Got the Blues

This fortnight’s challenge “Something Borrowed, Something Blue” was one of the hardest challenges to find something to make. I really wanted to do something blue, but blue foods are always a bit thin on the ground. The exception seems to be the Middle Ages when a range of colourants were used to dye foods: saffron or egg yolk for yellow, alkanet, blood or berries for reds, ground toast or liver for browns and blacks, spinach or parsley juice for green and almond milk and chicken for white.[1] To make blue medieval cooks had a range of options: ground lapis lazuli (don’t try this at home!), cooked carrot peel, blackberries, cherry or grape juice, or the rather enigmatic turnsole[2].

 

Many of these ingredients were used in jellies or leaches (milk jellies) to produce fanciful, multi-coloured dishes. Another popular use was coloured sauces, The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy lists white, green, yellow, pink, black, blue and camel-coloured sauces.[3]

 

The Recipe

 

The pleasant-sounding ‘Sky-blue sauce for summer’ (I’ve also seen it translated as ‘heavenly’ which I think is even nicer) seemed promising. I don’t speak Italian so I used an English translation (from The Medieval Kitchen) but an Italian version is available here called ‘Sapor celeste de estate’.

 

“Sky-blue sauce for summer. Take some of the wild blackberries that grow in hedgerows and some thoroughly pounded almonds, with a little ginger. And moisten these things with verjuice and strain through a sieve.”[4]

 

Unfortunately, as you may have guessed from the pictures there was a major problem with my version, it’s not blue. To add insult to injury, it also tastes pretty awful (it somehow managed to be both too watery and too sour at the same time). Because of these rather major faults I won’t be giving a redaction (if you want to try it you can find the redaction from the book here). I used similar proportions, although I halved the recipe and used slightly less verjuice. I do wonder if that was the problem, although having had a look at some other blogs it seems that no-one has really succeeded at turning the recipe blue, let alone “a lovely midnight-blue”[5].

The Round-up

The Recipe: Sky-blue sauce for summer from Libro de Arte Coquinaria by Martino de Rossi (available here in Italian)

The Date: c. 1465

How did you make it?: I mashed 2 cups of blackberries then added the 2 tbsp of ground almonds, 1/2 tsp of ground ginger and 1/4 cup of verjuice before straining the mixture.

Time to complete?: About 20 mins.

How successful was it?: Well it didn’t turn blue and didn’t taste good so it failed on pretty much all counts. Whether the taste was correct but just not my thing I’m not sure. As to not turning blue, I wonder if either I didn’t add enough verjuice or it wasn’t acidic enough. Epulario by Giovanne Roselli has a nearly identical recipe but he uses mulberries instead, would this work better?

How accurate?: I wonder what medieval verjuice was like, something to investigate further.

 

[1] Terence Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, 5th ed. (Suffolk and Rochester: Boydell Press, 2006), 114–116.

[2] Turnsole is a dyestuff that yields a colour that varies from red to purple to blue depending on the PH level of the liquid it is mixed with. It has been identified as several different plants, although the most likely is chrozophora tinctoria.

[3] Odine Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen: Recipe from France and Italy, trans. Edward Schneider (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 165–178.

[4] Ibid., 168.

[5] Ibid.

 

Bibliography

Redon, Odine, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipe from France and Italy. Translated by Edward Schneider. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

 

Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. 5th ed. Suffolk and Rochester: Boydell Press, 2006.

All Jumbled Up

Photography by Sophia Harris.

 

If you’ve ever flicked through a historical cookbook you may have stumbled across a recipe for jumbles (also spelt jumbals, iombils, jambals and any other way you can imagine), a popular type of biscuit from the 16th century onwards. When I first heard about jumbles I, like many other people I think, was under the impression that they were called jumbles because they were a jumble of ingredients, but in fact the name refers to their shape.

 

In 16th century England gimmell rings (from the Latin gemellus for twin) were popular symbols of love and friendship and often exchanged as wedding rings. The rings were made of two or more intersecting bands which could be separated to form two separate rings, worn by each party during the betrothal period and then re-joined during the wedding.[1] Many of these rings exist in museum collections, and they are also celebrated in the literature of the day. I particularly like Robert Herrick’s poem The Jimmall Ring Or True-Love Knot:

 

“Thou sent’st to me a true love-knot, but I
Returned a ring of jimmals to imply
Thy love had one knot, mine a triple tie.”[2]

 

Jumbles then are biscuits made in the shape of these rings, and their twisted and entwined shapes are easily recognisable in many 16th and 17th century paintings, only recently has their shape changed to a flat or mounded biscuit. What is less sure is what exactly they should be made of. In fact, there is a huge amount of variation over the centuries.

 

Still life with Venetian Glass, a romer and a candle by Clara Peeters, 1607. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Early jumble recipes, such as those from Thomas Dawson’s The Good Huswife’s Jewell from 1597 are biscuits flavoured with aniseed and rosewater and formed into knots before being boiled and baked.[3] Martha Washington’s Cookbook which, according to Karen Hess, probably dates from the second half of the 17th century contains a similar recipe which is even more heavily spiced (with carraway, aniseed, rosewater, musk and ambergris) but is not boiled.[4] However, it also has recipes for jumbles made from marzipan and baked fruit paste, as well as one for Lemon Jumbles which Hess notes is more like a meringue. Published in 1741 Elizabeth Moxon’s book English Housewifery Exemplified also offer both biscuit and fruit paste versions (from apricots, or she gives the option of making Barberry Cakes in the form of jumbles).[5]

 

Jumbles held on well into the 19th century, although the flavouring had become more familiar with cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon amongst the most popular additions. The shapes were also probably less complex, being formed into little rings or simply rolled out and baked thin. Whilst Elizabeth Lea’s book Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers (1859) offered a selection of recipes (Rich Jumbles, Common Jumbles, Molasses Jumbles, Jumbles for Delicate Persons, Cup Jumbles and Jackson Jumbles)[6], other sources had pared their recipes back to the bare minimum. A recipe from 1860 runs “Jumbles. Half a pound of sugar. Half a pound of butter. Half a pound of flour. Flavour with cinnamon.”[7] In Australia references to honey jumbles appear in newspapers around the turn of the 20th century, often referring to American recipes or producers. A version of these is still produced by Arnott’s today, but these soft, gingerbready biscuits bear little resemblance to any other type of jumbles in either their shape or ingredients. For an example of this type of recipe see here.

Photography by Sophia Harris.

 

The Recipes

 

I used two different recipes for jumbles, one is for a savoury more bread-like type of jumbles, pleasantly flavoured with aniseed and boiled before baking (like a modern bagel or pretzel).

 

“To Make Jambals : Take a pint of fine wheat flour, the yolks of three or four new laid eggs, three or four spoonfuls of sweet cream, a few anniseeds, and some cold butter, make it into paste, and roul it into long rouls, as big as a little arrow, make them into divers knots, then boil them in fair water like simnels; bake them, and being baked, box them and keep them in a stove. Thus you may use them, and keep them all the year.”[8]

 

I had a bit of difficulty shaping these because of the texture of the dough, and I think that they could probably use some salt, or at the least salted butter, to give them a little more flavour. The lack of salt in the recipe does confuse me a bit, given that May suggests you can keep them for a whole year. Possibly the salt was assumed in the recipe? The second recipe that I used was for a slightly chewy biscuit, also flavoured with aniseed. These were really good and I would definitely recommend the recipe.

 

“To make Iumbals. To make the best Iumbals, take the whites of three egges and beate them well, and take of the viell; then take a little milke and a pound of fine wheat flower and sugar together finely sifted, and a few Aniseeds well rubd and dried; and then make what formes you please ; & bake them in a soft ouen vpon white Papers.”[9]

 

The Redactions

 

To Make Jambals (the savoury bread type)

 

250g flour

2 tsp aniseeds, ground to a powder in a mortar and pestle

60g salted butter

4 egg yolks

4 tbsp cream

 

1. Place the flour and aniseed in a bowl and mix together. Rub in the butter until it is like breadcrumbs then stir in the egg yolks and cream until combined. If necessary add a little egg white to soften the mixture.
2. Take walnut sized pieces of dough and roll into sausages the thickness of a pencil. The dough gets air pockets in the middle which makes it difficult to roll but by applying downward pressure with your palms as you roll you can form sausages. Fold the sausage in half and twist the ends together or form into other shapes as desired.
3. Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Bring a wide saucepan of water to rolling boil and carefully place the jumbles into the boiling water with a slotted spoon. Allow them to boil in the liquid for 1 minute then scoop them out and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.

Photography by Sophia Harris.

To Make Jumbals (the sweet biscuit type)

 

3 egg whites

6 tbsp milk

225g plain flour

225 wholemeal flour

450g sugar

3 tsp aniseeds, ground to a powder in a mortar and pestle

 

1. Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Beat the egg whites until fluffy then stir in the milk, flour, sugar and aniseeds until they form a dough.
2. On a floured board shape pieces of dough into knots, hearts, letters etc. Place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper and cook in the oven for 20 minutes or until lightly golden.

Photography by Sophia Harris.

 

 

The Round-up

The Recipe: Jambals from The Accomplisht Cook by Robert May (available here)

The Date:1685

How did you make it?

Time to complete?: About an hr.

How successful was it?: More successful that I was expecting, at first I was really struggling to get the dough to stick together but by applying downwards pressure with my palms as I rolled, and adding a little egg white, I was able to get it to work. The larger twists fell apart a big during boiling, but the smaller ones stayed together really well. The flavour was quite subtle, and considering how long they are supposed to stay good, I was surprised at the lack of salt. Very different from the other jumbles, savoury rather than sweet but quite tasty.

How accurate?:  Not too bad I think, although I don’t know how long I should have boiled it for, I just guessed that. I’d also like to know how long they do keep, and what it means to box them and keep them in a stove.

 

The Recipe: Jumbals from Country Contentements by Gervase Markham (available here)

The Date:1623

How did you make it?

Time to complete?: About an hr.

How successful was it?: Very successful, gave a light slightly chewy biscuit lightly flavoured with aniseed.

How accurate?: I wasn’t quite sure what it meant to “take of the viell” so I just whipped the egg whites until fluffy. It seemed to work well.

 

[1] The British Museum, “Fede Ring/gimmel-Ring,” The British Museum Collection Online, accessed February 9, 2015, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=79510&partId=1.

[2] Robert Herrick, The Hesperides & Noble Numbers, ed. Alfred Pollard, vol. 1 (London and New York: Lawrence & Bullen, Ltd., 1898), 217.

[3] Thomas Dawson, The Second Part of the Good Hus-Wifes Jewell (London: Printed by E. Allde for Edward White, 1597), 19.

[4] Karen Hess, Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats, Reprint edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 348–351.

[5] Elizabeth Moxon, English Housewifry Exemplified (Leeds: Printed by J. Lister, and sole by J. Swale, J. Ogle, and S. Howgate, at Leeds; J. Lord at Wakefield; and the author at Pontefract., 1741), 139 & 175.

[6] Elizabeth E. Lea, Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers (Baltimore: Cushings and Bailey, 1859), 118–119.

[7] Luther Tucker and Son and J.J Thomas, eds., The Country Gentleman, vol. 15 (Albany: Luther Tucker, 1860), 383.

[8] Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook, Or, The Art and Mystery of Cookery. (London: printed by R.W. for Nath: Brooke, 1660), 275.

[9] Gervase Markham, Countrey Contentments, or the English Huswife: Containing the Inward and Outward Vertues Which out to Be in a Compleate Woman (London: Printed for R. Jackson, 1623), 114.

 

Bibliography

Dawson, Thomas. The Second Part of the Good Hus-Wifes Jewell. London: Printed by E. Allde for Edward White, 1597.

Herrick, Robert. The Hesperides & Noble Numbers. Edited by Alfred Pollard. Vol. 1. London and New York: Lawrence & Bullen, Ltd., 1898.

Hess, Karen. Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats. Reprint edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Lea, Elizabeth E. Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers. Baltimore: Cushings and Bailey, 1859.

Markham, Gervase. Countrey Contentments, or the English Huswife: Containing the Inward and Outward Vertues Which out to Be in a Compleate Woman. London: Printed for R. Jackson, 1623.

May, Robert. The Accomplisht Cook, Or, The Art and Mystery of Cookery. London: printed by R.W. for Nath: Brooke, 1660.

Moxon, Elizabeth. English Housewifry Exemplified. Leeds: Printed by J. Lister, and sole by J. Swale, J. Ogle, and S. Howgate, at Leeds; J. Lord at Wakefield; and the author at Pontefract., 1741.

The British Museum. “Fede Ring/gimmel-Ring.” The British Museum Collection Online. Accessed February 9, 2015. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=79510&partId=1.

Tucker and Son, Luther, and J.J Thomas, eds. The Country Gentleman. Vol. 15. Albany: Luther Tucker, 1860.

Raising a Revolution

Like Betsy from the Historical Food Fortnightly I decided to focus on a raising agent for the Revolutionary Food challenge, but where her recipe called for potassium bicarbonate (aka pearl ash) I used sodium bicarbonate. Sodium carbonate or soda ash had been in use as a leavening agent since its discovery in 1791 and continued in use into the mid-1800s, see for example the recipe for Buckwheat Cakes below, but sometime around the 1840s it began to be replaced by sodium bicarbonate and eventually baking powder.

 

Recipe for Buckwheat Cakes using carbonate of soda. From the Michigan Farmer, and Western Horticulturalist. 17th ed. Vol. 2. (Jackson, Michigan: D.D.T. Moore, 1844) 135.

As far as I can find out, sodium bicarbonate was discovered by Valentin Rose in 1801 but wasn’t used on a large scale until commercialisation in the 1840s. Nonetheless, I found a reference as early as 1808 to “digestive bread” made with bicarbonate of soda[1], and indeed many of the later recipes stress the health benefits of bread leavened with bicarbonate of soda rather than yeast.

 

I can’t say whether bicarbonate of soda really made bread that was healthier for you, but it certainly offered a number of advantages to the home baker. Firstly, it could be used with soft wheat flours, that is flour that doesn’t contain enough gluten to have the strength to make good bread with yeast. Secondly it was much faster, in fact as soon as the soda and the acid (often yoghurt or buttermilk) come together you have a very limited time to get it into the oven. Thirdly it was a lot less work, contrary to normal bread soda bread should not be kneaded. Fourthly, it was suitable for cakes and biscuits too, giving a lighter, fluffier result than those made with yeast. Finally, it was also cheap, didn’t go off in the summer months, and required much less attention than a sourdough starter or ale-barm. For all of these reasons, the introduction of chemical leavening agents was revolutionary for bakers of all types.

 

Brothers-in-law John Dwight and Austin Church were some of the first commercial suppliers of sodium bicarbonate in the USA, first selling their product in 1846. The two separated to set up their own companies, but these were re-united in 1896.  By Boston Public Library [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Although many countries have their traditions of quick breads leavened with chemical agents (damper, pancakes, griddle cakes, farls, bannocks, scones, biscuits) I’ve always had a strong attachment to the quick breads of Northern Ireland. Visiting my grandparents there meant fried pancakes, potato breads toasted and dripping with butter, soda farls with an Ulster Fry and best of all, thick slices of wheaten bread, slathered in butter and ready to be dipped into Granny’s vegetable soup.

 

Ireland’s relationship with quick breads is linked to several key factors. The Irish climate has always been better suited to soft wheats, and soft wheats are not suited to being made into yeast breads. These quick breads are also more suited to being cooked over a fire, an important factor given that until the 20th century many houses lacked an oven. The introduction of bicarbonate of soda also seems to have coincided with The Great Famine of 1845-1852, and the woefully inadequate imports of wheat and cornmeal which were to relieve the hunger. Nonetheless, the demand for bicarbonate of soda greatly increased during the famine years so much that it placed pressure on suppliers to find new ways to produce it[2].

 

The Recipe

 

Unfortunately few Irish recipe books exist from this period so I have had to make do with an early English recipe from The Farmers Magazine although a nearly identical recipe is available in the 1847 Manual of Domestic Economy[3]. It is quite simple to do, although it does make a very large loaf so it may be worth halving the recipe.

Recipe for Soda Bread from The Farmer’s Magazine: July to December 1836. Vol. 5. (London: Printed by Joseph Rogerson, 1836) 328.

 

The Redaction

Soda Bread

680g whole wheat flour

2 tsp salt

1 heaped tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/3 cup of water

Approx. 600ml buttermilk

 

1. Heat the oven to 190˚C and heat a large baking tray in the oven for 15 minutes.
2. Mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda into the water then stir it into the flour. Rub it together until it is evenly distributed.
3. Stir in the buttermilk, as much as possible to make a soft dough that is still able to be handled. Turn it out onto a floured surface and shape into a large circle about 1 inch thick. Do not knead the dough and act as quickly as possible.
4. Carefully remove the hot tray from the oven and place the dough onto it. Place in the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes or until the bread is golden and sounds hollow when knocked on the bottom. Serve hot or cold with butter.

 

The Recipe: Soda Bread from The Farmer’s Magazine (available here)

The Date: 1836

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: Very quick to mix, maybe 1 hr all up.

How successful was it?: Not as good as real Irish soda bread, the odd shape made it too crusty, and it had a slight aftertaste of soda.

How accurate?: The way of cooking it was very different, but that was unavoidable in the circumstances. I’m not sure if the quantity of soda was off, but it had an odd aftertaste which I can’t imagine it should have had.

 

 

[1] Andrew Ure, A Dictionary of Art, Manufactures, and Mines, vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1808), 248.

[2] Thomas Richardson and Henry Watts, Acids, Alkalies and Salts: Their Manufacture and Applications, vol. 1 (London: H. Baillière, 219, Regent Street, 1863), 312.

[3] John Timbs, Manual of Domestic Economy: By the Editor of “The Year-Book of Facts.,” 1847, 97.

 

Bibliography

Michigan Farmer, and Western Horticulturalist. 17th ed. Vol. 2. D.D.T. Moore, 1844.

Richardson, Thomas, and Henry Watts. Acids, Alkalies and Salts: Their Manufacture and Applications. Vol. 1. London: H. Baillière, 219, Regent Street, 1863.

The Farmer’s Magazine July to December 1836. Vol. 5. London: Printed by Joseph Rogerson, 1836.

Timbs, John. Manual of Domestic Economy: By the Editor of “The Year-Book of Facts.” London: David Bogue, 86, Fleet Stree, 1847.

Ure, Andrew. A Dictionary of Art, Manufactures, and Mines. Vol. 2. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1808.

 

 

 

Funereal Feasting

Here we are again, still playing catch-up with the Historical Food Fortnightly challenges I’m afraid, but as of next fortnight we should be back on schedule. For the ‘Sacred or Profane’ challenge I picked a topic which I’ve been curious about for a while now. For those of you who are seeing these for the first time, welcome to the weird, wacky and downright morbid world of funeral foods.

In Victorian times death was a big deal, maybe not on quite the same scale as an Egyptian pyramid, but certainly expensive enough to ruin a family and the focus of a complex web of symbolism which dictated the families clothing and behaviour for months, if not years, after the death. One of the most curious of these practices was the use of special biscuits in order to invite people to the funeral or to give out as a keepsake to guests. Although the use of biscuits at funerals seems to have been quite widespread in Northern England and parts of America, the form and usage varied based on the region and the social class of the deceased.

Essentially there were two types of biscuit, one was a Savoy or Naples biscuit (like a modern sponge finger or ladyfinger) and the second type was a kind of shortbread (The Great British Bake Off has a great video about these biscuits which you can watch here). The shortbread biscuits could be flavoured with caraway seeds and were often stamped with a mould, like the one below.

This 17th century stone mould from Yorkshire was owned by Thomas Beckwith and was used to mark funeral biscuits. From Sylvanius Urban, ed., The Gentleman’s Magazine (London, England) (London: Printed by Nichols and Son, at Cicero’s Head, Red Lion Passage, Fleet-Street, 1802), fig. 2.

Depending on how the biscuits were to be given out they could be bundled into parcels of between 2 and 6 biscuits, wrapped in a paper printed with a poem or verse and sealed with black wax. A correspondent of ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ in 1802 describes a time when “The paper in which these biscuits were sealed was printed on one side with a coffin, cross-bones, skulls, hacks, spades, hour-glasses etc.”[1] You can see an example of one of these wrappers on the Pitt Rivers Museum website here.

There were a number of different ways to distribute the biscuits:

1. Prior to the funeral a woman could be sent around ‘bidding’ friends and family to attend the funeral, and handing out wrapped packets of biscuits.
2. The biscuits could be served during the wake or just before the last viewing of the body.
3. A basket of wrapped parcels of biscuits could be left on a table for people to take home with them.
4. Packets of wrapped biscuits could be sent to the homes of family and friends who were unable to attend.
5. Packets of wrapped biscuits could be send to the homes of people who attended as a keepsake.[2]

An alternative was a funeral cake, which could either be small individual spiced cakes, or a larger (8-11 inches in diameter), round cake made of “flour, water, yeast, currants, and some kind of spice”[3]. Joseph Hunter makes an interesting distinction between when cake was served rather than biscuits:

“When cakes such as these are presented to the persons invited to attend the funeral it is understood to intimate that it is a pay-burying, i.e. that each person is expected to contribute something, usually a shilling, towards the expense. When it is not a pay-burying a Naples biscuit is the arvel-bread : and after funerals of people of a better condition, two Naples biscuits are usually sent to the friends of the deceased, with gloves, hat-band or scarf, or all of these.”[4]

Another use for funeral biscuits is documented in the village of Cherry Burton. Apparently in this Yorkshire village it was considered necessary to place the bee-hive in mourning, and so it was draped in black fabric with a propitiatory offering of funeral biscuit soaked in wine left for the bees.[5] There was a strong link between wine and the biscuits for humans too, and nearly all of the sources which I can find mentions the two together, even amongst teetotallers[6].

Even though this picture is quite a bit earlier than the other sources we’ve been looking at, I think its very interesting to see the girl serving wine on the left (and the text mentions that those present will drink several glasses before and after the funeral) and the girl on the right who has a plate of food. Could it be biscuits?   Funeral Scene from The ceremonies and religious customs of the known world by Bernard Picart, 1737. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images [CC BY 4.0]

The Recipes

In spite of all this information about eating funeral biscuits, there are very few extant recipes for either funeral biscuits or cakes. W.S. Steveley has recipes for ‘Funeral Buns’ and ‘Funeral Biscuits’[7] (available here pg. 16-17) but there are so few instructions and the quantities are so large that I wasn’t keen to try either of them. His buns, however, do shed some light on the type of cakes that would have been served. The most important features, which also show up in the descriptions above, is the inclusion of currants and spices (often cinnamon and/or caraway seeds).

There is also a 19th century recipe for Dutch doot cookjes (death cookies) from America which calls for 50lb of flour and makes some 300 cookies the size of saucers![8] But they don’t fit the mould for either of the two types of biscuits that I had read about. So instead I turned to the trusty Mrs. Beeton for my recipes.

SAVOY BISCUITS OR CAKES. 1748. INGREDIENTS.—4 eggs, 6 oz. of pounded sugar, the rind of 1 lemon, 6 oz. of flour. Mode.—Break the eggs into a basin, separating the whites from the yolks; beat the yolks well, mix with them the pounded sugar and grated lemon-rind, and beat these ingredients together for 1/4 hour. Then dredge in the flour gradually, and when the whites of the eggs have been whisked to a solid froth, stir them to the flour, &c.; beat the mixture well for another 5 minutes, then draw it along in strips upon thick cartridge paper to the proper size of the biscuit, and bake them in rather a hot oven; but let them be carefully watched, as they are soon done, and a few seconds over the proper time will scorch and spoil them. These biscuits, or ladies’-fingers, as they are called, are used for making Charlotte russes, and for a variety of fancy sweet dishes. Time.—5 to 8 minutes, in a quick oven. Average cost, 1s. 8d. per lb., or 1/2d. each.[9]

My Savoy biscuits didn’t turn out very well, they were very flat, so I haven’t provided a redaction for them although the recipe written quite clearly if you want to give it a try. The plain cake was also very dense, but I think that is probably inevitable with only 1tsp of baking powder. It is however rather tasty and wasn’t overpowered by the caraway as I had expected.

A NICE PLAIN CAKE. 1766. INGREDIENTS.—1 lb. of flour, 1 teaspoonful of Borwick’s baking-powder, 1/4 lb. of good dripping, 1 teacupful of moist sugar, 3 eggs, 1 breakfast-cupful of milk, 1 oz. of caraway seeds, 1/2 lb. of currants. Mode.—Put the flour and baking-powder into a basin; stir those together; then rub in the dripping, add the sugar, caraway seeds, and currants; whisk the eggs with the milk, and beat all together very thoroughly until the ingredients are well mixed. Butter a tin, put in the cake, and bake it from 11/2 to 2 hours. Let the dripping be quite clean before using: to insure this, it is a good plan to clarify it. Beef dripping is better than any other for cakes, &c., as mutton dripping frequently has a very unpleasant flavour, which would be imparted to the preparation. Time.—1-1/2 to 2 hours. Average cost, 1s. Seasonable at any time.[10]

The Redaction

A Nice Plain Cake

545g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

113g beef dripping at room temperature

170g sugar

28g caraway seeds

225g currants

3 eggs

Approx. 300ml milk

1. Heat the oven to 170°C and butter a 9” springform cake tin.
2. Mix the flour and baking powder in a large bowl. Rub in the dripping with your fingertips until it is evenly distributed. Stir in the sugar, seeds and currants.
3. Whisk together the eggs and 250ml milk then stir it into the dry ingredients. Add a little more milk, as necessary, until all the ingredients are wet and the mixture can be stirred.
4. Bake the cake for about an hour, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. It may be a good idea to place a tray under the cake to catch the dripping if it seeps out of the springform tin.

The Recipe: Mrs Beeton’s The Book of Household Management (available here)

The Date: 1861

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: The cake took about 1hr 35, the biscuits took about 40 mins.

How successful was it?:  The biscuits just didn’t rise at all, but they tasted ok. The cake was very, very dense and didn’t last very well over a number of days but it had a nice flavour and the currants were quite juicy. The only other thing is that the dripping gives off a rather meaty smell while cooking!

How accurate?: I think the cake recipe was probably the type of thing that women could make at home for a funeral, especially if you had to mass produce it in a hurry. The biscuits however seem a bit too fiddly for that, and certainly there were lots of specialists you could buy them from so that seems more likely to me. In terms of accuracy, I did beat the biscuits by hand! But maybe that was the problem.

[1] Sylvanius Urban, ed., The Gentleman’s Magazine (London, England) (London: Printed by Nichols and Son, at Cicero’s Head, Red Lion Passage, Fleet-Street, 1802), 105.

[2] Peter Brears, “Arvals, Wakes and Month’s Minds: Food for Funerals,” in Food and the Rites of Passage, ed. Laura Mason (Devon: Prospect Books, 2002), 103–105.

[3] Jonathan Boucher, Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Edited by Joseph Hunter. – London, Black, Young & Young 1833-, ed. Joseph Hunter (London: Black, Young & Young, 1833), sec. Arvel–bread.

[4] Ibid.

[5] George Oliver, The History and Antiquities of the Town and Minster of Beverley, with Historical Sketches of the Abbeys of Watton and Meaux [&c.]., 1829, 499.

[6] T. W. Thompson, “Arval or Avril Bread,” Folklore 29, no. 1 (March 30, 1918): 85.

[7] W. S. Steveley, The New Whole Art of Confectionary: Sugar Boiling, Iceing, Candying, Jelly Making, &c. Which Will Be Found Very Beneficial to Ladies, Confectioners, Housekeepers, &c., Particularly to Such as Have Not a Perfect Knowledge of That Art (Sutton & Son, 1828), 16–17.

[8] Peter G. Rose, Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch (The History Press, 2009), 69–70.

[9] Isabella Beeton, ed., Beeton’s Book of Household Management (London: S.O Beeton, 1861), pt. 1748.

[10] Ibid., pt. 1766.

Bibliography

Beeton, Isabella, ed. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. London: S.O Beeton, 1861.

Boucher, Jonathan. Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Edited by Joseph Hunter. – London, Black, Young & Young 1833-. Edited by Joseph Hunter. London: Black, Young & Young, 1833.

Brears, Peter. “Arvals, Wakes and Month’s Minds: Food for Funerals.” In Food and the Rites of Passage, edited by Laura Mason, 87–114. Devon: Prospect Books, 2002.

Oliver, George. The History and Antiquities of the Town and Minster of Beverley, with Historical Sketches of the Abbeys of Watton and Meaux [&c.]., 1829.

Rose, Peter G. Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch. The History Press, 2009.

Steveley, W. S. The New Whole Art of Confectionary: Sugar Boiling, Iceing, Candying, Jelly Making, &c. Which Will Be Found Very Beneficial to Ladies, Confectioners, Housekeepers, &c., Particularly to Such as Have Not a Perfect Knowledge of That Art. Sutton & Son, 1828.

Thompson, T. W. “Arval or Avril Bread.” Folklore 29, no. 1 (March 30, 1918): 84–86.

Urban, Sylvanius, ed. The Gentleman’s Magazine (London, England). London: Printed by Nichols and Son, at Cicero’s Head, Red Lion Passage, Fleet-Street, 1802.

A Lemon Blancmange

First of all, apologies that it’s been a while, between exams, moving and Christmas its been a bit crazy but better late than never. The challenge this time was “Fear Factor”, no not the TV show but a dish, technique or ingredient that strikes fear into your very heart. For me the obvious answer was calves foot jelly, a moulded jelly made by boiling calves feet for hours to extract the gelatine. Between the ick factor, the sheer amount of effort involved and the scariness of unmoulding a jelly, I’m sure you can understand why this dish has me shaking in my boots.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) I seriously underestimated how difficult it would be to find calves feet. Thinking about the recipe again though, I realised that the part that really strikes fear into my heart is setting and unmoulding the jelly, and that can certainly be done without extracting my own gelatine. If however you are really keen to learn about calves feet jelly, the amazing blog The Cook and the Curator has a great video about making it from scratch.

The recipe I decided to use comes from Mrs. Beeton’s The Book of Household Management and is for a Lemon Blancmange. Blancmange is a dish with a very long history, but has become almost unrecognisable over time. It’s a staple of medieval and Victorian cookbooks, whether as a white soup made of shredded chicken and almond milk, or an elaborate jelly set with isinglass.

The Recipe

LEMON BLANCMANGE. 1442.

INGREDIENTS.— 1 quart of milk, the yolks of 4 eggs, 3 oz. of ground rice, 6 oz. of pounded sugar, 1-1/2 oz. of fresh butter, the rind of 1 lemon, the juice of 2, 1/2 oz. of gelatine.

Mode.— Make a custard with the yolks of the eggs and 1/2 pint of the milk, and, when done, put it into a basin: put half the remainder of the milk into a saucepan with the ground rice, fresh butter, lemon-rind, and 3 oz. of the sugar, and let these ingredients boil until the mixture is stiff, stirring them continually; when done, pour it into the bowl where the custard is, mixing both well together. Put the gelatine with the rest of the milk into a saucepan, and let it stand by the side of the fire to dissolve; boil for a minute or two, stir carefully into the basin, adding 3 oz. more of pounded sugar. When cold, stir in the lemon-juice, which should be carefully strained, and pour the mixture into a well-oiled mould, leaving out the lemon-peel, and set the mould in a pan of cold water until wanted for table. Use eggs that have rich-looking yolks; and, should the weather be very warm, rather a larger proportion of gelatine must be allowed.

Time.— Altogether, 1 hour. Average cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient to fill 2 small moulds. Seasonable at any time.[1]

The Redaction

Mrs Beeton’s Lemon Blancmange

4 cups of milk

4 egg yolks

85g ground rice

170g sugar

43g butter

The rind of 1 lemon, peeled

Juice of 2 lemons

14g powdered gelatine
Note: Every time you go to place milk in the saucepan wet it with water first.

1. Place 1 cup of milk in a saucepan and bring it to a slow simmer. In a large bowl whisk the 4 egg yolks together. Slowly whisk the hot milk into the egg yolks until it is all incorporated. Place the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on a low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens into a custard*.
2. Place another 1 1/2 cups of milk into the saucepan with the ground rice, half the sugar, the butter and pieces of lemon rind. Boil for 5-10 minutes or until it is stiff and holds its shape. Stir this mixture into the custard.
3. Place the remaining 1 1/2 cups of milk into the saucepan. Sprinkle the gelatine over the milk and allow it to dissolve. Turn on a low heat and stir until dissolved before bringing it to the boil for 1 minute. Add this and the remaining sugar to the custard.
4. Allow the mixture to cool before adding the lemon juice and removing the lemon peel. Pour the mixture into moulds greased with a flavourless oil and leave in the fridge to set. To remove place the mould in very hot water for 30 seconds, but don’t let the blancmange get wet, and just loosen the edge to break the vacuum. Carefully turn the blancmange out onto a plate. If it does not come out of the mould return it to the hot water for another 30 seconds before trying again.

*If the mixture is lumpy with bits of egg just sieve them out.

 

The Recipe: Lemon Blancmange from The Book of Household Management (available here)

The Date: 1861

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: 45 mins to make it, several hours to set.

How successful was it?: It was delicious! Creamy, firm and not too sweet, it even turned out of the mould well, after a couple of anxious moments. I served it with a simple raspberry coulis of frozen raspberries, water and sugar cooked and mashed together.

How accurate?: I’m not sure what type of gelatine the original recipe would have used (powdered, leaf, liquid?) or how finely ground the rice should be but it seemed to work. I also set it in the fridge rather than in a bowl of cold water because the weather was too warm for that.

[1] Isabella Beeton, ed., Beeton’s Book of Household Management (London: S.O Beeton, 1861), rec. 1442.

Bibliography

Beeton, Isabella, ed. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. London: S.O Beeton, 1861.

Flat Fruit

The next challenge for the Historical Food Fortnightly is “Ethnic Foodways” and given that I’m in France I thought this was a great opportunity to explore the history of some of the local specialities. Well, I have to report mixed results. The modern sources all seem to be quoting each other, and even if you can discover what the original source was, that’s no guarantee that it is an any way accessible (my Latin is non-existent and $300 first edition cookbooks are a little out of my price-range). Nonetheless, I think I have been able to pin down enough to give you a bit of a glimpse into two local specialities (the second is coming soon).

First up, pommes et poires tapées or dehydrated, flattened apples and pears. They might not sound too appetising at this point, but they’re actually not all that different from the dried apple rings you can buy in the supermarket. Drying fruit to preserve it is a time-honoured tradition, going all the way back to prehistory. In France, archaeologists interpret pieces of carbonised fruit dating to the late Iron Age as evidence of dried fruits.[1] Jumping forward a bit but staying surprisingly close geographically, in 1560 the king’s physician Jean Bruyérin-Champier referred to pears and apples which were dried in ovens around Orleans and Tours.[2]

By the beginning of the 18th century, a rather unusual technique had developed with whole fruits (apples, pears and peaches) being dried in the oven for several days, and gently pressed with a wooden implement to flatten them. It is widely believed that fruit dried in this way was a staple for sailors, and that the flattening was to make them more space-efficient on ships. The industry expanded over the next hundred years, and in 1878 the region was exporting some 500,000 kg of dried fruit, but the glory days of  pommes tapées weren’t to last. Refrigeration and cheap imported fresh fruit took their toll and production nearly stopped in the 20th century, only starting up again in the ‘80s.[3]

Michel Albin explains that there are certain features of the ‘traditional’ technique

1. Plants aren’t watered while growing to give naturally drier fruit.
2. The wood fire oven is heated for three days and three nights to infuse the bricks with heat.
3. The temperature is held between 60 and 90˚C for up to four days, being brought back up to temperature as necessary.
4. The fruits are pressed one by one (sometimes with a platissoire).
5. The fruit is then returned to the oven for a final drying period.[4]

 

Historical sources, however, show quite a lot of variation in the methods used to dry the fruit. Some fruit is dried whole, some is cored and/or peeled first. Some is blanched before drying, some dipped in a sugar syrup flavoured with their own peel and yet others are sprinkled with sugar. To flatten them you can use a special implement called a platissoire, press them with the palm of your hand, squash them between your fingers or as in the recipe below with a wooden bat.

This recipe is from La nouvelle cuisinière bourgeoise published in 1817:

“Pelez des pommes très-seines, des reinettes ou autres ; avec une spatule creusé, extirpez-en le cœur ; mettez-les ensuite sur des claies, assez distantes les unes des autres, pour qu’elles ne se touchent pas ; mettez vos claies au four ; le lendemain, les pommes sont assez séchées pour que vous puissiez les taper avec une batte de bois ; remettez-les sur les claies ; faites chauffer le four modérément ; puis remettez-y vos pommes jusqu’à lendemain ; recommencez a les taper ; remettez-les de nouveau au four, jusqu’à ce qu’elles aient acquis le degré de sécheresse nécessaire ; puis mettez-les dans des boites, dans un endroit très-sec.”[5]

(Peel unblemished apples, Reinettes or another type. With a hollow spatula (apple-corer) remove the cores; then place them on racks far enough apart so that the apples aren’t touching one another, and place your racks in the oven. The next day, the apples should be dry enough for you to flatten them with a wooden bat, then put them back onto the racks. Bring the oven to a moderate heat and return the apples to the oven overnight, then begin to press them again. Place them in the oven once again until they have reached the right degree of dryness. Then pack them into boxes and store in a very dry place.)

But having spent three days heating your oven and four drying the apples or pears, how are you going to enjoy the fruits of your labour? Well don’t worry because you have between 3 and 10 years to decide, assuming the fruit was well dried. Nowadays the back of the packet recommends eating them as a snack, rehydrating them in liquid (e.g. wine, tea or cider) or incorporating them into your favourite sweet and savoury dishes (think pork roast with apples or a fruity tagine). You can also buy a variety of secondary products: jam, terrines, wine, fruit in wine, brandy or syrup, or pastries with a fruity filling.

 

As to how they were enjoyed historically, well that’s where I hit a bit of a brick wall. The one clear reference I found is from 1856 and says to enjoy them as a dessert, cooked in wine and sugar.[6] To be really historically correct, I suppose you would have to stop there. But. Considering that they are now enjoyed in a spiced, wine syrup, generally using spices which have been available in France for centuries, and because it’s coming up to Christmas, I decided to rehydrate the apples that I had bought in what is basically mulled wine.

And if you don’t have a wood-fired brick oven/four days/any desire to make your own? You can order pommes et poires tapées and assorted variations on them here or here. Another option would be to try something similar with dried apple rings, which aren’t as tough and chewy, but would give you a similar experience. This recipe makes a warming, spiced dessert which would be perfect served in crystal glasses on a cold winter’s night.

Pommes tapées in Mulled Wine

 

1 bottle of red wine, pretty much any type will do but you will have to adjust the sugar to taste

Sugar, probably between 1/4 and 1/2 a cup depending on the wine and how you like it

125g of pommes tapées, about 10 dried apples.

2 cinnamon sticks

3-4 cloves

Half an orange, sliced

 

1. Place all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a low simmer. Simmer for 30 mins or until the apples have swollen and are soft. Serve hot.

The Recipe: Extrapolated from a reference in Bulletin de L’instruction Primaire : Journal D’éducation et D’enseignement, (available here)

The Date: 1856

How did you make it? See above.

Time to complete?: 30 mins.

How successful was it?:  Quite chewy, but really very tasty. I think it make a lovely winter dish, and it smells just like Christmas!

How accurate?: Well, I think it’s a combination that is possible, but without an actual recipe it’s very hard to tell.

Links

An English recipe for pommes tapées is available here

A French recipe for wine made from dried pears is available here

And to dry your own pears you could try this recipe (also in French)

[1] Benedicte Pradat, “L’économie Agro-Pastorale Dans Le Loiret À L’âge Du Fer (du Hallstatt Ancien À La Tène Finale) : Synthèse Des Données Carpologiques,” Revue Archéologique Du Centre de La France 49 (2010): 132.

[2] Michel Albin, “Pommes Tapées,” in L’inventoire Du Patrimoine Culinaire de La France, Région Centre – Produits Du Terroir et Recettes Traditionelles (France: Editions Albin Michel, 2012), 227.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 228.

[5] Cousin d’avallon, La Nouvelle Cuisinière Bourgeoise, 4th ed. (Paris: Chez Davi et Locard, Pigoreau et Philippe, 1817), 248.

[6] A Y, “Économie Rurale et Domestique: Conservation et Préparation Des Fruits,” Bulletin de L’instruction Primaire : Journal D’éducation et D’enseignement, Aout 1856, sec. Vo. 3, No. 16, 126.

Bibliography

Albin, Michel. “Pommes Tapées.” In L’inventoire Du Patrimoine Culinaire de La France, Région Centre – Produits Du Terroir et Recettes Traditionelles, 226–28. France: Editions Albin Michel, 2012.

Cousin d’avallon. La Nouvelle Cuisiniere Bourgeoise. 4th ed. Paris: Chez Davi et Locard, Pigoreau et Philippe, 1817.

Pradat, Benedicte. “L’économie Agro-Pastorale Dans Le Loiret À L’âge Du Fer (du Hallstatt Ancien À La Tène Finale) : Synthèse Des Données Carpologiques.” Revue Archéologique Du Centre de La France 49 (2010): 103–61.

Y, A. “Economie Rurale et Domestique: Conservation et Préparation Des Fruits.” Bulletin de L’instruction Primaire : Journal D’education et D’enseignement, Aout 1856, sec. Vo. 3, No. 16.

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 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:

1. 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.
2. Moderately warm and moist foods (according to the humours) which are easy to digest e.g. boiled and stewed foods, cereals, chicken and kid
3. Foods that are difficult to digest e.g. cheese and other dairy products, venison, beef and pork.
4. 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*

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

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

 

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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], 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.

 

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

 

1. 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.
2. Stir in the egg, cream, nutmeg and sherry. Add a little more cream if necessary to form a smooth dough.
3. 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.
4. 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.

 

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], 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

 

1. Take the mashed potato and push it through a coarse sieve into a bowl.
2. 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).
3. Take small spoonfuls of the mixture and roll into rough cork shapes. Fry in butter or dripping, turning until browned on all sides.
4. 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.