Eliza Acton's Lemon Tartlets

More trees are changing colour.  The fields of beans are drying out, as are the fields of corn.  Today I saw squash and pie pumpkins in the shops.  We went from crazy hot weather, to its fall for sure.  Last night it dropped to 5°C.  Poor Dion slept draped over whoever he could find to give him some warmth.  It's definitely autumn!  With the cooler weather upon us it gives me ample opportunity to bake!

I made the following recipe for Common Lemon Tartlets  as found in Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1859.

It was a very pretty tart.  Because my chooks have been free ranging all summer, their egg yolks are very dark yellow which helped with the colour.  

A patty pan tin is a small, individual pie tin about 3-4 inches diameter.  They are often in fancy shapes, fluted, hearts, shells, etc.  

Fluted small pie tins with removable bottoms worked really nicely for this.   I'd recommend pre-baking the pastry for a few minutes because the pie crust didn't quite fully bake before the filling was done.  Prick the pastry a lot with a fork for steam to escape and to help the pastry stay flat.  Pie weights, beans or rice might work too.   I made some in tart shells, in a muffin pans.  They weren't as pretty but worked just fine.

350°F is a moderate oven temperature.

This was easy to make.   It's very pretty.     With the eggs and butter, making a rich base, with the sugar and lemon juice, you get sort of lemon flavoured omelette.   The butter softens the lemon flavour.  I wasn't a huge fan of lemon flavoured eggs, although it was pleasant enough.   I'd used the little patty pans for other pies though as it's a fairly impressive presentation.  

Strawberry Jam Fairy

starting point

 Today I was told that I was the Strawberry Jam fairy by a guest at Westfield, as I was delivering some samples of jam that we'd made at Westfield, to some nearby busy staff members.   

I was working with Ryan today, who is great fun to be with.  He doesn't mind helping out with things, including talking with people, any cleaning chores etc.   Today, he helped with the strawberry jam, which I'd planned to make on the Happy Thoughts Wood cook stove.  

Most jam recipes in historical cookery books call for a 1:1 ratio in weight of

Almost done

fruit to sugar.   The Wife's Own Book of Cookery, 1856, has recipes which call for 1 to .75 ratio of fruit to sugar.  This makes an amazingly flavourful jam.   Today I used 1 kg of strawberries to 750g of sugar.   It was cooked on a wood stove, using a cast iron pot.   I used frozen berries for convenience.  They were still frozen when the jam was started, so they we took turns manually chopping them with a wooden spatula we had to stir with.   It worked well.   The spatula was about 4 inches wide and had small holes in it, which worked a treat at keeping the jam from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Jam and tea

We cooked it until it started to thicken up and the bubbles blooped appropriately.   When the jam is starting to thicken, the boiling changes and you can tell when it is done.  We were given little paper cups for handing out samples.  We had about 1/4 of the cast iron pot of jam when done, and used most of it up for samples.    It took about an hour to make the jam and for most of that hour, the house smelled awesomely of strawberries.  We also took turns stirring as the jam needed to be constantly stirred for the whole hour.

You don't need to add any water to the fruit in the beginning.  The sugar quickly draws out the moisture from the fruit creating all the liquid that is needed to make the jam.   Early recipes don't add lemon like modern recipes.  This drops the ph to help keep the bacteria away.   Since there was no intention to keep this jam for months, because we were eating it fresh, it wasn't needed anyway.   If I were to make this jam to eat over the winter, I might add a tbsp of lemon juice.  I'd also pre-heat the jars to add the hot jam once it was made, and water bath can the filled jam jars for 10 minutes.  This length of time changes with different altitudes.    

Also, the tea is gingerale.   It looks quite proper in the cups and hides the modern drink well.  I didn't bring enough water with me for both clean up and tea, so this made an acceptable drink with our taste test of the jam.

1839 chocolate ice cream

I made a chocolate ice cream recipe from The Kentucky Housewife cookbook, published in 1839.  I did a bit of research on 18th and 19th century ice creams before I settled on this particular recipe.  It's not completely authentic though I followed the receipt, but chocolate as we know it, be it bar chocolate or even processed cocoa is not the same product as it was in earlier times.   Also, not having a sorbetiere, or even a manual ice cream maker, I ended up using my electric ice cream maker, which I will admit is very enjoyable to use.

Several cookery books have very specific instructions on how to make ice cream, but no, or few actual recipes.   However the 1830 The Cooks Dictionary tells us not only how to make ice cream, but how to adjust recipes for "creams" to make ice cream, as well as having a number of different ice cream recipes.   Most of the cookbooks have recipes for creams, which are custardy, mousse, pudding-like desserts.  Apparently you just make the cream recipe a little less thick and then use it to make ice cream.  

Because I didn't have enough cocoa on hand, and wasn't going to town for a few days, I used baker's chocolate.  I know a number of the recipes call for mixing the chocolate with water, which would be a cocoa product, not bar chocolate as it would seize.   I grated it and it made this lovely pile of soft, tiny chocolate flakes which melted easily into the milk mixture.    Because the chocolate was semi-sweet, I cut the amount of sugar in the ice cream as well.   I used a 10% cream mixture because we only had 1% milk and even our whole milk doesn't have enough fat content to qualify for "rich, sweet milk".   Also because a litre of that mixture was cheaper than purchasing a litre of whole milk and a container of double or whipping cream.   I also only used 4 eggs because my chooks are laying very large eggs, with large yolks.    I followed the directions, melting the chocolate in the milk mixture and then letting it cool a bit.  Then I added the yolks and the sugar  and brought the mixture up to just a boil.   This is pretty important as it cooks the eggs.   I stirred it constantly.   When the custard had boiled just a tad, I removed it from the heat.   I let it cool a bit, then transferred it to a bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and put it into the fridge overnight.  While this step is obviously modern, it is one of the procedures that is suggested in the instructions of the modern ice cream maker.

The next morning, I put the now fairly thick and cold custard into the ice cream maker and in about 15 minutes the ice cream was quite thick.   The instructions say to freeze twice.   In reality this means to pack the ice cream into a mould and re-freeze by setting it in the ice and salt mixture.   I didn't have a suitable mould, so instead I packed it into a lined loaf pan and set it into the freezer.   This second freezing allows the semi-soft frozen ice cream to harden up nicely.  

The ice cream scooped up nicely.  It was so creamy and rich.   It had a great mouth feel and felt very decadent.   I would use less chocolate next time, and try it with a mixture of cocoa and chocolate, which might replicate the actual period chocolate available.   

Would I make this again?   Indeed.  It was well worth the effort.   There is a recipe for peach ice cream in this book and there are tinned peaches left in my cupboard.   That will be the next recipe to try.
 

1889 Escalloped Potatoes - from a Suffragette Cookbook

 

Escalloped Potatoes

The Woman Suffrage Cookbook - Hattie A.Burr, 1889

A simple scalloped potato recipe which was easy and fairly quick to make. It cooked up perfectly. I used the only earthenware baking dish I had. The only thing I changed was that I added 1/2 cup more milk because the original amount didn't seem like enough in the dish I used. This recipe used a lot less liquid than modern recipes, so I wasn't sure how it would turn out. In fact, they were absolutely perfect. The potatoes were soft and well cooked, while the top was nicely crisp. They had a great flavour and weren't overly saucy or drippy. I would use this recipe again in an instant. Even my testers who aren't fond of scalloped potatoes liked them. Next time I'd use less flour on top, however, the flour toasted and gave it a lovely nuttyish taste, rather than being inedible

This cookbook is a community cookbook filled with recipes from both suffragettes and supporters. It has a huge array of everyday type recipes and if you ignore the suggestions for how long to cook vegetables, it looks to be a great resource for regular home cooking at the time. The recipes I read seem to be complete with even a few having other suggestions for serving, mainly in the cake section. It was a delight to peruse through and some of the more odd recipes like those using squash will come in handy in the fall for autumnal cooking demos.

 

More odd sock yarn dye lots

 These are the newest socks on the needles.  I was rather surprised when I wound the skein into a ball/cake and found a large band of gold nestled in at the halfway mark.  I didn't think too much about it though as the white bands were fairly large too.  That is until the second sock and I started knitting it.  I kept knitting the gold and realized that I'd have a a rather massive gold stripe, probably enough to have gold down past the heel turn.   I debated this, because I really don't like to have a yarn join in my socks, if I don't need to.  However, I cut the yarn and wound off the rest of the gold to a point just before it switche colours.  The resulting ball of gold yarn fits in my palm, so that I can just barely touch my fingers around it.  That is a large section of gold!   I could have ripped it out and maybe had enough to match the stripes, but I wasn't sure, so I left it in and kept knitting.   It's nice sock yarn to knit with.  The colours are interesting blends.  This is my third pair of socks with this yarn.  The first was speckled and pretty, but a bit plain.  The second had two totally different coloured socks as there were no repeats that I could find in the yarn.   This one is pretty bizarre too.  However, that it knits nicely and slides off the needles effortlessly makes it lovely to knit with.  Plus, I don't really mind the odd colour combos and dye jobs.   It does make it interesting to knit.  If it were a different colour than the gold, I would probably just left it as is, and not wound it off.

I made a raised pork pie for supper.  It was pretty good. I wasn't fond of the hot water crust pastry, so will try a different recipe next time.   The filling was good though.  Next time I'll make a gelatin gravy to add to it, as a moistener.   I'll also make them smaller.   This one took over 2 hours to bake!  

It's been a good year in the garden for cucumbers!  I've eaten one for lunch for the past couple of weeks.  Plus we've been harvesting English cucumbers as well, which are more supper oriented.   I missed a couple of the small ones, and they are huge.  This could be a problem, as cucumbers often die off once they've set a fruit that matures enough to reproduce.   The tomatoes are just starting to ripen.   The plants are loaded this year.   If they ripen enough to harvest, I won't have to purchase many for my canning marathon.  The Lemon Boy plant that my son in law gave me is particularly delicious!  It has bright yellow tomatoes that are nicely tomato flavoured but not overly acidy.   He also gave me a green cherry tomato plant.  Those are interesting because they have a strong tomato flavour, but figuring out when they're ripe enough to harvest is interesting.  I can't tell by colour, so I'm having to do a gentle squeeze on the fruit to see if they're soft enough.   

 

1917 Currant Tea Ring

 

Currant Tea Ring 

Recipe is from the 1st edition of the Purity Cookbook.   A much later edition of this cook book was one which taught me to make pie crust, along with the Betty Crocker Cook book - the only two cookbooks that I could find in our house.   

The Purity Cookbook was published by the Western Canada Flour Mills.   The recipes in this book are shifting towards modern recipe instructions, with more details.  However they still presume that the baker, or chef has some knowledge of cookery and don't add oven temperatures or times of modern recipes.   

This is an enriched bread, filled with sugar, currants and cinnamon, rolled up like a jelly roll and snipped almost through to make a pretty presentation.  It was quite delicious.  It was a bit fussy to make but still worth the effort.   Use parchment on your baking tray to keep the sugar from solidifying on the tray as it drips out while baking.  Icing is icing sugar, water and vanilla.   I'd use less next time.  For a less fancy presentation, just slice it up and set them in a pan to make cinnamon rolls.   This presentation however was well received.  

The bread has a fine crumb, nice texture, slices beautifully and has a really nice, taste.  I used about half the sugar, so it wasn't overly sweet.