HFF 6.24: Beverages

The Challenge: Beverages. Make something to drink.

The Recipe: Claret cup from Lady Elinor Fettisplace's Receipt Book

To Make Claret Wine Water
Take a Quarte of strong aquavitae, as much of goode Claret wine, a pound of the beste sugar, beat yr sugar small, then powre the wine and the aquavitae to the sugar and stir the sugar and the wine togather untill yr sugar be dissolved, then ad to it whigt pep, ginger, nuttmegg, large Mace, Red jylloflwers...put some bruised Cloves therein when you put in the other spices.

The Date/Year and Region: 1604 or later, English

 

How Did You Make It: I scaled this down to just a cup each of wine and brandy, using a merlot for the claret since I couldn't find anything closer at the store (claret can refer to any red wine from Bordeaux). Being on a 1/4 scale, I used 4 oz of granulated white sugar. The spices don't have specific quanitites involved, so I guessed: a generous dash of powdered mace, 3 white peppercorns, 3 cloves, a 1/2" piece of ginger, and about four gratings of nutmeg. I bruised the pepper and cloves in a mortar and coarsely chopped the ginger,

 

Time to Complete: About five minutes, though letting the spices steep for 1-2 days improved the flavor.

 

Total Cost: In the $5-$10 range. I don't recall the exact prices and was only using a small fraction of each ingredient.

 

How Successful Was It?: Better with time. On the first day, it mostly tasted like wine with a bit of burn from the brandy and some mixed spice flavor; after sitting two days, the ginger flavor came through better and the sugar cut a bit of the burning. 

I tried mixing this with hot water (like the Irish cordial), and while the beverage was nice warm, a 50-50 mixture with water made it taste thin and faint (though it still burned a bit). I'd be tempted in the future to add warmed wine instead of water for cutting this with (or just using a higher proportion of wine to brandy in the first place).

How Accurate Is It? I could have worked harder to find a bordeaux, but I think brandy was a reasonable approximation for aquavitae (which the editor's notes indicated to a "neat spirit" distilled from wine or beer). While I didn't notice any grittiness, I expect the texture could be improved by find whole mace and crushing rather than grating the nutmeg, but given the spices available to me, I don't expect I'll be able to try that.

Served in a cordial glass because that's fun.

 

Twelfth Cake

Yes, those are marzipan squirrels and flowers.

Revisiting Elinor Fettisplace's Great Cake for Twelfth Night. In addition to actually baking it as one great cake, this time I made a double-batch of the dough (~1/4 the original scale), and finished it with the recommended sugar-rosewater glaze (actually from the marchpane recipe in the same book). 

This time, I used the exact amount of liquid called for in the modern translation (12 oz each of ale and milk for a double-batch), and that was a mistake. The dough was very tough and I could not work it smooth, however much I kneaded it. Especially once I added in the currants, the dough tended to split and spew dried fruit instead of forming a smooth mass. 

The spice flavor remains nice and not over-bearing, with the cinnamon predominating slightly over the nutmeg and ginger. The sugar glaze added a hint of sweetness and a light rose flavor to some of the cake, but the rest still tasted like unsweetened cinnamon-raisin bread. I would like to keep working on this recipe, but I think from here on out I definitely need to increase the liquids, and likely also the sugar content, in order to get something that will be accepted as 'cake.' For what it's worth, the original instructions call for using 'enough barm to make a light cake', so I think I'm on good historic footing to add more ale.

To make it more festive, I decorated the cake with subtleties; I used commercially-prepared almond paste, but did bake and glaze the figures as called for in Lady Fettisplace's marchpane recipe. I cut out the upper squirrel and the four-lobed flowers with cookie cutters, but used a candy molds to make the 3D squirrel at the center front. This went easier than I had feared, but it was good that I made two of them, since both fell apart a bit during the baking. I also found that even a few minutes at 350F was enough to start browning the paste, especially at the thinner points of the shapes, before the centers were cooked through; next time, I should use a cooling oven or else see if the bread-proofing setting is high enough to dry it out.

1908 Linen Travelling Suit

For the 1909 Suffrage event last summer, I decided to make a summer traveling suit. For inspiration, I trawled magazines c.1906-1910, and decided to base mine on this 1908 illustration from Harper's.

"Gray Linen Travelling Suit with bands of old green linen and scarf and tassels of the green." --Harper's Bazaar, June 1908

For the pattern, I opted to draft a single-breasted coat and 9-gored skirt from The "Standard" Work on Cutting Ladies' Tailor-made Garments: A Complete Treatise on the Art and Science of Delineating All Garments for Women Made by Tailors by S. Gordon (1908). While the whole suit is not easily visible in the illustration, the placement of the stripes indicate that we're seeing a 7 or 9 gore skirt, which I interpreted as a 9-gore so that I would have two plain panels rather than striped panels meeting in the center back.

Early steps in the drafting process.

Unfortunately, things got a bit rushed, so I didn't have time to put the stripes on the sleeves, which I do intend to add later. I intentionally omitted the tassels, since I wouldn't be able to perfectly match them to the green linen used on the stripes and buttons. Both the green and grey fabrics are medium-weight linen from fabrics-store.com, with cotton grosgrain for the waistband, and the skirt fully flat-lined in tarlatan. I used cotton coutil for the interlining of the collar, which did give a nice crisp form, but also makes the actual fold of the turn-back a little bulky. The coat lining is light-weight scrap linen from my stash.

It looks a bit better when the dress form isn't stuck on a too-small setting.
That's why the shoulders are falling back at that angle.

All told, this was a really comfortable outfit to wear. It also relatively easy to fit. Despite the book describing it as "front slightly shaped, back moderately shaped at waist", my first mock-up was much too large through the waist. However, the bust, shoulder, and upper chest all fit well from start, so it was a relatively easy revision (taking in the back seams a little near the waist and the front seams a bit more).If I was re-making this ensemble, I'd move the stripes slightly closer together and position them lower on the panels, in order to more closely follow the original. However, I don't mind the placement enough to re-make the whole ensemble (the green bands were applied to the panels before I joined them, which finished the edges neatly, but makes alterations to the trim more difficult). I still intend to add the sleeve trim, but only after I actually finish the hat and make a better stock/chemisette to go with it.

2024 Costuming Resolutions

My big goal for this year is not to be rushing projects at the last minute before an event. I either need to finish any new projects well in advance, or else I need to wear things I already have. For this purpose, I am going to plan that any new items are finished a month before the event I want it for, but will consider it a victory if nothing is finished less than a week before it is needed. 

Fortunately, I believe I'm starting the year with a pretty good supply of basics, except that I still need to make/repair my 19th century cotton stockings and finish those chemises. Unfortunately, I have a Twelfth Night event this week for which I really want to make a new Tudor partlet and sleeves.

My other big goal is to finish up items in my WIP pile, especially the ones that are already draped, cut, or under construction:

• Summer-weight 1850s dress (green plaid)
• Two 1850s chemises
• Another pair of 1850s drawers
• Dotted Swiss undersleeves
  
• 1912 wrap cape
• Wool and linen skirts/dresses for modern wear
  
• Maybe the Tudor wool gown
  

In the same vein, let's see if I can whittle down the drafts folder here (maybe 80 is a more attainable goal?), and finish up the reviews I intended to write for books acquired in 2023.

Original: Wiener Werkstätte Blouse, c.1917-18

 Happy New Year!

Blouse, 1917-18 by Wiener Werkstätte. LACMA.

I went looking for a 1924 dress to ring in the new year, but got distracted by how comfortable this WWI-era print blouse looks.  I had pegged it for a much later design before realizing it was a Wiener Werkstätte piece. And the longer I look at it, the more I like the drape of the garment. Late 1910s styles may be the next era I need to experiment with.