HHF: New Year's

I blame this all on Rachel! (who sent me a text about this challenge)  I haven't done this sort of thing in soooooo  long.  I have decided to play in the Historical Food Fortnightly, as much as I am able.  This fab challenge was put forward by Beth's Bobbins, inspired by the original HFF.

The Challenge

For January 1-14 the challenge is New Year's: a new year, a new era, a new receipt, or a food intended for New Year's.

Receipt(s)

I elected to make a Twelfth Cake.  And then I went crazy, so I also made two other receipts: "To Ice a great Cake," and "To Make an Apple Paste."  Here they are:

Twelfth Cakes.

Take seven pounds of flour, make a cavity in the center, set a sponge with a[287] gill and a half of yest and a little warm milk; then put round it one pound of fresh butter broke into small lumps, one pound and a quarter of sifted sugar, four pounds and a half of currants washed and picked, half an ounce of sifted cinnamon, a quarter of an ounce of pounded cloves, mace, and nutmeg mixed, sliced candied orange or lemon peel and citron. When the sponge is risen mix all the ingredients together with a little warm milk; let the hoops be well papered and buttered, then fill them with the mixture and bake them, and when nearly cold ice them over with sugar prepared for that purpose as per receipt; or they may be plain.

Mollard, John, The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined, London, 1802, p.287

To ice a great Cake.

Take the whites of twenty-four eggs, and a pound of double refined sugar beat and sifted fine; mix both together in a deep earthen pan, and with a whist whisk it well for two or three hours, till it looks white and thick; then with a thin broad board, or bunch of feathers, spread it all over the top and sides of the cake; set it at a proper distance before a good clear fire, and keep turning it continually for fear of its changing colour; but a cool oven is best, and an hour will harden it: you may perfume the icing with what perfume you please.

Glasse, Hannah, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, London, 1796, p.309

To make red Colouring for Pippin Paste, &c. for garnishing Twelfth Cakes.

Take an ounce of cochineal beat very fine; add three gills of water, a quarter of an ounce of roche-alum, and two ounces of lump sugar; boil them together for twenty minutes, strain it through a fine sieve, and preserve it for use close covered.

Mollard, John, The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined, London, 1802, p.287
*note: this is what inspired me to make the apple paste, though, of course, I didn't waste my time or money on cochineal.

To make Apple Paste.

Take what quantity of golden pippins you think proper, which boil whole in a pan of water, without paring them; when you see they are well done, take them off, and put them in a draining sieve; then take a horse-hair sieve, very open, and strain them through; when that is done, put them in the preserving-pan,, and proceed as directed for apricots.

From Apricot Paste
Boil some apricots that are full ripe to a pulp, and rub the fine of it through a sieve; to every pound of pulp, take one pound two ounces of fine sugar, beaten to a very fine powder; heat well your paste, and by degrees put in your sugar; when all is in, give it a thorough heat over the fire, taking care not to let it boil; then take it off, and scrape it all to one side of the pan, let it cool a little, then lay it out on plates in what form you please; then dust them, and put them into the stove to dry.

Glasse, Hannah and Maria Wilson, The Complete Confectioner; or Housekeepers Guide, London, 1800.

Date/Region

Late 18th Century, early 19th Century, England

How did you make it?

I started with processing the apples for the pippin/apple paste.  I elected to use granny smith apples for the higher pectin content, and out of a desire for the paste to be less susceptible to tasting only of sugar (failed on that last part, by-the-by).  Of all of them, I felt that this would be the easiest, as there were only ratios rather than exact measurements of ingredients.  So I processed 4 apples, drained off a little bit of the water - I thought it looked too liquid, and then added the sugar and food coloring (modern, not bugs :> ).  Once heated through, and the sugar was all dissolved, I poured it out on a prepared pan to dry.  I then placed the pan into my oven on dehydrate - a "slow" oven in my opinion, to cure.

Then I started in on cake, having decided to quarter the recipe, otherwise the cake would have been enormous.  I started by mixing up the flour, warm milk, butter and yeast.  Then I added the candied fruit, a blend of currants, golden raisins, and candied lemon peel.  I had previously buttered a spring-form pan, and tipped the whole mess into it.  I then let it rise on top of my oven while it was preheating to bake, and ended up leaving it there for about 1.5hours.  In the end that was a little too long as the side of the cake collapsed a little when I took it out of the spring-form.

Once, cooled, I attempted the icing, which ultimately, I think, came out fairly well.  To start with, as with the cake, I quartered the recipe.  It read very much like a modern royal icing, but never having made that, I wasn't sure what it was going to come out looking like.  When I beat it up the egg whites and sugar together, it took quite a while too come up to soft peaks.  I was afraid that wouldn't work out correctly, so I added some more sugar until it came up to stiffer peaks, and then laid it on the cake.  I chucked it back in the oven (with the paste decorations on it) for about 45min to help the icing set, as recommended in the receipt.

I'm not perfectly happy with the way it came out, but it tasted great!

Time to complete
Forever. Approximately 8 hours, not including overnight drying of apple paste when I was done working.

Total cost

$15?  I had most of the indgredients on hand, save the apples, but the flour I used is not cheap.

How successful was it?

It tasted good, and looked pretty!  Though I wasn't perfectly happy, success to me.


How accurate was it?

 I will be frank and admit that there is a fair amount of guess work in this.  I have no idea what the shapes for the pippin paste look like.  I have seen some beautifully decorated cakes (Ivan Day), in which the icing is colored pink, and the decorations are white gum paste or sugar work. However, looking at some later receipts they say the pippin paste is "occasionaly flavoured with lemon, and is principally used for ornamenting the tops of twelfth cakes."  Sooo, shrug a little on that one, and generally I had fun making them, though I found sticky spots for days.

I love making historic receipts, but I am challenged by the fact that I should be, and mostly am, gluten-free for my health.  As a result, I elected to make this cake gluten-free so that I could partake and not foist it off in total to my co-workers.  After much looking at gluten-free receipts for yeasted cakes, stollen, and panettone (addition of eggs), I worked out something I believed would give me the texture and feel of the cake with gluten free flour.  I also use a homemade blend of flour, which is comprised of really high quality non-wheat flours, and pectin to retain moisture better than most gluten-free mixes, ensuring a non-gritty texture present in most off the shelf blends.

Next up:

January 15-28: Looking Back Improve on (or try an alternate version of ) a previous challenge, or a recipe you are already comfortable with.

I think I'm going with Kisses.  Thanks, Eliza Leslie.

Foodways Books Worth Reading

This will be a sometimes annotated bibliography (none as yet, I have to work on those annotations...) of foodways books I have found worth reading or using for prep and research.

Crump, Nancy Carter. Hearthside Cooking: Early American Southern Cuisine Updates for Today's Hearth and Cookstove, 2nd edition. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC, 2008.

McLeod, Stephen. Dining With the Washingtons: Historic Recipes, Entertainment and Hospitality from Mount Vernon. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, NC, 2012.

McWilliams, James E. A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest For Food Shaped America. Columbia University Press: New York, NY, 2005.

Hannah Glasse and Apple Tarts

Well, to the few the followers of this sporadic adventure in historic cookery, I have a new episode for you.

Fairly recently I came into possession of a reproduction copy of a wonderful, English, eighteenth century cookbook.  This would be the incredible text, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, by Hannah Glasse.  It was first published in 1747, and continually updated and revised over the course of her life and well after her death in 1770.  The edition I have was first published in 1796, illustrating some of the time span it was published over.  Like any cookbook of the time period, it was more intended for use by wealthy families, but really by the domestic servants who worked for those families.  Many cooks, some of them well-renowned in their profession, published books of cookery for the masses.  In my humble opinion, hers is by far the easiest to use, though I do still have to look through the lens of a modern eye.  The book has been likened to Irma Rombauer's Joy of Cooking, but I see the text more like a cross between that and Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  It has some of the best descriptions of how to cook I have seen in an 18th century cookbook, but has a plethora of recipes, racking up a total of 398 pages before the index.

Can you see that I love this woman's cookbook?

Also in the recent past, though really it was in October, I was invited to go cook at a local historic site in their reproduced tenant building. It was a wonderful experience.  I got to put on one of my other personas and drag myself out to a dark, smoky building with tables too low to really be counters, and climb in to a hearth.  I had an incredible time.  By the time I got home, I realized I had spent the entire day crouched over doing something I love, and my car stunk of wood smoke.  Can you say shower and laundry three time fast?

I used one of Mrs. Glasse's recipes while I was there.  After that I kind of promised myself I would make as many of her recipes as I could over time.  Among friends this has sparked a few questions over whether or not I would pull a Julie and Julia.  While that is kind of the reason I started this blog in the first place, no I will not be doing that.  I have an intellectual acceptance of sweetbreads and other people eating them, I refuse to make them.  (If you don't know what sweetbreads are, and you are American, do not look them up.  You will not like it.  In my non-scientific, cultural experience you will be grossed out.)  There are also the medical recipes, some of which contain wonderful ingredients like quicksilver (mercury).  I might to make one or two of them just to do it.  There is great recipe called To make a fine Bitter, which looks to be an infusion which brings the quinine properties out of some plants, which is good for malaria.  But that would probably be a waste of good brandy.

In any case, in the future you will probably see a number of recipes from The Art of Cookery because I really like it.  Also, many of them will currently be my experiences in the trenches, cooking over the hearth and not necessarily in the modern fashion.  Largely this is because I am on a tight budget and I have to be able to afford the ingredients to make it more than once.  I will at some point update them all to modern techniques when I can fiddle with them, or make a very good estimate on what will work.  A lot of what I do is art more than science.

That being said, I have a recipe for you that I made while I was cooking over the open hearth:  Apple Tarts.  Below are the two recipes that I used to make the tarts and the pastry.

To Make Different Sorts of Tarts

If you bake in tin patties; butter them, and you must put a little crust all over, because of the taking them out; if in China or glass, no crust but the top one. Lay fine sugar at the bottom, then your plums, cherries, or any other sort of fruit, and sugar on top; then put on your lid, and bake them in a slack oven. Mince-pies must be baked in tin patties because taking them out, and puff paste is best for them. For sweet tarts the beaten crust is best; but as you fancy. You have the receipt for crust in this chapter. Apple, pear, apricot &c. make thus: apples and pears, pare them, cut them into quarters, and core them; cut the quarters across again, set them on in a sauce-pan with just as much water as will barely cover them, let them simmer on a slow fire just till the fruit is tender; put a good piece of lemon-peel in the water with the fruit, then have your patties ready. Lay fine sugar at bottom, then you fruit, and a little sugar at top; that you must put in at your discretion. Pour over each tart a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and three tea-spoonfuls of the liquor they were boiled in; put on your lid, and bake them in a slack oven. Apricots do the same way, only do not use lemon.

Paste for Tarts

One pound of flour, the quarters of a pound of butter; mix up together, and beat well with a rolling pin.

Another Paste for Tarts

Half a pound of butter, half a pound of flour, and half a pound of sugar; mix it well together, and beat it with a rolling-pin well, then roll it out thin.

(Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery, pg 144)

I ended up using the second pastry, though if you choose you may use the first, and I am sure the tart would come out just as good.  And let me tell you, this was an experiment in learning the capacity of my fist for holding flour because there were no measuring cups.  And when they tell you things like "mix well till it looks good," hey as much as you might hate reading that, it's a good description.  And when it came to baking, each batch of tins (I had twelve or so, but only six or seven fit in the dutch oven) baked a little differently depending on how the coals were arranged and who was paying attention to it.

The results were spectacular.

Hardtack

By special request of some of the folks I am working with at my internship this spring, I made up a recipe of hard tack.  I did not have a recipe for this in any of my cookbooks, so I googled the topic and this is one of the recipes that I came up with:

Assistant Commissary General of Subsistence - Lt. Col. C.L. Kilburn - Notes on Preparing Stores for the United States Army and on the Care of the Same, etc, with a few rules for Detecting Adulterations - Printed 1863


Under Hard Bread

Should be made of best quality of superfine, or what is usually known as extra superfine flour; or better, of extra and extra superfine, (half and half). Hard bread should be white, crisp, light and exhibit a flaky appearance when broken. If tough, solid and compact, is evident the fault is either in the stock, manufacture or baking; it should not present the appearance of dried paste. If tough and pasty, it is probably manufacture from grown wheat, or Spring wheat of an inferior kind. In all cases it should be thoroughly cooled and dried before packing. Kiln drying, where practicable, for long voyages, is particularly desirable; but if really and thoroughly dried in the oven, hard bread will keep just as well and its flavor is not destroyed. To make good hard bread, it is essential to employ steam; hand work will not do.



The dough should be mixed as dry as possible; this is, in fact, very essential, and too much stress can not be placed on it. Good stock, dry mixed, and thoroughly baked, (not dried or scalded) will necessarily give good hard bread. If salt is to be used, it should be mixed with the water used to mix the dough. Both salt and water should be clean. Bread put up with the preceding requirements should keep a year; but as a usual thing, our best bread as now made for army use, will keep only about three months. Good, bread, packed closely and compactly should not weigh, net, per barrel, more than 70 or 80 pounds; should it be heavier that 80 it indicates too much moisture. The thickness of the biscuit is important; it should not be so thick as to prevent proper drying, or so thin as to crumble in transportation. The quality of stock used for hard bread can be partially told by rules mentioned in the article 'Flour,' as far as they apply. The term 'sprung' is frequently used by bakers, by which is meant raised or flaky bread, indicating strong flour and sound stock. The cupidity of the contracting baker induces him to pack his bread as soon as it comes out of the oven, and before the moisture has been completely expelled by drying. Bread of this kind hangs on breaking; it will also be soft to the pressure of the finger nail when broken, whereas it should be crisp and brittle.



The packages should be thoroughly seasoned, (of wood imparting no taste or odor to the bread,) and reasonably tight. The usual method now adopted is to pack 50 pounds net, in basswood boxes, (sides, top and bottom 1/2 inch, ends 5/8 of an inch,) and of dimensions corresponding with the cutters used, and strapped at each end with light iron or wood. The bread should be packed on its edge compactly, so as not to shake.



Bread thoroughly baked, kiln dried, and packed in spirit casks, will keep a long time but it is an expensive method. If bread contains weevils, or is mouldy, expose to the sun on paulins, and before re-packing it, rinse the barrel with whiskey.

(I found it here: http://kenanderson.net/hardtack/recipes.html )

As this doesn't have any ratios for the the recipe, I kind of fiddled with the concept and made up something that meets the criteria of the above treatise on hard tack, especially because I didn't want 10lbs. of hardtack.  I also ultimately didn't roll it out thinly enough, or bake it long enough, but that is easily remedied in the future. The following is my interpretation.

2 c. flour
1 c. water
salt to taste (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 375F.

2. Mix all ingredients into a stretchy dough, knead in the bowl or on a lightly floured surface until the dough no longer sticks and has a smooth surface.

3. Roll the dough out to 1/2 inch thickness on a lightly floured surface.  Cut the dough into 2 1/2 inch squares and set aside on a ungreased baking sheet.  (Reroll remaining dough to continue to form squares until there is no dough left.)

4.  Use a fork to pierce the surface of both sides of the squares in even rows, without punching all the way through.  If you forget this step your hardtack may have small pockets of air which will bake unevenly in the oven.

5. Bake the hardtack in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, flip the squares and bake for another 30 min.

6. Let the hardtack cool completely before packaging, otherwise the steam will cause it to soften and lack that good hard quality we look for in hardtack.

When I packaged mine up, I wanted to give it an "authentic" sort of feel for the person I was giving it to.  I wrapped it up in brown paper and tied it up with twine.  Obviously, this would not be the way that it was stored when it was in use, but a soldier might have wrapped it up in a bit of cloth in his mess kit once he was issued it if he needed to travel anywhere with it.

Also I had a small bit of the dough left when I was done shaping the squares, which interestingly enough has the consistency of play-doh.  I gave this to my honorary godson, who is now about 15 months, it of course went directly into his mouth.  However, if you have such leftovers they are safe to give to your kids, and if you add a little food coloring can be lots of fun.  The only caveat which it has that play-doh doesn't is that it can mold, so watch for that.

Pinkers

So this post is not about food, but one of my other loves, historic clothing.  I have seen some posts in various places about people having trouble using reproduction 18th century pinkers.  I also had trouble using them when I first tried.  But as I worked along a piece of trim, I established a good method to get the fabric pinked.

So first you will need some materials:
Your reproduction pinker (These are unfortunately no longer on sale from William Booth Draper, but they are out there!)
A block of wood
scrap fabric
A plastic mallet

1. Find a place where you can settle yourself comfortably for a good upper body workout which includes a stable surface on which work.

2. Set your wood on the surface, with a few layers of your scrap fabric over it. Lay your fashion fabric over the whole set up and get ready to pound on it.

3. Place your pinker along the edge of the fabric, with a little bit beyond the top of the curve of the blade.  Hammer sharply with your mallet, this may take two to three good, solid whacks.

4.  If necessary trim off fibers not captured by the pinker.

Notes:
I did this on my concrete basement floor.  Bad idea.  I spent something like five hours working my way along 7-8 yards of trim for the gown.  I was so stiff when I got up, that I think I laid down in bed with a heat pack after.  So seriously, find someplace comfortable.  Also use a plastic mallet.  The end of the pink eats at the mallet while you work and you will end up with little metal shards everywhere.  I used an old piece of hardwood flooring for this, but you could use something softer like pine and get a better bite in the fashion fabric without so much pounding.  I just used what I had on hand.

Anyway, good luck!

Edit, 6/12/12:
I recently discovered, dunno why I didn't think of this sooner, you can fold over and pink through several layers of fashion fabric at the same time.  (That would have made my job soooooo much easier.)And you can also use a piece of leather in place of the scrap fabric.   The leather will take the imprint of the pinker without actually cutting through, as you see happening with the fabric above.