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Francatelli’s Queen Victoria and Albert Pudding

20th February 2017 by Regula 9 Comments

Although spring is in the air at times and daffodils are showing their sunny faces hear and there, some days are still reminding us it is still winter. On cold grey days like these the central heating never seems to give enough warmth although the thermometer says otherwise. Baking seems to be the only antidote to dreary weather and puddings might just be the most fitting with their warming and filling character.

Puddings it is and although I have just published a 378 page book on the history of pudding… which was recently shortlisted for a prestigious André Simon Award (still pinching myself, and although I didn’t win, I am still chuffed to bits!), there are still so many pudding recipes left to boil, bake, steam, fry or freeze. Today I’m taking you to the Victorian era, when puddings were at the height of their splendour.

During Queen Victoria’s reign Britain was going through a period of industrial evolution and urbanisation. It was also a period of peace and stability. The 19th century saw the birth of the rail network with the steam locomotive as the greatest invention. This made for an enormous change in farming as food could now be transported to the towns more quickly and efficiently. On the land a lot of jobs had been replaced by new farming machines, techniques changed, unemployment and poverty rose as the population almost doubled. With more people moving to cities in search for work, demand for produce was high.

The contrast between the lives of the working class and the splendour in which the Queen lived was enormous. Victoria became queen in 1837 at the age of 18 but before that she lived in Kensington Palace which was at that time in quite a state of disrepair.

We know her mostly from her iconic photograph, in profile, dressed in black mourning clothes, looking stern and cold. She is the matriarch, the embodiment of a strong and powerful woman. But in reality she mourned the death of Prince Albert for the rest of her life and found it hard without him.

To know the story behind the portrait, the story of the woman, the queen and the widow, we were treated to an historical drama titled simply ‘Victoria’ recently. And this is the reason for this posting today. ‘Victoria’ is airing in America in March and that is why for the launch TV station KCTS9 and author Laurel Nattress asked me to recreate a pudding for Victoria and her husband Albert from a recipe by the queen’s then chef Charles Elmé Francatelli….

Quince tart and our workshop in Dorset

14th December 2016 by Regula 2 Comments

A still life of puddings I created for Borough Market Life Magazine – featuring the quince tart

Two weeks ago on a frosty yet sunny winter morning, we welcomed our workshop attendees at All Hallows Cookery School in Dorset. We started with tea and mini mince pies plus pancakes from the AGA for the early birds. It was hard to get started because we were all having so much fun getting to know each other, or catching up. We made the more delicate puddings from my book, a sweetmeat pudding – otherwise known as the Bakewell pudding, Snake fritters and a quince tart with intricate pastry work. Lunch was beef with prunes, lovingly prepared by our host and owner of the school Lisa Osman. I can’t think of a dish more fitting on a day of English cooking. After all, beef and pudding have been the icon of English food for many centuries. There was a time during the Napoleonic war when eating roast beef and plum pudding would have showed your patriotism. Visitors from all over Europe spoke with high regard about the quality of English meat and beef especially.

After our rather festive lunch in Lisa’s beautiful dining room which made me feel as if I was in a Jane Austen novel, she taught us wreath making which sounds far more easy than it actually was. We struggled and have a huge respect for wreath makers now. We all concluded we now understood why a impressive wreath is so pricy. It takes a ton of work, and will leave you with very painful hands. I finished mine at home and now have it on my front door for all to see….

My Books: Belgian Café Culture

20th October 2016 by Regula 29 Comments

A week after the launch of Pride And Pudding, exactly one year ago, I started working on a new book, a passion project…

This book ‘Belgian Café Culture / Authentieke Belgische Cafés (in English and Dutch) is a plea to carefully handle the fragile café heritage of Belgium. For too long have we taken these little cafés for granted. Not enough have we stopped to think about their history and their relevance in our culture. They are part of our social and cultural patrimony in Belgium. When I walk the streets, everywhere I look I see forgotten and lost cafés.

When I read in the papers that a much-loved café was going to close down I went to visit it, to talk to the people there who were about to lose their local. I was probably one of the last to document it. Nothing could be done; the owners of the building wanted to renovate the café and there is wind of a more hipster implementation. For this reason alone a lot of authentic cafés have had to go.

Although this heritage has always been staring me in the face, I only realised how fragile it is, and how important it is to preserve it, after taking a Belgian beer sommelier course which involved a lot of homework visiting cafés. The news of the closure of café Den Akker gave me the drive to do something about it in the only way I know how: by writing this book and documenting the importance of it.

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Cherry brandy… the first step towards winter

20th August 2016 by Regula 6 Comments

Preparing the cherry brandy or ‘Kriekenborrel’ as we called it in Belgium, is the first step towards Christmas and winter for me. On Christmas eve when I was a child, I was allowed one single drunken cherry in a small dainty glass as a treat. This is how memories are made, and how time and time again when Christmas comes, you need certain flavours to transport you back to the past. Nostalgia and Christmas go hand in hand. It is the one western tradition that is still going strong. People prepare things like this cherry brandy and plum pudding months in advance. The anticipation grows in the jars, and by every spoonful of brandy that is poured over the pudding every week.
Preserving fruit in ‘Jenever’ which is almost identical to Gin, has been a custom in our parts for many decades. It was particularly popular in the 1950’s when my grandmother was young. Because my mother grew up with it, it was sentimental to her, which is why she taught me how to make it. I still have the last jar of cherries my mum and I drowned in Eau de Vie in 1998. It is quite special, because the jar holds memories as well as cherries. In my kitchen I have jars from 2006, 2010, 2011 and 2013. Some I give away, ladling the cherries and booze out into smaller jars to decorate with a ribbon and the date. They go to people I know will appreciate my precious preserve. Because I part with memories of making them and hope they will be cherished….

Batter pudding, a Dutch baby and the scent of a ripening nectarine

15th June 2016 by Regula 8 Comments

I can clearly remember the first time my brain registered the juiciness of a nectarine and its heavenly scent. It was summer and unusually hot. I was about 3 or 4 years old and me and my mother, the lady next door and her son Sam who had the same age, had walked quite a distance to a park where we could play. After we had played a while, Sam and I were each given an unusually large nectarine – mostly because our hands were very small. They came out of a brown paper bag, and I can still recall the sound of the bag, and the scent that came next when it was presented to me to pick my fruit. I remember that I smelled the skin of the fruit, looked at it, turned it around and was then handed a piece of white kitchen paper to catch the juice that was about to drip from my chin and hands. I investigated the skin between my fingers, the texture of the fruit. I recall the bitterness of the magenta red stone as I was trying to get the last of the flesh from it….

Bath buns – or the tale of English buns #1

2nd April 2016 by Regula 2 Comments

If you have visited the city of Bath, nestled in a green valley with its Roman baths, elegant Georgian townhouses and impressive circus, you might have noticed that there are two famous buns in town. Both are competing to be the oldest, most authentic, and most valuable to the city’s heritage. The Sally Lunn and the Bath Bun – they both even have their own tea room in town. Of course the notion that one of these buns is more important than the other is bollocks. At the end of the day, it’s just something to spread your butter on. I’m far more interested in both of these buns history than I am in their importance.

One bun maker claimed that the Bath bun was just simply a Sally Lunn which was slightly changed and then given the name Bath Bun for the tourists. A rather simplistic way of looking at it, but it has happened to other foods in the past. Of course in this case we are talking about two entirely different buns.

What a difference a bun makes
We know that during the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, set up by Prince Albert, 934.691 Bath buns were sold to the public. This shows they were either popular, or they were the best option! According to bun legend people remarked that the Bath bun sold in London was not exactly like the one sold in Bath and soon Bath buns in London were renamed London buns. However, mentions for London buns can be found 20 years before the Great Exhibition. So I’m fairly sure we are again talking about two different buns. To confuse things even more is that in Australia a Chelsea bun is known as a London bun.

The Sally Lunn which I will get to in another posting, is a light bun with a nice dome shaped top, it looks like a brioche but is less rich and not sweet at all. It is known since 1776. The Bath bun used to be a Bath cake in the 18th century. But although it was called cake, it was definitely treated as a bun, which according to Elizabeth Raffald The Experienced English Housekeeper, 1769 should be the size of a French roll and sent in hot for breakfast. Bath resident and cookery author Martha Bradley, gave a recipe in her book in 1756 entitled ‘Bath seed Cake’. Over the course of the 18th century eggs were added to the batter making the buns richer. In Andre Simon’s ‘Cereals: A Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy’ from 1807 the recipe instructs the cook to:
Rub 1 lb. of butter into 2 lb. of fine flour; mix in it 1 lb. of caraway comfits, beat well 12 eggs, leaving out six whites, with 6 spoonfuls of new yeast, and the same quantity of cream made warm; mix all together, and set it by the fire to rise; when made up, strew comfits over them.

Jane Austen was a fan of Bath buns and promised to stuff her face with them if her sister Cassandra would not be joining her for a visit to Paragon that May….

My Books: Pride and Pudding

26th October 2015 by Regula 39 Comments

Pride and Pudding – The history of British Puddings Savoury and Sweet takes you on a journey through the fascinating culinary past of Great Britain.
Published by Murdoch Books in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Also available in a Dutch translation.
Pride and Pudding was selected as one of the best ‘Books of 2016’ by Sheila Dillon from the BBC Food Programme, Delicious Magazine, the Irish Times and the Guardian. It was also shortlisted for the prestigious Andre Simon Award and the Fortnum & Mason award. The book won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for the UK, in the Food Heritage category.

Why this book?

Every book I write is about preserving a heritage, because in the present day far too much importance is given to new and exciting things while the past holds a treasure of beauty that is often forgotten. (See my other book Belgian Cafe Culture HERE)

Captivated by British cuisine – from its ancient savoury dishes such as the Scottish haggis to traditional sweet and savoury pies, pastries, jellies and ices, flummeries, junkets and jam roly-poly – I tell the story of British food, paying homage in particular to the great British pudding, which is versatile and wonderful in all its guises.

By tracing back to authentic cookery texts, the earliest of which dates from 14th century, I have re-created more than 80 recipes for the twenty-first century, and in the process I have rediscovered long-forgotten flavours and food fashions. I show you how pudding evolved over the centuries from being a savoury, often meat-based sausage-like dish, to the more dessert puddings we know today.

Pudding was so important in British culture that even foreign visitors wrote about them and British food, for example this one, by a French visitor in his diary:

“Blessed be he that invented pudding for it is a manna that hits the palates of all sorts of people…ah what an excellent thing is an English pudding.”

In the book I explore how religion and politics all influenced food and flavours, and how wartime shaped what British food is today.

Part food history and part recipe book, I tried to capture the essence of Britishness through its food, this is a different kind of cookbook.
It took me 2,5 years to complete the book, of which most of it was research.

The illustrations in the book are created by my husband and tell part of the stories, as do the photoghraphs which I have taken myself. I also designed the book, so as you can see this is a very personal project.

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To order online Amazon UK and Waterstones (I don’t receive any commission from sales by clicking) Or signed copies through email, see contact page

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Praise for Pride and Pudding

It’s a labour of love that revives your faith in cookbooks – erudite, original, beautifully written, gorgeously shot and styled – something you’ll definitely want to own and leaf through. If it doesn’t win one of next year’s food writing and/or photography prizes I’ll be amazed.

Fiona Beckett

award-winning food and wine writer. Wine columnist for The Guardian and the author of 23 books on food, wine and beer.

This is quite definitely the most beautiful food book I have ever seen.
Regula Ysewijn has the aesthetic eye of an Old Master and the intelligence and attention to detail of a well-read scholar.
Every page is a delight. I would never have believed that a prune tart or cabbage pudding could look so captivating. You will want to have Pride and Pudding on your bookshelves. Not only because is it an extraordinarily fine looking book thats a pleasure to handle and behold, but also because the contents are fascinating.
Pride and Pudding is an astonishing achievement from an exceptional writer.

Joanna Blythman
acclaimed journalist and author of 7 books, most recent: ‘Swallow this’

Cook favourite and maverick creative Regula Ysewijn, is set to publish her first book, Pride and Pudding, in April. What started out as a childhood hankering for traditional English fare has become an all-consuming social study of the historical treats of Britain. And this is the beautifully illustrated, hardbacked result. Ysewijn collected handwritten cookbooks and vintage pudding moulds. She researched the etymologies of our dish names and the chronologies of our tastebuds. Crucially, she cooked the ancient recipes she came across, photographing, in glorious , painterly detail, jaune manges and apple tansies and glimmery almond flummeries. What a beauty of a book this is.

The Guardian – Cook

A truly wonderful thing of beauty…a very tasty masterpiece’ – Jamie Oliver

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Where to find my book

The English version is available online: Amazon UK and Waterstones! (I don’t receive any commission from sales by clicking)

The Dutch book costs 35 euros + shipping cost. You can find it in bookstores in Belgium and Holland (not signed).

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We have created something special:

The Limited edition pack

PRIDE-AND-PUDDING-LIMITED-EDITION-regula-ysewijn-LR

The Limited edition package with handmade pudding basin, a signed book, card set and signed art print.
Another news is that I’ve been working on a little project with pottery artist Solomia Zoumaras to create a Pride and Pudding – pudding basin! We’re still trying out glazes and clays but we managed to get a good one out of the kiln to show to you lovely people! The cool thing is that on the outside the pudding basin is quite modern, but the inside has a different shape so that your christmas pudding will come out pudding-shaped! So here is the deal: There will be 25 pudding basins, handmade by Solomia and printed with a design from the book. These basins come with a signed book (Dutch or English) a card set designed by Bruno, and a signed art print of one of the illustrations.

The limited edition costs 120 £ + shipping and contains*:
• A signed book – made out to whom you wish and personal message if you would like that
• The hand made pudding basin, designed by Solomia and I
• A card set with 5 cards (see below)
• A signed and numbered aprox. A5 size art print of one of the illustrations

Status pre-order for Limited edition:
Available: 25 / Sold: 15

Payment possible with paypal : contact me for a shipping quote

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