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!

Day Four - Tuesday

On the fourth day of our Victorian food adventure, we had a very simple breakfast.

Breakfast:  Bread and jam;  Apples.

I would have loved some butter on my bread as well, but as it was quite an expensive ingredient in the Victorian era, and as we were already using so much butter elsewhere, I decided (as my imaginary Victorian-era counterpart would have done) to do without it.

Lunch:  Currie / Roast beef & watercress sandwich.

Husband and Daughter ate the leftover curry from the night before.  I had the sandwich.  I was pleased to find watercress at my local supermarket, as this was a very common (and very cheap) source of nutrition for people in Victorian England.  Ironically of course, here and now it is somewhat difficult to find and relatively expensive (the supermarket appears to consider it a herb).  I had never tried it before this week, but it is very nice - quite peppery, like rocket is - and looks very pretty on the plate.  I shall look out for it in future.

Tea:  A Very Good Seed-Cake

One often reads of people eating seed-cake in books.  I have often wondered what it is like, what sort of seeds were used, etc.  Now seemed a good time to find out!  It turns out that the seeds in question are caraway seeds, which luckily I was able to find (although not at the supermarket).  I decided on Mrs Beeton's recipe for "A Very Good Seed-Cake" (as opposed to her "Common Seed-Cake", which calls for dripping, and "dough sent in from the baker's".  Hmm.).  Here is the recipe (or receipt, as they said at the time):  

INGREDIENTS.-- 1 lb. of butter, 6 eggs, ¾ lb. of sifted sugar, pounded mace and grated nutmeg to taste, 1 lb. of flour, ¾ oz. of caraway seeds, 1 wineglassful of brandy.  

Mode.-- Beat the butter to a cream; dredge in the flour; add the sugar, mace, nutmeg, and caraway seeds, and mix these ingredients well together. Whisk the eggs, stir to them the brandy, and beat the cake again for 10 minutes. Put it into a tin lined with buttered paper, and bake it from 1-½ to 2 hours.

After the usual flurry of mathematical calculations, imperial-to-metric conversions, and finding out what on earth a "wineglassful" might have been in the 1800s, I was able to begin.  I made half this quantity, and it fitted very nicely into a loaf tin.

This was an interesting one.  I rather liked the flavour, and didn't really mind the seeds.  Husband found "all the little seeds" super annoying, and the flavour too subtle.  Daughter and I both found the texture of the cake itself a bit odd (she described it as "spongy", which seems about right.).  I suspected the texture is because the mixture is beaten for so long with the flour in it - quite a no-no for most modern cakes, as it develops the gluten too much.  Incidentally, I used my benchtop mixer for this, so I didn't beat it for the full ten minutes, but for two (Mrs B would have done it by hand, so adjustments must be made).

Dinner:  Stewed Red Cabbage with Sausages;  Boiled Beetroot;  Boiled Turnip.

Here is Mrs Beeton's receipt for "Stewed Red Cabbage":

INGREDIENTS.—1 red cabbage, a small slice of ham, ½ oz. of fresh butter, 1 pint of weak stock or broth, 1 gill of vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, 1 tablespoonful of pounded sugar. 

Mode.—Cut the cabbage into very thin slices, put it into a stewpan, with the ham cut in dice, the butter, ½ pint of stock, and the vinegar; cover the pan closely, and let it stew for 1 hour. When it is very tender, add the remainder of the stock, a seasoning of salt and pepper, and the pounded sugar; mix all well together, stir over the fire until nearly all the liquor is dried away, and serve. Fried sausages are usually sent to table with this dish: they should be laid round and on the cabbage, as a garnish.

Again, I halved this recipe - I generally do with these recipes, as often the quantities are enormous, considering I am only cooking for three people.  For the sausages, I used pork chipolatas.

This was very tasty.  The cabbage had quite a tang from the vinegar, but also a rich texture from the butter, and plenty of flavour, thanks to the ham and the stock.

The beetroot was served with melted butter, as per Eliza Acton's instructions, and the turnip was served plain (we were quite keen to find out what it tasted like on its own, as its flavour had sort of disappeared in Sunday's soup).  Husband was very keen on the turnip, as it turns out.

For dessert, we ate the remainder of the leftover raspberry jelly.

Day Three - Monday

Up bright and early on Monday morning, as Husband and Daughter both had places to be.  

Breakfast:  Porridge with leftover Baked Pears

The good thing about steel cut oats is that they reheat more nicely than rolled oats, so I was able to make a big batch of porridge on Sunday morning, and just reheated what was left for Monday's breakfast.

The pears were a nice addition, making this porridge a little sweeter than Sunday's.

Lunch:  Sandwiches

Husband and I both had leftover roast beef, cheese, watercress, and horseradish cream in our sandwiches.  Daughter had ham, cheese and watercress.  Horseradish was a popular accompaniment to roast beef in the Victorian era, just as it is now, but they would have made their own sauce from fresh horseradish.  I wasn't able to find any fresh, so we made do with commercial horseradish cream - yum.

Tea:  Dried fruit;  Walnuts;  Apples.

I didn't bake anything for tea this time.  As we had quite a few desserts the previous day, I thought we could do with a healthy tea-time snack.

Dinner:  Mr Arnott's Currie;  Rice.

The only real bit of cooking I did today!

I must admit I found it a little surprising how many "Currie" recipes were included in cookery books of the day, but actually I shouldn't have.  The British government had taken over direct rule of India in 1857 after all, and later on (in 1877), Queen Victoria was declared "Empress of India".  The Queen herself was apparently quite fond of curry.

In Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery there exist quite a number of curry recipes, with the ubiquitous "curry powder" being put into everything from pasta, to oysters, to meat curries that sound a bit more like something that might be eaten today (although certainly not particularly authentically Indian, and with somewhat of a tendency to include fruit).  I didn't want to do anything too "normal", because it wouldn't be as fun, but I also didn't particularly want to curry oysters.  So I decided on Mr Arnott's Currie, which also conveniently allowed me to reuse the beef shin that I had lifted from the stock on Saturday.  

Mmmm, grey and unappealing.  But it still had enough flavour in it for this purpose.

Who Mr Arnott may have been, I have no idea, but Eliza had this to say:

"We have already given testimony to the excellence of Mr. Arnott’s currie-powder, but we think the currie itself will be found somewhat too acid for English taste in general, and the proportion of onion and garlic by one-half too much for any but well-seasoned Anglo-Indian palates."

Well, we thought that was hysterical (garlic - gasp!).

Mr Arnott's Currie Powder is comprised of the following spices:

"Turmeric, eight ounces.

Coriander seed, four ounces.

Cummin seed, two ounces.

Fœnugreek seed, two ounces.

Cayenne, half an ounce. (More or less of this last to the taste.)"

It basically calls for grinding the seeds and mixing the lot together.  It also includes a handy advertisement for a chemist, "the Messieurs Corbyn & Co", who can grind the spices for you if you consider the process too "troublesome".  I did not find it particularly troublesome, but then I made a much smaller quantity.  I also added only the tiniest suggestion of cayenne, as Daughter is a bit of a wimp where chilli is concerned.

The Currie itself was truly quite a bizarre recipe, calling for an egg-sized piece of cabbage, two apples, three onions, lemon juice, and "a garlic head the size of a nutmeg" (??)  We are then instructed to "put in a fowl that has been roasted and nicely cut up; or a rabbit; or some lean chops of pork or mutton; or a lobster; or the remains of yesterday’s calf’s head; or any thing else you may fancy".  I did not fancy a calf's head, or indeed a lobster (!), but I did cut the beef shin up and put that in, as well as some carrot.

And then I served it to my family.

I must say, I fully expected that none of us would like this at all.  I thought we'd struggle through enough of it to stop us feeling too hungry, and then throw the rest out, giggling guiltily.  But we didn't.  Daughter's comment was "It's weird, but I don't hate it".  Which summed it up quite well, I think.  Definitely weird, and I wouldn't bother making it again, but we actually kind of liked it.  Husband and Daughter both claimed the leftovers for lunch the next day too, so they clearly weren't just being polite.

Mr Arnott's claim that this is "an excellent currie, fit for Kings to partake of" may be a bit much, but it really wasn't bad.

For dessert, I decided to have another go at moulding the raspberry jelly.  So earlier that day, I melted it down, added some more gelatine, and poured it back into the bundt cake tin.  Here is the result:

Still not perfect, especially around the bottom, but so much better than my first effort!

Day Two - Sunday

Sunday was an important day in the Victorian era - it was a day of rest, church, and the Sunday roast.  Everyone who could afford to buy a joint of meat would have it roasted for their Sunday lunch.  For the working classes, this might be the only time they bought meat, and they would eke it out in various ways throughout the week.  A middle class family like ours would have been able to afford to buy meat two or perhaps three times a week, but even so, the Sunday roast was the main event (and the leftovers would definitely still have been repurposed, as we will be doing).

For our Victorian week, I decided to combine two food "events" that a family like ours would have enjoyed - the Sunday roast lunch, and the dinner party.  A middle class household would have held a dinner party less often than an upper class one, but it still would have been done from time to time, especially if one was wanting to climb the social ladder.

So on Sunday, we had my mother and her husband over for Sunday lunch.  I was a bit stressed, actually, as I hate cooking meat (I never know when it's cooked), and I had so many unfamiliar side dishes and dessert items to look after at the same time!  Mum was great though, and pitched in with the vegetables etc.  Plus they both arrived full of enthusiasm for the theme - G. arrived in a suit with bowtie, and Mum ceremoniously presented us with a gift, which turned out to be three bananas.  This of course was intensely amusing, as bananas in Victorian England would have been terribly exotic and certainly not available to most people.  Clearly our guests were either very rich, or very well-connected, or both - thus our social climb has begun!  

Before all that though, we needed to have breakfast.

Breakfast:  Porridge with Strawberries.

I had never used steel-cut oats before, so this porridge was interesting for us, texture-wise.  Daughter would have been happier with some kind of extra sweetener obviously (sorry lovey, don't think they had maple syrup in Victorian England!), but basically this did what it says on the tin.  We like normal porridge, so we liked this.

Lunch - First Course:  Vegetable Soup;  Toast.

Except that I burnt the toast.  So it was just vegetable soup.  Sigh.  Carrot and turnip soup, to be exact, made the same way as yesterday's carrot soup.  I didn't bother taking a picture, as it looked the same as yesterday's.  Funnily enough, noone could taste the turnips in this, but they did improve the texture, as they cooked down to a softer mush than the carrot, making the soup less watery.  Everyone liked it.

Lunch - Second Course:  Roast Beef;  Yorkshire Pudding;  Mashed Potatoes;  Fried Potatoes;  Boiled Brocoli;  Gravy.

As you can see, I overcooked the meat somewhat based on modern standards.  As it happens, it wouldn't have been unusual for people to prefer it this way back then though.  Luckily, it wasn't dried out or tough, and had good flavour.

The mashed potatoes, broccoli, and gravy (made with pan juices, stock and a little butter and flour) were what one would expect - I did cook the broccoli a bit less this time, and it was much nicer!

The fried potatoes were suggested by Daughter, whilst we were trying to recover from the shock of discovering that potatoes were usually served mashed with a roast during Queen Victoria's reign.  No lovely golden roast potatoes!!  In the end, I served both - the fried ones were cut into half-centimetre-thick slices and fried in lard until golden.  They were yummy, a lot like having chips, really.

For my money though, the star of the show turned out to be the Yorkshire Pudding.  I have only made these once before (a long time ago), and that time I made them in muffin tins, as many people do now.

For our Victorian Sunday roast though, I made them the traditional way, in a large rectangular tin.  It puffed up spectacularly, and was so delicious!  

By this time I was so flustered trying to get everything on the table still hot all at once, that I forgot to take a photo of the whole beautiful Yorkie, and I am so disappointed!  I did eventually remember, and took this of one of the pieces:

Yum.  I am definitely making this again one day soon.

Eventually, it was time for dessert...

Lunch - Dessert:  

Prince Albert's Pudding;  Custard Sauce;  Baked Pears;  Brandy Cream;  Raspberry Jelly.

Naturally, at the end of our traditional roast meal came a traditional English pudding.  The recipe for this one is from a little book called Favourite Pudding Recipes: Traditional Ways to a Man's Heart, which I bought many years ago whilst on holiday in London.

The pudding was flavoured with raisins, citrus peel, mace, and brandy, and was cooked in a pudding basin in a large pot of boiling water.  We really enjoyed it - it was tasty, buttery, and not too stodgy, and was well paired with Mrs Beeton's "Vanilla Custard Sauce (to serve with Puddings)".

The Baked Pears are another Mrs Beeton recipe.  Really they are poached pears, but are cooked very slowly in a covered pot in the oven "from five to six hours".  Mrs Beeton advises using a "baking-jar", but not only do I not have one, I genuinely have no idea what one is.  If anyone knows, please do let me know!  I used an oven-safe saucepan with a lid.  I set these up to cook just before I went to bed on Saturday night, and left them to cook in the oven overnight (they would have had just over six hours).  By morning they had turned a delightful pale golden brown colour, and smelled heavenly.

These were sweet, and perfumed with lemon zest and cloves, and they were very good - everyone liked them.  They went very nicely with some whipped cream which I had flavoured with brandy and a little sugar.

Lastly, I made a raspberry jelly, set in a decorative mould.  I used Eliza Acton's instructions (in her recipe entitled "Strawberry Isinglass Jelly"), except I cheated and used packaged gelatine.  Turns out I should have used significantly more gelatine than I did, because this was a disaster.  It came out of the mould okay, but then immediately collapsed under its own weight.  My fault, not Eliza's.  Luckily, I had been a bit paranoid about it coming out at all, so I had set a small amount in a plain bowl...

Even this one didn't really want to hold its shape.  It looked hilarious, but it did taste quite nice.  

So our Sunday Roast Lunch / Dinner Party hybrid went quite well, though with a number of hiccups!  Still, we all had a nice meal and enjoyed each other's company.

Dinner - Bubble & Squeak

For dinner I fried up the leftover vegetables from lunch with a little bit of leftover roast beef mixed in for good measure.  I also added cabbage to this, to make it a kind of Bubble and Squeak.  It looked extremely unprepossessing, but actually tasted surprisingly good.

And so ended Day Two.  It was fun, but boy have the last two days been busy!  By the time I tumbled into bed, I was looking forward to a less hectic day on Monday...

Day One - Saturday - Tea & Dinner

After Saturday's relatively light lunch of carrot soup, and after washing the mountain of dishes I had already accumulated by this time, I actually had a couple of hours when I was able to leave the kitchen!!  (I vacuumed the floor and washed some clothes, so you know, not super exciting.  I was feeling extremely domestic by the end of the day, that's for sure!)

By around three o'clock though, I thought it was high time I did some baking, to be ready for tea time.

Tea:  Gingerbread;  Apples

Tea, in this context, was quite a new meal in the Victorian era.  The story goes that in 1840, one of Queen Victoria's ladies, the Duchess of Bedford, found that she was becoming hungry around four o'clock in the afternoon.  Luncheon would have been served a few hours earlier, and dinner had by this time been pushed back to around eight o'clock, for reasons of practicality, fashion, and the greater availability of gas and oil lighting.  So fair enough, I guess.  Anyway, the Duchess would have tea and sandwiches or cakes brought to her room so she could have a snack.  She then began inviting her friends to join her, and the idea caught on, first among the upper classes and then the middle classes as well.

As we have placed our fictional Victorian-era counterparts in the lower middle class (and no doubt aspiring upward), we will of course be partaking of this tremendously fashionable custom.

So. Much. Treacle.

I therefore returned to the kitchen, this time to my happy place:  baking sweet things!  Daughter and I have always been intrigued by the idea of soft gingerbread.  Not gingerbread biscuits/cookies - we make those every Christmas - but gingerbread that is described as a rather sticky cake.  We have often said we would like to try it, but for some reason have never got around to making any.  We were pleased, therefore, to find several gingerbread recipes in both Eliza Acton's and Mrs Beeton's cookery books.  Some were clearly biscuits, others seemed more what we were after.

Finally, I decided on one entitled "Acton Gingerbread" from the later 1882 edition of Acton's Modern Cookery, simply because it sounded nicer than the earlier recipes - there was comparatively less flour in it, so it sounded richer and stickier.  It seems that this was Acton's own family recipe, so I'm not sure why it didn't appear in the earlier edition of her book, but never mind.

Here is the recipe:

"Whisk four strained or well-cleared eggs to the lightest possible froth (French eggs, if really sweet, will answer for the purpose), and pour to them by degrees, a pound and a quarter of treacle, still beating them lightly. Add in the same manner six ounces of pale brown sugar free from lumps, one pound of sifted flour and six ounces of good butter, just sufficiently warmed to be liquid, and no more, for if hot, it would render the cake heavy; it should be poured in small portions to the mixture, which should be well beaten up with the back of a wooden spoon as each portion is thrown in: the success of the cake depends almost entirely on this part of the process. When properly mingled with the mass, the butter will not be perceptible on the surface; and if the cake be kept light by constant whisking, large bubbles will appear in it to the last. When it is so far ready, add to it one ounce of jamaica ginger and a large tea-spoonful of cloves in fine powder, with the lightly grated rinds of two fresh full sized lemons. Butter thickly, in every part, a shallow square tin pan, and bake the gingerbread slowly for nearly or quite an hour in a gentle oven. Let it cool a little before it is turned out, and set it on its edge until cold, supporting it if needful, against a large jug or bowl. We have usually had it baked in an American oven, in a tin less than two inches deep; and it has been excellent. We retain the name given to it originally in our own circle."

I had decided, in my wisdom, to make the full amount of this recipe, serve some for tea today, and freeze the rest for a later date (no doubt in the 1800s a family like ours would have just gone on eating one cake until it was finished, before making a new one, but as Daughter and I are keen to try a few different recipes for teas this week, freezing the leftovers will allow us to do this without wastage).

Wow.  This mixture is enormous. 

"Oh dear," I said, giggling a little, "I hope it's good!"

Mixing it certainly gave my arms a workout!  When I beat the butter in, I began to understand what Acton is talking about during that part of the recipe - as the butter is incorporated, the whole texture and colour of the mixture changes completely.  

"It kind of looks and feels like caramel!" said Daughter, and she wasn't wrong.

We did make one change to the recipe:  Googling "Jamaica ginger" informed us that ginger grown in Jamaica is milder and sweeter than that grown in China or India.  Inspection of our jar of powdered ginger showed that it was grown in India, so we decided to halve the amount stated for our gingerbread.  This was a good decision.  The resulting ginger flavour in the cake was nice and strong, but not too overpowering.

When the gingerbread had cooled sufficiently, I sliced it and arranged it on a plate with some apple slices - it looked so pretty!  Then we were so busy putting it in our mouths that I forgot to take a photo.  Sigh.  So anyway, here is a much less pretty arrangement of gingerbread (we had these pieces for dessert later on in the evening):

It was delicious.  SO happy I made the full amount now, and I just hope it freezes well!  Obviously we paired this with a nice pot of tea.

Dinner:  Dressed Maccaroni;  Sliced Carrots;  Boiled Brocoli.

For dinner, I used Eliza Acton's recipe for Dressed Maccaroni (yes, she spelled it that way), with side dishes of Mrs Beeton's Sliced Carrots and Boiled Brocoli (again, spelled that way).

Firstly, some historical context:  in the Victorian era, the word "maccaroni" just meant pasta of whatever shape.  I have used penne as from what I can tell, similar extruded-tube type shapes would indeed have existed at the time.  The existence of the very small elbow shape that we refer to now as macaroni are more doubtful.

Here is Acton's recipe:

After it has boiled quite tender, drain it well, dissolve from two to three ounces of good butter in a clean stewpan, with a few spoonsful of rich cream, or of white sauce, lay in part of the maccaroni, strew more cheese upon it, add the remainder of the maccaroni and the cheese, and toss the whole gently until the ingredients are well incorporated, and adhere to the maccaroni, leaving no liquid perceptible: serve it imme­diately.

Maccaroni, 6 ozs.; butter, 3 ozs.; cheese, 6 ozs.; cream, 4 table­spoonsful.

I was actually a bit worried whilst making this, as 170g of pasta really doesn't look like much.  Then I tasted it with the sauce, and realised it was going to be heaps.  It is so rich (which shouldn't be a surprise, given the ration of cheese and butter to pasta).  Acton suggests parmesan cheese for this, but also mentions earlier in her book that parmesan is quite expensive and can usually be subsituted for another hard cheese.  As a dutiful middle-class Victorian housewife, I imagine I would be making some economical choices where I could on ordinary days, and pulling out the expensive show-offy ingredients as an occasional treat, or (more especially) whenever we entertained guests.  I therefore used a vintage cheddar for this (which was available then, and which honestly I think worked better here than parmesan would have anyway, due to its melting properties).

It was delicious.  Quite horrifically unhealthy of course, but SO yummy.

Mrs Beeton's Sliced Carrots recipe is as follows:

INGREDIENTS.—5 or 6 large carrots, a large lump of sugar, 1 pint of weak stock, 3 oz. of fresh butter, salt to taste. 

Mode.—Scrape and wash the carrots, cut them into slices of an equal size, and boil them in salt and water, until half done; drain them well, put them into a stewpan with the sugar and stock, and let them boil over a brisk fire. When reduced to a glaze, add the fresh butter and a seasoning of salt; shake the stewpan about well, and when the butter is well mixed with the carrots, serve. There should be no sauce in the dish when it comes to table, but it should all adhere to the carrots.

I used three carrots, about half a teaspoonful of sugar, half a cup of my home made stock, and just a small knob of butter (I was mindful of how rich the pasta was going to be).  These carrots were extremely tasty, and I may well adopt this way of cooking them in future!

Boiled Brocoli does what it says on the tin, essentially, although Mrs B suggests boiling a small head of broccoli for 10 - 15 minutes.  I did it for ten, by which time it was so overcooked it was quite unpleasant.  When Daughter complained, I reminded her of Eliza Acton's advice, that "Vegetables when not sufficiently cooked are known to be so excee­dingly unwhole­some and indigestible, that the custom of serving them crisp, which means, in reality, only half-boiled, should be alto­gether disregarded..."

Hilarious.  Suffice to say, any further broccoli we eat will be a little less cooked than this one!

We rounded the evening off with a bit more gingerbread, and deemed our first day in Victorian England to be a success.

Day One - Saturday - Breakfast & Lunch

My first day in Victorian-era England began with an early start.  I wanted to start making a big pot of stock, to use in various recipes during the week, early enough to make soup with it for today's lunch.  The recipe I used is from The Book of Household Management by Mrs Isabella Beeton (1861 edition), and is entitled "Medium Stock".  Once I had the meat, bones, vegetables, seasonings and water simmering away, it was time to turn my attention to feeding my family...

Breakfast:  Bacon, Poached Eggs, and Bread with Butter and Jam.

Nothing unusual here - I did consult Mrs Beeton regarding the cooking of eggs, but found that her method for poaching them was pretty much exactly what I do anyway.  Same with cooking the bacon.

After breakfast, Daughter and I made a pot of tea and drank it between us.  Then it was time for me to attend once more to the stock.  Mrs Beeton's instructions are to "skim off every particle of grease whilst it is doing" - well, I'm not sure about every particle, but I did my best.  I did find I had to skim it quite often, ladling the fat into a small container.

In the Victorian spirit of not wasting anything, I stuck the container of skimmings into the fridge to let the fat solidify, then removed this fat into another dish, which I kept in the fridge and topped up each time.  By the end of the process, I had a somewhat nasty-looking little dish of fat and impurities.  I put this in the microwave to melt it, refrigerated it again until the fat rose to the top and solidified, removed it and threw the impurities away.  Now I had a nice little puck of beef fat, ready for Sunday's Yorkshire pudding!

A couple of hours in, I removed the large pieces of beef shin from the pot, and put them into a box and refrigerated them - there should be enough flavour left in them to use for another recipe on Monday (it was very common in this era to boil meat for a soup or stock and then serve the meat as well.  This way, it was used for two purposes instead of just one).  There were still plenty of good meaty bones left in the stock.

Once it had simmered for six hours, I strained it through a sieve, then through a fine sieve, then finally through a fine sieve lined with paper towel.  I wasn't sure I would need this last step, but this picture shows the difference it made:

The container on the left has the twice-filtered stock, whilst the one on the right has been filtered through the paper towel as well.  The difference in clarity was marked, and definitely worth the extra time.  The resulting stock is nice and flavoursome, and will make a good base for other dishes.

Lunch:  Carrot Soup and Fried Bread

For lunch, I turned to Modern Cookery by Eliza Acton (published in 1845).  A simple soup made with boiled carrots, pressed through a sieve, and mixed with some of my newly made stock.  It was surprisingly tasty and sweet - we all liked the flavour.  

The texture was unusual for us - normally when I make a pureed-type soup like this, I use a hand blender, which gives a very smooth result.  This soup had just been pressed through a sieve, so it retained more texture, with tiny soft bits of carrot throughout.  This picture of one of our bowls afterwards shows what I mean:

It actually wasn't unpleasant, just a bit different.

Miss Acton's recipe calls for the soup to be served with fried bread, so I cut some small thick slices of bread, and fried them in a pan with a bit of lard (olive oil is mentioned by Mrs Beeton, but only in saying that it is "principally used in mixing a salad".  Certainly I have not seen any Victorian era recipes mention oil in the context of frying - they generally recommend either butter, dripping, or lard.  Butter being an expensive ingredient at the time, I figured it would be less likely to be used just for a casual family lunch like this, especially as we had already had some at breakfast). 

The bread was rather good, actually.  The texture was gorgeous - lovely and crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy inside.  They did taste slightly porky from the lard, which I didn't entirely love (I am not super keen on pork), but this did not bother Husband or Daughter.

So, we were off to a promising start, but with still quite a bit of cooking to get through in the afternoon!  I will leave this here for now, and write a separate post about Saturday's Tea and Dinner.  Bye for now!