May Mending

Mostly modern tasks this month (jeans and the like), though I did fix a split seam in my 1850s drawers and replace a bone button which had broken on my tucked petticoat. After last weekend's reenactment, I found a number of tears in my shifts and stockings, which have now replenished the mending pile.  

Sallet of all kinde of hearbes, 1587

 To make a Sallet of all kinde of hearbes, from The Good Huswifes Jewell (1587): 

Take your hearbes and picke them very fine into faire water, and picke your flo∣wers by them selues, and wash them all cleane, and swing them in a strainer, and whē you put them into a dish, mingle them with Cowcumbers or Lemmons payred and sliced, and scrape Suger, and put in vineger and Oyle, and throw the flowers on the top of the Sallet, and of euery sorte of the aforesaid things, and garnish the dish about with the foresaide thinges, and hard Egges boyled and laide about the dish and vpon the Sallet.

So, which are these "all kinde of hearbes?" In the contemporary A Book of Cookrye (1591), the only salad recipe is a boiled salad of spinach (with a sauce of currants, sugar, and vinegar). The earlier Forme of Cury (c.1390) gives a "salat" that truly features all kinds of herbs:

Take persel, sawge, garlec, chibolles, oynouns, leek, borage, myntes, porrectes [porrets], fenel and ton tressis [cresses], rew, rosemarye, purslarye [purslain], laue and waische hem clene, pike hem, pluk hem small wiþ þyn honde and myng hem wel with rawe oile. lay on vynegur and salt, and serue it forth.

In a more modern spelling, I read this as

Take parlsey, sage, garlic, chibolles [spring onions], onions, leeks, borage, mint, porret [scallions, young leeks, or small onions], fennel, cresses, rue, rosemary, purslane. Lave [rinse] and wash them clean, pick them, pluck them small within hand and mingle well with raw oil. Lay on vinegar and salt, and serve it forth.

Meanwhile, Eleanor Fettisplace's Receipt Book (edited by Hilary Spurling, started c.1604) apparently mentions salads of lettuce, radish, cress, and 'other greens' interspersed with olives, currants, nuts, and decorated with flowers. None of these recipes made the printed addition in full.

Being limited by what was available in the garden, I had to use a purchased spinach/baby lettuce combination as the bulk of the greens, supplemented by curly cress (lots in the garden already), roquet/arugula, parsley (doing well in the container garden), sage (ditto), mint (likewise), and green onions (also coming along in the garden). I technically could have grabbed some leeks and borage as well, but I didn't like how either of them looked in the necessary interval between when I picked them and when I started assembling the salad--and I simply forgot to pick any rosemary. I opted for the cucumber over the lemon (this being for an event, and feeling that cucumbers require less of an explanation), and did remember to grab some chive flowers to decorate the sallet.   

Sallet of all kinde of hearbes, after a recipe of c.1587.

Per the instructions, I washed and drained all the vegetables, then sliced the cucumbers and tore up all the leafy greens. Mounding the greens on a plate, I set the cucumber slices over them, and poured white wine vinegar and olive oil over the whole thing. I finished it the sallet by setting slices of three hard-boiled eggs around the edges and putting the chive flowers on top.

Overall the salad was fine, I just found it really bland. In many respects, it's not that different from my usual Victorian salads, so I think the main issue is the dressing not having that extra zip of mustard and cayenne. It might also just have been too cool of a day for salad to really be appealing. I was worried about the more pungent herbs, and the sheer number of onion variations called for, but it ended up not being a huge deal. The few bits of green onion I included went very nicely with the egg and cucumber, while the sage wasn't bad, and even the mint worked better than I feared. I'm not sure this will hold true for a salad with more mint and onion all together, but in small amounts, it sort of worked. I'd definitely inflict this one on other people in the name of historical accuracy (it's weird, but not awful). 

I did forget the sugar, but otherwise feel pretty good about the accuracy of this salad. For one thing, I think there's room to interpret "all kinde of hearbes" as 'this recipe can be many with any kind of green salad vegetables' as much as it can be read as 'this recipe requires as many different vegetables as possible,' and in that case, not including every plant isn't a failure. Furthermore, the herb list I used was a good 200 years older than the salad recipe itself, so while I think it was a potentially useful suggestion, I don't think it's a binding matter of accuracy to includes all of them in this one specific recipe. I think there's room to argue that the cucumbers should be mixed into the greens instead of laid on top, so I might try that instead next time, though I like the look of the cucumbers on top.

Shoe-making Tool Roll

Much like the flatware rolls, and the one for my straw-plaiting accoutrements, this tool roll isn't an historical copy, but rather the application of a historic method (rolled fabric pocket) to a crafting and living history need (a way to contain my shoe-making tools, especially the pointy ones, in storage and transit). It certainly would have been a familiar organizational strategy for the sorts of women trying to DIY their own shoes with Every Lady Her Own Shoemaker, so I think it's a reasonable addition to my interpretive kit. After all, I'm not portraying a period shoemaker, just a person with basic sewing skills attempting to learn from a book.

Tools all assembled.

 

I left out the hammer and pliers, due to their size and weight skewing my mock-ups. The rest of the tools and supplies get their own designation pockets: wool-lined leather sheaths for two shoe knives and a rasp; wool needle-page;  then fabric pockets for two awls, a wood burnisher, an edging tool, bar of wax, thread winders, a bag of tacks, and glass burnisher. Wool is used to keep moisture (and thus rust) away from the blades and needles, while the rest of the roll is made from reproduction cotton prints. The awls have small pieces of cork over their tips to prevent them poking through the fabric.

I've taken it out for one event so far, and other than being inconveniently large for the table space, it did a good job of keeping everything neat and ready at hand. I also appreciate that it rolls up into a single neat package, which is helpful for organizing my box of shoe-making supplies.

Food in Season: May 1861

It's May Beeton's Book of Household Management considers to be in season for May.

Fish- Carp, chub, crabs, crayfish, dory, herring, lobsters, mackerel, red and gray mullet, prawns, salmon, shad, smelts, soles, trout, turbot.

Meat- Beef, lamb, mutton, veal.

Poultry- Chickens, ducklings, fowls, green geese, leverets, pigeons, pullets, rabbits.

Vegetables- Asparagus, beans, early cabbages, carrots, cauliflowers, cresses, cucumbers, lettuces, pease, early potatoes, salads, sea-kale, -various herbs.

Fruit- Apples, green apricots, cherries, currants for tarts, gooseberries, melons, pears, rhubarb, strawberries.

Meat and poultry are looking pretty much the same as last month, save for the addition of goose. The game category is completely gone, as are the shellfish. Lots of turn-over in the fish, vegetables, and fruit categories.

Remaking Plaid Gaiters, c.1856

Now that I have proper lasts to play with, I decided to take apart and remake the plaid gaiters that were my first pair of non-slipper shoes. They worked, to a certain extent (especially after I had glued on an outersole so the stitches weren't exposed), but had always fit a poorly due to my inexperienced attempt at adjusting the width. I figured that I was unlikely to wear them again in their current state, so I might as well use the material to practice on and, in the best case scenario, get a little more wear out of them as well. 

Before: Dirt, worn out binding, and very clunky soles.

After disassembling the whole shoes, including removing the binding and cutting away the damaged parts of the lining, I washed the wool uppers (which mostly took off the surface dust, but had little effect on the serious stains around the lower edge), cut new linings by tracing the old ones, and pieced them in along either side of the eyelets. I considered adding foxing, mostly to cover the aforementioned stains, but decided to save the material. As it turned out, the worst of the stains found their way into the lower seam allowance.

Fitting in the new linings.

Then, I re-bound the uppers with wool tape; I did the same with the tongues, because I had bound them before and wasn't sure if I had enough seam allowances to sew them wrong sides together and turn. I also added a heal stiffener along the center back of the upper (just a piece of crinoline, so that it would turn easily). Then it was a matter of tracing the last and cutting the soles (which went more smoothly this time, hopefully I'm improving). I decided to try sewing the soles properly this time, based on the turn-shoe method given in Every Lady Her Own Shoemaker. I also consulted Nicole Rudolph's Gonzo cosplay shoe-making video (even though I'm not making a welted shoe) to get my head around the book's description of skiving and pricking the sole.

Results: a qualified success.

The sewing part went faster and easier than previous attempts (I credit the curved awl and tapered edges of the sole), and I managed to attach both soles in a single afternoon's work. Turn them right-side out also went easier than I feared. The result shoes are very light (and feel quite flimsy compared to the double-layer soles on my other recent pair). They fit just fine, and I'm not swimming in them like before. I also like that they have a more defined shape off the foot, and especially the distinctive square toe of this time period.

Original: 1840s Brocaded Silk Fabric

 

English-made silk brocade, 1840s, in the VAM.

It is the month of May, what better time for some English flowers? This Spitalfields brocade caught my eye not only for the bright polychrome floral sprays, but also for how their strong colors contrast with the more delicate white-one-white patterning of the background. The description calls the whole thing brocade, though at high magnification, the colored flowers look like they might be embroidered using satin stitch on a brocaded white ground. That being said, my eyes could be deceived, and all the flowers may be woven in. I do wish I could see the reverse of the fabric to make a better guess.