Belated 12th Night Cake

Revisited the 1857 Godey's receipt-in-verse for Twelfth Cake again this year. The changes this time were:

• I finally found candied citron, and thus was able to include all of the fruit and nuts in their proper proportions.
• I made a half-receipt worth of cake.
• I made a cake with gluten-free flour.
• I tried freezing the cake.
• I decorated the cake using piped icing. 
  

By way of explanation, I had two 12th Night events planned, one period and one modern, and so made two quarter-receipt-sized cakes. For the modern one, I again used a 1-to-1 gluten-free flour substitute, while I used regular flour for the period one. The period event then got postponed, so I stuck the extra cake in the freezer.

Period cake in the hoop, modern in the springform pan.

My first takeaway of the experience is that the candied citron mostly gets lost in the mass of other fruit (and some spice) flavors. There just isn't that much citron, so it's only every few bites that I'd get a flash of citron flavor among the currants and almonds. That being said, it was strong enough to be picked out, and it worked with the other flavors. I'm glad to have the chance to try it, and would use it again in the future, but I also think the cake doesn't suffer from missing it when the citron isn't available.

Since I used different flours, I was really making two quarter-batches rather than one half-batch. In the process, I observed that my modern springform pans are not large enough for even a half-receipt of the cake (the period cake hoop could probably manage a half batch, though not a whole), and it's doubtful that my mixer would be up to the half-batch either. I didn't notice any difference in taste or texture between the two cakes (both being functionally a mass of dried fruit held together with minimal batter), making it one of my most successful gluten-free baking experiments to date. Freezing the one cake worked beautifully:  as soon as it was cool, I wrapped it tightly with the parchment paper I had baked it in, then covered that with tin foil. It was in the freezer for a month, then I let it thaw for a day before frosting and serving it.

The icing was still my modern buttercream frosting, though I have since received a tip about adapting period royal icing which I will try next time (apparently meringue powder allows one to avoid the 'uncooked egg whites' issue).  I opted for piped decorations this time, since I came across detailed period instructions for piping icing onto Twelfth Cakes (also Wedding Cakes), though I failed to save the link for once. Will update when I find it again.

 

Modern cake. The period one had white-on-white frosting.

 

Comparative Cheese & Also Custard Puddings (1845-1855)

While I'm going through my old pictures: last week's cheese experiments at Fort Nisqually. All three receipts are variations on "melted cheese adjacent to bread" from The Carolina Housewife (1855).

Boiled Cheese.

 We used Quin's homemade sourdough and a mild cheddar cheese for all three receipts, in order to compare them. The boiled cheese involved melting the cheese on the stovetop with milk, butter, and egg. It was served with sippets of toasted bread (made in bulk on the skillet on the stovetop, since toasting it on the forks one at a time would have been prohibitive). The stewed cheese called for cream, butter, cheese, and a salamander to cook it from above. Both ended up tasting like delicious melted cheese, and tended to solidify quickly once taken off the heat. The stewed cheese was a little less intensely cheddar-flavored, but they were very similar in general.

To Stew Cheese.

The toasted cheese again called for grated cheese mixed with cream and butter, but also had salt, pepper, mustard, and breadcrumbs, which worked into a paste with the consistency of play-dough. This was spread over slices of bread and baked in the oven until the cheese started to brown. The flavor was quite good (after eating so much cheese, the slight kick of the mustard made a nice variation), though the texture of the cheese paste was a little too similar to the bread in my opinion. It was however, much easier and neater to eat than the first two receipts. All three receipts went together quickly, and would be easy to make around other receipts (say, for the cook's lunch while demonstrating other dishes).

To Toast Cheese.

For dessert, we made two different versions of a custard pudding. Again, for good comparison, both were flavored with almond [there was a mishap with the lemon flavoring] and served with homemade preserves. One was a common custard pudding from Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery (1845), the other from Cookery Rational, Practical, and Economical (1855). 

Common custard pudding. (Boiled)

The first was boiled, and the second baked, but the only other difference was the exact proportion of eggs, milk, and flavoring. The baked pudding did have an option to substitute flour for some of the eggs, but we decided not to do this. Both receipts produced a nice molded dessert with the texture of a flan and a notable, but not overwhelming, almond flavor. There was a small mishap with the boiled pudding turning sideways enough to have water leak into the mold, but the pudding still held together when turned out. I did end up draining excess water off the plate after it had set a few minutes. I noticed little difference between the two, but Quin preferred the baked pudding (the water leak apparently making the boiled one too moist).

Custard pudding. (Baked.)

All in all, it was a tasty day. Except for the bread being baked in advance in a modern home kitchen, everything was prepared in the Fort's historic kitchen, using the wood-burning stove. All of our ingredients were as close to period as possible, and most can be documented to the place as well.

Wimple Wednesday: 13th Century Kerchief and Plain Wimple

Experiment time: let's play with some medieval and early modern women's head-coverings.

[Context: I got frustrated with a person online (quelle horreur!) making opprobrious comments about the use of head-coverings by women in the modern world.  These comments may have been directed at practitioners of a certain non-local-majority religion. As such, I decided it was time to remind people that 'western' costume, until very recently, included head-coverings for men and women outdoors; indoor and outdoor hair-coverings for women have been part of that same tradition for over a thousand years, though they declined in popularity by the mid-19th century.]

I'm starting c.1200 CE, because that gives me an excuse to play with all the fun forms in Thursfield's The Medieval Tailor's Assistant, and to start week 1 with an actual wimple. The overall theme is 'unstructured/semi-structered hair coverings', but we don't have any days that make a good alliteration with 'veil' or 'kerchief' or 'coif', so wimples it is.*

Still not good with selfies.
The soft linen is quite comfy, though.

The wimple (the bit under the chin and over the ears) is a 12" by 36" rectangle of fine linen; the kerchief (bit draped over the head) is a square yard of the same. I'm tempted to experiment with a slightly shallower rectangle here instead of the full square--it's a good length along the front but perhaps too long down the back.

Both wimple and kerchief are pinned to the fillet, a double-layer bias-cut band of linen which is tied around the head. It's made of the same lightweight linen (3.5 oz handkerchief weight from Fabric-store.com), with two pairs of 1/4" wide linen tapes to fasten it at the back.  The wimple and kerchief are attached to the filet with three pins; I used the brass clothing pins from Burnley and Trowbridge.

*Not all offerings will feature throat-covering wimples. They all will cover some/all of the hair. I'm sticking to less structured items like headrails, kerchiefs and caps, both because it takes a ton of time to make hats, bonnets, and elaborately padded headdresses, but also because these things frequently cover the hair in addition to a outer bonnet or hat, and also in situations where outer headgear is dispensed with.

Hair Times

Just a little experiment* looking into the time actually required to dress one's hair in a basic style. To start, I picked three styles that I'm familiar with and which feel fairly practical.  The side bands over rats require a little fussing to look symmetric (a mirror helps), but they still go fairly quickly. 

Method: Each week, I dressed my hair in one the following styles.  I allowed the first two days to be 'warm-ups' to get the technique in my muscle memory; on the last five, I timed how long it took me to put my hair up. I started with my hair combed, a center part, and any product (pomatum or oil) already brushed in. The final time includes any additional parting, smoothing, braiding, and twisting, up until the last pin was placed. For the braids, I used a standard three-strand flat plait; the single braid was tied with thread, while the side braids and pair of back braids were plaited to the end and pinned up without being tied off. [I have a separate research project and experiment going on how braids were fastened before hair elastics.]

Two-braid coil (bun) of the back hair, with side hair in twists

Back	Side	Total
2:57	0:42	3:39
2:47	0:45	3:32
3:16	0:33	3:49
--	--	3:29
2:47	1:05	3:52

Two-braid coil, with rolls over braids on the side

Back	Side	Total
3:20	3:06	6:26
2:53	2:58	5:51
3:05	2:58	6:03
3:32	2:36	6:08
2:49	2:52	5:41

Single-braid coil, with wide side bands over rats

Back	Side	Total
2:15	1:41	3:56
2:47	0:57	3:44
2:40	1:03	3:43
2:08	1:24	3:32
2:30	0:54	3:24

Averages for different components

Type	Average time
Coil of two braids, no tie	3:03
Coil of one braid, tied with string	2:28
Side twists	0:46
Side twists into braids	2:54
Side bands	1:12

While I do have very long hair, and put up in historic styles often, I still don't have the same amount of practice as someone who has been dressing her hair thus everyday since she was a teen. It's quite likely that someone actually living in the 1850s-early 1860s would be faster still. On the other hand, the largest time sink of the styles was the braiding--which I have been doing since childhood--and so perhaps the duration isn't far off.

For the record, I did all of these styles, fully putting up my 28" long hair, with four to six 3" steel pins--two to secure the back coil, one more to attach each side to the coil, and sometimes an extra pin or two for added security.

*Ok, I maybe get frustrated with the myth that period hairstyles are too time-and-resource-intensive for ordinary use, and that some/most/all women just left their hair loose. Everything I've read suggests that dressing one's hair neatly was a social expectation of all classes, and my own personal experience is that wearing long hair down is impractical for any sort of work or movement, as well as situations like 'wind'.

Coif-Wearing

I'm going to need to keep this in mind for my next one: How to Wear the Coif. I love the "experimental" part of experimental archaeology/history, and how we can refine our understanding of material culture by trying things, and changing our hypotheses as necessary.  [See also, Jane Malcolm-Davies and Ninya Mikhaila's work on 16th-century dress support.]