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!