Victorian

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 On the land a lot of jobs had been replaced by new farming machines, techniques changed, unemployment and poverty rose as the population almost doubled.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….

Stir-up Sunday, History and Plum pudding

18th November 2016 by Regula 5 Comments

Let me start with blowing my own trumpet, it’s my blog so I’m allowed! I’m pleased to have tracked down a copy of Delicious Magazine while in Budapest because in it they have elected my book Pride and Pudding as one of the best books of 2016! After the hard work creating this book I am of course flattered and beyond happy to get this kind of news! So thank you again Delicious Magazine UK!!

Now on to the news of the day!

This weekend will mark the last Sunday before advent which is traditionally Stir-up Sunday. According to (rather recent) tradition, plum pudding or Christmas pudding should be made on this day. It is a custom that is believed to date back to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer (though it is actually not); where a reading states ‘stir up, we beseech thee’. The words would be read in church on the last Sunday before Advent and so the good people knew it was time to start on their favourite Christmas treat.

It was a family affair: everyone would gather to stir the pudding mixture from east to west, in honour of the Three Kings who came from the east. Sometimes coins or trinkets would be hidden in the dough; finding them on Christmas Day would bring luck and good fortune.

There are a lot of legends and claims made about the origins of the plum pudding. Some say it was King George I who requested plum pudding as a part of the first Christmas feast of his reign, in 1714. George I was christened ‘the Pudding King’ because of this myth but there are no written records prior to the twentieth century to tell us that this king deserved this title.

…

The intriguing Twelfth cake

14th January 2014 by Regula 23 Comments

The Twelfth cake is to me one of the most intriguing of cakes in the British cuisine. The cake is traditionally baked for the feast of epiphany or as the name already reveals – the twelfth night of christmas. But baking a cake for epiphany isn’t a custom in Britain alone, in other European countries and in my home country Belgium we have the ‘3 kings cake’ (driekoningen taart) or the ‘Galette du Rois’ which is a frangipane tart with puff pastry concealing a much coveted bean which will make you king for the day. The 3 kings cake is sold with a paper crown so all is in order for the coronation of the lucky finder of the bean. At some time however it was the fashion of concealing tiny porcelain babies and nativity figures in the cake, a custom my mother in law tells me is still practiced by the bakery in my neighbourhood. I remember as a child, I’ve never had the pleasure of finding the bean which would make me king, this annoyed me very much as a little girl.
In Britain the tradition was to hide a bean and a pea in a plum cake, the bean would crown the king and the pea would crown the queen. The Twelfth cake would contain spices like cloves, mace, nutmeg and cinnamon along with dried fruits like raisins and candied orange or lemon peel.

Antique 3 king cake figurines, imagine biting into one of those!

The earliest printed recipe for a Twelfth cake dates from 1803 and can be found in John Mollard’s the Art of Cookery. However, references to the custom of the Twelfth cake and the celebrations surrounding it can be found as far back in history as the 16th century and it is very possible that the tradition has been around for much longer. In a early Tudor manuscript which is kept at the Bodleian Library we find a passage about wassail cakes, which are believed to be heathen Twelfth cakes. Wassail comes from the Old English ‘Waes hale’ which most likely means ‘be whole’ or be healthy, like a kind of frase you say while making a toast. We can also find recipes for Wassail which is a type of mulled cider traditionally drunk while Wassailing, meaning a tradition of awakening the cider apple trees while singing and drinking.

In 1648, Robert Herrick’s poem ‘Twelft Night: Or King and Queen describes the celebrations of the Twelfth night beautifully. Here he speaks of a cake full of plums (plums meaning raisins rather than actual plums, see plum pudding) And goes on to describe the election of a king and queen after discovering a bean and a pea. And he mentions a gentle Lamb’s wool and the spices that should go into it to give to the king and queen for wassailing. The Lambswool is a Wassail drink made of ale or cider.
A
few years later in 1659/1660 Samuel Pepys writes in his diary on januari the 6th
of a ‘Brave cake brought us, and in the choosing, Pall was Queen and Mr.
Stradwick was King.’ Which shows that there were celebrations in the city as well as in the country, though there is no word of wassailing in Pepys lines.

During the mid 1700 up until the late 1800 Twelfth cakes were very fashionable and often decadently decorated showing elaborate scenes and figurines crafted out of sugar or wax. Crowns seem to have been the most popular decoration and usually white icing would have been used which back then was a sugar paste called gum paste which was shaped into wooden molds. We can find illustrations of large Twelfth cakes set in a scene of feasting in the Satires Collection of the British Museum, and we also find Victorian Twelfth night cards with humorous illustrations of characters. The day the Twelfth cakes, large and small would appear in the pastry shop’s windows in London a large number of people would gather in front of them to capture a glance of these most fashionable cakes. The Victorians enjoyed the Twelfth night celebrations to the full and the pastry shops sold the Twelfth night character cards with the cakes. Each guest of the party would then have to choose a card which had a verse describing the character underneath. One had to read the verse aloud and pretend to be that character until midnight. We can find an excellent description of these events and many more surrounding Twelfth day and Wassailing in ‘The Every-Day Book’ by William Hone. In the country the celebrations surrounding the twelfth night would still be the more heathen Wassailing, the twelfth night celebrations in London were considered rather vulgar by outsiders.

Although we will not easily find Twelfth cakes in the shops today, the tradition of wassailing is still very much alive with country feasts all over Britain. People come together to sing, drink wassail, eat plum cake and be merry. Once again it is the ancient and probably pre-christian tradition which has withstood the test of time. In my opinion because these traditions are more entwined with nature, the change of the seasons and the marking moments in the farming year that come with it.

What about you? Did you go wassailing or did you bake a Twelfth cake or another cake from your corner of the world?

This recipe is basically Mollard‘s recipe translated to modern day, Mollard doesn’t give measurements of the yeast and milk, which I had to test to give to you. Also the recipe of Mollard is three times the measurements given here, which means that this would have been a massive Twelfth cake!

What do you need

organic white wheat flour, 500 g
dried yeast, 2 teaspoons
lukewarm milk, half a cup
unsalted butter, softened, 75 g
raw cane sugar, 100 g
currants or sultanas, 340 g
Candied orange peel or lemon, to taste
Cinnamon, 2 teaspoons
Cloves, pounded, 1 teaspoon
a generous pinch of mace
a pinch of nutmeg
cold milk, 1,5 cups

Method

Add all the flour to a bowl and make a well in the middle, add the sugar in the well followed by half a cup of warmed milk.
Add the yeast to the milk and stir so the yeast, milk and sugar are mixed. After a few minutes the yeast will start bubbling and will look frothy.
Now add the butter and spices followed by 1 cup of milk, mix well and then add another cup of milk before adding the dried and candied fruit.
While adding the currants and peel you might need to add an additional half a cup of milk, especially if you’ve started out without soaking the currants.
Once the mixture has come together in a slightly wet dough, cover and let rest for 2 hours or more if you have the time.
Line a spring form or wooden baking hoop with baking paper and add the dough.
Put in a preheated oven at 200° C for 1 hour.
If you see that the top is browning too much, cover it with tinfoil to prevent a burnt crust.
Leave to cool in the tin or hoop and ice and top with the most decadent decorations you can manage to create. I used fondant and marzipan to create these decorations, I only need some pointers in evening out my icing!
This cake is more like a bread and reminds me of the German Stollen, but dryer.

You might also enjoy
Lambs Wool
Ypocras
Plum pudding
Cranberry and apple crumble

Kedgeree and… my first video!

8th December 2013 by Regula 12 Comments

I have something very exciting to share with you… my first ever video!!!
During the summer I was contacted by the guys from Grokker, a new online video network. They wanted me on board for a challenge with Loyd Grossman and because I had never really considered doing video, I thought this would be the perfect moment to get some experience in that area.
Although I was very tired after only 3 hours sleep and nervous of answering questions while trying to explain a recipe in a language other than my own without any form of rehearsal I must say I’m quite happy with how it turned out. The film crew really was a fabulous bunch of people. -Thanks guys- The video here is a trailer, the whole thing is on Grokker here > for which you have to create an account to see it – and if you do… don’t forget to click on the heart below the video to let me know you liked what I did there! 🙂 It’s a bit of a challenge with a few other fabulous blogger involved, check them out while you are there too.

A small -delicate- detail though… my name isn’t pronounced like you can hear in the video, so please don’t all start calling me ‘Regoela’ it’s more like ‘regular’ without the ‘R’ at the end and a more delicate ‘G’ like in Italian. It is Latin after all. 🙂
Anyway back to the dish, we had to choose a typical main dish of our niche that was able to be cooked in 30 min, prep to finish. So I choose Kedgeree, a recent favourite in our house.

Kedgeree is believed to find its origin in the Indian dish called Khichri and we can say it is the the first Anglo-Indian fusion food. During the British Raj, the Brits in India were craving a dish that would remind them of home.   Khichri is considered a sick person’s food in India, being less spicy and easier on the digestive system than other curries. It was perfect for the Britons who were still spice-shy back then and couldn’t take the heat of a curry like they do today.

But the British like to tweak recipes, so they added protein where as in an original Khichri there was none. The colonials added fish and eggs and embraced it as a breakfast dish. But why a breakfast dish, firstly because the Brits are used to protein rich breakfasts but also because the heat in India made it so the fish had to be eaten for breakfast in order to keep it from spoiling. This means that the original Kedgeree was made with fresh fish rather than with smoked fish.
Back in Britain the Victorians loved kedgeree and the novelty feel it had. It was perfect for the fancy breakfast table and a change from the usual.

How the smoked fish, came into the equation is another story.
It is generally believed that the arrival of kedgeree in Britain in the 18th century coincided with the introduction of a stagecoach from the Scottish village of Findon to Edinburgh and then further south. Findons’ cottage industry was the smoking of haddock and Kedgeree was the perfect way to balance the fish’s strong salty flavour with ingredients like rice and hard-boiled eggs.

Below is an explanation of Kedgeree from Colonel A. R. Kenney-Herbert, Wyvern’s Indian Cookery Book – 1869

 “Kedgeree (khichri) of the English type is composed of boiled rice, chopped hard-boiled egg, cold minced fish, and a lump of fresh butter: these are all tossed together in the frying pan, flavoured with pepper, salt, and any minced garden herb such as cress, parsley, or marjoram, and served in a hot dish.  The Indian khichri of fish is made like the foregoing with the addition of just enough turmeric powder to turn the rice a pale yellow colour, and instead of garden herbs the garnish is composed of thin julienne-like strips of chilli, thin slices of green ginger, crisply fried onions, etc.” 

Eliza Acton uses not hard-boiled but raw eggs to create a Carbonara type of sauce and Elisabeth David adds a lot of spices and raisins. My version is something in between the recipes of these clever ladies and the gentleman above, my eggs are boiled semi runny and I only use cayenne pepper as a seasoning. The smoked haddock gives enough flavour to make this dish an excellent comfort food, or as I’m told it works wonders for a hangover!

What do you need
• 400 g smoked haddock
• 500 ml water
• 2 sjallots
• 150 g basmati rice
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 3 eggs, boiled semi runny or hard boiled if you prefer – shell removed
• sea salt to taste
• a pack of butter, unsalted
• fresh parsley, chopped

method
Bring the water to a boil in a deep pan with a lid, ad the fish and make sure it is completely covered and simmer – not boil – for about 10 minutes or until flaky
Remove the fish from the pan – keeping the liquid aside – transfer to a warmed dish and cover
Add the rice to the pan with the cooking liquid, cover with the lid and bring back to the boil for 10 minutes and regularly stirring the rice. Keep the lid on.
Now flake the fish into bitesize pieces using a teaspoon
Remove the shells from the eggs and cut up one of the eggs and leave the other two whole
After 10 minutes, turn down the flame and leave the rice covered with the lid until needed.
Heat a generous amount of good quality butter in a large deep pan, add the finely chopped shallots and glaze while stirring
Now ad a large knob of butter and ad the cayenne pepper, the rice and the fish with a generous pinch of salt.
Stir well so the pepper colors the rice an add two eggs, cut in pieces before stirring a last time.
Get your warmed serving plate out, transfer the food to the plate and halve the last boiled egg to put on top as decoration.
Finish of with the chopped parsley

A great dish for using up leftover rice or fish, it can be made with any kind of white fish or even prawns. Serve with a side salad to ad some vegetables to the mix.
Some people like it with mango chutney but I find it too sweet.
Drink with a nice IPA beer.

So jealous of those wheels!

British watercress and the ‘Poor Man’s bread’

2nd June 2013 by Regula 24 Comments

Steve in one of the watercress beds

‘British weather is perfect for watercress’ the words of Steve … my host at the watercress farm in Hampshire.
Britain is one of the few countries to grow watercress and has been for hundreds of years. As far back as the 1600’s and most likely even earlier it was foraged in the wild where it grew in streams and rivers but as from 1808 it was first commercially cultivated by William Bradbery, along the River Ebbsfleet in Kent.

The success of the watercress trade is very much entwined with the British railways. In 1865 the ‘Mid-Hants Railway’ or Watercress Line was opened, it connected Alresford to London giving Hampshire watercress growers the opportunity to get their crop fresh to the London markets. The delicate leaves would be picked by hand by the men and tied into bunches by the women to be placed in wicker baskets for the transport.
At London’s Covent Garden watercress would be sold by street vendors who often were children. The bunches of watercress were said to have been formed into posies and eaten like that for breakfast straight away or if you were lucky to be able to afford a loaf, between two slices of bread. In Victorian Britain it was called ‘the poor man’s bread’, it provided the working class with a good portion of nutrition for the day and became one of the first foods for on-the-go.

The Watercress Line declined during the years of the first and second world wars and gave her final blow to watercress growers in the 1960’s with the closure of the line.
Now a flourishing industry, watercress is gaining popularity again and Alresford even has a Watercress festival in may.
We now have Watercress all year round but it used to be a hardy winter crop, feeding off spring water that has a constant temperature of around 10° C, watercress is unaffected by frost.

The clear water feeding the cress

Planting seedlings

The beds on this Hampshire farm are still the original ones from the 1800’s, they are cleared each year to keep the crop healthy and follow the natural line of the river benefiting of the natural spring water. Hawks and Falcons are used to chase away stealing pigeons and bats are set free to clean the beds of small insects that could affect the health of the crop. They very much work together with nature, preserving the wildlife that likes to reside around watercress and to keep the beds chemical free.

University
students are at the site to study this method as was Steve at one time
in his life. Steve has a PhD in the nutritional physiology of watercress
and his course was part funded by the watercress industry. He tells me watercress contains more vitamin c than oranges, more iron than spinach and more calcium than milk.
He himself swears by eating a few bunches, raw in his hand like the ‘Poor man’s bread’ every day and has done for thirty years.

Steve with his ‘Poor man’s bread’

The
watercress from Hampshire does taste perfectly peppery filling your
mouth and nose with mustardy warmth and then refreshing it with the
juicy stalks.
It has been a favorite on my plate for quite some time,
preferring it to Rocket salad. It is so versatile, like the ‘poor mans
bread’ straight out of your hand or just plain between two slices of
bread, spicing up your soups, salads and smoothies. I can’t get enough
so with my precious bunches the farm kindly gifted me I had a lovely
salad, a sarnie, an egg and a trout and watercress pie. (check back on friday for the trout and watercress pie)

Watercress from the Watercress Alliance is sold all over the UK in supermarkets and market stalls. Have a play with this brilliantly British crop and I assure you that it’s mustardy bite will not let you go in a hurry.

The Poor man’s bread

What do you need

British watercress
bread *optional*

Method

To make a slightly more luxurious ‘poor man’s bread’ adding actual bread, bake a loaf of bread, or buy a decent loaf from a local bakery.
Cut off a couple of slices and wrap in a tea towel.
Pick out a handsome looking, crisp bunch of British watercress at a store or farmstall. Take a walk in the countryside or if you are urban, a park. Search for a perfect spot, in the sun ideally, by a lake or a stream preferably. Have a seat and a breath in deeply, hopefully all you will smell is flowers blossoming and the sweet scent of spring grass. Unpack your slices of bread on you lab and on it place the bunch of watercress, I am not washing it.
Notice the vibrant green color before you take the first bite.
Peppery warmth will fill your nose followed by the sweetness of the bread and then the fresh juiciness of the stalks.
You will wonder why you always over complicate meals when it can be so simple. You will start to think what will go beautifully with this sarnie, some light cream cheese or just a generous spread of fresh farmhouse butter …
From now one watercress will always be on your list, because you can’t get enough.
Enjoy x

You might also like
A farmers life for me – a day at a rare breed pig farm

Poverty and oysters … Beef, stout and oyster pie

4th March 2013 by Regula 10 Comments

As Dickens’ Sam Weller remarks in the Pickwick papers:

‘Poverty and oysters always seem to go together’.

Oysters have been savoured in Britain since Roman times. Shells have been found at many archaeological sites, with the Roman fort and Amphitheatre in Richborough as the most symbolically important one, and stretching as far north as Hadrian’s and the Antonine walls. Before the Romans came, the Britons regarded shellfish as something to eat when there was no fish or meat to be had. The little molluscs weren’t sought after until the Romans started to farm them and even export them live to Rome, where they were considered a delicacy.

When the Romans withdrew and the Saxons invaded in the 5th century, so a rich culinary culture disappeared, which included the oyster farming. It would take centuries for the oyster to become popular again and the first recorded appearance is to be found in a 14th century cookery manuscript by the Master Chef of King Richard II.

Throughout
the Medieval period the church imposed a number of days where one
should eat fish rather than meat. In fact, for a third of the year,
eating meat was forbidden. Therefore the mixing of fish and meat in
dishes only became popular later in the 16th century and an early 17th
century cookbook gives the recipe for roasting mutton with oysters.

By the end of the 18th century the industry had become highly regulated and although oysters had been the delight of the rich for a very long time, industrialisation cheapened them, making oysters one of the staples of the diet of the poor.

Beef
and oyster pie is a classic Victorian dish; it was the food of the
poor, and the poorer you were the more oysters you would put in your
pie. Oysters were plenty, the smaller ones sold as fast food on the
streets of London or pickled to keep, while the bigger ones were put in
stews and pies to make up for the deficiency of meat. It was a cheap
source of protein.

Oysters were also a typical food to be found
in public houses, where they were most commonly served with a pint of
stout. Stout beers were popular because of their strong flavour, higher
alcohol content, longer shelf life and because they were cheaper than
other beers. The claims of Stout being a nutritious drink made the
pairing with oysters the perfect cheap meal for the working class on
their way home with their wages.

Demand for oysters was high,
with as many as 80 million oysters a year being transported from
Whitstable’s nutrient-rich waters to London’s Billingsgate Market alone.
In the middle of the 19th century the natural oyster beds became
exhausted in England. As the oyster beds further declined, what had
previously been the food of the poor became a delicacy for the upper
classes once again.

This pie is wonderfully succulent; once a poor man’s dinner, it now graces our tables with elegance. The beef, oyster and stout or porter beer are a perfect pairing together with a rich suet crust – just like your nan used to make but let’s kick it up a notch and put some effort into the decoration of the pie! It’s fun to let your children have a go with the leftover pastry; you will have leftover with this recipe. Keep in the freezer until needed, defrost the evening before in your fridge.
This recipe works just as good as a stew, feeding 4 hungry mouths.

What do you need
For the stew

1 large carrot, quartered and cut into 2 cm long pieces
3 medium onions
500 g chuck of beef, diced
flour to dust the meat
1 pint of stout, Guinness or porter beer
1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup (if you don’t have it, leave it out or use 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar)
2 bay leaf
thyme
pepper and salt to season
water
6 oysters, cleaned.

For the pastry

300g plain white flour
100g unsalted butter
100g Atora shredded suet
a generous pinch of salt
125 ml icecold water
1 egg, beaten

Method
for the stew – filling

Preheat your oven to 160C
Add the carrots and onion to a cast iron casserole and color them over a medium fire.
Dust the meat with the flour and add it to the vegetables.
Immediately pour in the stout, mushroom vinegar and herbs.
If the meat isn’t completely covered in liquid, add some water or extra stout until it’s just covered.
Bring to the boil without putting on the lid.
When boiling, put on the lid and place in a lower part of the oven for 3-3,5 hours.
It depends on the animal used, the quality of the meat and how lean it is to know when the meat will be done. Check on it regularly so you don’t end up with dry meat. The meat is done when it is about to fall apart.

for the pastry lid
Combine the flour, butter, suet and salt in a large mixing bowl and use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour. Keep on doing this until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Pour in the water and start pressing the liquid into the breadcrumb-like mixture. Be gentle as you must be careful not to overwork the dough.
When you have created a rough dough, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or more. You can prepare the pastry the day before if you’re feeling organized.
Preheat your oven to 180C
Ladle the stew into your shallow pie dish and place the oysters neatly so everyone will find some in his plate.
Use the beaten egg to eggwash the edges of the piedish.
Take your pastry out of the fridge and place it on a floured work surface. Now roll out the pastry about 1 cm thick and make sure it’s larger than your pie dish.
Now carefully pick up the pastry and place it over the pie dish. Trim off the edges of the pastry so you get a nice lid. Now crimp the edges by using your thumb or a fork so the pastry lid is closed tightly.
Decorate the pie lid if you like and eggwash generously before putting into the oven on one of the lower parts.
The pie should be nice and golden after 40-45 minutes.Serve with peas and carrots because you got to have peas and carrots with pie …

You might also like
Sussex stewed steak >
Jo’s Hotpot >
Chicken & taragon pie >

Victorian

Footer

Connect