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: 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!

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