Melissa Challenge 14: Fear Factor

Here I am!  Finally back and posting on the blog!  For those of you who do not know, I am finishing my last year of undergraduate studies, and cooking/baking in my apartment during my busy week is near impossible.  Most of the historic cooking I have been doing has been in the hearth kitchen at Historic Locust Grove, which is amazing and fun and awesome, but I barely have any pictures of that and the recipes I make there don't necessarily line up with what the challenges are.  However, I did realize that I was going to be remaking a recipe I made for the recent Christmastide event, which is definitely feared or revered by most...

Fruitcake!

Specifically, a pound plumb cake from The Housekeeper’s Instructor,  by William Augustus Henderson, 1809

To be honest, I did not hold fast to this recipe.  What I made ended up being an amalgam of a few pound cake recipes I have made.  My tried-and-true recipe follows:

1 pound butter

1 pound sugar

1 pound eggs (about 9 large eggs)

1 whole nutmeg grated, or 1 tbsp ground nutmeg

The zest of 1 lemon

1 gill (4 oz) of brandy or cognac

1 pound flour

1/3 pound currants

1/3 pound candied orange peel

1/3 pound candied lemon peel

Preheat your oven to 350.  Start by creaming your butter and sugar together:

Next, add your eggs.  About 9 large eggs equal one pound, but it's always good to use your handy dandy scale to help measure.

Mix your eggs and butter/sugar until smooth.  Now it's time to add the fun things!  Throw in the nutmeg, brandy, and lemon zest, and mix.  I left out the lemon zest this time because of the inclusion of candied lemon peel.  It's definitely cook's choice.  Also, sometimes you realize that your bowl is too small in the middle of baking.  Introducing great green bowl!

Measure out a pound of flour and mix in.  The batter will stiffen considerably and become more like the cake batter you know and love.

Finish the cake off by stirring in the candied lemon and orange peel and currants.

I find that stirring this in works the best, since the hand mixer can be a little harsh.  I just used a rubber spatula.

Pour the batter into two greased 8-inch cake pans and bake for about an hour, or until a toothpick comes out of the center clean.

Allow to cool on the counter completely, then remove from pans.  If you'd like an extra kick of flavor, I recommend soaking the cakes in brandy for anywhere between a week and a month.  To do this, simply soak a paper towel with brandy and lay them on the cakes within a plastic bag.  Replace the paper towel every couple of days.  The brandy helps to keep the cake moist and to develop the flavors of the fruit, so it is definitely enjoyable.

Delicious finished cakes waiting for a brandy bath!

When I was doing my research for these cakes, I desperately wanted to find evidence of using marzipan as an "icing", but unfortunately I did not find any examples of this.  Most of the icings that I found from this period were actually whipper meringues that were then hardened onto the cake using either a salamander or simply proximity to the fire. Henderson has one example of a recipe here:

The first recipe is the one I took inspiration from, but since meringue is so finicky I decided to use a recipe that I have used for years now.  I now realize that the second recipe in the image would have yielded a similar taste to marzipan, but oh well!  The meringue icing is the perfect touch for this cake.

Meringue icing

2 egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Pinch of salt

1/2 cup white sugar

Preheat oven to 225.  Beat the egg whites until foamy.  Add cream of tartar, salt, and sugar, and beat until stiff peaks form.  Place cakes on parchment paper on baking sheets.  Spread a thin layer on cakes and bake for 1 hour.  Leave cakes to cool in oven with door slightly ajar.

This cake is so delicious that it can't even be classified as fruitcake.  It has none of the flavors that you would typically associate with Granny's fruitcake, and the density of fruit isn't so high that you wonder if there is even cake.  The nutmeg and lemon work perfectly together, and the brandy helps to merge the flavors.  All in all, I would highly, highly recommend it!

The Challenge: #14: Fear Factor

The Recipe: See above!

The Date/Year and Region: Europe/America, early 19th century

How Did You Make It: See above, again

Time to Complete: It takes about 30 minutes to get the batter together, and another hour to bake.  The meringue takes 15 minutes to make an an hour to bake, as well.

Total Cost: The fruit was the most expensive, topping in at $10 per batch of cake.  The other items were mostly lying around.  I would guess that two brandy-soaked meringued cakes cost about $20.

How Successful Was It?: This cake is amazing.  It's the perfect density with the fruit in the heavy pound cake base.  The meringue icing and brandy soak are really awesome additions to an already great cake!

How Accurate Is It?: Somewhat diverged from the original recipes, but in relatively accurate fashions.  Cream of tartar wasn't available in the period, and the currant question (whether fresh currants or dried "currants" [actually raisins] were meant is a conundrum) is always on my mind, though I don't think they would have called for preserved fruits (candied lemon and orange peel) to be mixed with fresh in the same cake.  I would guess that it is about 90% accurate to the period

Melissa: Challenge 7: The Best Thing since Sliced Bread

Here I am, the prodigal admin, returning to the blog after skipping a challenge! I apologize for the tardiness of this challenge, but I had to move in to school and start the new semester so the pear dish I was going to make sadly got pushed aside to do, well, school.  But I'm here! Better late than never, right?

To preface this, I am not a salad eater.  I have never been a salad eater.  I am morally opposed to what most people deem "salad", which is basically layers of fat and oil and cheese with some green stuff to make you feel good about yourself.  So I decided for this challenge I would go back to the start of this terrible thing called salad, the 1920's.  I turned to my original cookbook, Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, 1925, for some background.  The book touts that, "there is no more effective nor appetizing way in which to include [fresh fruits and vegetables] in a meal than in the serving of salads.  In addition, salads make a strong appeal to the appetite and at the same time are beneficial so far as the health of the family is concerned."  Yeah, no.  The "salad" I made was definitely not at the top of the healthy totem pole.

What did I make, you ask?

Banana-and-Peanut Salad

with

Fruit-Salad Dressing

Yes. You heard me correctly.  It was insane.

I started off by making the dressing in a double boiler.  It consisted of 1/2 cup pineapple, peach, or pear juice (I chose pineapple), 1/2 cup orange juice, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 cup sugar, and 2 eggs.  It was briefly whisked together, then put in the double boiler, boiled until it thickened, taken off the flame and whisked a bit, then left to cool before serving.

What do you do when you don't have a double boiler? This!

As that cooled I prepared the "salad".  The recipe calls for cutting the bananas in half lengthwise, rolling them in crushed peanuts, and serving on a lettuce leaf.  If you'd rather have a more appetizing (disgusting) presentation, you could coat the bananas in the dressing before putting the peanuts on.  No thanks!

I ground the peanuts in a vintage nut grinder, as one does, and then put them on a plate.  The peanuts stuck very well to the middle of the banana but fell off of the outside.  Oh well.

See? It's a salad now because it's served on a lettuce leaf!

After the dressing had cooled, I topped my banana with it and tried this weird concoction.  It's... strange.  There are no bad flavors, the combination is just so strange!  I imagined some kind of bananas-and-peanut butter flavor, but the peanuts kind of faded to the background and all I could taste was bland banana and super citrusy dressing.  But I ate salad!

The Challenge: #7: The Best Thing since Sliced Bread

The Recipe: Woman's Institute Library of Cookery (personal collection)

The Date/Year and Region: Pennsylvania, 1925

How Did You Make It: See above :)

Time to Complete: About 30-45 minutes, the dressing took most of the time

Total Cost: I had to buy large bottles of juice for this project, so I would say about $10 outright, but only $3 was used.

How Successful Was It?: Strange... weird... different... unexpected... My father apparently liked it, since he ate two pieces, while my mother and I (more discerning critics) only ate one each.

How Accurate Is It?: Pretty darn! Most of the items I used would have been available in '25, except the bananas might have been smaller.

Melissa: A half-hearted Challenge 4 and a quadruple-hearted Challenge 5!

Hey everyone!  Long time, no post, it feels!  I definitely slacked off for Challenge #4: "Foreign Foods" and made a very sad, very boring "chocolate soup" that I accidentally cooked an egg in.  I won't bore you with the stories of my pain and agony caused by that "chocolate soup", but I will leave you with this picture (if you look closely, you can see the little bits of egg yolk floating at the top! Yuck!)

So, in order to compensate for my gross failure at Challenge #4, I decided to participate in Challenge #5... four times.

Yes, four.  Not because I was trying to up Jenni Cole Miller and her three awesome pies, but because the occasion actually arose to bake four whole pies.

First, I decided to make a buttered apple pie from Amelia Simmons' 1790's cookbook, "American Cookery", because there is an orchard right by my house with the most delightful apples and nothing is better than a hot apple pie.  The recipe goes like this:

A buttered apple Pie.

Pare, quarter and core tart apples, lay in paste No. 3, cover with the same; bake half an hour, when drawn, gently raise the top crust, add sugar, butter, cinnamon, mace, wine or rose-water q: s:

Instead of using Simmons' crust recipe I just made up some of Hannah Glasse's Puff Paste, which is my go-to pie crust recipe because pie crust is just one of those things that needs to be constant and strong in your life.

I really liked this recipe because it called for adding all of the extras after the initial baking, which made a delightful buttery soupy pie that didn't have mushy apples.  I would definitely recommend it!  Instead of using white wine, we used my friend's homemade hard cider, which was amazing.  It was apple on apple deliciousness.

After putting the crust on, I posed for a picture.  I love my pies :)

After taking the top crust off and filling the pie.  This little number went back in the oven for about ten minutes so everything would melt together into epic deliciousness.

My friends and I then decided that we would take a trip to the local historic village and park to have a picnic all dressed out, which definitely required food.  I began with the intention to make a meat pie, since I had promised I'd make one for my beau for this challenge, but I didn't plan on the other two, they just sort of... happened.  My dear friend Amy is a vegetarian and I wanted to make her an original dish that was originally vegetarian instead of making something with tofu or eggplant instead of meat.  So, back to Hannah Glasse I went.  I found two of her recipes, one for a beef steak pie and one for an onion pye.  Perfect!  Two pies for the challenge, one of which was perfectly vegetarian.

I made the beef steak pie to the recipe except I used stew cuts of beef instead of hunks of steak (for ease of eating) and used beef broth instead of water.  The onion pye was made almost exactly to the recipe (even down to the point of grating my own nutmeg) with the omission of eggs, because I'm not a fan of those :)  All in all it took one medium onion, two Idaho potatoes, and four small apples to make that pie.

But wait!  What were we to eat for dessert?  I had my eye on this recipe for a long time, and was just waiting for an opportunity to make it... Frederick Nutt's Chocolate Tart!

Now I know that the challenge technically said pies, but our modern term for pie does not necessarily mean that there is a top and a bottom crust, so I just went with it.  I followed the recipe completely!  If I was to make it again I would use some sugar and cream of tartar in the meringue to make it more appetizing.  It looked like browned snow on the top of the tart, and since it's mostly for looks anyway, it's probably best to actually make it look good.

All of the pies were served at our historic picnic today, and a get-together with good friends and good food can never go wrong.  All of the pies got top marks!  I'm so proud of my creations.  PIE!!

The Challenge: #5 Pie!

The Recipe: Two from Hannah Glasse's "The Art of Cookery", one from Frederick Nutt's "The Imperial and Royal Cook", and one from Amelia Simmons' "American Cookery"

The Date/Year and Region: Late 18th-early 19th century America

How Did You Make It: Lots and lots of work!

Time to Complete: I would say that each pie took about 2 hours, start to finish.  I made the first pie all in one fell swoop, but for the last three I made the crust the night before and kept it in the fridge so that I didn't go crazy with making insane amounts of crusts and pie at the same time.

Total Cost:  Oh dear, there is no way of knowing.  The first pie might have cost around $10 for all of the ingredients?  For the last three I went to a giant international market called Jungle Jim's (if you are anywhere close to Southwest Ohio, and you are a foodie, seriously go there.  You will thank me later) where I picked up various ingredients for various projects and then stopped by the apple orchard again to get produce for the pies there... I would say each pie probably cost around $10, but who really knows?

How Successful Was It?: All of the pies ended up tasting great!  The apple pie was delightful, I definitely think I will make that recipe again.  The onion pie was extremely oniony!  The onion seeped into the apples and potatoes and really you couldn't taste anything else.  I loved the seasoning, though.  I think I might use that to season the beef steak pie when I make that again.  It also should have baked longer at a lower temperature because I think that was definitely one of those pies where everything should be a little mushy.  The beef steak pie was very simple but excellent, and my beau was so happy to have finally received his promised meat pie!  I think I might season it with something more than pepper and salt next time.  And the chocolate tart, despite the lumpy meringue, was absolutely delicious!  The filling was nice and custardy and chocolatey.  It was the perfect end to a perfect meal.

How Accurate Is It?: With all of my modifications to the original recipes, I think I kept in the spirit of the past.  The things I changed were minor or necessary changes due to what was available to me and my personal tastes.  I don't think I would have liked the dishes as much without my modifications.  I'd rate them pretty high on the accuracy scale, if I do say so myself!

So, there they are, my four dear pies.  All delicious and lovely in their own right!  I can't wait to see what everyone creates for our next challenge!  Happy eating and happy cooking, dear friends!

Melissa: An Independence Day Cake of Three Centuries

For this challenge (This Day in History), I had originally planned on making an early 1800's bride cake for some random event or the other, but after Jenni posted her masterpiece for Challenge 1, I knew that I would be best off finding another challenge.  I was invited to a fun little half-day event at Historic Tunnel Mill just outside of Charlestown, IN for an Independence Day celebration and reenactor party afterwards.  Of course, I needed something to bring to the party!  I wanted to find a dessert appropriate not only for the HFF challenge, but also for the time period of the event (1776) and having something to do with the Fourth of July.

I did a little research and found that Independence Day was declared a national holiday in 1870, almost a century after the country first declared independence.  I began by looking up recipes from between 1869 and 1879, using good old Google Books, and found an interesting Independence Day cake recipe from a ladies' journal of 1869.  I hesitated in using it though, because you don't want to be that person who brings an 1860's cake to a 1770's party, am I right?

I continued searching and came across Martha Washington's Great Cake recipe, and wow that thing is huge--all in all it contains around 25 pounds of ingredients!--but that would have required me candying orange and lemon peel and somehow tracking down currants in my area, plus doing extra research so that I didn't rely simply on the modernized recipe.  Plus, the Great Cake is basically the same as the Bride Cake I was going to make originally, and it would be super heavy in the unairconditioned historic house we were going to be convened in.  So, I looked back at the recipe I found in The Mother's Journal, July, 1869:

See that last line?  I had completely missed it the first go 'round, but it turns out this recipe was (at least originally) sourced from the 1770's after all!  I found the loophole!  Not only could I make a cake that historically was made for Independence Day in the 19th century, it was also period correct for the 18th century!  So, for this challenge I made a 21st century interpretation of a 19th century interpretation of an 18th century cake.  SO COOL RIGHT?!?

Of course, I had to add a little patriotic flair for my Washington Cake

The Challenge: #3 This Day in History

The Recipe: The Mother's Journal, July 1869 via Google Books

The Date/Year and Region: America, 1869

How Did You Make It: With an electric hand mixer I creamed the one pound of butter, then added in the one pound of powdered sugar, mixed in the pound of flour, beat the pound of eggs (8 eggs since modern eggs are heavier now) separate from the butter-flour-sugar mixture, then beat those in.  Once that was smooth, I beat in the gill (4 ounces or 1/2 cup) of brandy, the zest of one lemon, and two teaspoons of nutmeg!  I baked it at 350 until done in the middle, around 45 minutes (but don't count me on that one).  Once it was cooled I topped it off with a simple glaze of lemon juice and powdered sugar.

Time to Complete: 30 minutes prep time and 1 hour baking time.

Total Cost: Around $7 because of the amount of butter and eggs, but everything else was in the pantry already

How Successful Was It?: It was absolutely delightful!  I think the nutmeg was a little less flavorful than it could have been since it had been in our pantry for God knows how long, and it could have stood to be a little more lemony, but all in all it was a hit.  I took both cakes to the party and came back with about 1/8 of one of the cakes still left!

How Accurate Is It?: I'm not sure how early commercialized powdered sugar was available, so it is possible that the cornstarch included in my powdered sugar is not exactly period correct.  I also used pre-ground nutmeg instead of grinding my own nutmeg, and used a hand mixer rather than doing the deed myself.  I would call it about 90% accurate!

The event itself was delightful, a very good time with fun people (one of whom discovered that her homemade orange liqueur tasted amazing on the cake!), and my beau was given both his first 1770's "battle" experience along with going on a reproduction boat for the first time and shooting cannons on said boat for the first time!  We always have a great time at Tunnel Mill, it is such a magical and beautiful place.  

I can't wait to see all of the creations for this challenge!  Happy cooking and eating!

Melissa: A Little Barley, a Lot of Soup

I have to admit everyone, I cheated...

This week was a LONG week.  My sister got married smack dab in the middle of this challenge, plus we had visitors from Germany for the entire week after the wedding, so I did something a little bad... I let Colonial Williamsburg do the guesswork for me.  I made their barley soup recipe based off of Mary Randolph's 1824 recipe from The Virginia Housewife.  It goes a little something like this...

That would make A LOT of soup.  CW's recipe is for a smaller, more manageable portion (but still giant!) of delicious soup-stew-stuff.  I added an extra carrot, left out the onions so that my mother would be able to eat it (she hates onions!), and used beef instead of mutton for cost's sake.  It was an absolutely delicious stew, and definitely a balanced meal in and of itself.

It ain't pretty, but it tastes amazing!

The Challenge: #2 Soups and Sauces

The Recipe: Colonial Williamsburg, via The Virginia Housewife

The Date/Year and Region: 1820's Virginia

How Did You Make It: Started off stewing the beef, barley, and water for a bit, then added the turnips and carrots, then finally added the ham and tomatoes.  If I would make it again I'd probably add the barley in later as it did get a bit mushy (and more barley!)

Time to Complete: Start to finish, about three hours.  Lots of cooking and cutting time.

Total Cost: Around $9 for eight servings of delicious soup!

How Successful Was It?: It was absolutely delightful!  I've never had turnips and I'm wary of tomato in soup, but this was amazing.  I will definitely make it again!

How Accurate Is It?: I did go off of a reproduction recipe instead of the original (but I had access to the original at least!) It would have benefitted from the addition of lamb or mutton instead of beef, and onions would have enhanced it even further.  I did used canned diced tomatoes instead of fresh and pre-packaged diced ham instead of "a few slices" of ham.  I would say it's about 75% there!

I've been amazed at all of the delicious soups and sauces our lovely members are posting on the Facebook group!  Go on over and check them out!  Bon appetit!

Melissa: Baked Apples a la Jane Austen's Emma

"There is nothing she likes so well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome, for I took the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Perry; I happened to meet him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before—I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. " ~ Emma by Jane Austen

Hello everyone!  The Historical Food Fortnightly officially began at the beginning of this month, and it has been so much fun seeing everyone's historical food creations!  For this challenge, Literature, I chose a novel by one of my favorite authors, Jane Austen.  In Emma, Jane Fairfax is known to frequently indulge in baked apples.  In order to recreate what she might have eaten, I went to The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse, published in 1774.  The receipt is vague, as can be expected from a cookbook of this time.

I chose to look at a few modern recipes for baked apples to see what proportions of things should look like.  This recipe suggests two cloves, and I decided to do three because there were no other spices, and this recipe suggests 3/4 cup of liquid and a pat of butter on the top of each apple, which I chose to do on a few.

"Coarse sugar" also proved to be a confusing instruction.  At first I thought to use brown sugar since that was the cheaper sugar available at the time.  However, after talking to a friend, we determined that the "coarse" modifier likely referred to the fact that the cook did not need to grind the sugar finer and could simply leave it coarse.  With this in mind, I decided to do two different variations on the recipe: one with white refined sugar and one with turbinado sugar.  Refined white sugar would be the finer variety available, taken out for special guests, where an unrefined cane sugar like turbinado sugar would be the everyday fare for the family.

Any good apple recipe, of course, begins with great apples!  I'm spoiled as I have an apple orchard nearby.  I chose Idared apples, but I've seen recipes recommend Granny Smiths if you can't make it out to an orchard or farmer's market.

Washed and ready in the pan - didn't have an earthenware one so this will have to do!

Core and scoop out the innards of the apples

My two choices of sugar - standard fare refined white sugar and organic turbinado sugar.

Fill the apples with sugar (yum!)

Cut a little lemon peel...

And place it in the apple! I suppose H.G. might have meant candied lemon peel, but fresh is what I had on hand.

Butter, the perfect accessory: four of the apples received a pat of butter, not in the original recipe, because BUTTER!

Three cloves topped off each apple

Throw in "special sauce"...

And bake at 375 for one hour!  They don't look great, but they taste amazing!

The Challenge: #1 Literature

The Recipe: Baked Apples in Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery

The Date/Year and Region: 1774, England, in order to represent 1810's England

Time to Complete: About 15 minutes of prep and 1 hour of baking!

Total Cost: I bought a lot of apples for other projects as well, so I maybe used $3 worth in this.  The fancy sugar cost $5 and the cloves were about $2, everything else was already in the kitchen.  All in all, around $10.

How Successful Was It?: Amazing!!! I doubted Ms. Glasse's original recipe because I couldn't imagine just throwing sugar, cloves and lemon peel into an apple would result in any edible thing, but boy was I wrong.  The two experiments I did (one set with all original ingredients plus butter, and one set with sugar, cloves, and butter but no lemon peel) did not turn out as well as the original recipe.  If I were to make this again, I'd like to just use white sugar instead of the turbinado sugar since the white sugar melted into a delicious appley clovey lemony sugar soup in the middle of each baked apple, which was absolutely delightful!

How Accurate Is It?: I'm not sure what the processes are for refining sugar nowadays, but I would guess my modern white sugar is not a period perfect option.  The apple variety I used was introduced in 1930, however it can't be too different from the baking apples available at the time.  I could have potentially used candied lemon peel instead of fresh lemon peel, but I couldn't tell the difference.  As mentioned before, I added butter to a few of the apples.  All in all, it was a delightful experiment!

I can't wait to see what all of you have been cooking up!  Thank you all for your support in this little project - Betsy and I are just floored that anyone else is crazy enough to do this!  Good cooking and Bon Appetit!