Knit Wristlets

 Not really a historic design (though I've seen other wristlets in 19th century knitting books), but I'm pretty excited about these wristlets. 

They're brown wool (the yarn was somewhere between a fingering weight and sportweight), but the part I'm excited about is what I made them with: a c. 1920s Autoknitter circular sock machine.

 

I've mostly just been knitting tubes of scrap yarn (and a few flat webs), but the wristlet project allowed me to practice several important sock elements, such as hanging the hem and not dropping stitches.

HFF 5.23: Dessert

The Challenge: Dessert. 

I went a little off-task on this challenge: hypocras or ipocras is certainly sweet, and I like drinking it after dinner, it's but not exactly a dessert in its time period. As far as I can tell, hypocras is simply a drink (if you're rich enough for the ingredients), and/or may have medicinal purposes. It can certainly be used as a vehicle for consuming herbal medicines, per the different recipe books I was looking through.

The Recipe: To make Ipocras From The English House-wife (1631)

To make Ipocras, take a pottle of wine, two ounces of good cinamon, halfe an ounce of ginger, nine cloues & sixe pepper cornes and a nutmeg & bruise them and put them into the wine with some rosemary flowers and to let them stoepe all night and then put in sugar a pound at least & when it is well setled let it run through a woollen bag made for that purpose, thus if your wine be claret the Ipocras wil be red, if white, then of that color also.

The Date/Year and Region: 1631, English 

How Did You Make It: A pottle being a half-gallon, I decided to make a half-batch of the receipt, which is 1 quart. Conveniently, this is the exact volume of my Renaissance pitcher (from Reannag Teine). Scaled down, this calls for:

• 1 quart wine
• 1 oz cinnamon (sticks)
  
• 1/4 oz fresh ginger
  
• 5 whole cloves
• 3 whole peppercorns
• half of a nutmeg [I ended up skimping on this because I only had ~1/4 of a nutmeg available]
  
• rosemary flowers
• 1/2 lb sugar (1 generous cup of granulated sugar)

I measured out the wine, for which I used Barefoot's "buttery chardonnay", then cut the ginger into coarse pieces, and gave the cinnamon/cloves/peppercorns/nutmeg a few hits with the mortar and pestle to bruise/break them a little. I then added all the spices to the wine, and let it sit in the refrigerator for two days. I then added the sugar and a small handful of dried rosemary leaves (having no flowers). As the sugar did not readily dissolve, I let it sit overnight in the fridge before straining out the solids. Even after the extra time the sugar hadn't fully dissolved, so I ended up discarding some after decanting the wine.

Total Time: 10 minutes, over 2 days (intended) or 4 days (what I did here)

Total Cost: Depends on the wine.

How Successful Was It?: Too much cinnamon, but in the sense that it over-powered the other flavors a bit; it didn't burn or anything, it just tasted like cinnamon wine rather than having many different complex flavors combined. I found the receipt bit too sweet, but that's probably because I used a fairly sweet white wine and then added a lot of sugar. There was so much sugar sludge in the wine, even after lots of stirring, that I think the solution just got saturated. In the future, I would like to play with using a more dry or tart wine, reducing the amount of cinnamon (or increasing the other items), and using a bit less sugar. I'd also be tempted to try heating the wine before adding the sugar, to aid in dissolving it.

How Accurate Is It? I put the wine in the refrigerator mostly to keep it from attracting flies--which always seem to be a problem this time of year--though it should have been fine at room temperature. This may have make the sugar less soluble, so it's worth investigating further. I then proceeded to forget that I was only supposed to let it steep one day, so everything went a bit longer than it should have--except the rosemary, which I only remembered when I meant to go strain everything out after two days. I added the rosemary leaves with the sugar, and let it all sit overnight in hopes to make up for the missing time steeping the rosemary

I ended up skimping on the nutmeg, just because I had closer to 1/4 than 1/2 of a nutmeg left (and haven't been able to source whole nutmegs since before the pandemic started). I also wasn't able to source any rosemary flowers just now, but I did throw a few dried leaves in, albeit late. In total, the spices sat in the wine for 3 days instead of one, with the sugar and rosemary added the day before.. Some residual sugar and flecks of clove/pepper escaped repeated straining,which is my own fault for using a metal strainer instead of cloth.

 

Ingredients assembled.

HFF 5.22: Stars

The Challenge: Stars. Make a "star" dish to catch the eye. Or something star-shaped, inspired by the heavens, etc

The Recipe: French Bisket from The Cook's Guide (1664) or Bisket-Bread from The Accomplish'd Lady's Delight (1677) [with further reference to "To Make Bisket" The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened (1669).]

I chose these (very similar) recipes, in order to use some star anise.

The Date/Year and Region: 1664, England

How Did You Make It: I made one-third of the recipe from The Cook's Guide. In full, it called for:

•  1/2 peck [1 gallon or 16 cups] flour
  
• 2 oz anise seed [~4 Tbsp]
  
• 2 oz coriander seed [~4 Tbsp]
  
•  6 egg whites
• 1 pint ale-yeast [substitute 1 oz/28 g/4 tsp yeast in 1 pint water]
  
• enough water to make a paste

I took 5 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, and mixed in 2 1/4 tsp ground coriander and ~2/3 oz of star anise (hand-ground in a wooden mortar); to this I added 2/3 cup of water (with 2 tsp dry yeast proofed therein) and 2 egg whites, and mixed it all up, with an additional 1/2 cup of water to make a workable paste. I rolled this out by hand into long rolls, and divided in two to fit my largest pan. I baked the rolls at 325F for 30 minutes, then let them sit in the cooling oven overnight. The next evening, I cut them  into pieces about ~1/2" thick. For the icing, I beat 1 egg white into peaks, and stirred in 1/2 cup powdered sugar and 1 tsp rose-water. I iced the slices, and put them in an oven pre-heated to 325F and promptly turned off.

Total Time: 2 days. About 1 hour worth of work, separated by baking and cooling times.

Total Cost: I used ingredients on hand, no idea as to price.

How Successful Was It?: These are not great. To say the least. I expected something like hard-tack from the double-baking/drying instructions (not to mention the note that they "keep all year"), but was hoping for something closer to biscotti. It ended up like licorice-flavored hardtack. The only sugar's in the icing, so the overall effect if more like a hard bread than a cookie, but the anise flavor is very strong, and completely overwhelms the coriander and rosewater flavors. The icing was thinner than I would have liked (more like a glaze), which I'm blaming on the eggs not being beaten enough.

I did bring these to a reenactment, described as "anise abominations", and a weirdly large number of people were actually willing to try them. Exactly one person actually liked the texture (but agreed there was a bit much anise), while most others were morbidly curious and/or eager to experiment with what beverages the cakes could be soaked it to soften them.

How Accurate Is It? I hope that the texture/flavor issues are a result of user error. My scale really isn't meant for measuring less than 1/2 oz quantities, so I suspect that I ended up using more anise than was really called for. Regarding the baking, I thought from the instructions in The Closet that it really shouldn't be given much rising time, but on further reflection, note that that recipe only uses water (more like hardtack) while the eggs and barm/yeast in the other two could point towards a more bread-like treatment of the first baking (allowing time to rise, baking it somewhat faster, and then using a slower oven to dry it later). The Cook's Guide and Lady's Delight recipes differed only in the number of egg whites (4 versus 6) and days between bakes (1 or 2). I ended up mostly using the former, since it specified icing with egg white, sugar and rosewater, where the latter recipe just said to "sugar" the bisket.

 

Ingredients

 

Preparing for the second bake

 

HFF 5.21: Dinner is Served

Having caught up on the cooking, now on to the writing...

 

The Challenge: Dinner is Served. Prepare a dish for dinner or another evening refreshment.

The Recipe: To Make a Hodgepodge from A book of Cookrye

Boyle a neck of Mutton or a fat rump of Beef, and when it is well boyled, take the best of the broth and put it into a pipkin and put a good many onyons to it, two handfull of marigold flowers, and a handful of percely fine picked and groce shredde and not too small, and so boyle them in the broth and thicke it with strained bread, putting therin groce beaten pepper, and a spoonfull of Vinagre, and let it boyle somwhat thick and so lay it upon your meat.

The Date/Year and Region: 1591, London

How Did You Make It: I opted to use lamp shins, as the closest option available to mutton neck (it was that or lamp chops in the ovine meat department). At the advice of my cooking mentor, prior to boiling, I browned the meat slightly over the fire (meat + butter in cauldron), and then added the water, and with it a handful of herbs from the garden (parsley and fennel) and a dash of salt. I covered the pot, and let it boil while I prepared the rysshewes and assembled my next steps.

Somewhat over an hour later, when the meat was very tender and starting to fall off the bone, I removed the pot from the fire, and laddled out ~3-4 cups of it into the ceramic pipkin. To this I added ~5 small onions (chopped, stored over the winter from last year's garden), a modest handful of fresh parsley (also chopped small), two very small handfuls of dried marigold (chopped small, also from last year's garden), a sprinkling of ground black pepper. [I forgot the vinegar.] I set this on the coals and let it simmer, though I did not keep track of how long. By time everything else was cooked, the sauce looked fairly sauce-like. I then added a final dash of salt [mistake] before serving.

Total Time: ~3 hours, with other tasks in between

Total Cost: About $10 for the meat, other ingredients were either home-grown or pantry staples 

How Successful Was It?: Except for the excess salt (I forgot when I went to add the last bit that I had salted the broth, and it was really just a bit much all together), I thought it was fairly tasty. We served it with fresh-baked bread (out of the Dutch oven), the rysshewes, and various modern sides (including pickles, fruit out of season, and potato chips). The bread was very useful for sopping up the sauce, which I think I could have gotten a bit thicker.

I like this one fairly well, and could see myself using it in the future if I need to prepare mutton or beef over an open fire.

How Accurate Is It? I'm not sure how to judge the accuracy since I added extra steps (browning the meat, seasoning the broth), BUT as far as I know there's some debate about how literal the instructions are meant to be. Specifically, that cookbooks of this period are meant to inspire/remind experienced cooks, who are to use their background knowledge--like browning meat before boiling for extra flavor. I do know that the amount of salt I put in was excessive and inappropriate for the period.  

 

Hodgepodge: boiled mutton and onion/parsley/marigold sauce.

HFF 5.18: The More Things Change

The Challenge: The More Things Change. Make a dish or use an ingredient that was common in your historic era, but is unpopular or hard-to-find today. 

I decided to use an uncommon technique, and fry these pastries over an open fire. In a ceramic pan.

The Recipe: Risshewes from Harleian Manuscript 4016 (Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks)

"Risshewes. Take figges and grinde hem ał rawe in a morter and cast a lituð fraied oyle there to. And þen take hem vppe yn a vessell and caste there to pynes, reysyns of corañce, myced dates, sugur, saffron, pouder ginger, and salt. And þen make Cakes of floure, sugur, salt and rolle þe stuff in thi honde and couche it in þe Cakes, and folde hem togidur as risshewes. And fry hem in oyle and serue hem forth."

The Date/Year and Region: c. 1450, English

How Did You Make It: I cut up a small handfull of figs, and ground them in a marble mortar, and mixed them with zante currants, chopped dates, a small handful of grandulated sugar, a few threads of saffron, about a tsp of powdered ginger, and a small piece of butter (for the "fraied oyle"). I omitted the "pynes", as I could not find any pine nuts to include (though I wondered if this actually meant "prunes", but decided "pines" is the more straightforward reading).

For the "cakes", I took about 1 cup of flour and 1/4 cup sugar and a dash of salt, cut in 1/2 cup butter, and added minimal amount of water to make a paste, rolled it out with a rolling pin, and folded into half-circles with a spoonful of fruit-paste in the center. I then fried them two at a time in butter over the coals.

Total Time: No clock outdoors, but I think it was about 30 minutes to mix things up and shape the pastries, and another 30 or so to fry them. [After the first 8, I switched to cast iron just to get the things done.]

Total Cost: This was a bit expensive with all the dried fruit to purchase, but I can't find the receipt. I did at least have some saffron threads left from my own harvest, which knocked the price down a lot.

How Successful Was It?: My cooking mentor compared them to fig newtons, which isn't a bad descriptor. Under her tutelage, I think the pastries turned out quite nicely, though frying them was a bit of a trick. I had transcribed the recipe as using butter, not oil, for the cooking, which was a bit higher temperature than the pan wanted to go, so things were cooking very slowly. The best/most crisp ones were the last few, which I threw in an iron pan after cooking almost half of the pastries on the ceramic. The butter certainly melted quickly, but it just wasn't hot enough to fry the pastries crisply. These first few weren't bad warm, but were obviously under-cooked as they cooled down.

How Accurate Is It? Other than the butter/oil issue, I think I did pretty well within the lose guidelines of the instructions (no quantities, no directors for the paste, etc).

 

Original: 1857 Gown (World's Largest Plaid)

Looking for some inspiration as I remake all my fort gear. It would be splendid to show up to Queen Victoria's Birthday looking like this:

Woman's Dress, c. 1857, in The Met.