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.