Risky Regencies

“Sweets for the sweet” –Regency Confectionary

Updated on February 22, 2023 by Gail Eastwood

Did they or did they not have chocolate sweets in the Regency period? (I have seen authors fight over this!) What kind of sweets DID they have? In my new book, Her Perfect Gentleman, the heroine conceives the idea (wisely or not) to involve much of the village of Little Macclow in a project to make sweets for the wedding everyone has come there to attend. Researching this part of the story was an interesting rabbit hole!

I found a great resource to help me, a “confectionary” cookbook from 1789 with newer editions in 1807 and 1809. It is called The Complete Confectioner (Or, the Whole Art of Confectionary with Receipts for Liqueures, Home-made Wines, etc. the Result of Many Years Experience with the Celebrated Negri and Witten, by Frederic Nutt, Esq.

This remarkable tome (available in Google Books) includes 38 recipes for biscuits—that’s cookies, to us Americans—including chocolate ones made of chocolate, egg whites and powdered sugar, like meringues. No flour, which interests me to try them since I have allergies and must stay gluten-free.

There are also six types of wafers, and ten flavors of drops—including chocolate, so there WAS a type of chocolate candy in period, just not the kind we think of as “chocolates” today. Filled chocolate candies such as we eat today were first displayed to the world in 1851 at the Great Exhibition in London at the Crystal Palace, well past the Regency decades.

The Regency chocolate drops were just like the “chocolate nonpareils” you can still get today, named for the white sugar beads that coat them. Have you eaten chocolate nonpareils? Wikipedia says: “a round flat chocolate drop with the upper surface coated with nonpareils. Ferrero makes a variety marketed as Sno-Caps. In Australia, these confections are commonly known as “chocolate freckles“, or simply “freckles“. Nonpareils are also sold in the United Kingdom as “Jazzies“, “Jazzles“, “Jazz drops” and “Snowies” (the latter being of the white chocolate variety). The coating of nonpareils is often referred to as “hundreds and thousands” in South Africa and the UK. The Canadian company Mondoux sells them as “Yummies“. So if you want Regency sweets and don’t want to make them, buy yourself some of these!

The book also covers eight kinds of jelly (and six jams), essences for ices, seventeen flavors of “waters” to serve at routs (including lemonade), 32 flavors of ice cream (including chocolate, but also “burnt almond” and “parmesan”), plus a whole section on “water ices” (I think similar to sherbert?), all sorts of fruits preserved in brandy, and a large section on preserved fruit both wet, candied, or dry. Beyond all this yumminess, Nutt also offers the promised recipes for liqueurs and wines, along with a small number of cakes and sweet puddings, plus illustrations for laying out a dessert course on tables for different numbers of guests.

Nutt’s book also has a whole section on “Prawlongs.” I read it with interest, having no idea what they were. I soon discovered other mentions spelled “prawlins” and guessed that perhaps it was an alternate spelling of pralines. According to an article on the history of the famous New Orleans pecan praline (here), the Praline is named after the 17^th century French diplomat César duc de Choiseul, Comte du Plessis-Praslin (1598 or 1602-1675). One theory is that Plessis-Praslin’s personal chef Clement Lassagne was the actual inventor, and the sweets were gifts for the duc’s lovers. If you consider the French pronunciation of Praslin, I think Nutt’s spelling “prawlong” may have been phonetic.

These first pralines were made with a combination of caramel and almonds. However, Nutt’s recipes include pistachios, filberts, or almonds covered with caramelized sugar syrup, AND he also used the method with slivered lemon and orange peels, orange flowers, and chunks of Seville oranges!! So it may mean in the 18^th century, at least in England, pralines (however you want to spell them) may have meant caramel-coated whatever-you-want! And the practical early settlers of New Orleans adapted the French recipe to pecans, since that’s what they had.

I have to say, without the aid of candy thermometers that are so helpful for today’s cooks, I am in awe of how period cooks managed to turn out sweets without always burning the mixture or undercooking it. Would you be brave enough to try a recipe from 1809? Have you ever tried to recreate an authentic period dish?

Her Perfect Gentleman releases on Thursday (Dec 15^th)! Can we wish my characters, Christopher and Honoria, a happy book birthday?

Posted in Daily Life, Food, Gail Eastwood, Risky Regencies, Weddings | Tagged 18th century cooking, food, Gail Eastwood, period cookbooks, Regency cooking, Regency sweets | 3 Replies

A White Christmas

Updated on February 21, 2023 by Diane Gaston

As you know Washington DC joined the rest of the mid-Atlantic in experiencing a record-breaking December snowstorm. Here in the Northern Virginia suburbs, the snow started Friday night about 9 pm and didn’t stop until late afternoon Saturday. We got 2 feet of snow. Here is a view of our snow, taken from my upstairs window at 12 noon Saturday.

One nice thing about snow is it covers all the dirt and darkness in a blanket of pure white, everything becomes quiet and life, of necessity, slows down.

One can almost imagine what it would be to live in the country in Regency England, to take walks through the wood, perhaps even to go skating on the pond or zipping over to your neighbor’s house in a horse-drawn sleigh.

Of course, a Regency winter walk might be like this:

And zipping along in a vehicle, might be more like this:

In the newspaper you might read about stories like this one from the 1814 Annual Register:

Extraordinary Instance of the Sagacity of a Dog.—Mr. T. Rutherford, of Long Framlington, was, about a fortnight ago, overcome in a snow storm, near Alnwick, and fell. In this state he was exposed to all the horrors of the night, till seven o’clock in the morning. His faithful dog at this time observing a shepherd at a small distance, used every exertion to attract his attention, such as howling, going from and returning to the spot where his master lay. This induced the shepherd to follow the dog’s motions. Mr. Rutherford was found, (then covered by the snow,) carried to a neighbouring publichouse, and, after five hours’ exertion, life was restored, and he is now quite well.

On the other hand, one might have a lovely Regency Christmas, eating Christmas pudding, drinking wassail, playing Christmas music on the pianoforte, dancing or playing cards.

What do you imagine a Regency winter and Christmas to be like? What do you think you’d like best about it?

It’s been a great gift to have such a wonderful Risky Regencies community. I wish all my fellow Riskies and everyone else a very happy holiday season!

Marmion
by Sir Walter Scott

Heap on more wood! – the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

Posted in Risky Regencies | Tagged A Regency Christmas, snow, winter | 19 Replies

Yes, Mr Darcy’s Fortune Was Likely Tied to Slavery

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Isobel Carr

Recently, an article about whether or not Mr. Darcy’s fortune was based on slavery set my Twitter feed alight. And I thought, well of course it was (in one form or another). This is the dark side of our wealthy, aristocratic characters that romance sweeps under the rug. It is certainly possible that the Darcy family fortune was based entirely on the profits of the mines in Derbyshire (harsh as those conditions might have been, they were NOT akin to slavery), but it’s much more likely that those profits were then put to use in ways that almost certainly have ties to slavery.

How so, let us tally up the ways …

1) Directly. Many families owned plantations in the West Indies (see this fascinating account of how the Earls of Harewood built their fortune on slavery, the products there of, and the overseeing of same).

2) Being paid off. When slavery was abolished in 1833, the British government spent a staggering amount of money to compensate the owners of slaves for their losses (good article about that here). Some families got the equivalent of millions of dollars. There were over three thousand claims, which lets you know how widespread slavery was and what its impact must have been on the fortunes of the top families.

3) Via investments. People invested in specific ships and ventures (sometimes called consortiums or syndicates). Many of those would have been involved in producing or importing some kind of product that was produced by slaves in either America, the West Indies, or India (sugar, rum, cotton, opium, tea, rice, etc.).

4) The East India Company. It’s worth noting that when Britain abolished slavery, supposedly throughout its empire, it made an exception for slavery in India. So all those fortunes made in India by younger sons, all those tea plantations, and cotton farms, and military careers, existed because of slavery (good summation on Wikipedia).

I’m sure Janet would have even more insightful things to say on this topic, but I wanted to bring it up for discussion given the timeliness of the article. I know romance is generally seen as escapist, and I don’t want to ruin that for anyone, but I do think it does history a disservice to gloss over these sorts of things to the point where they no longer seem to exist.

So what do you all think? Do you want to topics like this addressed in romances, or do you think it makes it too hard to enjoy the HEA and heavy topics are best left to those writing straight historical fiction?

Posted in History, Isobel Carr, Jane Austen, Rant, Research, Risky Regencies | 6 Replies

Red, Charlie boy. Red!

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Isobel Carr

As is often the case, today’s post is brought to you courtesy of Twitter. After the first episode of Wolf Hall aired, there was a raging debate about the colors used in the costumes. I think the main thing that set people off was Henry’s brocade doublet and his bright red schaub coat (how sad is that I only know the German name for that garment, because I’ve spent all my time in that period studying Landsknecht costuming?).

Several people said they were simply too bright, too vivid, etc. to be historically accurate. They landed particularly on the reds as being impossible to achieve in that era (and then purple got brought up, which I’ll tackle next time I post). When I was done scraping my jaw off the floor, the tweets were fast and furious.

To put it in a nutshell: YOU DO NOT NEED ANILINE DYES TO GET DEEP, BRIGHT, INTENSE COLORS! (and anyone who’s ever looked at extant textiles should know this)

Let’s outline the dye options open to Henry VIII (c. 1525, when he was trying to divorce Catherine):

First and foremost, there was madder root. Madder was cheap and plentiful. It produces decent reds, but is probably not what is being used to produce fancy brocades for the King of England. Top left you can see Dharma Trading’s madder root swatches, and as you can see, madder is pretty vivid on silk (and would be so on wool).

The next option is kermes, a red dye made from the body of a Mediterranean insect. It was used throughout Europe and was a highly desirable (and very expensive) dye stuff. If you had money, fabrics made with kermes dyes were readily available. They were widely in use by the Church and by the nobility (and the wealthy in general; we know they were widely available, because they had sumptuary laws about red in some places). The detail of a 16thC wall hanging to the right is most likely dyed with kermes.

After the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, you also have Mexican cochineal (first shipment in 1523, so it’s entirely possible that fabrics made with cochineal would have already joined those made with kermes on the open market). Bottom left you have Dharma Trading’s cochineal swatches, which on my compter are trending a little more purplish than they do in real life.

So, while I may have quibbles with the costuming on Wolf Hall (none of Anne’s gowns fit properly which I think is due to the fabric choices being too light for those style gowns; why are some of the men running around in jerkins with no doublets?!), I don’t have any qualms about the color of Henry’s brocade doublet or his overcoat.

For more examples of naturally dyed red clothing, see my post from last year about red Georgian era gowns.

Posted in Clothing, History, Isobel Carr, Rant, Research | 3 Replies

How to get a little chocolate in your (character’s) life

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Isobel Carr

Original chocolate pot c. 1750-1800, Colonial Williamsburg

The easiest way is what we could call “hot cocoa”. This was a very common breakfast drink for the gentry and upper class (aka anyone who could afford it). It was also often served at coffee houses (in fact, White’s started out as a “Chocolate House”). It was generally made with water (not milk, alas) with a “mill” which very much resembles a simpler version of the wooden whisk (molinillo) that is used to make Mexican hot chocolate today (which makes sense when you think about it, as Europe got chocolate from Mexico in the first place so the method of making it would remain the same).

This basic directions are thus (from Experienced English Housekeeper, 1769): “Scrape four ounces of chocolate and pour a quart of boiling water upon it, mill it well with a chocolate mill, and sweeten it to your taste, give it a boil and let it stand all night, then mill it again very well, boil it two minutes, then mill it till it will leave a froth upon the top of your cups.”

I’ve also found this recipe from 1814 which more closely resembles modern hot cocoa, being made with milk. And I like ease of it. Nice to have something made up that can be used for the whole week.

HOT COCOA 1814 A new system of domestic cookery

A New System of Domestic Cookery, 1814

Many of the cookery books of the day have various chocolate tarts, biscuits, pastils (which are basically spot-on modern nonpareils), and even ice cream. So while I haven’t (yet!) found a bonbon with a cream center, I have found PLENTY of delicious options for our characters to enjoy. Below are a few of these for you to explore.