Julia Bennet

Victorian Cooking

Georgian Cookbook: Bath Buns

June 17, 2020June 17, 2020 Julia Bennet

This weeks’s recipe is from this book:

Before we even start, let me make it clear that I’ve never baked with yeast before. Never.

And I’m scared.

Here’s what you need for 12 buns:

450 g plain flour

1 tsp salt (not in historical recipe, so leave this out if you’re a purist)

150 g butter

7 g active dried yeast

2 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp caraway seeds

225 ml milk

2 tbsp sugar (for the glaze)

1 tbsp milk (for the glaze)

Now, here’s what you do:

Add the salt to the flour and rub in the butter. Then, sprinkle in the yeast, sugar and caraway seeds.

2. Mix well. Then, warm the milk and stir into the dry ingrediants until you can form a soft dough.

3. Knead for about 10 minutes. I loved this part. Imagine the dough is a person who did you wrong and punch and pummel away. Grind their face against your counter. Drop them repeatedly from a great height. It’s very cathatic.

4. Place ball of dough in a bowl and cover with a cloth and allow to rise in a warm place for 2-3 hours. I meant to take a photograph of the dough before I left it to rise, but I forgot. Luckily, my general incompetence is, I think, part of my charm.

5. Two hours later and, to my utter shock, this is what my smallish ball of dough had become:

5. Punch the air out of the dough and form into 12 balls. Don’t make them too smooth.

6. Cover with damp towels and allow to rise for another hour.

7. Now, I didn’t take a photo of what they looked like after the hour because, though they’d expanded, they’d gone out rather than up and they looked like sad little dough splats. Perhaps Because I am in no way a perfectionist, I decided to just cook the damn things.

8. Preheat oven to 190C. The recipe said bake for 12-15 minutes, but that is a filthy lie. With my oven, 20 minutes is much more like it.

9. Next, make the glaze by heating the milk and sugar together. Brush the warm glaze over the buns and sprinkle a bit of sugar on top. The recipe said caraway seeds as well as sugar, but I knew two of my test subjects would balk if I tried that.

Here’s what I ended up with:

They may not be as pretty as the ones in the book but they taste v. good.

Honestly, these didn’t rise the second time as much as they should have. You can probably do a better job.

But, anyway, here’s what the test subjects had to say:

8 yr old: “It’s good but not perfect.”

15 yr old: “Good but would be better with icing.”

The adults loved them. A bit too much. Not only are we doing Keto, but wheat (to paraphrase Jane Austen) “disorders my stomach.” We only meant to have a bite, but we both ended up having a whole bun each. (I’m probably not supposed to say this publicly, but Mr. B had two. Don’t tell him I told you.)

These are really, really good. Apparently, the Georgians ate them with jam and clotted cream (a bit like a scone) and, though I haven’t tried that, I bet it would be amazing.

Edited to add: Mr. Bennet had five in a single day. I had three. Totally worth the stomach disorder.

Next week: Amy March’s Pickled Limes.

Victorian Cooking

Regency Cookbook: Rout Cakes

June 10, 2020June 8, 2020 Julia Bennet

This is a nice, easy one. Quick, too.

These small cakes were popular at evening parties or routs (hence the name) and, though the recipe I used was Georgian, they were still popular in the Victorian era. They pop up in Jane Austen’s Emma, Vanity Fair, and Dickens. All over 19th century literature, really.

FYI, I had a little helper in the kitchen this week, but he didn’t want to be photographed.

Emma: Picnic at Boxhill (at which rout cakes were almost certainly not served). Caption reads: “Ladies and gentlemen, I am ordered by Miss Woodhouse…to say”

First, the regency recipe:

To make rout drop-cakes, mix two pounds of flour with 1 pound of butter, one pound of sugar, and one pound of currants, cleaned and dried. Moisten it into a stiff paste with two eggs, a large spoonful of orange-flower water, as much rose water, sweet wine and brandy. Drop the paste on a tin plate floured, and a short time will bake them.
From The Cook and Housekeeper’s Dictionary by Mary Eaton, 1822.

You have to love the complete lack of detail in these old recipe books. “A short time will bake them?” What the hell?

Also that amount of ingredients would make a whole lot of rout cakes. I want about twelve, so I’m going to adapt a recipe from this book, which in turn adapts a recipe from Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery from 1806, which is almost identical to Mary Eaton’s.

Ingredients:

100 g self-raising flour

50 g butter

50 g sugar

50 g currants

1 egg

2 drops of orange essence (in place of 1 tsp orange-flower water which I couldn’t get)

2 drops of rose essence (in place of rosewater which I also couldn’t get)

1 tbsp brandy (which I absolutely got)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Rub the butter into the flour, then add the sugar and currants:

My little helper absolutely refused to get his hands dirty, so this is all my own work. 😉

2. Whisk the egg with the orange and rose essences, and brandy. It will smell awesome and you’ll start to get excited. Also, I’m not supposed to show you this:

This is what happens when you ask an 8 yr old to crack an egg. His hands were now thoroughly dirty and he was not happy.

3. Add some of the egg mix to the flour and combine. Sadly, you won’t need all of it, so only add it until you have a thick paste that will hold its shape like this:

4. Put heaped teaspoons of mix onto a greased baking tray as above.

5. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

You should end up with 12 little cakes that look something like this:

Now bring on your test subjects.

At last, a unanimous verdict. More or less.

8 yr old: “This tastes delicious.”

15 yr old: “I’m not sure…but I’m going to finish it.”

We adults loved them, and I know they ate them at evening parties during the regency, but these would be really good with a nice cup of tea. Definitely try them.

Victorian Cooking

Victorian Cookbook: Egg-Hot, a Victorian Pick-me-up.

June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 Julia Bennet

An egg-hot was supposed to make you feel better on a cold winter’s night. Mrs. Macawber and David Copperfield drink them when David needs comforting, and the ingredients sound spicy and Dickensian. As Victorian as a drink could possibly be.

Mrs. Micawber looking a bit rough. To be fair, it was probably a very hard life.

You will need:

1 bottle of ale/stout
1 egg
1 1/2 tsps butter (Except don’t. Just don’t.)
1 tbsp of sugar
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of nutmeg

Victorian recipes for this drink vary. They don’t all include the butter and my advice is to leave it out or use less. You’ll see why.

This is what you do:

Put the sugar, spices, and most of the ale in a saucepan. The butter, too, if you’re using it. Again, and I can’t emphasise this enough, DON’T.

Heat it slowly.

Beat the egg in a bowl or large mug, then add some of the remaining cold ale/stout. Temper the egg mix by stirring in spoonfuls of the warm ale mixture one at a time.

They should end up looking like the picture below or a little darker.

Pour the beery eggs and remaining cold ale into the saucepan and, stirring continuously, heat the contents until they’re about to come to a boil.

That’s it. Your egg-hot is ready. It will smell like sweet hops and cinnamon. The very sight will comfort you.

But then you taste it…

Okay, that’s clearly too much butter. You can see that just by looking. Perhaps cream would work better. Didn’t Julia Child once say “If you’re afraid of butter, use cream”? And I am afraid of butter. Very, very afraid.

Nevertheless, despite the oil-slick on the surface, I had high hopes for the taste.

The Verdict:

This was so nearly good. I almost like it. Buttery residue aside, there were lots of good flavours. I’m just not sure I like them together.

But I’m not a beer drinker, so I decided to ask Mr. Bennet (who is one) for his thoughts.

I wish I’d taken a photo of his little face when he tasted it, but his expression was not dissimilar to this:

Mr. B’s comments: “There’s lots of familiar flavours but they’re all in the wrong place. It’s…eggy. I can taste the egg. It..reminds me of something. It’s… it’s…not…good.”

We ended up wishing it was eggnog instead and I’m sad to say…we threw both drinks down the sink.

But…I feel like maybe this is a case of the right drink for the wrong people. David Copperfield liked it. Dickens liked it (probably). Maybe you will, too.

Just don’t include the butter.

Victorian Cooking

Victorian Cookbook: Mrs. Beeton’s “Very Good” Seed Cake

May 27, 2020May 27, 2020 Julia Bennet

I only know that seed cake exists because of regency romance. Heroines are always eating it at breakfast time. Apparently, it also pops up in Jane Eyre when Miss Temple gives some to Jane and Helen Burns as a treat. I’d totally forgotten this detail, though.

I used a scaled down version of Mrs. Beeton’s recipe but, for fun, here’s the original:

Ingredients for a very good seed cake:

1 lb of butter, 6 eggs, 3/4 lb of sifted sugar, pounded mace to taste, Grated nutmeg to taste, 1 lb flour, 3/4 oz caraway seeds, 1 wine-glassful of brandy

Method:

Beat the butter to a cream; dredge in the flour; add the sugar, mace, nutmeg, and caraway seeds, and mix these ingredients well together. Whisk the eggs, stir to them the brandy, and beat the cake again for ten minutes. Put it into a tinned lined with buttered paper. and bake it from 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Mrs Beeton estimates the cost of all this to be 2s. 6d.

However:

Because I wanted to make a smaller cake, I decided to use the measurements and cooking time from this book, which adapts Mrs. Beeton’s recipes for “the modern kitchen,” but still use Mrs. Beeton’s instructions. Spoiler: Mrs. Beeton knows her stuff. This cake is “very good” just as she promised.

Ingredients for “a very good” 1 kg loaf seed cake:

230 g butter,

200g caster sugar

3 medium eggs

75 ml brandy

200 g self-raising flour, sifted

1 tsp caraway seeds

Pinch of ground mace

Pinch of nutmeg

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 160C.

Cream the butter, but then forgot which method you’re meant to follow and add the sugar next. Sorry, Mrs. Beeton.

Mrs. Beeton frowns upon creaming the butter and sugar together. Shame on me!

Sift the flour in, then add the spices:

In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, then stir in the brandy. Add to the other ingredients.

Beat the cake, though not actually for ten minutes because I forgot which method again. It would have been boring anyway. I stopped as soon as it started looking like cake batter, but feel free to follow Mrs. Beeton’s instructions to the letter. She’s probably watching.

Pour batter into the loaf tin.

Place in the centre of the oven for 40 minutes, then reduce the heat to 150C and bake for a further 25 minutes. Honestly, it looked a “deep, golden brown” at this point, just like the book said, but I got scared, so I covered it in foil and put it back in for another 10 minutes.

I can’t tell you how good this smelt while cooking. The sweet, spicy, boozy fragrance permeated the house. It was so comforting!

We let it cool completely, I cut a slice, and asked Mr. Bennet to take a photo. He misunderstood (ha!), took a massive bite, and proceeded to make a lot of inappropriate noises. He didn’t quite reenact the diner scene from When Harry Met Sally, but it was close.

8 yr old arrived and took a bite. And he…liked it and even wanted more. This is the first Victorian recipe he’s approved of, so that should tell you something.

15 yr old didn’t like it because he dislikes the taste of alcohol, even in cooking. It’s not “his thing.”

I thought it was amazing. I would marry this cake. Seriously, Mrs. Beeton was on to something here.

In short, you should totally try this.

Victorian Cooking

Victorian Cookbook: Syllabub

May 20, 2020May 19, 2020 Julia Bennet

I thought I knew what syllabub was. A cool, creamy dessert usually eaten by historical romance heroines at a ball or rout.

But then I read Mrs. Beeton’s recipe…

Mrs. Beeton, author of “*Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Houehold Management*” (1860)

1 pint sherry or white wine,

1/2 grated nutmeg

Sugar to taste

1 1/2 pints milk

And, confusingly, she then says:

“clouted cream may be held on the top…and a little brandy may be added to the wine before the milk is put in. …Warm milk may be poured on from a spouted jug…but it must be held very high.”

The penny suddenly dropped. It’s a drink! A sort of cloudy wine punch with a head or layer of cream on top. The dessert version was based on the drink and became popular in the eighteenth century. I just needed to substitute cream for milk.

Here’s what I used:

200 ml of white wine

Pinch of nutmeg

1/8 cup of sugar (I don’t like things too sweet, so you may want to increase this)

300 ml of double cream

The Method:

Put the wine, nutmeg, and sugar in a bowl. Don’t do what I did and use the prosecco that you think has gone flat only to whimper when you realize it was still fizzy after all and you could have drunk it. Just some words for the wise.

Perfectly good Prosecco now adulterated with nutmeg and sugar 🙁

Whisk it, then add the cream, and whisk again for bloody ages until your arm feels like it might fall off and the cream forms soft peaks. Or cheat and use an electric whisk. Mrs. Beeton won’t mind and you’ll be done in about 2 minutes.

Transfer between four or more wine glasses until you end up with about 6 of these:

Mrs. Beeton inspired white wine syllabubs

I don’t know what’s happening because these look quite… nice?

Leave somewhere cool for several hours. Full disclosure, I decided not to get too “method” and stuck mine in the fridge.

When they’re ready, bring in your test subjects.

Verdict:

Well, this was a surprise! My hopes weren’t high but Mr Bennet and I ate all of ours. It’s creamy with a delicate white wine taste at first but, the closer you get to the bottom, the boozier it gets. Extremely yummy. Syllabub for the win!

8 yr old tried a speck and pronounced it disgusting but he shouldn’t be having it anyway.

15 yr old liked this and wants a whole one tomorrow. Might let him, might eat it myself.