All of the Unknowns

After reading "The Clerk's Tale" from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales this past weekend for class, I've been thinking a lot about Grizzle Cale again.  I came across Grizzle in the 1750-1800 August County Court Order Books back in 2010 when I was working as a research assistant.  All I know about Grizzle is that she had a husband named Jacob Cale and that at one point they came into court to certify a deed of gift or something.  That's all I know.  Likely, that's all there is available to know.  Perhaps if I really dug deep, I could find a record of their marriage, but that's assuming those records weren't burned or destroyed.  Maybe I could find something more on Jacob Cale-- maybe a birth record, or if he owned a little plot of land?-- but even so, what would that really tell me?  It wouldn't tell me the things I long to know.

I wonder what Grizzle looked like.  I wonder what color hair she had, what color eyes she had.  I wonder if she and Jacob had children, and how many, and if they lived.  I wonder if she loved Jacob and if he loved her.  I wonder if they hated each other.  I wonder who she was friends with, and I wonder if she ever visited market fairs.  I wonder what colors she loved.  I wonder what she liked to eat, and if she brewed beer (likely), and if she did, what it tasted like.  I wonder if she could read (as I recall, she made her mark, so probably not-- but some people could read even if they couldn't write).  I wonder what stories she knew, and what stories she told, and what songs she sang.  I wonder if she embroidered, and what the things she embroidered looked like, if she did.  I wonder what her maiden name was.  I wonder if her name was really Griselda, or if it was Grizzle and if it was pronounced Grizzle like "grizzly bear" or if it was pronounced Grizzle like "Giselle" but with an 'R'.  I hope her story was nothing like that of Griselda in "The Clerk's Tale," unless she got to have just the happy ending part with her husband loving and cherishing her, and her children living. 

Grizzle sticks out to me, because of her name, but there were countless other people in those order books just as inscrutable.  I remember one time having the macabre thought that everyone I read about in the order books had died and no one would ever know anything more about most of them than the sentence or two they were allotted in the books for securing a bond or certifying a deed.  Just name after name.  Then, I turned the wheel and the microfilm revealed a blank page with a little drawing on it, a doodle of one of the clerks in the court, to judge by the name written under the tiny informal portrait.  It made me feel relieved to see a picture.  To see that, for at least one them, there was something more than a name.  All of them, all of them were flesh and blood.  All of them had thoughts and feelings and lives.  And even if most of it is unrecoverable, isn't it enough to know that they were there?  Aren't these glimpses of the past worth it, just to remember that we are not alone in our strife, or in our joy, and that none of this is new?

I'm not really sure where I want this post to end up, or what I mean by this.  Perhaps all it means is that I should really be a historian, or a biographer, or a story-teller.  But somehow, it means more.  I can't exactly articulate what I mean, but I'm very glad to know that one person, at least, remembers that once there was a woman named Grizzle Cale.  She's not forgotten, even if she's mostly unknown.

Queen's Cake and Roasting Chestnuts On An Open Fire

On my second day back to work, I decided to make a Queen's Cake.  In full disclosure, I'm going through a bit of an American Girl phase at the moment.  Last week, my mom and I went through my Felicity collection, straightened it out, figured out what we owned, put it in the proper boxes, etc.  In her tea set, Felicity has a Queen's Cake.  So, it'd been on my mind.

(Mmm Queen's Cake!)

A Queen's Cake is your basic pound cake, except you add in cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and currants.  My currants were soaked in a liberal amount of brandy, which also found its way into the cake itself.  For those who want to know: first, take a pound of butter.  Using your hands, work the butter until it's very soft and creamy.  This takes longer in a cold, cold kitchen than it will in your climate-controlled kitchen at home.  Once the butter has been creamed, add in a pound of sugar and work it into the butter.  Work and work until you can barely feel the grains of sugar in the butter anymore.  This also takes a while, but your hands get a nice butter-sugar scrub, so that's good.  Then, separate your eggs into two bowls-- one for yolks, one for whites.  Whip up your yolks good, then fold them into the butter-sugar mixture.  Next, whip up your whites really well, until they are starting to become like a solid froth.  Like bubbles in a bath tub.  The whites are your leavening in this cake, so the more whipped they become, the lighter the cake.  This will be a dense cake no matter what, so be sure to really, really whip those whites.  Fold them into the mixture.  Then add in your flour, get it to a batter, then add in your spices and currants.  Once you've worked it altogether, put it into a buttered/greased small cake pan (or bundt pan) and bake... at cake-heat until done.  If you recall from this summer, I really can't give you a better estimate than that.  Maybe 350 degrees for 45 minutes?  It will also depend on your cake pan; just keep an eye on it is all.  Then, enjoy!

I personally like a slice of Queen's Cake for breakfast.

Anyway, it was cold outside that day, so Barbara also decided that we should roast some chestnuts.  My goodness!  "Chestnuts roast[ed] on a open fire" are amazing!!!  They are kind of chewy and sweet and totally wonderful.  Years ago we had some very bad roasted chestnuts that totally put me off of them, but these!  These were amazing!  Plus, it's not often you can say "Oh, yes, I went to work and roasted chestnuts on an open fire."  What a perfect way to get into the Christmas spirit!

(Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)

Hog to Ham: 'Little House' Style

On Saturday, I helped butcher seven hogs.

So take warning, there be graphic photos ahead, mateys.  If you're squeamish, or don't want to see  pictures of a butchering, I suggest you stop here.  There are dismembered pig bodies and blood in these photos.

Yes, you read that right.  On Saturday, I returned to Foodways for the holiday season.  Once more, I put on my shift, layered up my petticoats, straightened my cap, and headed to the kitchens.  This time, I also wore some thermals under my eighteenth-century getup, and luckily the costume center gave me a pair of mitts and a winter weight kerchief.

And my first day back?  Our annual "Hog to Ham" program.  If you've ever read the butchering chapter in Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Little House in the Big Woods, you'll have a pretty clear sense of how my day went. We began the morning at eight, with the delivery of the hogs.  They were slaughtered and cleaned off-site at a professional slaughterhouse (bristles scraped; heart, liver, bladder, etc. removed; thank goodness); we just got the bodies.



We divided into rotating teams: I headed Team 4.  We had four stations: "Hog to Ham," Palace Kitchen, Larding and Salting, and Wrapping.  Team 4 started in the kitchen, which was quite a nice way to start the day-- and my first day back.  Since Butchering Day is a special day, we fixed a big lunch for everyone.  We roasted beef on the spit, made fried apples and fried potatoes, and grilled some (freshly butchered) porkchops on the grid-iron.  When the first pig head came off, I was very glad to be stirring the apples.

At the start of Hog 2, we went to wrapping, but we didn't have a lot of cuts to wrap at first (since we wrap as they bring us the cuts of meat from the butchering), so we helped carry all of the food to the break-room and took a minute to eat some of our goods-- including pre-prepared Chelsea Buns, Pears Stewed Portuguese, and bourbon balls!  Then for Hog 3 we switched to Larding and Salting.  I was in the Larding Room, rendering lard.  Basically, you cut up bits of fat from the freshly butchered pig, then put it in a pot over a not-too-hot fire, and strain the lard through cheesecloths into a big jar.  Once the pieces of lard have boiled down enough, they become cracklings, which are very tasty.







Then Hog 4.  We were at the "Hog to Ham" station.  We got the pig we dubbed Il Monstro. He weighed 210 dressed down, 250 when alive.  He had a nose ring.  I cut the head meat to the bone (basically, I cut off the head) and then another member of my team gave the head a twist to make it come off.  I'm very glad I wasn't the one to give the head a twist.  Then I scraped out the fat from the hog's side with my hands.  It was very, very difficult.  I felt a little shaky once all that was done.  Then I removed the kidney buried in the fat, and took the fat to the larding station.  Then we cut the pig down the spine both ways, to separate it into two sides.  We chopped the spine meat into three sections-- top chine, middle chine, and bottom chine.  I used the hatchet to chop out the bottom chine.  It wasn't easy work.  We also chopped the tail off-- another group in town wanted the tail for a program, so I didn't get to roast it like Laura, which was disappointing.




 



Then, we removed the ribs from one of the sides, then the shoulder and ham.  We repeated this with the second side.  We also cut off the trotters at the joint.  I took all four of the trotters over to the wrapping station. 



Once our pig was done, it had begun to rain.  Our next station was the kitchen.  We cleaned up what was left, and did the day's buckets.  Then off to wrapping-- and this time there was lots of work.  We wrapped, and labeled, and wrapped, and labeled for the rest of the afternoon-- the teams fell apart after the rain started, as those who were dry were told to stay dry, and those who were wet became soaked.  I did go back out for the last hog, and again cut the head to the bone (but didn't twist), and held the legs back while another woman cut down the spine of the hog.  Then back to wrapping and labeling until 3:30 or so.  Once all of the hogs were done, we adjourned to the kitchen until closing time, warming ourselves and steaming off by the cozy fire, as the rain came steadily down outside.

I wouldn't say it was something I would want to do regularly, but it was a very interesting day.  It gave me a lot to think about.  The meat is now being salted, then will be smoked.  Some of it has gone into modern freezers for use in later Foodways programs.  It will be very tasty, I assure all you omnivores out there.  Or carnivores.

And now, I'm back in Foodways!  Look out for more recipes!

A Little Advice from the Eighteenth Century

"Let the [liberals] be moderate in their demands, the [conservatives] not pertinacious in opposing every reform, and government, strengthened by the accession of both parties to it as a center of union, will present to the world a compact body, firmly united to preserve an improving constitution, and to promote the publick happiness." 

"Whatever may be our fate with respect to foreign nations, peace and union are the greatest objects at home." 

"[If a few reforms are] put immediately into execution... the people seeing, that the house of commons, instead of indulging in so much personal altercation and frivolous panegyrick, is seriously occupied in promoting and improving the welfare of the state, will thankfully receive these presages of better times, and contentedly wait till a longer period shall have put an end to all their grievances."

-- William Frend, excerpts from Peace and Union, 1793

Somehow, William Frend seems really relevant today, as we go forward from the government shutdown with the clock ticking as we try to hammer out our new economic plan.  He's writing about England in the 1790s, but whether or not you agree with everything he says, or if you think any of it is relevant to the USA today (quite a bit isn't, actually, especially the bits about reforming rotten boroughs and game laws), the entire pamphlet is worth a read.  We can learn a lot from the past.

Especially about how our government should strive to promote the common good.

A Busy Day, A Busy Week

Days and weeks seem to fly by here at Georgetown.  I only have class two days a week, and Tuesday night as I cross the bridge back home I always feel so relieved, as if I have so much time to complete all of my work before Monday.  But my, how the time goes, and before I know it the week is nearly over and I still have so much to do before another Monday arrives.

Yesterday took the cake for busy.  I woke early, got to campus early, then went to my first workshop for the Apprenticeship Teacher program.  I think I'm really going to enjoy this program.  The workshop yesterday was especially fun since so many of my friends have decided to take part in the program, and they gave us free Panera bagels.  As a graduate student, I appreciate free food.

Immediately following my workshop, I headed to the English building for the first meeting of The Modernities Working Group.  The topic this year is archives, which-- with my history background-- is a very dear topic to me.  One of our readings even obliquely referenced Montaillou, and before I knew it I had written, "Hello Montaillou, my dear friend," in the margin.  Ah, I love French Annales.  The other readings were more abstract, and gave me something to really wrap my brain around.  The working group itself was comprised primarily of professors and librarians, and the discussion was very heady.  I think I'm going to like this group.

After the workshop, I read some Thomas Paine outside in the perfect, perfect weather, then visited two professors' office hours to become better acquainted with the department.  I think both meetings went well, though I was a bit nervous to just drop by uninvited (though, obviously, that's the point of office hours).  I finally arrived home after dark, but only just long enough to change shoes and grab a light coat, before I was off again for dinner with Zan and two old friends, one of whom is now in my M.A. program!  Zan gave me bad directions, but that got sorted, and on the way there someone threw a Jolly Rancher at me and that was weird, but otherwise the evening went very well!  We had a great pizza dinner in Chinatown, complete with a lovely pineapple rum/ginger drink to round out the evening.

My friend Rick has a thing he says: "Go to bed tired."  And I did.

Sinful Spanish Loaves

One of my last days in Foodways we ate-- I'm sorry, I mean, we made-- Spanish Loaves.  These are absolutely, sinfully, decadently, wonderful.  Once I describe this you'll probably think it's a dessert, but in the eighteenth century this would have been a side dish.  Yes, a side dish.  I suggest you still put it with your side dishes, because who doesn't want chocolate at a meal?



Ok, so here's what you do.  Either buy or make six French rolls, then let them go a bit stale.  Cut off the tops of the rolls, then hollow out the roll, like you would a miniature bread bowl.  If the rolls have a thick crust, carefully grate off the outside crust to make the next step extra wonderful.

The next step is soaking them in wine.  Get a bowl of nice white wine and dip your bread rolls in til they are soaked through, then drain them and cover them in flour til they feel dry to the touch.  Make sure they feel dry or you could start a grease fire.  Then, heat a pound of lard (or butter, or vegetable oil) in a deep frier and put in the floured rolls.  Fry until golden brown. Then, roll the fried rolls in sugar. 

Finally fill your fried, sugared rolls with a chocolate cream.  To make chocolate cream, grate four ounces of dark chocolate (unflavored).  Heat a  pint of cream over the stove, then stir in the chocolate.  Once it's melted together a bit, add in two pre-whisked egg yolks tempered with a bit of the chocolate-cream blend, and as much sugar and spice as you desire.  Some good spices to add are cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and a pinch of cayenne.  Stir constantly or you will end up with creamy chocolate scrambled eggs because of those yolks!  Once heated and a bit thick, take it off the stove and pour the cream into the French rolls.

Then enjoy!!!

Pretty as a Pear

Yesterday I finished my last day of work in Foodways for the summer.  I can't believe how quickly the past few months have gone by!  It seems like it can't have been so long since I signed my papers and got my costumes and began to cook and learn in earnest.  I'm so thankful for all of the friends I made this summer and the relationships I strengthened.  I'm also thankful for the cooking skills I gained!  Particularly, I like knowing how to make a pretty dish.  One dish that I made this last week at the Palace came out looking especially pretty.

It's called Pears Stewed Purple, or Pears Stewed Portuguese.  The recipe can be found in several cookbooks from the period, and it's very easy to make!  You will need three pears, port wine, sugar, cloves, and lemon-peel (optional).  Skin your pears, then leave one whole and cut the rest into quarters or eighths.  Put them in a relatively deep earthenware dish-- or a deep oven safe dish-- and add in about two cups of port wine, a quarter of a pound of sugar, some whole cloves (not too many!!! Too many cloves can make your mouth go numb.  Maybe only a teaspoon full, or 6-8), and a little bit of lemon-peel, if you choose.  Cover them with parchment paper and put them in the oven at about 325-350 degrees farenheit.  I have no idea how long this will take, so I would say to check every twenty minutes or so.  I cut the paper open to check.  Once they have softened and begun to take on the color of the wine they are done.



Arrange them on the plate, garnish with cloves, then enjoy!  They have a very nice flavor and can be served warm or cold, though I really liked them warm out of the oven. 

Eggs and Tomatoes

The other day in the kitchens I made a dish I’ve made once before and long ago: Eggs and Tomatoes, from Mary Randolph’s cookbook. The first time I made this dish was with Jim Gay when I was an intern. When I came across the recipe the other day, I felt as though I should attempt it again, considering I have such a short time left in Foodways. Silly though it may seem, I felt a bit like I was paying tribute to a great man and a great time.

It's a fairly simple recipe, and very tasty. While now we might think of this as a "scrambler" or an "omelet"-- definitely in the breakfast category-- in the eighteenth century this would have made a nice side dish to a dinner.

You will need six ounces of butter, a small-to-medium-sized onion, six or so small-to-middling tomatoes (note: you can use canned tomatoes in puree, just be sure to strain the tomatoes out from the puree), six eggs, and salt and pepper to taste.

First, get a large frying pan and add the butter.  Let it melt, then saute the onions in the butter until translucent.  Add in your tomatoes-- if you are using fresh tomatoes peel the skin off first-- and then cut them as they fry.  If you are using sliced canned tomatoes, strain off the juices.  Let the tomatoes and onions fry a bit more in the butter, then add the salt and pepper.  I like to use a little salt and more pepper to give it a kick.  Once all of that has fried a bit, break in six eggs.  Or, break six eggs into the bowl, whisk, and add into the fry pan.  Let all fry for a few more minutes, until the eggs are cooked to your liking, then serve.  

A Rich Dish: Buttered Crab

This is one for the books, folks!  Buttered crab!  An incredibly delectable dish full of flavor that you will not be able to finish alone.  I'm planning on making this for the next pot luck I'm invited to, and I suggest that you all do the same.  It will be a hit!

My buttered crab recipe comes from Hannah Glasse.  She suggests this recipe for either crab or lobster.  You will need: crab or lobster meat minced small (about a pound or a pound and 1/2), a glass of white wine, two tablespoons of vinegar (just plain white), a bit of nutmeg, half a pound of butter, two egg yolks, and an (optional!) anchovy.  First, if you have a whole crab, take the meat from the shell and save the great shell.  Hannah Glasse suggests that you serve up this dish in the shell when done.  If you have canned meat, skip that step-- it's not necessary, but makes for a great presentation.  Can you imagine?  Served in a crab shell!  But, it's not necessary.  As you can see, mine was simply presented on a plate.

So, put the crab meat in a large frying pan, add in your glass of white wine, your vinegar, and your nutmeg.  Let cook together for a few minutes.  While that cooks, melt your butter (if you're using an anchovy, add it to your butter here) and mix it with your egg yolks.  Then add that mixture to the crab meat, "shaking the sauce-pan constantly round till quite hot."  Then, if you have the great shell, pour the mixture into the shell for the presentation.  If not, put on a plate.

Then you need to make toast points!  Cut your bread into triangles and fry them in butter or lard until brown, like you would with the bread in a grilled cheese.  Once the bread has been lightly browned on each side, place pleasingly around your plate (or shell).  When you serve it, scoop the buttered crab onto the toast points.  This is a delicious, delicious dish that will fill you up after two bites (or four... or six).  Definitely take it to a party.

Lemonade? No, Lemon Creams!

Desserts in the eighteenth-century are light, little things meant to clear your palate after the heavy flavors of the meal. One of the prettiest is a Lemon Cream. Despite the name, this dessert does not involve any actual cream, just lemon juice, sugar, water, and egg whites.

(Our dessert section.  The Lemon Creams are in the glasses in the back.)

I used the Lemon Cream recipe from E. Smith’s The Compleat Housewife. Her recipe reads, “Take five large lemons, and squeeze out the juice, and the whites of six eggs well beaten, ten ounces of double refin’d sugar beaten very fine, and twenty spoonfuls of spring water; mix all together and strain it through a jelly-bag; set it over a gentle fire, scum it very well, when ‘tis as hot as you can bear your finger in, take it off, and pour it into Glasses; put shreds of lemon-peel into some of the glasses.”

So, take five large lemons and juice them. I find that the best way to juice any citrus fruit it to cut it in half, then slash it across with a knife, then dig in your fingers and let the juice run into a bowl. Once you’ve juiced the lemons, get together your egg whites. Take care that no yolk gets into the bowl of whites. Beat them fairly well, but these don’t need to be stiff like they would if you were making a pound cake. Mix the juice and whites together, add in ten ounces of sugar, then twenty tablespoons of water. Beat all together, then strain through a cloth of some kind. If you have a jelly-bag, great. I used a rag. You can use a cheese cloth. Just push the mixture through the cloth/bag and into a pot. Then set it on a burner turned on low-to-medium and cook until it’s not quite boiling. Be sure to stir the whole time so the eggs don’t solidify! Pour into glasses when it’s at a jelly-like texture. Very lovely dessert and so pretty in the glasses!


Note: Eating not-fully-cooked egg whites can be detrimental to your health in rare cases, and I’m not sure these actually get “fully cooked” (I think 160 degrees is standard), so just be aware of that if you attempt this recipe.

English as an Apple Pie

I made an apple pie!  I must say, I felt quite proud looking at my finished pie, with a crust made from scratch and everything.  It was actually quite simple!  I used an apple pie recipe from Mary Randolph's The Virginia House-wife, which closely aligns with our many English recipes despite its provenance, so this made a very English apple pie.  Yes, an English apple pie recipe.  Believe it or not, apple pies are not American.  They are all over our 17th and 18th-century English cookbooks, with a key difference: cloves instead of cinnamon.  Mary Randolph's recipe calls the cook to make a good crust, cut apples thin and lay them in layers with powdered sugar between each layer, then at the end to add in cloves and rose-water.  It smells divine.



The hardest part is the crust, if you're not used to making pie crusts.  For this one, I took about a pound and a half of flour to almost one-third pound of butter.  Simply rub the butter into the flour bit by bit with your hands until it feels grainy and looks a bit like sand.  Then I added in one egg to give it a bit of strength (it needs to stand on its own outside of the pie tin), and just a little water until it formed a dough (remember, you can always add more, you can't take any out).  Then grease your pie tin and flour it (so the pie will come out).  You can use any standard size, because with the amount of flour you used you'll have plenty of crust.  Lay in your crust, then do as I described above: pare, then cut apples thinly and lay them in layers with powdered sugar between each layer.  For my pie, once the apples reached the top, I put in about a spoonful of rosewater and some ground cloves.  Feel free to spice as you like, though, with cinnamon or nutmeg.

Then the part that makes it a pie: roll out a top-crust.  It's not a pie without a top-crust by 18th-century standards.  Once rolled, add decoration!  To make the decoration stand out, brush a little egg white over the top before you bake it-- I neglected that step... oops!  I baked mine in a Dutch Oven, but you can bake as you would a normal pie (again-- bake times and temperatures are hard for me to give you).  Then marvel at how pretty it looks and enjoy!

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

His name is Humperdinck.  One of my colleagues made him to adorn our table; after all, if you could afford it, the eighteenth-century meal functioned as much to delight the eye as the palate.  Humperdinck is made from marzipan and slivered almonds.  Wouldn't you love such an adorable, edible center piece on your dinner table?  And, lest you think we just did this without documentation-- or if you want one of your own-- here is the recipe from Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy:

"To make a Hedge-Hog: 

Take two pounds of blanched almonds, beat them well in a mortar, with a little canary and orange-flower water, to keep them from oiling.  Make them into stiff paste, then beat in the yolks of twelve eggs, leave out five of the whites, put to it a pint of cream sweetened with sugar, put in half a pound of sweet butter melted, set it on a furnace or slow fire, and keep it constantly stirring, till it is stiff enough to be made in the form of a hedge-hog; then stick it full of blanched almonds, slit and stuck up like the bristles of a hedge-hog, then put it into a dish; take a pint of cream, and the yolks of four eggs beat up, sweetened with sugar to your palate; stir them together over a slow fire till it is quite hot; then pour it round the hedge-hog in a dish, and let it stand till it is cold, and serve it up; or a rich calf's foot jelly, made clear and good, poured into the dish round the hedge-hog; when it is cold, it looks pretty, and makes a neat dish; or it looks pretty in the middle of a table for supper."

Shrewsbury Cakes

Did anyone else read the American Girl Felicity books as a child?  If so, you may remember that Felicity made Shrewsbury Cakes with her family in the book Felicity's Surprise.  Well, Shrewsbury Cakes really are an eighteenth-century recipe, and I made them the other day in the kitchens.

 (Me, with my tray of Shrewsbury Cakes)

I used Hannah Glasse's recipe: "Take two pounds of flour, a pound of sugar finely searced, mix them together (take out a quarter of a pound to roll them in); take four eggs beat, four spoonfuls of cream, and two spoonfuls of rose-water; beat them well together, and mix them with the flour into a paste, roll them into thin cakes, and bake them in a quick oven."

Pretty simple, right?  Let's clarify something first: once made, these should end up more like sugar cookies than like what we think of as "cakes."  In the eighteenth century, things that we now call "cookies" were termed "cakes," since the word "cookie" had not yet entered the English language, at least not to signify a small sweet treat.  Shrewsbury Cakes are also flavored with rose-water instead of vanilla.  Why not vanilla?  Well, vanilla isn't really used in the eighteenth-century; rose-water and orange-blossom water are much more common flavorings.  Try them!  They are quite nice.

So, to make these, take a pound and twelve ounces of flour (because we set a quarter aside to use when we roll out the cakes/cookies), a pound of granulated sugar, three or four eggs, enough cream to make it into a paste about the consistency of a cookie dough, and a little rose-water for flavoring.  Once you've rolled out your dough until about a quarter of an inch thick, take cookie cutters in whatever shape you choose and cut out your Shrewsbury Cakes.  Put them on parchment paper on a baking sheet, and bake them in an oven at around 350 degrees F, for maybe 10-15 minutes.  They should not get golden brown!  Carefully tap them to check if they are hard-- then they are done.  You can also look at the bottoms, which may get slightly brown when done. 

Then, arrange them prettily on a plate and enjoy! 

Each a Little Miracle

The other day I needed vegetables to make a stuffing for a roast.  We were running low on our stored veggie supplies, so one of my co-workers suggested I run to the garden to pick some carrots.

(Photo found here)

"Pick some carrots!"  These have become my new favorite words.  I found the carrot patch and pulled seven or eight carrots out of the ground with unbridled joy!  Each one is a surprise.  It's like opening an oyster and finding a pearl.  Sometimes the pearl is big and shiny, sometimes small and sweet.  So, too, with carrots.  I took them inside, cut off the leafy green tops, and washed them until they shone orange, all the while telling everyone how amazing it is to pick carrots!  "Yes," said my co-worker (perhaps somewhat sarcastically, now that I reflect upon it), "Each one is a little miracle."  Sarcastic or not, I must agree wholeheartedly.

 (Photo found here)

The next day, I again needed carrots for a recipe.  I ran into the garden on feet as light as feathers, and bent down to the carrot patch.  I looked for the carrots with their tops just poking out of the dark ground-- these promised to be the biggest.  And out they came!  Small and round, big and triangular, some slightly yellow around the bottom, others a striking orange from top to tail!  I took them inside and began the process of preparing them, when Dennis-- who had not been working with me the day before when I picked carrots-- asked me if I didn't need some more.  I must have looked at him with shining, hopeful eyes, as if I thought he was joking.  "Really?" I asked.  "Can I pick them myself?" He seemed taken aback, "Yes, of course..."  I smiled so wide that a tourist snapped my picture and told me I had a beautiful smile.  "Picking carrots is an unparalleled joy!" I exclaimed.  "Each is a little miracle!"  Dennis had a good laugh at that.  I ran to the garden to pick more carrots, and when I return to cut off the tops and wash them, Dennis told everyone that "One of my colleagues is working with a cake, the other is working with little miracles."

 (Photo found here)

I think next year I may need to plant a carrot patch of my own.

(Note: You may have noticed I used other people's carrot pictures for this post.  Well, I wanted to take pictures of my own carrots, but we never had a lull in visitors, so I couldn't get my camera out.  They frown upon us pulling out modern technology when in 18th-century costume).

Carrot Puffs, A Tasty Side Dish

 A few weeks ago at the Palace I made a dish called Carrot or Parsnip Puffs, from Elizabeth Smith's "The Compleat Housewife."  Here's a picture and the recipe:

Scrape and boil your carrots and parsnips tender; then scrape or mash them very fine, add to it a pint of pulp, the crumb of a penny loaf grated, or some stale bisket, if you have it, some eggs, but four whites, a nutmeg grated, some orange-flower water, sugar to your taste, a little sack and mix it up with thick cream; they must be fried in rendered suet, the liquor very hot when you put them in: put in a good spoonful in a place.

Yum, right?!  These won't actually *puff* so don't worry if your attempt looks more like a carrot hushpuppy or a carrot patty than a carrot beignet.  You are doing it right.  So, to start, get some carrots.  I think I used about six large carrots and that made quite a few puffs-- perhaps enough for between 5-7?  A penny loaf is basically a dinner roll, so grate a dinner roll for that part; a French roll would be the best kind of bread to use.  Don't worry about the "pint of pulp."

First, scrape and cut your carrots, boil them until soft, then mash them.  Add in the breadcrumbs, eggs (use only two or three), nutmeg to taste (2 tsp?), sugar to taste (perhaps 1/3 cup?), optional bit of orange-flower water (a tsp?), optional bit of sherry (a couple tablespoons?), then-- once you have the mixture tasting how you like it-- fry them in vegetable oil, butter, or lard!  Carrot puffs make a very tasty vegetable side dish for any meal.

Although, it's bit like fried carrot cake. This might be good with a cream cheese icing... hmm...

Cherries for Independence Day

Looking for a red-colored dish to compliment your 4th of July table?  How about something red, sweet, and easy to make?!  How about "Stewed Cherries To Be Eaten the Same Day?"*

This 18th-century recipe is very easy to make in your own kitchen, and takes just around half an hour to complete. You need only three ingredients: cherries, sugar, and water!  Take about a pound of cherries with their stems and pits still on/in them and put them in a pot.  Add just enough water to cover them-- you don't need to drown them.  Next, add in 3/4 pound of sugar.  Yes, you read that right.  That is exactly what the recipe calls for.  Then let them come to a good boil for about 5-10 minutes, take off the stove, and repeat.  Once you've boiled them twice or three times (until soft, but not mushy), let them cool.  When they have cooled, put them in a pretty dish and serve up with some of the sweet liquid from the pot poured over them.

To eat, pick them up by their stems, bite them off into your mouth, push out the pit with your tongue and throw it away, and enjoy!  Remember, cherry pits contain cyanide, so don't swallow them!  It's very easy to push the pit out of the stewed cherry and throw it into a trash can.  This is an incredibly tasty and simple dish to add to the table, and was very much enjoyed by all who sampled it.

Plus, next to apples and eagles, what feels more American than cherries? ;)


*Why "Same Day?"  This is as opposed to stewing cherries for cherry preserves.  The process is very similar, except you would, of course, take off the stems and pit them.

An Easy, Elegant Dessert

Need a simple dessert for a dinner party?  Try syllabub!  It's very easy to make, but feels very fancy.  Everyone will be impressed.  There are about fifty different syllabub recipes, but my favorite is a mix of white wine, cream, lemon juice, and sugar.

Again, I'm not great with exact modern measurements since that's not really our thing in the eighteenth-century kitchens, but to make enough for four I would suggest that you take about one and one-half cups of white wine, two and one-half cups of cream, two lemons, and sweeten it to your palate (I like maybe 1/2 or 3/4 cups of sugar?  Test it for yourself). Then get out a large mixing bowl.  Juice the lemons into it and grate a bit of the peel into it, too.  Then add your wine and sugar and mix until the sugar has dissolved.  Then pour in your cream and whip it until it's of a whipped cream consistency.  Pour into shrub glasses (or any kind of clear glass-- a champagne flute, perhaps), and after a couple of hours the wine and cream will separate from each other.  On top you will have a light, sweet, lemony whipped cream froth to eat, and underneath a wine punch to drink.  Enjoy!

Note: don't whip it too long or it turns into butter, as I found out the hard way.  If you do turn it into butter, it goes well on bread.  Syllabutter!

Potato Balls: A Personal Favorite

One of my favorite eighteenth-century recipes is for making "Potatoe Balls."  Here's the recipe, from Mary Randolph's The Virginia Housewife: "Mix mashed potatoes with the yelk of an egg, roll them into balls, flour them, or cover them with egg and bread crumbs, fry them in clean dripping, or brown them in a Dutch oven. They are an agreeable vegetable relish and a supper dish."

(Om-nom-nom!!!)

First, use russet potatoes to make mashed potatoes, however you best like to eat them-- with garlic, onions, cream, butter, etc.  If you leave the skin on when you boil your potatoes the starch will help hold a ball shape later, but it's not necessary to do this if you really don't like potato skins, or if you're using leftover mashed potatoes.  I would also suggest roughly mashing for this recipe: if you have super silky potatoes they won't form balls very easily.  After you've made your mashed potatoes, let them cool until you can work them with your hands.

Once your potatoes are cooled, mix in an egg yolk (to help hold the potato balls together), then use your hands to roll them into golf ball-sized balls or a little larger.  Next, roll the balls in a beaten egg, then roll them in breadcrumbs and fry until they are golden brown and crispy on the outside.  You can add herbs and seasoning to your breadcrumbs, too.  I like to add some sea salt and parsley.  And I suggest frying in butter or lard for added flavor.  You can also bake these, according to the recipe.  I haven't tried baking them, as I prefer frying, but I would imagine you would bake at about 325° F or 350° F for maybe 20 minutes, until golden brown.

I think this is a great dish for Thanksgiving leftovers.  If you're like me, you always make too many mashed potatoes and have leftovers for a few days.  After two days you're a little sick of mashed potatoes, right?  So, roll them in balls, roll them in breadcrumbs, and fry!

...or just go ahead and make these instead of mashed potatoes because I promise that you won't regret it.  This is seriously one of my favorite dishes to prepare and eat.  Yum!

Ice Cream Sunday

I had great plans on Sunday to make an onion soup, but when I arrived Dennis suggested that we make chocolate ice cream instead.  How could I say no to that?!  Chocolate ice cream!  

(Oh hey, it's me in eighteenth-century garb!)

Many of you will say, "Ice cream?  In the eighteenth century?  I don't believe you."  Well, believe it!  The Governor's Palace has an icehouse-- a twenty-foot deep hole made for keeping ice.  The Governor (and other wealthy Virginians with icehouses) would have had ice shipped down from the northern colonies in the dead of winter and would have packed it into their icehouses.  Ice was cut from lakes and packed with salt and sawdust for shipping, so it wasn't the kind of thing that you would mix in with your drinks.  Nor was this a refrigerator-- foods were much fresher then and bought and consumed daily, so there was no need for refrigeration of vegetables, fruits, or meats.



Ice was shipped almost specifically for ice creams, and occasionally for putting around (not into) drinks for a cool treat during the hot summer months.  "During the summer months?" you might ask.  "Wouldn't the ice have melted?"  No.  Reports suggest that ice could remain, well, ice, until September or October in the ice house, even if it had been brought in the previous December or January.  A test of the Governor's Palace icehouse a decade ago or so confirmed these reports.

Their iced creams, however, differ slightly from our ice cream.  Theirs was more like frozen custard.  To make eighteenth-century ice cream, you must start out by making a custard.  You can flavor it however you want-- fruit ice creams were especially popular with denizens of the eighteenth-century.  Since we made chocolate ice cream, we started by grating some pure chocolate that we had made in our chocolate program.  We then got together about a dozen egg yolks and five pints of cream in a pot over the fire, taking care not to let it boil.  As it heated, we added in the grated chocolate, along with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of cayenne pepper for a bit of a kick.  Once the mixture had thickened, we took it off the fire and set it to cool for several hours.  We had to cool it, because to make eighteenth-century ice cream you put the custard into a metal canister, set the canister in a bucket, and pack ice around it.  If we had put the custard into the canister hot it would have simply melted the ice.  Useless.

As it was, we put the cooled custard into the canister, canister into bucket, ice packed around it, and spun.  Yes, we spun the canister in the ice, by hand, for two hours.  You notice the handle on the lid?  It's for spinning.  You can also just use your hands and turn the whole canister (as I am doing in the first picture, above).  You spin.  And spin.  And spin some more.  As the ice melts you drain it from the bucket, and add in more ice and rock salt-- the rock salt makes the ice colder.  We spun for two hours before it was time to clean up the kitchen for closing, and it probably could have used another hour of spinning to harden completely.  But ta-da!  We made ice cream!  Since it melts we can't display it, so I just had to take some home with me.



And it was delicious. :)

Pineapple Fritters

Today at work I made a very tasty dish: Pineapple Fritters!  Pineapples would have been consumed by Americans in the eighteenth-century, but they were a very, very expensive fruit.  Only the richest could afford to purchase and eat them.  If you visit Williamsburg you will see images of pineapples everywhere, for the fruit came to symbolize hospitality to Virginians in the eighteenth-century.

I used a recipe from "The French Family Cook" for strawberry fritters, but I prepared it with pineapple since we had one available in the kitchen (and it desperately needed to be used before it went bad).  The recipe reads, "Make a paste with some flour, a spoonfull of brandy, half a glass of white wine, the whites of two eggs beat and green lemon shred fine. Mix it well, neither too thick nor too thin. It should rope in falling from a spoon. Dip some large strawberrys in to it, fry them and glaze them with a salamander."

So, I got out some white wine (you will need quite a bit more than half a glass of wine), brandy, flour, and eggs-- remember to use only the whites.  Since we had no "green lemons," or limes, on hand, I grabbed a lemon, too.  I mixed all the ingredients, except the lemon, together as the recipe says until I got something like the consistency of pancake batter, maybe a little thicker.  If you've made onion rings at home, that's a good consistency to have in mind while mixing this up.  Finally, I cut the lemon in half, squeezed in just a little juice for flavor, and grated in a bit of lemon zest. Then I took my whole pineapple, peeled it, cored it, and cut it into rings.  I placed a frying pan full of lard over the fire, waited for it to heat, then dipped my rings into the batter and put them into the lard.  Once they had cooked to a nice golden brown on each side I took them out.

The next step was challenging for me, but will be easy for you.  Spinkle sugar over each fritter, the finer the better. I suggest castor sugar.  Once you have on the sugar, put it under the broiler until it carmelizes, and then you're done!  This was challenging for me because electric broilers didn't exist in the eighteenth-century.  I had to use a device called a salamander.  A salamander looks like this:

You put the round part in hot coals until it's red hot and shimmering with flame, then use the rod to hold it steady over the items you want broiled.  It's not exactly light-weight either, and I had to return it to the fire multiple times to keep it hot enough to achieve the look I wanted for these fritters.  Some have little legs to set them down, as in the illustration, but mine did not.

Once done, serve immediately.  And enjoy!


(Salamander illustration found here)