this and wasn’t sure if I should put a layer of baking paper in the pastry first to make getting rid of the flour easier. In the end I didn’t, and it actually worked really well with the flour absorbing some of the oiliness of the pastry. Yet another example of how historical recipes often work if you just follow them! This made a very crisp pastry that stayed firm even when the quite liquid filling was put into it and was still crispy two days later. It’s definitely a method that I will be using again.

The filling itself is simple to make although I probably left the greengages in the syrup a little too long. You want them to change colour but not for the skin to start falling off them, it’s really only a couple of minutes. I then cooked the syrup down until it was starting to gel, testing it as if for jam. It will thicken a bit more as it cools, so don’t take it too far.

Overall, this makes one of the most delicious fruit tarts I’ve ever tasted with the sweetness of the syrup offset by the tartness of the greengages and balanced by the rich, biscuit-y pastry.

The Redaction

Flanc of Greengages

3/4 cups water

226g sugar

9-12 greengages, halved and pitted

226g plain flour, plus flour to fill the pastry case

57g sugar

85g cold butter, cubed

1.2 cups boiling milk

Boil the sugar and water together in a medium saucepan for 10 mins. Turn down the heat to medium-low and add the greengages. Remove the greengages after 2-3 minutes when fully yellow and the skin is just starting to wrinkle.
Continue boiling syrup until light gel forms (20-30 mins) then allow the syrup to cool.
Heat the oven to 180°C. To make the pastry, place the flour and sugar in a mixing bowl and rub in the butter. Heat the milk and add enough milk to bring the dough together into a smooth paste.
Butter a shallow pie dish and press the dough into the dish to make a case. Fill it with plain flour, then bake for 45 minutes. Use a spoon to carefully remove the flour and discard the flour. Use a pastry brush to remove any remaining flour, then put the case back in the oven and back for 15 minutes at 170°.
When the case is golden brown and crispy, but not burnt at the edges, remove it from the oven. Arrange the greengages in the case and spoon over enough of the syrup to fill in the gaps between the fruit. Serve warm or cold.

For more about the history of dining, see:

Flandrin, Jean Louis. Arranging the Meal: A History of Table Service in France. English-Language ed, University of California Press, 2007.

Gray, Annie. “‘Perfection and Economy’: Continuity and Change in Elite Dining Practices, ca. 1780-1880.” The Importance of British Material Culture to Historical Archaeologies of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Alasdair Mark Brooks, University of Nebraska Press, 2015, pp. 216–42.

June 17, 2022 / 2 Comments

Puff Paste Loaves aka Buttered Loaves

Following on in the series of recipes from Margaret Baker’s recipe books, I chose one from Sloane MS 2485. This book has the most culinary recipes, although there are still some medical and household recipes too. The front page is dated “The 27th of December 1672” when Margaret Baker must have been in her 60s or maybe even 70s. I wonder if this book was supposed to be a clean copy of recipes she had collected over her lifetime, a compendium of her skills and knowledge.

image of several buttered loaves on a wooden board, one with the top off to show the filling

The recipe is titled ‘To make puff past loues” which is interesting because puff paste implies pastry, but loues (or loaves) implies a recipe for bread. In fact, the recipe is similar to those found in many sixteenth and seventeenth-century recipes under variations of the name ‘buttered loaf’.

To make puff past loues;
Take :3: pintes of fine flower & putt into it :6: yolkes of eggs & noe whites a sawcer full of good yeast; cloues mace & salt yn mould it into past with could creame this being bake yn beinge open in ye topp & putt therinto melted butter and suger;

The recipes for buttered loaves are descended from the medieval ‘rastons’ which were rolls made of bread dough enriched with butter and eggs. Once the rastons were baked, the tops were cut open and melted butter (and sometimes sugar) could be poured in, or mixed with the crumb.

Rastons.—Take fayre Flowre, & þe whyte of Eyroun, & þe ȝolke, a lytel; þan take Warme Berme, & putte al þes to-gederys, & bete hem to-gederys with þin hond tyl it be schort & þikke y-now, & caste Sugre y-now þer-to, & þenne lat reste a whyle; þan kaste in a fayre place in þe oven, & late bake y-now; & þen with a knyf cutte yt round a-boue in maner of a crowne, & kepe þe cruste þat þou kyttyst; & þan pyke al þe cromys withynne to-gederys, an pike hem smal with þin knyf, & saue þe sydys & al þePage 53 cruste hole with-owte; & þan caste þer-in clarifiyd Boter, & Mille þe cromeȝ & þe botere to-gedereȝ, & keuere it a-ȝen with þe cruste, þat þou kyttest a-way; þan putte it in þe ovyn aȝen a lytil tyme; & þan take it out, & serue it fortℏ.

There are several good recreated recipes for rastons floating around, including Maeve L’Estrange’s recipe ‘How to Make Buttery Twice-Baked Raston’ or if you prefer a video Max Miller has a Youtube episode called ‘How to Bake Medieval Rastons’.

By the 17th century, the recipes called for the dough to be spiced as it is here with cloves and mace. A variation is made with fresh cheese, as in the very next recipe from Margaret Baker:

An other Loffe;
Take a quart of new milke putt rennett to it; & wn it is turned whey it & hange ye curd up a dreaninge an hower or two; take :10: eggs leaue out :3: of their whites a little ginger a pitne of eale yeast; as much flower as will make it up in to a loafe; when it is well baked cutt it up & butter it with butter & suger your butter must be melted first with ye suger in it;

This version is almost identical to one called ‘[To] Make a Butterd Loafe’ in Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery, suggesting they may share a published source. To try a version of this recipe, Peter Brears suggests using cottage cheese as shown in this example by Brigitte Webster (Brears 215, 136) .

image of four rolls on a wooden board, each with the tops cut off and replaced on top of a mixture of melted butter and sugar. One has the top laying on the side so the filling can be seen.

Margaret Baker’s Puff Paste Loaves

480g flour (stone-milled would be great but strong white flour will do fine)
4 cloves, ground (preferably freshly ground)
1 large piece mace, ground (preferably freshly ground)
3/4 tsp salt
3 egg yolks
1 tsp yeast in 1/2 cup lukewarm milk, ale or water and allowed to become bubbly
1 cup cream plus enough extra cream or milk to make quite a sticky dough
100g butter
100g sugar

1. In a large bowl mix the flour with the spices and salt. Mix in the egg yolks, yeast and cream. Stir, then add enough extra cream or milk to make quite a sticky dough.
2. Turn the dough out onto a surface and knead until it becomes smooth and pliable. Shape into a ball and place in an oiled bowl, cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes.
3. Knock down the dough and cut it into 12 equally sized pieces. Shape each into a smooth ball with good surface tension. Place on lined baking trays and allow to rise for another 30-45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200C.
4. After the rolls have risen, bake them for 15-20 minutes or until they sound hollow when knocked and not too golden. Allow to cool enough to handle.
5. In a small saucepan melt the butter and sugar together over low heat. It’s OK if the sugar remains a bit grainy.
6. Using a sharp knife, cut the top of each roll off and pour 1-2 tbsp of the melted butter mixture onto the larger part of the roll. Put the top back on and serve while still warm.

The Verdict

A little on the dry side but beautifully spiced and the melted butter and sugar is a master-stroke. Since the dough is not sweetened, it adds just the right amount of richness.

References

Brears, Peter. Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England. Prospect Books, 2015.