Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Modern Cookery and Flavored Vinegars

Published by LaurieB on February 28, 2010 in Cookery and Consumables.
modern-cookery-and-flavored-vinegars

I return to the world of Victorian cooking fresh from a February vacation with two children in the grip of cabin fever and a roof that decided to relocate, in part, to my front lawn.  It’s good to be back in the land of butter and sheep’s head!

In the rare free moments I’ve had over the past two weeks I cheated on Beeton and spent time exploring Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families.  Acton was a poet-turned-cookery author whose Modern Cookery predated Mrs. Beeton’s book by about 16 years.  Beeton actually jacked over one hundred recipes from Modern Cookery for her own book; what a naughty little devil she was.  In any case, you can read Eliza’s book online here, or read the great bio of her (including a poem) here.  Her poetry, by the way… not too bad.  Don’t expect it to bleed into the cook book in any significant way, although she does get lyrical on occasion (to boil lobsters, “throw them into plenty of fast-boiling salt and water, that life may be destroyed in an instant.”  Poor, lifeless, tasty lobsters.)  It’s not that it’s a poorly written book – it’s not – but it’s hardly a lyrical masterpiece.  Instead, it’s collection of simply described recipes, written out with amounts and specifics not often included in books of this kind prior to its publication.  I would say that Mrs. Beeton takes things a step further in terms of standardizing measurements, and she also gives some more suggestions on how to use certain sauces and other dishes than Acton does.  But all in all, I’ve really enjoyed reading Modern Cookery, and I’ve only just scratched the surface.

I choose to try out three of her recipes for flavored vinegars.  Mrs. Beeton uses them with some variations in her book, but since these are not complicated recipes, nor are they earth-shatteringly new ideas on how to flavor vinegar, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they were stolen.  I tried Acton’s Green Mint Vinegar, Celery Vinegar, and Cucumber Vinegar.  They each involve, very simply, pouring vinegar over the main ingredient, adding salt and pepper (and in the case of the celery, cayenne pepper – really), keeping it closed for about one to two months, then straining and using it.  In Mrs. Beeton’s book she suggests using these types of vinegars for salads, and Acton mentions using them in any sauce which requires an acid.

I had a hard time remembering not to jam the jars full, since I was not pickling the ingredients, but rather flavoring the vinegar with them.  I’m curious how they will taste, especially the mint and celery, and I plan on using the mint for something when I’m done with it, as Acton mentions can be done.  So…  at the end of April perhaps I’ll try these with the first greens of the season!  Any other ideas on what to use them for are quite welcome and encouraged.

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Scented Geraniums and Stealing Cuttings

Published by Undergardener on February 21, 2010 in Cookery and Consumables and Gardening and the Out-of-Doors.
scented-geraniums-and-stealing-cuttings

We are coming to the end of the summer in Melbourne. Leaf-curl Spiders have strung their webs and leaf hammocks throughout the garden and the morning air is decidedly crisp despite the paper’s promise of afternoon heat. These are the first stirrings of autumn in the garden and the deciduous leaves will soon be turning and falling. As Mrs Beeton suggests it is time for the Under Gardener to plan for winter and time to take Geranium cuttings to increase the plants available for display next spring.

1817 Geraniums. Now that the planting-out season may be considered over, attention should at once be directed towards furnishing a supply of plants for another year. The class of plants which will require propagation first are geraniums, of which both the fancy and common bedding kinds must be struck in time to get established in small pots before winter, and the different scarlets and horseshoes and zonal sorts. There is no plant more useful for decorative purposes; many are, besides, deliciously fragrant, and there is none whose cultivation is more simple.

Mrs Beeton’s Garden Management.

Geraniums are great plants! They are fabulously egalitarian growing in just about every garden in Melbourne from the burbs to Toorak mansions. One of the reasons they are so popular is that they are very easy to grow from cuttings; so easy they are practically free. They were swapped and traded by early Victorian settlers and as an ongoing tribute to our convict ancestry they are still stolen from botanic and backyard collections today. I am descended from a man transported from Britain to the Australian colonies for the ‘term of his natural life’ for “using exciting language and inciting men to riot” so I know that crime is wrong – very wrong.

Striking Geranium Cuttings

Striking Geraniums

To grow a Geranium from a cutting all you need to do is break a piece off a large plant. If you are doing this by moonlight while hanging over your neighbour’s fence just remember not to make enough noise to wake their Pit-bulls.

Remove three sets of leaves from the bottom of the cutting carefully so as not to strip the stem.  Once you have removed these leaves dip the bottom end of the cutting in honey. The honey will help to stop the cutting from rotting and will promote root growth. Then pinch out or cut off the top pair of leaves, make a hole in a pot of soil with a stick or your finger and place the cutting into the soil.

Keep watered and warm.

The pots then needs to be keep damp and warm until the next spring. I place the pots on a sunny outside window sill through the winter.

In colder climates the pots will need to be taken into a glasshouse or sunny inside window until spring as Geraniums are not frost hardy.

When is a Geranium a Pelargonium?

If you are interested in learning the difference between Geraniums and Pelargoniums then have a look at this link. Confusingly Geraniums and Pelargoniums (both members of the family Geraniaceae) are commonly called Geraniums. To avoid confusion (and annoy the botanists) I’m going to just call them all Geraniums!

Biodiversity and the Collecting Bug

Geraniums from South Africa were first introduced to Europe in the 1600′s and to Britain via Paris by John Tradescant the Elder in the 1700′s.  During the Victorian Era they became extremely popular and the craze for collecting and breeding new hybrids sweep through Europe, America and Australia.

A very diverse family of plants!

Depending on which book you read there are now some 2000 varieties of Geraniums and you can see in the photograph on the left that there is an enormous variety of flower colour, form and leaf shape available in these genera.

The other reason that Geraniums were so loved by the Victorians is their enormous range of leaf perfumes. It is possible to find varieties that smell like rose, lemon, ginger, cinnamon, mint, incense, pyrethrum, southern-wood, nuts, balsam, apple-cider, nutmeg, orange, coconut and fusions of this list such as minty-lemon or lemony-rose.

The Victorians grew Scented Geraniums along the edges of pathways or placed pots inside in winter where wide crinoline skirts would brush past and release their scent.

A Vase of Geraniums for the Library.

Cut Flowers

I had a go at following the technique for placing flowers in a wide vase outlined in the BBC’s Victorian Flower Garden DVD.  Instead of modern green oasis block Victorian Head Gardeners would cut lots of small pieces of English Box and place these in the vase to hold the flowers.

I don’t have any Box in my garden so I cut pieces of Rosemary to hold up the smaller Geranium flowers.  I think it works well but it would look neater if I had cut all the pieces very short and evenly.

In the Kitchen and Household

Lemon Scented Sugar

The Victorians used Scented Geraniums to make flavored sugars. I have a Lemon Geranium in my backyard which smells just like Lemonade Icy Poles. Australians will know exactly the smell that I mean. I guess the smell is just about the same as Lemon Verbena but fizzy.

Rose Geranium leaves baked into Plain Cake

To make the flavored sugar all you need to do is layer the Geranium leaves in sugar and seal in a jar for two weeks in a warm spot.  As I have learnt from bitter experience it is a good idea to make sure that you have flicked all the insects off the leaves before entombing them in sugar. You then sieve out the leaves and use the sugar to flavor desserts or dust on cakes.

In Denise Greig’s book Scented Geraniums and Pelargoniums she describes how the Victorians flavored cakes with Geranium leaves. So I had a go by placing Rose Geranium leaves at the bottom of a buttered cake tin before pouring in Plain Cake batter.

Dust icing sugar over leaves as stencils

Once the cake was baked I peeled off the cooked leaves, placed fresh leaves on top of the cake and sprinkled over icing sugar. I think this makes a nice pattern on the cake. So did it taste of Rose Geranium? Well no actually; not to me. The Master of the house said that he could taste a faint herby rose flavor which he liked. Not sure I would try this again unless I find a really strongly rosy Geranium.

A Scarlet Geranium Buttonhole

Geranium Buttonhole

While doing the research for this article I came across what looks like a fabulous book, A Passion for Pelargoniums, by Anne Wilkinson. In one of the extracts of the book that I read online Anne describes the Scarlet Geranium as Charles Dickens’ favourite flower and one that he frequently wore.

Unfortunately this book has not been published in Australia and mysteriously we can no longer buy books like this via Amazon (what’s going on Amazon?). So my family in the UK will help out by sending it to me. I just wanted to share my frustration in not being able to get me hands on this book immediately!

The extracts speak tantalizingly of the Victorian craze for collecting plants and the criminal lengths that people would go to to get their hands on that elusive Geranium specimen. I have read about the wanton Orchid and the Orchid thieves in their thrall. Who ever would have though that the gentle Geranium so frilled, flounced and proper could excite such passions? There is something so addictive about the Scented Geraniums. I can feel the irrational need to seek out and find that Apple-Cider scented one – I need it now and I don’t know why! There is a Dark-Purple Flowered Geranium in a house around the corner from me; when you see me on the news being carted away in a police van you will know that it was all in the name of Victorian authenticity – your Honour!

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Two Hours Into What Seems Like Infinity

Published by Faythe on February 17, 2010 in Arts and Crafts.
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It seems that back in Victorian times, silk was the fiber of choice to knit with. Silk undervests, stockings, mittens, lace–you name it, it was knit with silk. I made the mistake of trying to knit with silk when I first learned how to knit (like the very next day after I had just learned to knit, purl and cast on–I really should have known better) nearly 4 years ago and it ended in a disaster of EPIC proportions. I still break out in a sweat whenever I think about The Incident That Shall Not Be Named, Unless You Want To Die. Anyway, so when I found this out, I was a little anxious. I knew my knitting skills had progressed enough to where I wouldn’t have to worry about a second disaster, so I was all prepared to meet the challenge head on. Then my challenge met my wallet, and my wallet bitch-slapped my challenge straight into a future month or year where I’ll actually have lots of money to spend.

Turns out that over 120 years later, 100% silk laceweight yarn is expensive (When I mean expensive, I mean at least $50 a skein expensive and it would take 2-4 skeins to make anything besides a pair of mittens or a bag) Too expensive for my budget and grand knitting ideas, so while I’ve been able to buy the correct needle sizes, I have been unable to buy the correct yarn fiber. My mom finally told me what colors she preferred, so armed with this information I hit up my local yarn store hoping to find some cobweb lace yarn (cobweb means it’s super skinny) that wasn’t alpaca (too fuzzy) or expensive.

At first I was annoyed that my mom had chosen such blah colors (light grey and cream), but when I located some undyed (which happens to be cream colored, yesssssss!)100% merino lace weight yarn for only 6.95 a skein, I immediately felt much better and scooped up 3 of them pronto. I had also picked up a pair of size 0000 (1.25mm) needles, so I was now ready to begin my next Victorian knitting project–a pair of lady’s stockings. Actually, a pair of “Lady’s Ribbed Stockings no. 2″ to be exact.

Last month I had purchased a great pamphlet titled “Weldon’s Practical Stocking Knitter (Third Series)” that was originally published in 1886. At first I wanted to make the “Gentleman’s Bicycle Stockings” because they had cables in them, but then I got hold of my senses and figured that it would be hard enough knitting with such small needles, why add cabling tiny yarn to the mix? Plus, I’m pretty sure back in Victorian times any ladies who would wear stockings intended for gentlemen would be heartily frowned upon, and I thought it’d be more accurate to keep gender stereotypes intact.

American Idol was coming on, and it was a 2 hour show last night, so I figured it’d be the perfect time to sit down and cast on for the stockings. Imagine my intense dismay when the 2 hours flew by and this is all I had to show for it.

Knitting Victorian stockings isn’t necessarily hard, I discovered especially since they’re pretty much made exactly the way top down socks are made today (just a lot longer and with decreases for calf shaping), but with such small needles and tiny yarn it takes forever. And the worst part is that once I finish the first one, I’ll have to make one more! I just can’t win.

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Blankity Blancmange

Published by SJ on February 14, 2010 in Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
blankity-blancmange

Happy Valentine’s Day! I return after my two week hiatus. Cooking like it is ye olde thymes it not easy if you are traveling out of town for two weekends in a row. I feel refreshed after the trial that was Beefuary, and I am REALLY feeling poultry this month.

A LOT of arrowroot.

I was also not feeling fancy. I was thinking about interesting things I’ve read lately, regarding what people actually ate then, opposed to how they aspired to eat. I think Beeton’s sold a fantasy of that, of what it would be like to have twenty guests coming to dinner, how that would look and how that could affect one’s social status.

[As a related aside, I am reading House of Mirth and in the introduction the author informs us that Edith Wharton's family is the origin of the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses." (Wharton was born Edith Jones.)]

I had the remains of a cold chicken in the fridge from Thursday night, and I recalled I was always seeing mentions of “cold meat cookery” in Beeton’s–repurposed leftovers from the excesses of dinner parties, perhaps, or what was more likely, regular old leftovers. I decided to make it into minced fowl [956].

A little minced wing

First, you must hand-mince the leftover chicken. I always forget how long it takes to mince meat relatively finely and uniformly. I last did this for my croquettes I made for Christmas. This recipe calls for homemade stock, but I had already chucked my chicken carcass into the carrot soup [120], so I boiled the herbs and chopped onion the stock called for in storebought broth.

This amount should last all year.

Finally, I got to use my mace which I bought specially a few weeks ago, once I realized that every other recipe called for it. I was going to just dash a little nutmeg into everything, but I decided to try the real deal. I don’t know if I am easily fooled or what, but the mace really does taste different to me. I find it fruitier and more harmonious with what it often goes with in Victorian cooking, like chicken or cream sauces.

Mace blades

The recipe called for the broth to be thickened with flour, which is right out for my gluten-intolerant children, so I used a little cornstarch. I am not quite brave enough to throw arrowroot into everything yet, because I don’t always know how much to use or how it will react. Much like the béchamel that I love so much, this broth came out deliciously once the herbs and onion had been steeped in it.

Two eggs from the giant blue cochin

The broth gets stirred in with the chicken, minced hard-boiled egg, and some cream, and it turns into this creamy slurry of herby awesomeness that is excellent on toast. It is like out of control gravy. My girls enjoyed theirs on mashed potatoes.

Minced fowl with broiled buttered bread

I served it with the carrot soup I mentioned, which was different than I expected. I think now we expect vegetable soups to be really pure concentrations of the vegetable they are representing, perhaps thinned with a little stock or water. This soup had onions, a turnip, and enough broth to choke a small army and the recipe says it serves ten. I believe it.

Carrot soup beginnings

I put the chicken carcass in and snapped the small chicken bones to let all their goodness out. The soup simmered for three hours and then I strained it to get the bones out, and then blended it. It doesn’t get any additional herbs or spices and it was wonderful the way it was. Beeton’s notes that the soup should be served the next day, and I cannot wait to try it. I am foisting it on unsuspecting friends who are in the air as I write this, and this after I told them “No Victorian food.”

Dessert was the only little road bump in the meal, and even that was decent and edible. I made blancmange, which is something I’ve always been idly curious about. Blancmange, English-style, is basically a milk jelly. Beeton’s advised stirring in a little brandy at the end, and I had dark rum, so I used that. The recipe also called for steeping lemon peel or bay leaves in the warming milk. I opted for lemon peel, which gave the finished product a really pleasant citrus flavor.

Steeping the milk and lemon "before a fire"

I thickened it with arrowroot, which I bought a large quantity of last month. When it was done simmering, it looked a lot like tinned sweetened condensed milk for baking, and not at all like warm Jell-O does. It was kind of bland and unimposing, and I served it with homemade grape jelly. My one real snag with it was unmolding it. I thought it would slide cooperatively like Jell-O might, but it was stubbornly sticky once decanted. Whoops!

Boing! Whoops. Shit.

The girls enjoy all things gelatinous.

There are a couple more pics at my flickr.

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Love Apples for Valentine’s Day

Published by Undergardener on February 10, 2010 in Cooking with Mrs. Beeton, Gardening and the Out-of-Doors and History.
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We are now in High Summer in Melbourne.  February brings warm weather, windy skies, very little rain but if we are lucky a glut of tomatoes for Valentine’s Day.

This week I am continuing my quest to find out how Australians gardened during the Victorian Era. Did we grow and eat tomatoes?

Turning to the esteemed Mrs Beeton it is clear that tomatoes were grown in Victorian England but were not as popular as she felt they should be.

Tomato, or Love Apple an admirable sauce by itself, it enters largely into a great number of our best and most wholesome sauces.  It also may be cooked and brought to the table like other vegetables, in several different ways; or eaten raw cut into slices like cucumber, but much thicker, and dressed with salt and pepper, oil and vinegar in the same way. When prepared in this manner, as a salad, a few slices of onion will be found an improvement. Further, it is extremely palatable when eaten as a fruit, dipped in sugar. Those who have analysed its properties say that the tomato is singularly wholesome, and very useful, especially in cases of bad digestion; still, it is not appreciated or cultivated as it ought to be.   Mrs Beeton’s Garden Management.

Mrs B's Simple Love Apple Salad - Yummy!

Inspired I prepared tomatoes with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper as Mrs B suggests.  The tomatoes were still warm from the garden; served with crusty bread this simple salad suggestion was simply fabulous.

Mrs Beeton’s advice for growing tomatoes follows the steps that would be very familiar to any modern gardener. Tomato seeds are planted in late winter keeping the pots in a glasshouse or on the window sill in the sun.  The seedlings are then planted out once the soil begins to warm up in spring in a hot and sunny spot in the garden.

In the reading that I have done so far one of the things that sings out loudly about Victorian Head Gardeners is how clever they were, if successful, at using and creating micro-climates within their gardens. If you have good soil and water in Melbourne it is easy to grow tomatoes. In colder British gardens large estates built walled gardens which allowed gardeners to take advantage of the reflected heat off the sun facing walls to grow crops such as tomatoes. It seems that really successful Head Gardeners needed to cultivate a strong connection to the seasons and the particular conditions and opportunities of their garden – I take my hat off to them!

The plants should be well watered with liquid manure to keep up a rapid growth. As soon as the blossom buds appear, watering should cease.  Stop shoots by nipping off the tops, and throw out all those sprays that show little signs of fruit, exposing the young fruit as much as possible to the sun and air, only watering to prevent check in case of very severe drought, of which the state of the plant will be the best index. Mrs Beeton’s Garden Management

When I first learnt about growing tomatoes from my Father nipping or pinching out the lateral tomato shoots was still the preferred practice.  It means that the tomato plant can grow neatly straight up a tall stake. The theory behind this practice was that you would get fewer but larger tomatoes than a bush that was allowed to sprawl unchecked. The Victorians were very interested in precision and efficiency and their estate gardens needed to be as beautiful and orderly as they were productive.  I can see that neat stakes of tomatoes would appeal to their aesthetic tastes. Interestingly research by the Digger’s Club shows that un-pruned tomato plants produce more (and a greater weight) of tomatoes than their pinched out cousins.

Tigerella and Cherry Bite Tomatoes

So did Australians grow tomatoes during the Victorian Era and what other vegetables were grown in colonial Melbourne gardens? In order to answer this question I visited the library of the National Herbarium of Victoria which has a small collection of seed catalogues from the mid 1800s. I have a thing for seed catalogues I love reading them so this was a great treat.

The selection of vegetable seeds available in each catalogue was surprising small and didn’t list varieties.  There were artichoke, cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion and other basics but no tomatoes! In a present day Australian seed catalogue produced by Eden Seeds there are 162 varieties of tomato listed from Black Russians, Green Zebras to the delicious Tigerallas.

I’m finding it difficult to believe that this meagre list of seeds represents the only vegetables that were grown in the mid-1800s. It could be that settlers were still purchasing seeds from England. If they were free settlers rather than convicts it is very likely that they brought their favorite varieties with them on the voyage to Australia. I’m reading a really interesting book called Green Pens by Katie Holmes, Susan Martin and Kylie Mirmohamdi.  In this book a reproduction of a letter from a land agent Henry Widowson in 1829 to prospective settlers of Tasmania encourages them to bring seeds “I should recommend every one to purchase a quantity of the best kinds of seed previous to leaving England.”

I’m still dipping in and out of Green Pens but it seems clear from the letters reproduced that settlers were sending seeds back home as they found native plants that they liked and requesting seeds in return from home. Plants, cuttings, seedlings and seed were also swapped between settlers as a means of making friends or establishing status. It isn’t difficult to imagine that creating a garden as a way of establishing a sense of home and belonging let alone growing food would have been a priority for settlers.  Interestingly gardening seems to have become the province of women very early on in Australian settlement. It isn’t until the late Victorian / Edwardian era that gardening is exhorted as a suitable occupation for women in Britain.

While the seed catalogues in the Herbarium have very few vegetable seeds they are full to overflowing with fruit trees, roses, azaleas, fuchsias, geraniums and pelargoniums. Roses don’t seem to have ever gone out of fashion here in Melbourne; they are just as popular today as they were in the Victorian era.

Ballam Park Homestead 1855 - The view from the rose garden

Roses and Chocolate

On the weekend I visited Ballam Park Homestead a local property maintained for public display by a volunteer historical society. Ballam Park was built in 1855 and where I live now in suburban Melbourne was once a field in this 8000 acre estate.

The great thing about Ballam Park is that much of the 1855 ornamental garden, gravel paths and orchard are still intact. I took this photo standing in the recreated rose garden.  To the left of the house is an Oak tree which would be one of the oldest oaks in Melbourne to the right is a Carob tree – the only Carob I’ve ever seen.  The pods of this plant were used by the family who built this house to create a chocolate substitute – good to see they had their priorities straight – get settled grow chocolate!

The orchard follows the main road way to the house and was planted with apples, fig and olives.  There isn’t any trace of a kitchen garden and the guide book to the house doesn’t talk about a location for a kitchen garden. Apparently the President of the society is a font of knowledge and I have been invited to call in again to talk to her at the tea-rooms now run next to the homestead. It maybe that the archive has records of the kitchen garden. So I will report back on our meeting.

Ripe Carob Pods - still fruiting 165 years on!

Again not possible to take photos in the house.  One of the interesting things about the house is that the dairy is attached directly to the kitchen with a stable door for bringing the cows into be milked. It looks a lot like a cow garage.

Ballam Park was in the middle of nowhere when it was first built and was accessed by boat across the bay from Melbourne and then a long walk along the beach, through swamp and then scrub.  The house has a small lantern room at the front of the top storey of the house. It is believed that a whale oil lamp was hung in this top window, which faces the bay.  This was to provide a guiding light at night to people trying to find the homestead. This seems a risky strategy during the days of bushrangers.

I still haven’t tracked down a copy of the Colonial Gardener but I have found that their is a copy on fiche at the Victorian State Library.  Once we get some cool weather I will make time to visit the VSL and to sit and read it in the great Victorian domed reading room – sounds like fun.

A Button-hole for Valentine’s Day

I think the Victorian’s would approve of this button-hole with a dusky red rose for love on Valentine’s Day. This variety of rose is called Tradescant and is named for one of the most famous Head Gardeners of all time John Tradescant the Elder born in 1570. Not a Victorian obviously but his work was tremendously admired by Victorian Head Gardeners so it seems an appropriate choice. The rest of the button-hole is purple Plectranthus flowers called Mona-lisa (because the Mistress is a big fan of purple), Yellow Lomandra flowers a sweet scented Australian native plant and a Rose Geranium leaf. This button-hole has a very fragrant rose perfume. Happy Valentine’s Day for this coming 14th February 2010!

Happy Valentine's Day

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Hard Labor with Costume Changes (and Preserving Pineapple)

Published by LaurieB on February 7, 2010 in Cookery and Consumables and Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
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It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I was feeling a little sorry for myself until I started flipping through Inside the Victorian Home by Judith Flanders.  I’m a working mom with a long commute, so I am, legitimately, an overworked and often tired person.  Compared to a Victorian-era maid-of-all-work, however, I’m a huge slacker who sits around with her feet up all day.  All I need is some bon bons to complete the picture.  Judith Flanders creates some pretty vivid descriptions of the kind of life these women led and the hard labor (complete with costume changes!) they put into every day.  Here’s just a quick peek:

“… She folded up the hearth rug for shaking outside and laid a coarse cloth over the carpet so that she could put down the blacklead box, the cinder sifter, and the fire irons.  Cleaning the grate, fire irons, and the fender – which had to be done daily – was supposed to take twenty minutes but often took longer.  The fire was then lit to warm the room before the family came downstairs for breakfast.  Then she cleaned and rubbed the furniture, washed the mantelpiece and any ledges, dusted the ornaments.  She strewed damp, used tea leaves, rinsed the day before, over the carpet to help collect the dust, then swept them up again…  This was the last of the early-morning dirty work, and now the maid was expected to change into a clean cotton dress, apron, and cap.”

And this was just a very small piece of what she did after getting up, cleaning the kitchen, lighting the range, cleaning the boots, and making breakfast.  The family, presumably, is not even awake at this point in the day.  For me, loading the dishwasher after sitting at a desk all day suddenly seems like a breeze.

I’ve just scratched the surface of  Inside the Victorian Home, but I’m enjoying it so far.  I’ve been struggling to put Mrs. Beeton’s book in an accurate context, and this book is helping me move from the Victorian England I know from movies and half-remembered History classes towards something a bit more fact-based.  I’ll put together a review when I’ve had time to get through the whole thing.  Maybe after I shake out the hearth rug and put on a clean dress.

So what I’ve managed to squeeze in between being super busy and reading about women who were even busier is Preserved Pineapple, for Present Use  [1579].  Notice the contradiction in the title?  This isn’t the recipe for Preserving Pineapple [1578] which keeps for some unspecified amount of time; this recipe is for pineapple that’s preserved but that doesn’t keep (Beeton’s recipe actually advices, “It must be eaten soon, as it will keep but a very short time.”).  So this doesn’t fall under the “preserved foods” section of my Beeton adventures; it’s actually closer to comfort food.

The recipe is quite simple – you boil the peel and core of a pineapple for 15 minutes, strain it, boil the pineapple in the same liquid for 10 minutes, add as much sugar as you want (“to sweeten the whole nicely”), boil it again for 15 minutes, and then you’re done.

Doesn't look like such a great idea, does it?

This recipe actually fits best under the category “things you boil the hell out of” and I expected it would taste like most things that undergo that sort of treatment – bland, flat, just generally unappealing.  But Beeton surprises as only she can.  Boiling a pineapple for an ungodly amount of time  actually improves its consistency – it’s not at all stringy or tough, as it can sometimes be when it’s fresh, but it’s also not mushy.  It held its shape but came apart easily with the back of a spoon.  And it had a full, almost smoky flavor that I wasn’t expecting.  I might actually try using this in a savory recipe if I make it again.  The addition of a cinnamon stick would have make it pretty interesting, too.  I added just over a cup of sugar and the finished product was fairly sweet, but it’s easy enough to adjust the sweetness up or down, depending on your preference.  So overall it was a good experience – not a lot of effort for a surprisingly pleasant outcome.

Still doesn't look like much, but the taste is good.

Still, it’s more work than I’m generally inclined to do for what is essentially canned pineapple in light syrup, and it would be a criminal use of really good, fresh fruit.  Plus, my eight year-old said it tastes like, “Halloween candy, like, five days after Halloween,” so it might not be to all tastes.  But if you’ve got a less-than-perfect pineapple on hand give it a try.  It makes the house smell great and gives a bit of a different take on a familiar fruit.

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The First Mitten Is Done, & Now I’m All Fired Up

Published by Faythe on February 6, 2010 in Arts and Crafts and Uncategorized.
the-first-mitten-is-done-now-im-all-fired-up

The first thing I have to report is that I finished the first mitten.  I have to say, other than wishing I could have used different yarn (I can’t afford to buy 100% silk laceweight yarn right now, so using what I already have is necessary at this time) because the alpaca fuzz obscures the pattern too much for my taste–I’m pretty happy with how it came out.  It’s so delicate and airy and not at all what would have come to mind when thinking of mittens. I guess these kinds of mittens were worn for fashion reasons, because I’m not sure if these would actually keep my hands warm if it were below freezing.

The palm side of the Lady's Fancy Mittens.

The top side of the Lady's Fancy Mittens.

Now that I’m done with the first mitten, I’m on the prowl for a new project.  I’ve done some preliminary internet searches, and I came across what I consider to be a quite decent sized list of Victorian pattern books that people have taken the time to scan in every single page of each book and they are now available to download as pdfs. Genius!  All the books are ones that are in the public domain, probably because they’re so old. I also managed to find a  handy needle conversion chart, so now I know exactly which needles to use when I read the pattern instructions.

The last thing is that I went ahead and ordered two more sets of needles. I chose to order the two smallest sizes.  The needles arrived in the mail on Friday, and Holy Crap!

The penny is there for scale.

The top needle is the smallest size I’m used to using (size #1), and I like to make socks with them. It’s 2.25mm in diameter. The last two needles are the new ones. The middle one is a size 000-000 and it’s .75mm in diameter. The bottom needle is the one that’s really freaking me out. I am completely and utterly terrified by it. It’s a size 0000-0000 and only .5mm!

Also, I just want to say how glad I am that I decided to become part of this blog.  I’d never really given much thought to Victorian patterns before, but now that I’ve decided to go all in I find my interest in knitting has skyrocketed. Not that I’m not always excited to knit, but it’s like the heady excitement I had when I first learned how to knit and knit successfully is back!  I’m happily spending hours pouring over Victorian patterns and daydreaming about making delicate silk undergarments. I’m so excited about all the knitting projects that will be ahead of me this year and I’m even starting to think about continuing on with Victorian knitting even after 2010 is over.

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Poulet a la Marengo

Published by kerewin on February 2, 2010 in Cookery and Consumables and Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
poulet-a-la-marengo

Ever since my stock escapades I looked for a recipe that could utilize the delicious stock yet fit my wheat-free, dairy-free issues. Not so easy with Beeton. Poulet a la Marengo doesn’t quite fit that bill but I decided to take a page from SJ’s arrowroot bechamel and substitute that for flour in this recipe. Since I just got home from work and still had to go to the store and get the ingredients and cook, the easiness of this recipe was very reassuring.

949. Ingredients – 1 large fowl, 4 tablespoons of salad oil, tablespoon of flour, 1 pint of stock No. 105, or water, about 20 mushrooms – buttons, salt and pepper to taste, 1 teaspoonful of powdered sugar, a very small piece of garlic.


I was determined to follow the recipe as close as possible this time out and ran into a snag pretty much, well, right off the bat.

Mode – cut the fowl into 8 or 10 pieces; put them with the oil into the stewpan, and brown them over a moderate fire; dredge in the above proportion of flour; when that is browned, pour in the stock or water; let it simmer very slowly for rather more than 1/2 hour, and skim off the fat as it rises to the top; add the mushrooms; season with salt, pepper, garlic, and sugar; take out the fowl, which arrange pyramidically on the dish, with the inferior joints at the bottom. Reduce the sauce by boiling it quickly over the fire, keeping it stirred until sufficiently thick to adhere to the back of the spoon; pour over the fowl, and serve.

Clearly, I can cut a chicken in pieces. Not pretty ones, mind you. Brown the meat, easy peasy. Now, dredge. Um, dredge the browned meat? Why not dredge it ahead of time? But, ok.

I love the way the arrowroot powder puffed everywhere. It was a pain to clean up later but the picture is cool.

After dredging about half the pieces it finally occurred to me that perhaps you were supposed to put the flour in the pan and let the fat and flour make a roux. Then the next thing – add mushrooms, sugar, salt and pepper. Raw mushrooms, uncut, straight into a dish with the stock? I feel like this was just a lack of proper directions. So, I had the browned chicken sitting to the side and I put the (sliced) mushrooms in the pan and dumped in whatever arrowroot powder was left into the stock pot and allowed the mushrooms and the “flour” to catch all the yummy browned bits on the bottom. THEN I added the stock.

After that is was easy to add the seasonings and the chicken and put a lid on it and let it simmer on low for 30 minutes. After that was done I arranged the chicken and reduced the sauce, and served it over the chicken.

The sauce was amazing, from already silky stock the arrowroot powder added another luxurious mouth feel and the mushrooms added so much in terms of flavor. It was like the fancy version of my whitetrash family’s recipe of chicken with cream of mushroom soup over rice-a-roni. I wanted to spoon that liquid up and eat it right in the kitchen.

However, the dredged flour on the skin that was then boiled made for a gelatinous covering. Not very nice. Who needs skin on a simmered piece of meat, anyway?

Here’s what I am doing the next time I make this, and boy howdy, am I making it soon. I would take off the skin and use it to render some fat for use in browning the chicken. (Yum! Cracklins for an appetizer!) Then skip the whole dredging idea, put the browned chicken to the side, and put the flour in the bottom of the pan, then add the mushrooms. When they have given off some nice moisture add a little bit of white wine to the pan and scrape up all the brown bits then add the stock, chicken and spices. Last, I am definitely going to add some green herb to the sauce when it is reducing, probably tarragon because it is my favorite and a squeeze of lemon to make it a little zippier.

All in all, I feel like this is my first pure success and it yielded a luscious meal. Since my husband is out of town for work this week I have plenty of leftovers.

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