1850s Opera Gown (Red Stripe)

Evening gown of striped red tafetta.

My dress form is broken (see above bad fit, despite attempts at padding it), so I've delayed posting this dress. It was made for attending a performance of Rigoletto last autumn, with the fringe finally attached for Burn's Night. The fringe is hand-made, of the same striped tafetta. The style details (sleeve shape, fringe, darted bodice, center front concealed closure) are based on this 1850s evening dress from the Met:

Evening gown, French, 1850s.
From The Met.

 

HFF 4.2: Downstairs Dinner

The Challenge: Make a dish of the working classes.

The Recipe: Welsh Rabbit (sometimes called "Welsh Rarebit") from A Shilling Cookery for the People by Alexis Soyer

The Date/Year and Region: 1855, London

How Did You Make It: I tried the first three versions (after a fashion). I started by preheating the oven to 325F; while this was heating, I sliced three pieces of sourdough bread*, and slightly hollowed out a French roll. Once the oven was hot, I placed all of these on a pan in the oven, and toasted them for ~5 minutes per side. Meanwhile, I cut 4oz of Dubliner** cheese into 1/2" cubes, and set it in a saucepan over medium heat to melt, along with 1.5" oz ale, 1 tsp dry mustard (it didn't specify 'made' mustard versus the herb alone, so I guessed), and a dash each of salt and pepper. When I flipped over the bread, I added 1/4" slices of Gloucester*** cheese on top of one slice, with a dash of mustard and cayenne. Halfway through baking that side, I used a knife to spread the cheese better. When the cheese was thoroughly melted, and the bread toasted, I removed the bread from the oven, and poured the melted Dubliner cheese over the rest of the bread and the roll.

*Not the called-for quartern loaf, but the least weird option at the store. 

**The 1st and 3rd recipes do not specify a type of cheese.

***This should have been a single Gloucester according to the recipe, but the only Gloucester at the store was a double with onion and chives. It's quite tasty, but I fear the additions overwhelmed the other flavors.

Time to Complete: 15-20 minutes, including pre-heatinv the oven.

Total Cost: $5 for the small amount of cheese and bread used

How Successful Was It?: It's hard to go wrong with bread and cheese. The sourdough bread was a bit underwhelming, and I think the Dubliner cheese sauce on it was ok, but could use more flavor (it also had some texture issues where the cheese and ale would not fully mix, and the cheese tended to harden instantly, so perhaps I need it hotter or more vigorously stirred in order to poor it easily). Anyway, verdict on #1 is rich, but not amazing. I'd try it again with more seasoning and maybe some different bread and/or cheese. The Gloucester on sourdough (#2) was similar, but the mustard and cayenne disappeared under the onion and chives. I would like to try this again with unflavored Gloucester and maybe more mustard (and different bread?). It was much easier just melting the cheese directly onto the bread. The roll (#3) was my favorite: the French roll worked better with the melted cheese (same as #1), and nicely absorbed the runnier portions of the melted cheese. I actually liked it enough to make two more for my dinner. I'm inclined to make this "Welsh Rabbit" again, moreso than the others, but would still like to try some different cheeses.

How Accurate Is It?: I already noted the cheese/bread types, where there is room for improvement. I used an electric stove/oven, but see where this would be fairly easy to make on a woodstove or cooking hearth.

Diverse varieties of the "Welsh Rabbit"

Braid of Three Bowes

Pewter whirligig on blue silk fingerloop braid.

Messing around with fingerloop braids, again. This one is 3 bowes, using size FF beading silk. It's mostly an excuse for practicing the technique, though I needed a new string for the whirligig I got from Billy and Charlie's (I may have gotten a little too enthusiastic with the first).

HFF 4.1: One Last Holiday Hurrah

It's season 4!

The Challenge: Pick a holiday, any holiday, and start the New Year with some in- or out-of-season merriment. 
I thought going into this challenge that I'd end up with either a fun Christmas recipe that I didn't have time for in December, or maybe an interesting Easter receipt. Unfortunately, my trawl through Victorian (and a couple medieval) cookbooks didn't reveal many specific holiday foods, at least under the search terms I was using. There are hot cross buns for Good Friday (which I've made a few times), and a couple Mardi Gras recipes (Tarte owte of Lent, pancakes), and then the run of Christmas and New Years' recipes  (Wassail, Mince Pie, Christmas Cake, Plum Cake, Twelfth Cake, more Twelfth Cake, New Year's Cookies, Rocky Mountain Punch, Cherry Bounce). In the spirit of not repeating things (and lacking the time/means/audience for the larger meat dishes), I decided to try cooking a winter squash, as shows up in some of the Christmas dinner menus.

The Recipe: Winter squash is on the Christmas dinner bill of fare in Miss Leslie's 1847 The Lady's Receipt-Book (copied verbatim in Godey's in January 1860).  I ended up turning to Mrs. Bliss's 1860 The Practical Cook Book for how to actually cook it.

The Date/Year and Region: 1860, Philadelphia

How Did You Make It:  I pared the squash; as the instructions did not specify further, I removed the seeds but left the shell on (the shell came off easily once cooked, as I hoped). I then set the squash to stew in water on the stovetop on medium heat for 45 minutes. Once tender, I drained the water, peeled off the shell, and mashed the squash with 2 oz of unsalted butter (being what I had on hand) and a generous pinch of salt (about 1/4-1/2 tsp).

Time to Complete: An hour.  It took 45 minutes to boil the squash, preceeded by about 5 minutes of preparing/paring it and followed by 10 minutes of peeling/mashing/letting the butter melt.

Total Cost: $4.50: four dollars for a 2lb squash and 50 cents worth of butter

How Successful Was It?:   Alright. The texture of the spaghetti squash was the least appealing part (it lived up to its name, and became stringy as mashed). The flavor was fine: it's hard to go wrong with butter and salt, though I think slightly less butter and possibly a touch more salt would be worth trying. I'd definitely try a different type of squash next time. I picked the spaghetti squash basically at random, as there were no marrows to be had at the store, but on cutting it proved to be rather different from the marrow (harder shell, stringier seed area, stronger flavor).

How Accurate Is It?: The squash type is the big issue here (there being three whole ingredients in the recipe). So, I'd like to try this again with some vegetable marrow or another definitely-period variety of winter squash.

It looks so appetizing... the squash actually tasted
alright, but there's room for improvement. 

Twelfth Cake

One of these years I'll remember to photograph
the cake before serving it.

Revisiting the 1857 Twelfth Cake receipt this year. I went up to a half-batch this time (skimping 2 oz out of the 2 lbs of currants and 2/3 the mace, because I ran out). The batter quite overwhelmed my mixer, especially when I got to adding the currants--but did fill the cake hoop nicely. As before, the half pound of candied peel is a mixture of orange and lemon, and I skipped the citron. The big change is that I tried using gluten-free 1:1 flour subsitute, since I already know this recipe works and have successfully used the subsitute in modern cakes (just not ones with this much fruit).

Consensus is that the gf flour substitute worked just fine.  Even with the increased volume, the cake baked in just over 2 hours at 325F (with 4 layers of paper below and two above and on the sides).

Vampire Dinner Party Bill of Fare (~1850s)

Notes from a project from November: a period-inspired dinner party for 7, in a "vampire" setting. I chose to interpret this as "Romantic Era", vaguely leaning more into the 1850s because that's where I have more recipes to work from. A few dishes are from Beeton's, which is technically 1861, but there's fairly good evidence that the recipes themselves are older.

 When I did my first independent dinner party (Candlelight, all those years ago), I got a little crazy analyzing menu patterns. Beeton, for instance, in the various dinner party suggestions, tends to break down into "1 dish per 2 guests per course". This is always way too much food for modern diners in my experience, so I ended up following "Lady Maria Clutterbuck's" plans in What shall we have for dinner? (1852). Looking over menus throughout the year, this book give a total of 7-10 dishes for a party of six or seven people. This amounts to: 1 soup or fish dish, occassionally both; 2 meat dishes and 2 vegetable dishes (sometimes with a third of one or the other); and finally 1-2 sweet dishes with 1-2 savory.

Bill of Fare

Soup a la Julienne [Beeton]
Very Good Rolls [Beeton]
Beef ala Mode [Beeton]
Boiled Celery with White Sauce [sauce from Mrs. Rundel's]
Pork Cutlets
Potatoes in the German Fashion
Quince Jelly  [Mrs. Putnam's]
Chicken Croquettes
Egg Salad
Meringues
Jelly in Oranges (blackberry jelly)

By using gluten-free breadcrumbs on the croquettes, some flour substitute, and omitting the beer in the gravy, I was able to make everything except the rolls gluten-free. The dishes which aren't explicitly meat-containing were made vegetarian (but still with eggs and dairy) through meatless gravy and stocks, and substituting agar for gelatin/isinglass (and omitting the chicken on one salad).

Quin's Quince Recipes

Having come into a quantity of quinces last autumn, I started scouting for mid-19th century receipts for them. I'm posting them here in case the situation ever repeats itself.

Mrs. Putnam's Receipt Book (1860) has quince pudding, also preserved whole, as jelly, or marmalade.

Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery (1860) include the preserves, as well as quince custards, quince juice, quince blancmange, and quince paste.

Elizabeth Lea's Domestic Cookery (1859) has quince jelly, marmalade, pudding, and cordial, as well as a sore throat remedy using quince seeds.

Mackenzie's Five Thousand Receipts (1839) include quince wine, quince pudding, and quince marmalade

The New England Economical Housekeeper and Family Receipt Book (1845) includes quince pudding and preserved quinces.

The Southern Gardener and Receipt-Book (1860) also has quince blancmange, quince jelly and quince preserves.

The United States Practical Receipt Book (1844) gives receipts for quince jelly and quince wine.

The Royal Parisian Pastrycook (1832) mentions quince tartlets, as well as calling for quince marmelade or preserves in various custards, canapes, savoy cakes, etc.

Quince marmalade is named often for coloring or flavoring other dishes, though I think quince jelly to flavor iceland moss is my favorite so far. There's also wafers made with preserved quince juice. Beeton suggests using quince to flavor apple pie.

Costuming Resolutions for 2020

On the 9th day of Christmas: resolutions for the year. I had some fun originals lined for the first of the month (/year/common-usage-decade), so the resolutions had to wait a day.

Things I would like to make in 2020

Embroidered coif and forehead cloth
Tablet-woven garters
15th/16th century purse
Belt for 16th century garb
Turnshoes that fit better

18th century stays
18th century petticoats
Pockets
One of the 18th century dress lengths I have lying around

1800s/1810s Spencer
1810s Caped Pelisse

1859 net cap
Fancy 1850s undersleeves
Black wool crinoline-era dress (finish)
One of the 1830s dress lengths I have lying around
Sleeve plumpers for 1830s use
Dancing slippers

1889 day dress
1880s/1890s corset
1870s Natural Form Petticoats
1890s Petticoats
1879 Opera Gown
1897 Opera Gown

Also get blog drafts below 100. We'll see how well that goes...

Originals: 1720-1920

Happy New Year! The 2020 jokes may now commence.

Evening Dress, French (Poiret), 1920-3.
The Met.

Dress, English, c.1820.
LACMA (more images at link).

Silk Dress, English, c.1725.
The Met.