Betsy Challenge 19: Something Borrowed, Something Blue

I knew that blue foods would be tricky even when we were planning the challenges last summer. Blue foods just aren't really plentiful. The obvious one - blueberries - didn't become popular in recipes until well after my chosen time period (1840s-1860s). So I decided to stretch myself into a new era, and I even had a book I was interested in using.

Fannie Farmer is a legendary chef in American cookery. Her recipe book, The Boston Cooking-School Book, completely revolutionized the way cookbooks were written. Prior to its publication, most cookbooks relied on cooks' knowledge of arbitrary measurements. We're familiar with these at the Historical Food Fortnightly - "butter the size of an egg", and so forth. Fannie Farmer's cookbook promoted a scientific approach to cooking and standardized these measurements into the ones we know today - cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons. She also relied on volume rather than weight. Whether or not this was an improvement, and what it did to American cooking, is up for debate (and if you're interested on how the post-Fannie Farmer home economics movement changed women's roles and domesticity, I highly recommend you check out Made From Scratch by Jean Zimmerman). However, it means that the recipe does not require any of the fudging or translating that older recipes do!

I also borrowed my mom's kitchen to make this, yet again.

The Challenge: Something Borrowed, Something Blue

The Recipe: Steamed Blueberry Pudding, from The Boston Cooking-School Book

The Date/Year and Region: 1912 (Revised Edition), Boston

How Did You Make It: I rubbed the butter into the dry ingredients with my fingertips (which is a technique I learned while learning to make soda bread - it's similar to using a pastry cutter or running it through a food processor, but ends up with a lighter finish). Then I added the milk and the blueberries dredged in flour, put it in the steamer, and put that in a stock pot with water to steam for an hour and a half. Took it out, got it out of the mold, and ate it - couldn't have been easier! And my small mold was a perfect size.

Time To Complete: About an hour and 45 minutes

Total Cost: Less than $5

How Successful Was It?: It's pretty tasty! I didn't have time to make the sauce that should have gone with it, but we had whipped cream on it and that was a nice addition. With no sugar added to it, it's a little bland on its own. I was a little concerned about the taste with so much baking powder added to it, but it turned out like a big biscuit with juicy blueberries in it. The family taste-tested it and gave it two thumbs up.

How Accurate Is It?: No heirloom ingredients but otherwise I followed the recipe to the letter.

Have some pictures!

Rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients

Blueberries are surely the prettiest fruit...

Put into the mold for steaming...bon voyage, buddy!

The finished product! It got a little stuck to the pan but it tasted lovely!

Betsy Challenge 17: Revolutionary Foods

I've been a bit absent lately, due to being under the weather. That all culminated in a diagnosis of a sinus infection this week (ew). But, I had plans for the Historical Food Fortnightly, and I was going to follow through on them!

For this fortnight's challenge, I planned on doing Washington Cake, from Elizabeth Hall's Practical American  Cookery. There was no explanation about the connection between Washington and the cake, but George Washington was the hero of the American Revolution so it hit the challenge nicely. It also called for saleratus, which is the mid-19th century name for potassium bicarbonate, a leavening agent that was new to cooks in the 1850s. It was quickly supplanted by its more effective, less disgusting-tasting cousin, sodium bicarbonate, which we know as baking soda, and I planned to use that as a revolutionary leavener.

Here's the recipe:

If you're like me, you may read it a couple times before realizing something. There's no flour in this cake. Not even a little bit. That should have given me some pause, but I was flying high on recent successes and feeling really confident about following the recipe with a wing a prayer.

Spoiler alert: I failed utterly.

The Challenge: Revolutionary Foods

The Recipe: Washington Cake, from Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy by Elizabeth M. Hall.

The Date/Year and Region: 1860, United States

How Did You Make It?: First, I followed the directions to the letter (after making a couple small adjustments by cutting the recipe in half and using two eggs instead of three). I beat the eggs until they were very light, added the other ingredients, and wound up with a bowl of goop. It was half congealed butter, half gross liquid. I could tell immediately that it wasn't going to happen.

So I mixed it again. This time, I creamed the sugar and butter together, before adding the liquids, and then folding in the eggs. It was slightly more successful, but still not great, and even before adding the baking soda I was dubious. Still and all, I thought I'd give it a go. I put some of the goop into muffin tins and put it in the oven.

After ten minutes, I had bubbling goup that wasn't getting cooked anywhere fast. It reminded me a great deal of the German puffs - buttery eggy grossness. I didn't even take any pictures. It wasn't worth the effort.

Time To Complete: Half an hour

Total Cost: Too much, for failure. The eggs and butter both weren't super cheap.

How Successful Was It?: Ha. Hahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Seriously though, this may indeed be a case of no one having ever tested the recipe. Somewhere out there, there may be some errata from Elizabeth Hall saying "Whoops, there should be some flour in there." With flour, it's very close to a sponge cake - so it may be worth messing with.

How Accurate Is It?: Modern ingredients, modern stove, modern tools (include an electric mixer for beating the eggs), and I switched out the postassium bicarbonate for sodium bicarbonate.

For all that it failed, I'm still pleased. I've learned so much from doing these challenges, and become so much braver and more willing to try new things - it's just another learning moment!

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

Betsy: German Puffs, or A Not-So-Miserable Failure

Ladies and Gents, we have our first failure. And I'm utterly delighted by it.

For this challenge, I was very torn about what I wanted to make. I had a big case of the undecideds. Couldn't find a recipe that really stuck with me. Until I stumbled upon German puffs from Directions for Cookery by everybody's favorite busybody, Eliza Leslie.

I found other recipes for German puffs in my other period cookery books on Google books, but Miss Leslie's directions seemed the most promising and had the most information about amounts of ingredients. As I have done with pretty much every challenge so far, I halved the recipe.

Here I should mention that I have never taken a cooking class - not even a home ec course in school. The principles and science of cooking elude me. I gleefully flail my way through baking, learning more from trial and error than I do from reading a recipe. I also happen to have a good friend, Sarah, who is a food scientist and is only a phone call away. She'll feature later in the story.

First things first, I melted the butter into the milk. I used 2% for "rich milk" (and also because that's what I had on hand).

Next, I beat the eggs and mixed them into the milk, alternating with flour. This created a rich, eggy batter. It reminded me of a very thin pancake batter, almost crepe-like but more eggy. The cinnamon and nutmeg looked really pretty swirled in the batter.

Now, I have plenty of teacups, but I didn't want to test whether or not they were oven safe. So I went with some custard cups, figuring that was probably a good approximation.Realizing that I'd never made anything like this before, I sent one lone scout in on his own, at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Bon voyage, little buddy!

He never even set up. I didn't even take a picture of him because he was so shameful. This is when the phone call to Sarah occurred. She confirmed my thought of bumping the temperature up to 425. I would have gone straight to 450, but they are so small I was worried about burning. I popped another test cup in, and left him in for 20 minutes.

This was slightly more successful! You can see the top has developed a really pretty, custard-y skin and a lovely color, and puffed up quite nicely. Unfortunately, it was still really goopy. At this point, I started to wonder if there wasn't too much liquid in the mix, and that was prevented from setting.

Now that's more like it!

So then I put all four of the rest of the cups in. These looked even worse coming out of the oven, and fell almost immediately, but were probably the most successful in the end - the ones in the frosted glass cups could be turned out and put on a plate, like Miss Leslie directed, and I even tried a taste of them - yummy, but the texture was kind of funny. Goopy. Very goopy.

Pretty, but...goopy.

The Challenge: "Foreign"Foods 

The Recipe: Eliza Leslie, Directions for Cookery 

The Date/Year and Region: 1840/United States

How Did You Make It: See above

Time to Complete: An hour, but probably less for someone more successful 

Total Cost: Negligible. Probably about $4 and would make at least two dozen with the halved recipe.

How Successful Was It?: "Successful" is so subjective. Was it something I'd serve to someone else? Probably not. It's best I didn't set up a taste-tester. But we learn more from our failures than from our successes, and I learned a lot through this process, and if I had to fall flat on my face with something, this was a relatively inexpensive failure. I'm rather delighted with the whole trial-and-error process! Melissa, Sarah and others can attest to the fact that I was gleeful through the whole thing.
 

I have some theories as to why this didn't set up: it's possible I should have used whole milk instead of 2%, and it's also possible that something wonky happened when I halved the recipe. It's also entirely possible that they should have been baked at 450. However, I think the most likely culprit is that there were too many eggs in the recipe. I used four, and perhaps they were too large and there was too much liquid for them to really set up. I'm definitely entertaining suggestions for what to do next time (because I definitely WILL make it again) so if you're some sort of custard/dumpling genius, please do chime in with your thoughts in the comments. 

How Accurate Is It?: Woefully accurate; except, as always, I use an electric oven and stove.

And don't worry, Gentle Reader: this story has a happy ending. The oven was already heated up, and I had some homemade pizza dough on hand, so I made myself a homemade pizza. And that was quite victorious.

Nom nom nom

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!

Betsy: Plum Puffs from Anne of Avonlea

The Challenge: On the Facebook page, I gave a teaser about what I was cooking for the first challenge. It's something from an era I've never interpreted (and, frankly, never want to interpret), and from a book that first inspired my love of history. The book is Anne of Avonlea, the era is the late 19th century, and the recipe is plum puffs!

The Anne series of books made me fall in love with history. I watched the miniseries again and again, and read the books as many times as I could take them out from the library, enamored of the quaint-yet-elegant country life of Anne, Diana and their friends. I wanted to go to a one-room schoolhouse, play on Barry's Pond (excuse me, the Lake of Shining Waters), and wear a dress with puffed sleeves. Anne, the awkward and "homely" heroine who gets herself into so many scrapes with so many good intentions, also appealed to little me, and still has through all these years. So, when we set out a literary challenge, I knew for sure that I was going to pick an Anne recipe.

The plum puffs came from Anne of Avonlea. In the book, Anne has become a teacher with many ideas about what a teacher should do - including never hitting a child. Unfortunately, she meets her Waterloo in Anthony Pye, and gives him a whipping. Horrified with herself, she goes home for a good cry, which is how Marilla finds her.

"I can't help it. I want everybody to love me and it hurts me so when anybody doesn't. And Anthony never will now. Oh, I just made an idiot of myself today, Marilla. I'll tell you the whole story."

Marilla listened to the whole story, and if she smiled at certain parts of it Anne never knew. When the tale was ended she said briskly, "Well, never mind. This day's done and there's a new one coming tomorrow, with no mistakes in it yet, as you used to say yourself. Just come downstairs and have your supper. You'll see if a good cup of tea and those plum puffs I made today won't hearten you up."

"Plum puffs won't minister to a mind diseased," said Anne disconsolately; but Marilla thought it a good sign that she had recovered sufficiently to adapt a quotation.

Oh Anne. How can you not love her?  Who hasn't been there?

The Recipe:  As chance would have it, I came across a recipe for "Puffs" in The Good Housekeeper by Sarah Josepha Hale from 1841. Here's what she says:

Roll out puff paste nearly a quarter of an inch thick and, with a small saucer, or tin cutter of that size, cut it into round pieces; place upon one side raspberry or strawberry jam, or any other sort of preserved fruit, or stewed apples; wet the edges, fold over the other side, and press it round with the finger and thumb.

Simple concept! Puff pastry with fruit filling. There's even a recipe for puff pastry in the book, and it looked remarkably similar to modern puff pastry recipes. To be sure, I double-checked in The White House Cookbook, and their recipe is very similar as well.

The Date/Year and Region: There are several different theories out there about the timeline of the Anne stories. Most place the Anne of Avonlea scenes somewhere in the 1880s/1890s. So I stuck with that as a general era. Given Marilla's old-school-housekeeper personality, I felt comfortable reaching farther back to the mid-19th century for a recipe that she might have learned as a young woman, or even as a child from her own mother. The Good Housekeeper dates to 1841. The White House Cookbook dates to 1887. Both cookbooks are American.

How Did You Make It: I won't bore you with the details of making the puff pastry, except to note that it wasn't as hard as I feared. Following explicit directions was important, and chilling the dough between turns was very helpful. Since Anne wakes up the next day to a blanket of snow on the ground, I felt confident that Marilla probably chilled the dough on the porch as well.

For the filling, I decided to stew some fresh plums. I got some really ripe, juicy plums, peeled them, stoned them, and put them in a pan with a bit of water and some sugar, intending to thicken it up. I waited. And waited. And waited some more. I put some corn starch in and boiled it. And waited. And still it was runny. But, the plum pieces themselves, though nearly decimated from the process, were sweet and tart and juicy. So, I salvaged what I could.

I followed the recipe's directions: cut out circles, put a blob of filling in them, wetted the corners and folded them over. But, the filling was so runny, it was hard to get them to behave. So, they ended up a little more open that I would have liked - I was hoping for something that looked like a little fruit pie.

It doesn't matter though, because they were DELICIOUS. I baked them at 400 degrees for 10 minutes - that wasn't long enough, so I gave them another five minutes, at which point the bottoms were golden brown. The dough turned out flaky and light (a little salty, because I used salted butter without realizing, but oh well). The filling was everything a good fruit filling should be (except that it was runny). They got a little soft in between baking and serving (it was a warm, humid weekend) but they were still very good.

Time to Complete: FOREVER. At least that's what it seemed like. The dough took the longest because of the amount of chilling required between turns. In between each turn of the dough I worked on the filling, so it really took about three or four hours. Easily doable of an evening or on a weekend afternoon, but make sure you don't have to go anywhere suddenly, and plan on doing housework in between turns. You know that's what Marilla did.

Total Cost: Negligible. The pastry was flour and water to make a paste dough, plus a half a pound of butter. The plums were under $5. Mrs. Lynde would be proud of my frugality.

How Successful Was It?: They disappeared at the picnic to which I brought them, those who ate them gave rave reviews (even when asked "But seriously...") and those who did not get to try one were disappointed.

How Accurate Is It?: I live in the wasteland known as Central Minnesota. There are no green grocers or fruit markets, and plums are not easily grown here. So, I made do with what was available at my local supermarket, and have no idea if they are at all similar to 19th century plums. I also used my Kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook attachment to mix the dough, but did end up working it by hand at the end to get it uniform.

 Pictures! As stated on my own blog, you will always get terrible pictures from me. Still not sorry.

The finished product, with tea (naturally)

Bottom right, mid-devouring, on the picnic table. Courtesy of my dear friend Karen!

A note: Just before I started working on this, I was sent a link to another blogger who has done plum puffs from Anne of Avonlea. I was unaware of her efforts before I began this process. I still haven't even looked at her post, or her results, for fear of skewing my own research and results. I'm looking forward to comparing our notes, now that I'm done!

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!