The Challenge: Seasonal Vegetables
The Recipe: Economical Vegetable Pottage accompanied by A Plain Salad (& Egg Dumplings, roughly based on the recipe from Godey's, reproduced in Civil War Recipes)
Date/Year & Region: English, 1852; American, 1860s
How Did You Make It: Started a broth with 4 oz. butter in 6 pints of water; added salt, pepper, winter savory*, parsley* and thyme*. Allow that to boil while cutting vegetable: red potatoes*, gold potatoes*, golden beets*, tete noir cabbage*, carrots*, welsh onions*. Added the shallots and (some type of) fresh bean whole. Allowed the whole thing to simmer for a while, adding mint near the end. For the salad, I layered green and red cabbage leaves, added some red lettuce, and decorated with slices of golden beet and mint leaves. Dressing of apple cider vinegar & olive oil (ran out of butter) with salt and pepper. Dumplings made of flour & salt, worked to a dough with egg* yoke and then boiled.
Time to Complete: From digging the potatoes until the dishes were washed, about 5 hours. I was making this in order to demonstrate the period kitchen in use, so it filled the time wonderfully.
Total Cost: All ingredients to hand. Asterisked items were from the Fort's period garden (or period chickens residing therein).
How Successful Was It: My best stew yet (probably because the instructions informed my seasoning choices, and I didn't put in too much pepper this time). The visitors commented favorably on the smell, and the reenactors seemed to favor the dumplings.
How Accurate Was It: I confess I just hunted through the available recipes looking for guidelines by which I could justify improvising (having not exactly prepared for the task at hand). That being said, the period instructions offer great latitude to use whatever vegetables are available--and for what it's worth, veggies and herbs used were all heirloom varieties dating no later than 1855.
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| Soup on the Stove |
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| Salad |
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| Egg Dumplings |
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