Category: Food

The Nottingham Goose Fair

Updated on October 5, 2016 by Sandra Schwab

Not quite a goose, but a duck

The first Wednesday of October is the traditional date for the Nottingham Goose Fair, which today is a huge pleasure fair. But as its name suggests, in former times, one of the main goods being sold at that fair were indeed geese.

The time around Michaelmas (also known as the Feast of the Archangels or the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels) on 29 September was traditionally a time for goose-eating in England — according to legend, because Queen Elizabeth received news of the defeat of the Spanish Armada on Michaelmas Day, just when she had sat down for a meal of roast goose. She thus declared (again, according to legend) roast goose should forevermore be eaten on Michaelmas day in celebration of England’s might.

The truth is a bit more mundane: by the Tudor age, goose eating had already become connected to Michaelmas – probably because it is one of the old quarter days, marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the new farming year. Incidentally, spring geese are big enough to be slaughtered by the end of September and thus, a goose became a customary gift of tenants to give to their landlord when they were paying the rent on Michaelmas Day.

Not surprisingly then, at a lot of fairs held around the country around Michaelmas the wares that were being sold included geese. Most of these goose fairs have been long forgotten, but Nottingham Goose Fair is one of the few exceptions.

The fair has a very long tradition: in some form or another, it might have existed even before the Norman Conquest, and it had received its name, “Goose Fair,” by 1541. Originally, the main event of the far was indeed the selling of geese. An article from the September 1871 issue of Golden Hours: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine for Family and General Reading mentions that a “street on the Lincolnshire side of Nottingham is said to be called Goose-gate from the numbers which were driven through it for the annual goose fair, when from 15,000 to 20,000 of those birds were brought from the Lincolnshire fens, each flock attended by a goose-herd with a crook, wherewith to catch and lead out any goose which a possible customer might desire to examine more closely.”

By the 19th century, it was considered lucky to eat goose on Michaelmas Day: according to a proverb, you’d never lack any money if you ate goose on Michaelmas Day. And in 1813, in a letter to her sister, Jane Austen writes, “I dined upon Goose yesterday — which I hope will secure a good Sale of my 2d Edition” (i.e., the 2nd edition of Sense and Sensibility).

Today, only the name of the Nottingham Goose Fair and the sculpture of a giant goose in the town serve as reminders of the old purpose of the fair, which by now has become a giant pleasure fair.

The Nottingham Hidden History Team has a picture of said sculpture as well as a few pictures of the fair in earlier centuries.

~~~

In other news: A couple of days ago, I sent my latest WIP to my editor. “The Centurion’s Choice” is a spin-off novella from my Roman series and will be ready for release at some point in November. (And poor Lucius doesn’t have any nipples in this picture. *sigh* Sandra Schwab, forever forgetting to give her male digital models nipples.) (He totally will have nipples on the finished cover!!)

Posted in Food, History, Regency, Research | 4 Replies

The Curious Peach

Updated on August 25, 2016 by Janet Mullany

Here’s a post from a few years ago, edited and recycled. It’s peach season and I’ve been eating lots of them. Yum.

Peaches have been around for a long, long time, from China to Europe via the Silk Road, to America in the seventeenth century and into commercial production here in the nineteenth century. There were peaches at Pemberley:

The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by the entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of all the finest fruits in season; but this did not take place till after many a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to Miss Darcy had been given, to remind her of her post. There was now employment for the whole party; for though they could not all talk, they could all eat; and the beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches soon collected them round the table. Pride and Prejudice

Jumping backward a few centuries–people like me should take note that King John of England died in 1216, some say from overindulging in peaches at a banquet nine days before. Here’s a recipe from 1597 for Peach Marmalade.

To make drie Marmelet of Peches.
Take your Peaches and pare them and cut them from the stones, and mince them very finely and steepe them in rosewater, then straine them with rosewater through a course cloth or Strainer into your Pan that you will seethe it in, you must have to every pound of peches halfe a pound of suger finely beaten, and put it into your pan that you do boile it in, you must reserve out a good quantity to mould your cakes or prints withall, of that Suger, then set your pan on the fire, and stir it til it be thick or stiffe that your stick wil stand upright in it of it self, then take it up and lay it in a platter or charger in prety lumps as big as you wil have the mould or printes, and when it is colde print it on a faire boord with suger, and print them on a mould or what know or fashion you will, & bake in an earthen pot or pan upon the embers or in a feate cover, and keep them continually by the fire to keep them dry. The Second Part of the Good Hus-wives Jewell, (1597); Thomas Dawson. From theoldfoodie.com

Indian Blood Cling Peaches growing at Monticello

I couldn’t find a whole lot about peach recipes in England in the Regency period. There’s a possibility that quinces were more popular than peaches, according to historicfood.com (great pics here!). A lot of the historic recipes I did find were of the use them up quick variety and/or preserve them and if you’ve ever visited a pick your own orchard you’ll know exactly what I mean.

In America, were much more popular. Thomas Jefferson embraced peach cultivation with enthusiasm, growing thirty-eight varieties at Monticello, compared to only two varieties at Washington’s Mount Vernon. Jefferson made mobby, an alcoholic drink from peaches, claiming that “20 bushels of peaches will make 75 galls. of mobby, i.e. 5/12 of its bulk” (The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello. Peter J. Hatch).

I’m fascinated by the wealth of varieties of peaches. Peaches are peaches, right? Unless they’re white peaches or doughnut peaches, which do have distinctive flavors. William Cobbett commented, “It is curious enough that people in general think little of the sort in the case of peaches though they are so choice in the case of apples. A peach is a peach, it seems, though I know no apples between which there is more difference than there is between different sorts of peaches.” (Quoted in Hatch, above).

Here are a couple of recipes from The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph, first published in 1825:

Peaches in Brandy. Get yellow soft peaches, perfectly free from defect and newly gathered, but not too ripe; place them in a pot, and cover them with cold weak lye; turn over those that float frequently, that the lye may act equally on them; at the end of an hour take them out, wipe them carefully with a soft cloth to get off the down and skin, and lay them in cold water; make a syrup as for the apricots, and proceed in the same manner, only scald the peaches more.

Peach Marmalade. Take the ripest soft peaches, (the yellow ones make the prettiest marmalade,) pare them, and take out the stones; put them in the pan with one pound of dry light coloured brown sugar to, two of peaches: when they are juicy, they do not require water: with a silver or wooden spoon, chop them with the sugar; continue to do this, and let them boil gently till they are a transparent pulp, that will be a jelly when cold. Puffs made of this marmalade are very delicious.

And here’s a Peach Pudding recipe from later in the century, adapted from Recipes Tried and True, compiled by the Ladies’ Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church, Marion, Ohio, 1894.

peaches, cooked and sweetened
pint sweet milk
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon butter
a little salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups flour
cream

Fill a pudding dish with peaches, cooked and sweetened; pour over them a batter made of one pint of sweet milk, four eggs, one cup of sugar, one tablespoon of butter, a little salt, one teaspoon of baking powder, and two cups of flour. Place in oven, and bake until a rich brown. Serve with cream.

The title of this post, by the way is from Andrew Marvell. I do love the phrase “stumbling on melons”, and if I’d discovered these lines sooner I might have blogged about melons:

The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass

What are your favorite peach recipes? Do share! I’m off downstairs where a bowl of fresh peaches awaits…

Posted in Food, Research | Tagged Jefferson, monticello, peaches, The Virginia Housewife | 1 Reply

Let’s Talk Food!

Updated on March 11, 2016 by Sandra Schwab

Samian ware bowl (picture by Mercato, from Wikipedia Commons)

Hello, Risky Readers, there’s been a slight change of plans and today you get me again. And I’m also rather late with posting – sorry about that! (I also apologize for any typos in this post; it’s really late here in Germany and I’m so ready to head to bed….)

So I thought today I could talk a little about food because tomorrow I will go to that lovely reconstructed Roman fort near where I live and attend a Roman cookery workshop. It’s called “A Look into Apicius’ Pots” and includes not just a guided tour through the fort and museum, but also a hands-on experience of Roman cuisine: we will prepare a meal using Roman recipes (from Apicius’ cook book, I assume) and then we’ll eat said meal from replicas of posh Roman tableware (that would be Samian ware made in what today is southern France).

There might even be garum, that dreadful, shudder-inducing Roman fish sauce that was made by putting fish heads and fish innards into a vessel together with herbs and what not and then putting it out into the sun for a couple of weeks. The Romans poured that stuff basically over everything. Like ketchup.

It’s going to be an interesting afternoon!

Victorian Bakers, BBC

In addition to doing some practical research on Roman cuisine, I also recently stumbled across a rather fantastic BBC documentary called “Victorian Bakers.” In this documentary a group of modern-day bakers all don Victorian clothing and learn how their 19th-century predecessors made bread.

Bread was incredibly important for 19th-century England, as it was the staple food for large parts of the population. In the Regency period, bread making hadn’t yet become industrialized. Bakers ran their business as they had done for decades: from a bakery in a village, often near – or indeed, even part of – a local mill. They also worked closely with brewers from whom they got the yeast. Compared with more modern forms of yeast (think of dry yeast out of a package), this particular yeast was a bit more temperamental. The dough had to be kneaded much longer and the proofing took much longer as well. On the other hand, bakers had to be careful not to overproof the dough as it was possible the yeast would go bad.

Once the oven was fired up, the bread was baked and then the baker’s boy would go from house to house in the village and deliver bread that had been pre-ordered. As most people didn’t have an oven to bake in at home, bakers also offered a service whereby villagers could come and have their things baked in the baker’s oven.

While in earlier centuries only the upper classes had been able to afford white bread, by the early 19th century white bread had become the standard in all households. The older forms of barley bread and rye bread were disdained by large parts of the population, even though there were several attempts by health reformers to make whole-wheat bread popular again. Thus, in the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction we can read in 1847:

Nothing is more false to suppose than what is called fine white bread is better than the bread made of good wheat, ground into flour without abstricating from it the digestive principle contained in what is termed the husk, or skin. Nothing is more wholesome or so easy of digestion as this natural pure bread, when made with wheat of proper quality; and though the color is more homely, still the taste is far superior to that of white bread.

What I found perhaps most surprising about that BBC documentary was the realization that 19th-centiry bread would have tasted much, much different from our bread, mainly they used a different kind of wheat as well as that different yeast. That’s something we don’t really think about very often, do we?

And now it’s over to you: What type of historical food would you love to try and recreate?

Posted in Food, Research | 3 Replies

Toogood’s onion pie

Updated on January 25, 2016 by Rose Lerner

In Listen to the Moon (my new Regency romance about a valet and a maid who marry to get a plum job), Toogood makes an onion pie.

“Are you fond of the Dymonds?” Sukey asked.

“Of course.” He said it without hesitation, and offered not a syllable more.

She shrugged and took a bite of her pie. Mmm. Roasted potatoes, sliced apples, hardboiled egg, onions and butter in a thick, rich dough. He really did know what he was about in the kitchen.

Several people have asked me if I have a recipe for this pie, and the answer is YES.

(Most of the foods mentioned in my books—Mr. Moon’s desserts, for example, although I took a little creative license with the bacon ice cream—are drawn from period sources and often from cookbooks, so if you do ever want a recipe, it’s worth asking!)

I took a Regency food class with Delilah Marvelle a few years ago, and one of the assignments was to cook something from a Regency recipe. I posted about the pie (plus a few other recipes I wasn’t as all about, although the potato cakes with sherry sauce for dessert were quite yummy too) on History Hoydens a few years ago, and here it is again for your delectation. The text of the original recipe comes first, and then my comments.

I took the recipe from Hannah Glasse’s The art of cookery, made plain and easy (1774). It’s actually a pretty straightforward cookbook compared to some others I’ve seen from the same era; her confectionery book, which I read for Sweet Disorder, is great too. (Although I’ve seen a food scholar complain that her recipes don’t always work.)

And read her Wikipedia page, it’s fascinating! (Sample: “In 1760 Ann Cook published Professed Cookery, which contained a 68-page attack on Hannah Glasse and her work. Ann Cook lived in Hexham, and was reacting to an alleged campaign of intimidation and persecution by [Hannah’s half-brother] Lancelot Allgood.”)

To make an onion pye.

WASH and pare some potatoes, and cut them in slices, peel some onions, cut them in slices, pare some apples and slice them, make a good crust, cover your dish, lay a quarter of a pound of butter all over, take a quarter of an ounce of mace beat fine, a nutmeg grated, a tea-spoonful of beaten pepper, three tea-spoonfuls of salt, mix all together, strew some over the butter, lay a layer of potatoes, a layer of onion, a layer of apples, and a layer of eggs, and so on till you have filled your pye, strewing a little of the seasoning between each layer, and a quarter of a pound of butter in bits, and six spoonfuls of water. Close your pye and bake it an hour and a half. A pound of potatoes, a pound of onions, a pound of apples, and twelve eggs will do.

I wasn’t sure if “eggs” meant raw, or hard-boiled and crumbled. I asked Delilah, who said definitely hard-boiled, and that for a pie like this oftentimes the different filling ingredients would be cooked in advance to ensure even cooking. So I also sliced and roasted the potatoes on a cookie tray.

Mace is a spice derived from the dried covering of the nutmeg fruit seed; they didn’t sell any at my grocery store so I just used regular old nutmeg instead.

Here’s the crust recipe I used:

A cold crust.

TO three pounds of flour rub in a pound and a half of butter, break in two eggs, and make it up with cold water.

Four cups of flour, two sticks of butter, and an egg would be plenty for a two-crust pie (I made a half-recipe even though in my heart I knew better and wound up with WAY too much dough). On Delilah’s advice I cooked the bottom crust alone for 15 minutes at 375 (actually, 400 because my oven runs cold, but whatever). I then put it in the fridge until it was cool, filled it up with my layers, rolled out the top crust, and baked it for about half an hour at 350 (you can tell when it’s done because the crust will start to turn golden; once it’s completely lost that doughy, translucent look, you’re done!).

The crust came out nice and flaky, and it was super easy to roll, too, maybe because of the egg. Next time I might chill the bottom crust before baking and then the whole pie once it’s assembled, to see if I can get just a little more flake, but it’s really not necessary. I halved the recommended amounts and still ended up with a lot of leftover filling stuff, I think next time I’ll start with one large potato, half a large apple, half a large onion, and four hard-boiled eggs. But I just made an egg-salad-potato-avocado sandwich with the leftovers the next day (so awesome, will eat again!). (I also used a lot less butter layered with the filling than recommended, probably only two to three tablespoons. I still enjoyed it but it would have been better, and cohered more, with more butter.)

At first I thought this was just okay (although my guests were enthusiastic), but when I tried it cold the following day, it was fantastic. The flavors and textures combined really well cold and overnight.

And a few more things about food and drink in Listen to the Moon:

A tumblr post I made about hot sauce in Regency England
Hannah Glasse’s recipe for calf’s foot jelly and Portugal cakes (I haven’t tested those)
Another tumblr post by me about cherry bounce, an infused Christmas brandy
This recipe is for Huckle-my-buff, a Sussex beer brandy and egg drink, served hot, which originally appeared in the book and now is mentioned only in this deleted scene on my blog where Sukey and Toogood have a threesome. (If that does not sound like your thing PLEASE DO NOT READ IT.)
Seedcake recipe

Tell me a combination of savory ingredients you think would taste delicious baked in a pie!

Posted in Food | 5 Replies

how many men have been beguiled and captivated by a soft voice offering them a meringue?

Updated on July 27, 2015 by Rose Lerner

Barbara Cartland came up a few times at the Romance Writers of America conference this week, which reminded me of her wonderful cookbook. I posted some scans from it a long time ago, back when I had my first author photo taken (I still had long hair then!). This is some of the funniest food photography I’ve ever seen and I think you all deserve to see it.

***

I think my favorite author photo ever is this one of Barbara Cartland from the back of the cookbook:

In fact, the only photos to rival it are other photos of Barbara Cartland [google image search: look!!!]. I hope that someday I’m confident enough to have a photo that over-the-top taken of myself.

I bought this book at the library book sale a couple of years ago. It’s called The Romance of Food. It’s one of the best book sale purchases I have ever made.

The inside front cover describes it as “a collection of recipes which will revive even the most jaded lover and put a song in the heart of the most enraptured[…]Also, to show just how irresistible to the eye as well as to the palate are dishes such as Flower of the Heart, Summer Splendor and Fleur de Lis d’Amour, they and many others have been photographed at her own home, one of the most romantic settings in England.”

On page 12, we learn:

“Some of the youngest-looking men on the screen and stage declare they owe their youthful appearance to a large consumption of liver and kidneys. Pope Pius V, famous for his aphrodisiacal dishes, originated a pie in which layers of sliced bull’s testicles alternated with ground lamb kidneys.”

Here are some of the best photos:

“Seafood in a Melon Basket: the hidden wonders of the deep evoke the mystic wonders of Love.”

The caption for that one reads: “An exotic creature from the deep, the color of two red lips, which can invite, provoke, and surrender.”

And this one is just for Susanna Fraser:

“Beef Wellington: England’s greatest General who defeated Napoleon and a plate worthy of his name in the Battle of Love.”

Some other great captions [tw: racism]:

“Noisette of Lamb with Baby Vegetables: What woman does not long to be carried like a lamb in the arms of the man she loves.”

“Gypsy Magic and Imperial Splendor: The gypsies wandering romantically through the Countryside make watercress soup but the Russians with fire and passion prefer Borsch.”

“Duck with Orange and Grand Marnier Sauce: A plate of Chinese magic in whose life the duck has always had a very special place.”

“Normandy Pheasant: The leaves of Autumn fall from the trees but the beautiful exotic pheasant, who comes from China, delights the sportsman and surprisingly the sportswoman.”

“Mocha Chocolate Cake, Black Currant Gateau and Meringues: An English tea; how many men have been beguiled and captivated by a soft voice offering them a meringue?”

Can you describe a plate of food in the style of Barbara Cartland?

Posted in Food | 8 Replies