Monthly Archive for November, 2010

An American Victorian Thanksgiving

Published by SJ on November 26, 2010 in Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
an-american-victorian-thanksgiving

I. Candied Citrus

Hello, and welcome to this week’s internet-based installment of One Woman’s Descent into Madness, Part 47. How was your Thanksgiving, if you celebrate it? I had a very nice day overall, except for the fact that I wrote and swilled coffee all morning in lieu of eating, which guarantees that I will and did have acid stomach by the afternoon. I took remedies all afternoon–NONE recommended by Beeton, however, who mentions calomel and TOMATOES (this just in, folks, gasoline is excellent for putting out fires). Lucky lucky lucky for me it subsided exactly five minutes before I got dinner on the table and I got to enjoy the feast, and so I have learned my lesson again until next time.

Chicken Foot Crown

I have been busy here with a few things. One is making vast amounts of candied citrus peel. I took apart a buddha’s hand, and you know, nothing was in it! I thought there would be some small amount of useless vestigial fruit like there is in the round citrons, but it was just pith. I also candied orange and lemon peel.  (You might be interested to learn that I have collected all my Victorian experiment pictures in a set, including ones I have not written about.)

Brigid Keely asked me about candying citrus. Really, it could not be easier. First, peel the zesty part off of your citrusy victim, trying not to skim off the pith. I like a vegetable peeler for this as pictured here. If you want fat slices then you are done, but I usually like to use a chef’s knife to slice them down into skinny strips that would make a cute pile of shavings on a cake or fancy drink. If you want to mince them later to go into a cake or pudding you can do this as well after they are done.

Then, heat a simple syrup solution until the sugar is melted (1 part sugar to 1 part water, usually for one fruit a half-cup of each is enough), then simmer the strips for 10 minutes, after which they should look slightly translucent. Strain out the syrup. I also lay the drained strips out on paper towels so they cool just slightly, then sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar over them and toss them to coat. Then eat one. YUM! They store in the fridge for a long time, at least all through the holidays.

II. Thanksgiving

So, the interesting thing about American Thanksgiving, foodwise, is that it has barely changed since its official founding in 1863 by President Lincoln. It is kind of a late harvest festival, which is in keeping with what the Pilgrims supposedly ate almost 400 years ago. I decided to mix things up a bit, since the modern food I serve every year is a lot like an American Victorian-era Thanksgiving–turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, seasonal vegetables like squashes. Since it was just three of us this year, I also decided not to make 4 frillion side dishes like I usually do and just focus on experimenting with various dishes.

First, I eschewed a turkey and ordered a goose. I have never had a goose. I assumed they are a lot like turkey, but when I looked into it I was delighted to discover the flesh is, of course, a lot closer to duck, which I love. I have also heard they make a vast amount of grease while they cook, also a bonus, since I am going through grease like water right now, and I knew I wouldn’t have to fuss about the breast drying out like you do with turkeys.

Beeton, of course, instructs us on the removal of feet, how to snip the wings down, and says

Beat the breast-bone flat with a rolling-pin, put a skewer through the under part of each wing, and having drawn up the legs closely, put a skewer into the middle of each, and pass the same quite through the body. Insert another skewer into the small of the leg, bring it close down to the side bone, run it through, and do the same to the other side. Now cut off the end of the vent, and make a hole in the skin sufficiently large for the passage of the rump, in order to keep in the seasoning.

What the…this is way too much like math for me. Smash the breast bone? Can we not just stuff it and roast it? She goes on…

Be careful to serve the goose before the breast falls, or its appearance will be spoiled by coming flattened to table.

The breast might fall, perhaps, because you smacked it with a rolling pin? I decided to follow the modern technique of simply pricking some holes in the skin to allow the grease to drain adequately, and stuffed it with Beeton’s sage and onion stuffing. Beeton called for bread “crumb,” which might mean cubes and might actually mean crumbs. I opted for cubes, since I didn’t want the stuffing to turn into a soggy mass. I often put a LOT of  ingredients into stuffing, following modern recipes, but a nice loaf of bread, some fresh sage, a couple of sauteed onions, and salt and pepper was perfect.

Goose Out!

Cutting the Goose

While the goose was setting up after cooking, I pulled it off its drip pan so I could get access to the yummy lake of grease that had formed under it. I put a couple of generous spoonfuls onto the leftover stuffing I had in a pan waiting to go in after the goose went out.

I also used a few more large spoonfuls to fry up the rissoles. I have made potato rissoles before, but I think they reached their apex of deliciousness this time around. Fowl fat was much better than lard for cooking them in, and I sauteed the shallots they were filled with and used minced ham I had leftover from making white broth.

Rissoles Frying

Barely visible in the above picture, behind the rissoles, is the gravy, also made with some goose fat, rich stock, and a splash of gin. I have become very, very good at making gravy this year, which is one of those “simple” operations that a person can do adequately once a year on Thanksgiving, but to really get a feel for gravy, it helps to do it a couple of times a week for, you know, a year.

This little websitelet I found when doing research on making really kick-ass gravy has one of my most favorite phrases I have ever read on cooking ever: “After you have made gravy maybe 50 times, you will develop your own eye for how dark you will like the roux.” I like it when people take the long view towards perfecting simple tasks. And because it is cooking, you will still fail sometimes.

Scullery maid Jane surveys rissole-pyramid

A Simple Table This Year

The Plate

As a concession to my victims, I served a modern typical winter salad topped with cranberries, pecans, and blue cheese with a mustard vinaigrette I knocked together at the last minute. Instead of cranberry sauce, I sent a store-bought red current jelly to the table, which we have been eating a lot this year, especially with hashes and rabbit.

III. Dessert

For dessert I decided to use my delightful turkey pan my sister gave me for my birthday this year. I have been intrigued by a poundcake recipe in Beeton’s that calls for no liquid, except eggs, and no leavening agent, except whipping the eggs.

It turned out fairly dreadfully, as you might expect. The center was underdone and the outside was crispy like a biscuit. We discussed shallower pans and lower cooking temperatures, but I don’t think it’s really worth salvaging. Many of the recipes just aren’t worth it, especially when there are modern ones that are perfected already. I could take a nice pound cake recipe and add currents and candied peel, but EH.

I also decided to make a couple kinds of gingerbread, thick and white. The white gingerbread was a lot like a scone, and not very appetizing. The thick was made with treacle and turned out more like traditional gingerbread, very dense with good spice balance.

White Gingerbread

Gingerbread Batter

Gingerbread with too much egg wash!

Out of three desserts, I’d say one was a keeper, the thick gingerbread. I was pleased with Thanksgiving and despite the time an energy it takes to make things like stock from scratch, it felt a lot simpler than what I normally make.

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The Lady’s Horse- Part II

Published by Hope V. on November 23, 2010 in Customs and Manners, History and Victorian Horsemanship.
the-ladys-horse-part-ii

In the second installment of The Lady’s Horse, we will take a look at another source for equestrian wisdom in the Victorian Era, and see what it has to say about the nature of the horse appropriate for a lady:

Park riding with some remarks on the art of horsemanship, written by J. Rimell Dunbar, Professor of Horsemanship, 1859.

Those of you who read Part I will be relieved to know that this post will be much shorter, as this particular author says much less about the proper horse for the lady rider than Matthew Horace Hayes.

So much less in fact, that Dunbar’s thoughts can be summed up by the following:

“Horses with bad habits are never fit to carry ladies.”

That and his ‘Golden Rule’ which is that “a lady ought never, if can be avoided, chastise her horse: let someone else undertaking the breaking him of any vice”, which explains why the horse must not have bad habits. If a lady is not supposed to chastise her mount, then it had better behave for the entirety of her ride.

He discusses the issues of the equestrienne in the chapter titled ‘STYLISH RIDING’.

From the title we have chosen for this division of our work, the reader may discover our intention to confine it to that branch of riding, practiced by gentlewomen, thoroughly instructed in the equestrian art, in which we see displayed those inimitable beauties that have carried horsemanship to the highest pitch of perfection; and although we feel bound to admit that perfection in the art of riding, as in every other art, is the limit to which improvement can be carried, we trust we shall be excused for maintaining that perfection itself may be rendered more pleasing and agreeable by the aid of style, and where style is required, in how infinitely greater a degree do we sometimes find it in the female than the other sex. An accomplished horsewoman rides with elegance, propriety, and a good grace, united to a noble boldness, beautiful yet modest, which never fails to command attention and excite admiration.

Ah yes. The gentleness and style of the female rider. Very important.  On to the horse.

We will assume that a lady having selected a horse for her own use, before she purchased him, took an opinion, as to his qualities and ability to suit her, from a competent judge, and that he was found in all respects what a lady’s horse should be—wellbroke. No lady should ever attempt to ride a horse which does not in every particular answer this description.

Yup. That’s basically it. Dunbar writes more, but it’s to give instruction on riding, not in regard to the horse itself. I think that this book is probably a little more typical an example of Victorian views (‘the horse must be well behaved as to not distress the lady’) than the one written by Hayes; but I believe I prefer Hayes’ more progressive confidence (comparatively speaking) in the ability of a lady to ride well.

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Are there Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden?

Published by Undergardener on November 23, 2010 in Arts and Crafts, Gardening and the Out-of-Doors, History and Uncategorized.
are-there-fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden

If you live in country Victoria or have the means to get there (I may have discovered the real reason why Airforce 2 dropped Hilary Clinton in Melbourne instead of our capital Canberra) then you have until this Saturday the 28th of November 2010 to see a fabulous exhibit of Australian Fairy Art from the Victorian era at the Bendigo Art Gallery.

After stopping in Castlemaine recently to visit Tute’s Cottage I drove onto Bendigo especially to see this exhibit – it was well worth the drive.

Beautiful Bendigo

Bendigo is an extraordinarily gorgeous town. The Victorian architecture surrounding Queen’s Park, at its heart, shows the amazing wealth and opulence of the goldfields at their peak. I would have liked to have spent more time exploring but I only had enough time to see the exhibit and get on my way back to Melbourne. I have been eagerly anticipating this exhibit since February as it promised to explore the transposition of the English Victorian Fairy Art craze into an Australian context – very pertinent to our interests at TQS.

The exhibition was beautifully mounted with works from national collections, ‘never been seen before’ works from private collections (fancy how special a family would feel to own their very own fairy art) and illustrations from period books. I loved it but left feeling somewhat unsatisfied.

For me the best works of the exhibit were the two beautiful painting by the Australian painter Frederick McCubbin. Frederick’s work is well known to many Australians as his triptych called ‘The Pioneer’ has graced many a lounge room wall, biscuit tin and tea towel.  It is a stunning work that subtly shows the impact of settlement on the bush. As time passes from left to right in the triptych more and more of the bush is cleared until you can just see a hint of a city in the distance. Unfortunately familiarity has bred contempt for McCubbin’s work and I get the sense that we don’t love his painitings as much as we could – too sentimental for modern sensibilities perhaps.

McCubbin’s fairy paintings have the same sombre mood as ‘The Pioneer’ until you begin to catch glimpses of the winged creatures hidden in the bush. The only clue to finding the fairies quickly is following the gaze of the small children in the paintings. In a way McCubbin is encouraging us to look through the eyes of childhood to see the bush in a new way.

Another highlight of the exhibit was a chance to see new prints of the ‘Cottingley Fairy Photographs‘. These faked photographs from 1917 show two young girls and fairies frolicking in a garden. If you haven’t ever read about the Cottingley Fairy Scandal and the role of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creater of Sherlock Holmes, it is worth following the link above. Given that the girls cut the fairy images out of a popular children book of the time – it is a wonder that anyone thought they were real. I suppose sometimes we just need to believe – and that might be why I love the Cottingley Fairy Photographs. The Cottingley Fairies are also behind the plot of the 1997 fantasy film – Photographing Fairies.

So why did I leave unsatisfied? While the craze for fairy art was an English Victorian era phenomenon it didn’t really take off in Australia until the Edwardian period – so not so much Australian fairy art of the Victorian era. The catalogue to accompany the exhibition is OK but not great. I was left disappointed by the lack of Australian context provided in the curator’s notes. Here there is a brief discussion of Victorian England’s representation of the fae as mischievous, wanton and dangerous as a salve to the taming of the wild by the industrial revolution, when an enormous proportion of the population forsook the rural life for cities. In Australia the burgeoning of fairy art in the Edwardian period is seen as a retreat from the horror of war.

I think that Australian fairy art of the Edwardian period is another version of the ‘Lost in the Bush’ myth of Australian settlement. It might surprise non-Australians to know that in Primary School we are all read and re-read the story of three young children who stray from their parents and become hopelessly lost in the bush. The children become increasingly frightened, the older sister (my hero) snaps gum of Eucalypt trees for her brothers to eat and covers them with her skirt to keep them warm at night until eventually at the point of no hope they are rescued. This is our ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and our cautionary tale about the wild wood, nature as savage and unknown. Europeans decided very early on after drought and flooding rains that the bush was out to get us. Fairies are a way of making the Australian bush safe. They are chubby cherubs looking out for us or as the Australian Girl Guide rhyme says of the bush spirit the Melluka,  ’I'm a Melluka but you will find, though I play tricks, I’m always kind’.

The answer to the question is of course ‘Yes’!

Purple King Climbing Bean and Fairy

Victorian fairy folklore is full of cautionary tales about farmers who failed to heed the warnings of fairies: don’t plant your potatoes here, don’t call your cows without using their proper name, don’t use all the milk without leaving us a saucer by the front door (so like living in a share house) and the ever popular don’t forget to leave us a corn-dolly from your new harvest. Ruin, failed crops and disappointment in love follow all who don’t do as they are bid.

As a gardener I am fully prepared, if the fairies at any point tell me where they want the carrots planted, I will do as they say (actually I would do pretty much anything to get carrots growing properly)!

Pollen pants means that it is both 'Hammer Time' and a Bee - so not a fairy!

If you look carefully through my posts you will see that on a number of occasions I have been lucky enough to accidently capture images of the fairies that live in my garden – I could tell you how many there are – but the fairies don’t want me to spoil the fun.

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Queen Victoria on Horseback

Published by Hope V. on November 21, 2010 in History, The Queen and Victorian Horsemanship.
queen-victoria-on-horseback

This is a fantastic picture of Queen Victoria on horseback- you can clearly see the type of habit she wore and that she’s riding side saddle. The man holding her horse is the famous Mr. Brown.

Long live the Queen!

If you get a chance to see the movie based on their friendship, I highly recommend it. It’s entertaining and has great Victorian Era visuals.


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Has Beans!

Published by Undergardener on November 20, 2010 in Cookery and Consumables, Cooking with Mrs. Beeton, Gardening and the Out-of-Doors and History.
has-beans

Throughout this project I have been haunted by the question – what types of vegetables did people grow in Melbourne during the Victorian era (well haunted might be an overstatement … so Victorian). Discovering the answer to this question has not been straight forward. This is an update on an earlier post in which I searched through a collection of ancient seed catalogues in the National Herbarium of Victoria‘s library.  The selection of vegetable seeds available in each catalogue was surprisingly small.  There were artichoke, cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion and other basics. Mmmm…

…so I began trawling other other library collections…

My next step was to visit the State Library of Victoria, in June, a magnificent Victorian beauty, in the heart of Melbourne’s Central Business district.  I went to the State Library to read an original copy of ‘The Colonial Gardener : being a guide to the routine of gardening in Australia with a catalogue of select kitchen, garden and flower seeds as sold by Smith, Adamson and Co, 1854‘. This short pamphlet, with a surprisingly long title, published twenty years after the settlement of Melbourne is now digitized and available to read on-line (and as SJ has said – the Victorians would have loved the internet. I did however enjoy the experience of handling an original copy).

Reading Room at SLV - or what the afterlife looks like!

The ‘Colonial Gardener’ provides advice to commercial and beginner gardeners in an almanac style. I love the foreword to the pamphlet – authentic 1850′s marketing spiel!

“At considerable trouble and expense, we have got the following calendar compiled, by a thorough gardener to meet a very obvious want. It has been criticised by and had the approval of some of the oldest resident gardeners in the colony and though printed principally for the guidance of our non-professional customers, professional gardeners but of short experience in the colony might do worse than be guided by it. It may not enter sufficiently into detail to satisfy all, but we flatter ourselves that the information it does give is substantially correct. Smith, Adamson and Co.”

Finally, a proper list of vegetables! The interesting thing about the ‘Colonial Gardener’ is that it shows the beginnings of working out how to grow vegetables in the new colony. The entries each month provide general growing advice, invariably refer to the unpredictability of rainfall and the extremes of temperature. One of the interesting things I’ve noted about their advice is that they are encouraging gardeners to plant ‘a little and often’ this is still great advice as it means that you have a succession of vegetables available rather than them being ready all at once. This is something that I still struggle with as a gardener because once I’m out there with the seed packet open I’m in a planting kind of mood! ‘Little and often’ also has the advantage of ensuring that in an unpredicatable climate you are more likely to get at least some of your crop. Very clever Messers Smith and Adamson!

My next challenge is to see how many of the seed varieties listed in ‘The Colonial Gardener’ still exist in modern seed catalogues. This task is likely to take longer than the life of this blog – so at the end of December 2010 I will move this research to my regular gardening blog.

Making a start on this research in June the first Victorian vegetables to go into my garden were broad beans (Yes Fava Beans! Liver and Chianti fffff). The Colonial Garden lists two bean varieties for planting in June: the Mazagan and the Long Pod. Looking in the American Heirloom Seed Companies catalogue the Mazagan are described as an early fruiting dwarfed plant.  I can’t find seeds available to Australia so far.

Long Pod have also been hard to identify as there seems to be a long list of bean types that have been called Long Pods – the Mr Smith of the vegetable world. In Mrs Beeton’s Garden Management – The Art of Gardening, Mrs B cautiously promotes both the Mazagan and Early Long Pod with the following advice

“…but whatever sort is grown, the culture is the same, and as it is not a favorite vegetable with many persons, it should be carefully considered how much ground can be devoted to it without encroaching on space required for more important crops”.

Crimson Broad Bean in flower by October (mid-spring Melbourne)

Eventually I found an ‘Early Long Pod’ Broad Bean in the Australian Yates Seed Catalogue. I love broad beans so despite Mrs B’s warning I planted a whole garden bed and added some ‘Crimson Flowered’ Broad Beans another old variety of bean rescued from extinction by seed savers in the 1970′s. One of the main themes that I keep returning to in my reading, and it is especially evident when you look at old fruit catalogues or read ‘The Victorian Kitchen Garden’ by Jennifer Davies, we have far less variety of vegetable seeds available to us now than the Victorian gardeners had.  One of the losses that I feel most keenly is that we no longer have the knowledge of what grows well in our own neighborhoods and in many cases we have lost the plants.

Now it is November (late-spring in Melbourne) and there are broad beans ready to eat. They have grown so well this year as the weather has stayed wet and humid. Our first wet spring in ten years! I harvested a big pile and turned to Mrs Beeton’s Household Management to see if she included receipies for broad beans.

Has beans!

Young beans liberated from their pods.

Here is Mrs B’s receipe

1092. INGREDIENTS – To each 1/2 gallon of water, allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt; beans.

Mode.—This is a favourite vegetable with many persons, but to be nice, should be young and freshly gathered. After shelling the beans, put them into boiling water, salted in the above proportion, and let them boil rapidly until tender. Drain them well in a colander; dish, and serve with them separately a tureen of parsley and butter. Boiled bacon should always accompany this vegetable, but the beans should be cooked separately. It is usually served with the beans laid round, and the parsley and butter in a tureen. Beans also make an excellent garnish to a ham, and when used for this purpose, if very old, should have their skins removed.

Time.—Very young beans, 15 minutes; when of a moderate size, 20 to 25 minutes, or longer.

Boiled Ham Beans and Swirls of Parsley Butter - Yummy!

Something to bear in mind is that if you salt and boil tender young broad beans for 15 to 25 minutes they will taste and look like grey sludge (hence Mrs B’s contradictory views on the enjoyment of beans). My advice is to get some unsalted water boiling rapidly and blanch for 3 minutes any longer and they are yuck, yuck, yucky.

Parsley butter (cut parsley up finely and mix with butter) was a revelation with the ham and beans and is really worth trying. I made little swirls with a piping bag rather than placing in ‘a tureen’ as directed – with only two to feed a tureen would be over-kill and the parsley butter doesn’t keep very well.

All in all I highly recommend growing and eating broad beans with or without cannibalism and Chianti.

Time Traveling to Tute’s Cottage, Castlemaine

There is a garden in country Victoria that I’ve been wanting to see ever since Mandy Stroebel’s fantastic new book ‘Gardens of the Goldfields – A central Victorian sojourn’ came out in July this year – Tute’s Cottage. This tiny cottage now jammed between a road reserve and the Forest Creek embankment was built in 1858 when the surrounding area was still being mined for gold. Tute’s cottage was occupied under miner’s rights – the right to fence off a small amount of land to create a productive garden, these types of gardens were amongst the first gardens of settlement, and were not owned by the occupiers but leased from the Crown.

Tute's Cottage - lived in by 'Miner's rights' from 1858 to 1997.

In Mandy’s book she describes her project to recreate an 1850′s productive garden in the bones of the remaining allotment garden at Tute’s. This garden is now looked after by a collective of neighbours who live near the cottage and is occasionally open to the public – especially on Castlemaine’s Open Garden Weekend – the weekend after the Melbourne Cup each year.

Broad Beans (Back Left) growing in Tute's Cottage Garden.

Mandy also notes the difficulty of finding nurseries and seed catalogues that still stock Victorian seed varieties and plants. You will see in the photo of Tute’s Garden that the beds are edged with local sandstone rocks. Miners had to be resourceful in creating their productive plots from materials at hand and gardens of this period were often edged with bones or bottles – these were subsistence rather than pleasure gardens.

If you feel like time traveling to the 1850′s and can’t afford a Tardis or Star Gate then a day in Castlemaine during the yearly Garden Festival is the strategy for you. Failing that boil up some broad beans and ham.

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The Gift of Meat: Victorian Potted Ham and Rabbit

Published by SJ on November 16, 2010 in Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
the-gift-of-meat-victorian-potted-ham-and-rabbit

Preserving food was an important part of Victorian life, as we have demonstrated through the year with experiments in pickling, canning, and drying. If I had a domestic staff, I would be a terrible tyrant, making them save and use every scrap of food and every animal bone. The Book of Household Management lists several recipes for potted meats, including veal, anchovies, and more.

Potted Ham with Red Currant Jelly and Fig Paste

What was, 150 years ago, an exercise in thrift and practicality is now an elegant snack that brings something unique to the table for holidays and entertaining. Potted meat can be thought of as a British precursor to deviled ham or paté. This is a great host/hostess gift or something unique for a meat lover you know. The potted meat keeps a long time, but it’s not shelf-stable like a pickle, so plan accordingly. It’s wonderful on crackers or spread on bread as a sandwich. Once you get the lid on, you can fancy it up with some pretty cloth or ribbons.

"Unpacked" Rabbit Meat

Recently, I potted some rabbit. They are worth shopping around for, because I see greater discrepancies in rabbit prices than any other meat. One Seattle store carries $25 rabbit, while at one of my favorite Asian markets I can usually get one for around $6.

Preparing the Rabbit for Stewing

Potted Rabbit [1028.]

This recipe just fills a pint canning jar for me, and can be easily doubled. The liquor that the rabbit is stewed in can be strained and used for soups and gravies.

Ingredients.
1 rabbit
4 slices of raw bacon
a large bunch of savory herbs, such as thyme, oregano, and parsley
1 cup of decent sherry
4 whole cloves
Pinch of powdered mace or a finely-chopped blade [optional]*
1 teaspoonful of whole allspice
2 carrots, chunked
1 onion, sliced
salt and pepper to taste
A small quantity of melted butter [1-2 tablespoons]

Mode.
1. Skin, empty, and wash the rabbit, if needed; cut it down the middle, and put it into a stewpan, with a few slices of bacon under and over it; add the spices, herbs, vegetables, sherry, and sufficient water to cover the rabbit (usually about a pint). Bring the liquid to a gentle boil. Stew very gently on low, covered, for 2 hours, until the rabbit is tender, and the flesh will separate easily from the bones.

2. When done enough, remove the rabbit from the broth, separate the tender flesh from the bones, and pound the meat, with the bacon, in a mortar, until reduced to a perfectly smooth paste. [The Victorians were very fond of pounding everything, but for this step I pulse the mixture gently in a food processor. You could also chop the meat very finely.] Should it not be sufficiently seasoned, add a little cayenne, salt, and pounded mace, but be careful that these are well mixed with the other ingredients.

3. Press the meat compactly into potting-pots (I like clear glass canning jars for this), pour over melted butter, and keep covered refrigerated.

* Mace, especially whole blades, can be challenging to source. It is possible to substitute ground nutmeg in much smaller quantities (usually half). I recommend mace for an authentic Victorian flavor, and also to blow people’s minds trying to figure out what it is, since many people are unfamiliar with it now.

Potted Ham, That Will Keep Good for Some Time [814.]

This recipe is great for using up leftover baked ham.

Ingredients.
To 2 lbs. of lean ham allow
1/2 lb. of fat (bacon grease, duck fat, or other drippings)
1 teaspoonful of pounded mace
1/2 teaspoonful of pounded allspice
1/2 teaspoonful of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoonful of cayenne
pepper to taste
clarified butter or lard

Mode.
1. Mince the ham and stir together the softened or melted fat in the above proportion, seasoning it with cayenne pepper, allspice, pepper, pounded mace, and nutmeg.

2. Grind to a smooth paste in a food processor, or chop very finely if needed.

3. Press the mixture firmly into potting-pots or a jar to prevent air pockets, pour over clarified butter, and keep it refrigerated. This recipe produces about 3 pints. If well-seasoned, it will keep a long time in winter, and will be found very convenient for sandwiches, &c.

Related: The first post where I mention potted ham.

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Hello Sculleryteers

Published by SJ on November 13, 2010 in Uncategorized.
hello-sculleryteers

Hi! So as the year is rapidly drawing to a close, we are trying to figure out how to have some kind of grand finale. If you have anything you would like to hear or see from us, please let us know.

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Frittering the Time Away

Published by SJ on November 6, 2010 in Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
frittering-the-time-away

What have I been up to? A lot! I will give you the briefest of recaps (well, brief for me). I have eight weeks of cooking left, and I am really excited about that. It’s fun to look back on this year. Truly, I am a different person now than when I started. I look at food and history very differently now. More about that some other time, though, because there are FRIED THINGS.

I. Fritters

I have been frying everything fryable. Orange fritters? Really? Not too shabby though.

Sectioned Oranges

Orange Fritters with Pounded Sugar

My favorite was this Indian fritter, which has a very light batter that “blooms” beautifully when you put a scoop of it into the hot oil. I also made beef fritters [not pictured], which is more of Beeton’s cold meat cookery. Battered beef is insanely delicious with Worcestershire sauce.

Indian Fritter

II.Rolled Beef, to Eat Like Hare

From the BOHM:

ORIGIN OF THE WORD “SIRLOIN.”—The loin of beef is said to have been knighted by King Charles II., at Friday Hall, Chingford. The “Merry Monarch” returned to this hospitable mansion for Epping Forest literally “as hungry as a hunter,” and beheld, with delight, a huge loin of beef steaming upon the table. “A noble joint!” exclaimed the king. “By St. George, it shall have a title!” Then drawing his sword, he raised it above the meat, and cried, with mock dignity, “Loin, we dub thee knight; henceforward be Sir Loin!” This anecdote is doubtless apocryphal, although the oak table upon which the joint was supposed to hare received its knighthood, might have been seen by any one who visited Friday–Hill House, a few years ago. It is, perhaps, a pity to spoil so noble a story; but the interests of truth demand that we declare that sirloin is probably a corruption of surloin, which signifies the upper part of a loin, the prefix sur being equivalent to over or above. In French we find this joint called surlonge, which so closely resembles our sirloin, that we may safely refer the two words to a common origin.

ARISE SIR LOIN!

I pounded this sirloin pretty flat. I love pounding meat. Then you marinate it in some port and fill with forcemeat and roll up.

Post-marination

Then the roulade is braised in a port sauce. Yum! Looks like some kind of horrible movie prop larva, doesn’t it? Ew.

Sliced rolls, full of forcemeat

Here they are cut. The beef looks extra swirly and lollypoppy because the port colored the outside of the beef. I had forcemeat in the freezer from a previous batch I had made and shaped into patties, but not fried. All I had to do is pull it out and fry it up in a skillet. I am now a person who has frozen forcemeat, suet, stock, heavy cream, sherry, port, and brandy on hand pretty much all the time.

You serve the rolls on a nice puddle of gravy and with red current jelly.

As an aside, the name of the recipe references hare (to eat like hare), but there is no similar recipe made with hare in the BOHM. I did find rolled hare in other, older cookbooks, so perhaps the reference was simply that people knew the dish.

II. WHY GOD WHY: Oyster Catsup

:(

Oysters blanched in sherry with cayenne added, then blended. GREY DEATH.

IV. Long Pepper

Long Pepper

I saw these referred to several times and I could not find them locally. I finally got curious enough and ordered these off Amazon. The BOHM calls for long pepper in a lot of pickle-type recipes. Here’s what Beeton said:

LONG PEPPER.—This is the produce of a different plant from that which produces the black, it consisting of the half-ripe flower-heads of what naturalists call Piper longum and chaba. It is the growth, however, of the same countries; indeed, all the spices are the produce of tropical climates only. Originally, the most valuable of these were found in the Spice Islands, or Moluccas, of the Indian Ocean, and were highly prized by the nations of antiquity. The Romans indulged in them to a most extravagant degree. The long pepper is less aromatic than the black, but its oil is more pungent.

I absolutely love them! They have a smell that makes me think of incense or opium, which is cool. I’ve been dropping them into stock and sauces, and they are easy to pull out again. If you want to try something new, I think they are totally delicious.

I ordered my goose today for Thanksgiving. I know, I know, Victorian England did not have American Thanksgiving, but it was made a holiday in 1863 in the U.S., which is perfect timing. According to some preliminary research I’ve been doing on early American Thanksgivings, it has not changed much between then and now–cranberries, stuffing, etc., in keeping with the story of the first Thanksgiving. So I will put together a large spread where every element is Victorian, but it will probably be more like an English dinner party that an 1860s than an American Thanksgiving. Stay tuned!

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The Splendour of the Turf

Published by Undergardener on November 2, 2010 in Gardening and the Out-of-Doors and History.
the-splendour-of-the-turf

Today is the 150th Anniversary of the Melbourne Cup, the world’s richest horse race, which was run on the turf at Flemington for the first time in 1861. The Melbourne Cup Spring Racing Carnival has come down to us from the Victorian Era with many of its traditions intact. In many ways the Melbourne Cup became our equivalent of Spring (May Day) Festivals.

Turf Racing 1881

Almost from inception the Cup became a Melburnian institution with 100′s of 1000′s of people of all social classes attending. The Cup was a place to promenade and picnic, to see and be seen. To underscore its importance to the social life of the colony the Victorian Government made the first Tuesday of November, Melbourne Cup Day, a public holiday in 1873 closing all banks and government offices.

Fashions on the Field 1881

Today  as I enjoyed my public holiday I spent some time trawling through the internet looking at historic images of the Cup. There is very little to pick between images of 1881 and 2010. Men and women still dress in their finest and promenade on the lawn. Despite the waxing and waning of fashion hats have endured as a constant feature of race day – ensuring that millinery has remained a thriving art in Australia.

A traitor to my city I have to confess that I’m not interested in horse racing. I’ve never managed to get excited about the idea of dressing up and attending but nevertheless I feel a social obligation to place at least one small bet on the Cup each year (look in Melbourne parents take their kids to place a bet from the moment we are born). I have bucked the trend in my family who on both sides have loved racing from both sides of the turf. I’ve even found an extraordinarily wealthy ancestor, William Bailey, who (apart from being a career criminal) was exceptionally fond of a flutter. His 1906 obituary is online and a good third of the text lists the horses he owned, races won and the seemingly ridiculous amounts of money he paid for yearlings (1000 Guineas – This is why we are no-longer rich, ‘Damn you Bill’, I say as I shake my fists at the heavens).

Where did the money go Bill?

Fashion and flowers remain an important part of the carnival especially roses. Each of the major racedays at Flemington has an official flower. Victoria Derby Day is the Corn Flower, Melbourne Cup Day is the Yellow Rose, Oaks Day the Pink Rose and Stakes Day the Red Rose. There is a modern staff of 12 gardeners that tend the enormous race track rose gardens and lawns with modern equipment; in previous eras this staff would have been much larger.

By the 1860′s the vast expanses of turf at Flemington would have been mown using horse drawn mowers. Horse drawn mowers were developed in the 1830′s. Previously lawns were managed using scythes (think Grim Reaper). To protect the turf from damage from the horses’ hooves the horses were fitted with leather booties.

These boots are made for mowing...

Mrs Beeton’s Book of Garden Management has an extensive section on the newly developed Mowing Machines. All are a hand pushed version of the mowers that horses pulled along.

Mrs Beeton gives the following advice on when to mow the lawn:

“A scythe works better in the morning when the dew is on the grass, or when it has been wetted by a slight shower of rain, so when mowing is effected by means of the scythe it is better to get the work done early in the morning.  The mowing machine, which works on an entirely different principle, acts more smoothly and pleasantly when the grass is dry, and may therefore be used even at midday… to produce a soft elastic velvet-like surface of fine short, close grass, a lawn should be run over with the machine at least once a week.”

One of the models recommended by Mrs B.

Taking up Mrs Beeton’s advice I have been mowing our front lawn with the modern equivalent of the ‘Excelsior Junior’. The hand mower is definitely a lot more work than the petrol lawn mower. If the grass gets too long or sends up flower heads it wraps around the blades and jams the mower. This is one of the reasons that you do need to mow the lawn every week when using these devices. With out a scythe (I really think that me doing the lawn with the scythe would be the very last straw for our neighbors – which has almost inspired me to find one) I use hand clippers to cut down the long pieces.

As for a finish that looks like “a soft elastic velvet-like surface” well … it looks more like a neatly tossed salad.

The Junior Salad Tosser!

So now that Melbourne Cup Day is in its dying hours I can go to bed with the knowledge that while I didn’t back the winner again this year or solve the puzzle of where the Bailey millions went (I imagine it was all lost at the track) – a least my front lawn is almost up to scratch!

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