Day Seven - Friday - Dinner

It's Fish Friday!  In the Victorian era, many people ate fish on a Friday for religious reasons.  For others, it was simply more affordable to eat seafood than it was to eat meat.

Dinner:  Mussels cooked in Cider;  Bread;  Fried Fish;  Fried Potatoes;  Peas and Beans.

For the first course of Friday night's dinner, I cooked mussels.  I actually couldn't find a Victorian-England recipe for these, although they were definitely eaten during the period.  Neither Mrs Beeton or Eliza Acton mention them (perhaps they were too working-class an ingredient for these ladies to bother themselves with?  Who knows.)  At any rate, for this one occasion I decided to fall back on using a modern recipe, but making sure that all the ingredients were commonly available to the average Victorian household.  This recipe has the mussels being steamed in apple cider, with bacon, onion, and thyme.

Now I remember why I don't generally cook mussels.  

Don't get me wrong - these were delicious!  I would absolutely order this from a menu in a restaurant.  It's just that it takes so long to scrub the little buggers before cooking them, and by the time you throw out all the dead ones, I find that they suddenly aren't as economical as they first appeared.  Maybe that was just bad luck on this occasion.

Anyway, they were very tasty - and I was very pleased to find that Daughter ate them without any fuss (she had never tried a mussel before, and was very suspicious of the look of them).  She concluded that they weren't that exciting, but they were okay provided she didn't have to look at them too much.

I served a nice loaf of bread alongside the mussels.

For our second course, I fried the fillets of cod that I had frozen on Wednesday.

I was interested to see that Eliza Acton advised frying the fish just as I normally do anyway:  simply by dusting the fish with seasoned flour, and frying it in oil (or lard, which I do not normally use).  Mrs Beeton's instructions involve crumb-coating the fish.  There is no batter in sight.

Anyway, I was quite pleased with this, as simply flouring the fish before frying it is my favourite way.

I served the fish with sides of fried potatoes, boiled peas, and boiled beans.

I followed Eliza Acton's instructions on all of these (apart from the bit about removing the peas and beans from the packets in my freezer, that is).  The potatoes were cooked in lard, and were yummy, although still not quite as crispy as I thought they might be.

The fish was very good indeed, and Husband and Daughter were much more comfortable with it in this form than they were with Wednesday's more theatrical presentation.

And so our last full day in Victorian England ended, with a dessert of Victoria Sandwiches, leftover from tea time.  Just one more meal remains of our adventure, being Saturday's breakfast. 

Day Seven - Friday - Breakfast, Lunch & Tea

The beginning of our last full day in Victorian England!

Breakfast:  Porridge;  Currant Buns.

I had some porridge already made from yesterday, so we had a little of that each, plus the last of the buns.

Lunch:  Leftover Beef-steak Pudding  /  Ham and Cheese Sandwiches.

I made the sandwiches for Husband and Daughter, but thoroughly enjoyed more of the beef-steak pudding myself.  

It may not look fantastic in the photos, but I thought it was super yummy.  I was pleased to discover that the pastry held up okay to being refrigerated and then zapped in the microwave, too.  (Obviously it wasn't quite as good as when it was first cooked, but it didn't really go soggy either).

Tea:  Victoria Sandwiches.

A Victoria Sponge cake is actually the very first thing we decided we definitely wanted to include as part of our Victorian week.  So when we were planning our menu, I went looking for an old recipe for a "Victoria Sponge Cake".  And found nothing.  That can't be right, I thought.  

But it turns out, the big round "Victoria Sponge Cake" of today, laden with jam and lashings of cream (and, sometimes, fresh strawberries), really doesn't seem to have been a thing in the Victorian era.  As far as I can tell, it seems to have evolved from this recipe - the Victoria Sandwich.

Now, it is essentially the same cake.  And the funny thing is, the old recipes are right - this isn't a sponge cake at all, really.  Whether you are using Mrs Beeton's recipe or Mary Berry's, the ingredients are more or less the same:  equal weights of egg, butter, sugar, and flour, (with sometimes a little milk added).  

Which means that actually, it's a pound cake.

There are just a few differences between this and a modern recipe:  firstly, no baking powder or bicarb soda were included (the rise coming purely from the amount of air one can beat into the eggs).  Baking powder wasn't yet available in the 1850s, so fair enough, although baking soda was.  Apparently noone had yet thought to pop some into this cake though.  

Secondly, the shape:  this was not baked in a round tin and served as a large cake, but was always baked in a large square or rectangular tin, and cut into rectangular fingers.  

And thirdly, I could find no references at all to serving this with cream - it was simply sandwiched together with jam, and dusted with powdered sugar.

Sorry if I'm boring you here;  I just found all this fascinating - nearly everything I thought I knew about this cake was wrong!

Anyway, once it was baked, cooled, spread with strawberry jam, sandwiched together, and dusted with icing sugar, I followed Mrs Beeton's very specific serving instructions:  

"... cut it into long finger-pieces; pile them in crossbars on a glass dish, and serve."

Why it matters that the dish is glass is anyone's guess - maybe she thought it looked fancy?

This cake tasted exactly as I expected it to - it was very nice, although not quite as light and fluffy as a modern version would be (due to the lack of baking powder).

We all enjoyed it, and there is definitely something lovely about eating this whilst drinking tea from pretty china teacups!

Day Six - Thursday - Dinner

Even before we had Tea on Thursday, I already had dinner on the go, the reason being that it was going to take a long time to cook.  So whilst I had a pretty busy afternoon, there wasn't much last-minute dinner prep - as long as all went well, of course...

I had decided to make a beef-steak pudding.  I was excited to try this, as it is something very different and intriguing for me - I couldn't see how it would work, and there really isn't any way to tell whether it has worked until you turn it out.  Suspense!

Dinner:  Beef-Steak Pudding a la Dickens;  Boiled Cabbage;  Buttered Carrots.

It worked!  - more or less.  This pudding is from Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery.  The reason for the somewhat literary title is because the pudding recipe is inspired by a scene from Dickens' novel, Martin Chuzzlewit.  In it, a character named Ruth Pinch makes such a beef-steak pudding for herself and her brother.  Dickens goes into some detail as to the ingredients of the pudding:

“First, she tripped downstairs into the kitchen for the flour, then for the pie-board, then for the eggs, then for the butter, then for a jug of water, then for the rolling-pin, then for a pudding-basin, then for the pepper, then for the salt; making a separate journey for everything, and laughing every time she started off afresh.”

Acton's recipe begins with a suet-based pudding, then gives Ruth Pinch's version as an alternative:

"SMALL BEEF-STEAK PUDDING.*

Make into a very firm, smooth paste, one pound of flour, six ounces of beef-suet, finely minced, half a teaspoonful of salt, and half a pint of cold water. Line with this, a basin which holds a pint and a half. Season a pound of tender steak, free from bone and skin, with half an ounce of salt, and half a teaspoonful of pepper well mixed together; lay it in the crust, pour in a quarter-pint of water, roll out the cover, close the pudding carefully, tie a floured cloth over, and boil it three hours and a half. 

Flour, 1 lb.; suet, 6 ozs.; salt, ½ teaspoonful; water, 
½ pint; rump-steak, 1 lb.; salt, ½ oz.; pepper ½ teaspoonful; water, ¼ pint: 3½ hours.

* To make Ruth Pinch’s celebrated pudding (known also as beef-steak pudding à la Dickens), substi­tute six ounces of butter for the suet in this receipt, and moisten the paste with the well-beaten yolks of four eggs, or with three whole ones, mixed with a little water; butter the basin very thickly before the crust is laid in, as the pudding is to be turned out of it for table. In all else proceed exactly as above."

The whole concept of this is so weird to me - we are essentially making pastry, pouring water into it, and then steaming it.  I honestly don't get how it isn't just a soggy mess?!  And in all honesty, full disclosure:  when I finally took this pudding out of the water and removed the cloth, the top "crust" (which obviously becomes the base when you turn it out) kind of did look like a soggy mess, with a certain amount of liquid visible on top.  So either it must have sprung a leak somewhere, or some of the steaming water gathered on the cloth and dripped in (or both)?  Anyway, I panicked a bit and wasn't sure what to do about it, so I decided to pop it in the oven for a little while, to try to dry the top out a bit.  It worked, and turned out nicely (although it did then develop a sizeable crack, as shown in the photo above).  Anyway, she's not the prettiest little pudding, but for a first try I was quite pleased with how it had turned out.  

In this picture, you can see that the pastry is quite nicely cooked, and not super soggy.  I was actually very surprised at how tasty this was.  I loved it.  Husband liked the filling, but didn't like the pastry so much.  Daughter enjoyed the pastry, but was less keen on the filling.  I actually could understand Husband's position on this, as it was a lot of pastry - I didn't eat all of mine either.  It's not like you can roll it out thinly as you would for a pie;  I guess it needs to be fairly sturdy.  And I understood Daughter's view as well, simply because she is not a huge fan of beef.  Really she has been quite a good sport about how much of it we have had this week.

Besides, I wasn't complaining, as it meant I would get the leftovers the next day.  :)

I made a last-minute decision to bake a simple cake for dessert tonight, and chose Mrs Beeton's "Honey Cake" for the purpose.  The recipe is as follows:

INGREDIENTS.-- ½ breakfast-cupful of sugar, 1 breakfast-cupful of rich sour cream, 2 breakfast-cupfuls of flour, ½ teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, honey to taste.

 

Mode.-- Mix the sugar and cream together; dredge in the flour, with as much honey as will flavour the mixture nicely; stir it well, that all the ingredients may be thoroughly mixed; add the carbonate of soda, and beat the cake well for another 5 minutes; put it into a buttered tin, bake it from ½ to ¾ hour, and let it be eaten warm. 

Once again, there were a few cryptic elements to this recipe, but once I figured out what a breakfast-cup was, I halved the recipe, mixed it, and baked it in a small loaf tin. 

It rose nicely, but did get a bit dark right on the top, so possibly the oven was just a mite too hot.

This cake was pleasant, but fairly unremarkable.  It was not overly sweet;  I think if anything I would add a bit more honey if I was to make it again.

It had quite a nice crumb though - I liked the texture of this one better than Tuesday's Seed-Cake, but the latter probably had a more interesting flavour.  As I said, the flavour of this one might have been improved by increasing the amount of honey in it.

Still, eaten warm from the oven, and accompanied by a nice cup of tea, it was quite an acceptable end to our day.

Day Six - Thursday - Breakfast, Lunch & Tea

A fairly short post today - I shall write about Thursday's dinner in my next post, but will cover the daylight hours here...

Breakfast:  Porridge with Baked Pears

Yes, I am shamelessly reusing the photo from Monday.  I made new porridge for Thursday morning's breakfast, but we did use up the last of the pears that were baked on the weekend.

Lunch:  Ham, Cheese & Watercress Sandwiches

I also added mustard for those who wanted it.  Simple, but a nice portable lunch (Husband and Daughter were both out of the house at lunch time on this day).  

After I ate my lunch, I turned my attention to making something for tea, as I knew it would take a few hours for the dough to prove.

Tea:  Currant Buns

This is another recipe from Mrs Beeton.  It is actually entitled "Plain Buns", but she notes that "These buns may be varied by adding a few currants, candied peel, or caraway seeds to the other ingredients".  So I decided to add "a few" currants.

Honestly, these looked nice, and the dough did work properly, but they were indeed quite plain, even with the currants.  Maybe I should have added more?  Or some candied peel as well?  At any rate, whilst these were fine, I don't think they were worth the time and effort it takes to make them.  I won't be bothering with these again, and I am quite pleased that I divided the recipe by three (as written, it makes eighteen buns, so we do have three left over - I figured we could have them with breakfast the next day).

Thank you for your patience, anyone who is still reading this!  I shall post about Thursday's dinner tomorrow, but for now, good night.

Day Five - Wednesday

Day Five!  Another simple breakfast to start today, and not much real cooking until dinner time...

Breakfast:  Bread and Jam;  Cheese;  Dried Fruit

It was a bit odd for us eating cheese with our breakfast, but it wouldn't have been odd then (and indeed probably wouldn't be still, for many people).

Lunch:  Leftover vegetables and sausages from Tuesday night's dinner.  

Eating leftovers for lunch the next day is quite a normal thing for us, and it would have been for the Victorians too.  It would not have been unusual for them to have leftover dinner foods as part of breakfast in fact, but I didn't think my family was ready for stewed cabbage for breakfast!

Tea:  Leftover Seed-Cake;  Strawberries

Dinner:  Cod's Head and Shoulders with Cream Sauce;  Beef Fritters;  Potato Salad;  Beetroot.

It's a bit like something out of a horror movie, isn't it?  I had to put parsley over its eyes so that Daughter wouldn't freak out.  LOL

After breakfast this morning, I had headed off to the fish market to buy a fish.  Seafood was widely available and fairly cheap in Victorian England, and quite a variety was enjoyed.  The most popular white-fleshed fish were cod and haddock, but even the working classes were able to obtain seafood such as herring, sprats, eels, oysters, mussels, cockles, and whelks.

I found a nice whole Rankin Cod, which the people at the fish market gutted and cleaned for me.  Once I got it home, I set about cutting it up.  I am not used to buying whole fish, so this was a bit of an adventure.  Luckily, my father has been a keen amateur fisherman for most of his life, so I have seen filleting etc done many times.  First I removed the front of the fish, a little way back from the head (so it included the wings), kept this piece whole and popped it into the fridge.  Next, I filleted what was left, removed the skin and small bones from the fillets, and froze them for use later in the week.

When it was time to make dinner, I followed Eliza Acton's instructions for boiling the "head and shoulders" of the cod.  This seems to have been a very popular method of cooking fish;  both Miss Acton and Mrs Beeton give very matter-of-fact instructions on this, before even mentioning other methods of cooking.  In fact, it is more like poaching, as the instructions are very clear that the cooking be done "very gently".

I followed Eliza's instructions on cooking time etc, and when the fish came out of the water, it was perfectly cooked, and absolutely beautiful.  I also made Acton's "Cream Sauce For Fish", to go with it.

Husband and Daughter found this way of serving the fish to be challenging.  They were unsure of how to tackle it, and concerned about getting bones.  I therefore served the morsels of fish onto their plates for them.  They agreed that it was tender and tasty though.

The interesting thing about cooking this, is that you actually end up eating some of the best parts of the fish - the wings and the cheeks.  Often these parts are never seen by people who favour the fillets (which, I freely admit, is us usually, just out of convenience).  It does require a bit more work, but they really are lovely.

The sauce was rich and tasty, without overpowering the flavour of the fish.

For our vegetables tonight, I served leftover beetroot from Tuesday night, and also made Mrs Beeton's Potato Salad.  

This was basically boiled potatoes, sliced after cooking, tossed in vinegar and "salad oil" (which is apparently what the English called olive oil at this time) with a little parsley.  It was an excellent accompaniment to the fish.

As only a small serving of fish is obtained from the head and shoulders of a cod this size, I decided to use up the last of Sunday's roast beef by making Mrs Beeton's Beef Fritters.  This does what it says on the tin - it is essentially slices of cold roast beef, dipped in a batter, and fried in lard or dripping.  They were crispy and tasty, and I can feel very successful about not having wasted any of our roast meat!

For dessert tonight, I made Mrs Beeton's "Apple Fritters".

This had a separate batter made for it, as the ingredients and method were both different from that used for the beef.  Next, I peeled the apples, sliced them thickly, and punched the core of each slice out with a cutter.

Then I dipped each slice in the batter, dropped it into boiling lard. and cooked it until it was "a nice brown".  The fritters were then "strewn" with sugar, and served.

Oh, wow.  These were amazing.  They actually weren't crispy like I thought they would be, but the batter took on an almost doughnut-like flavour and texture, and the apple was cooked, but still retained some texture (it wasn't just apple mush).

I cut three apples up for this, and we ate the lot.  I will definitely be making them again!