HFF 6.2: Breakfast

 

The Challenge: Breakfast. Make a food suitable for breakfast. 

The Recipe: Potatoes à la Maitre d'Hotel  From The American Matron. 

 

                      "A good breakfast dish", and said to be popular in London.

The Date/Year and Region: 1851, Boston 

How Did You Make It: On a wood-burning stove! Which actually ended up being the hardest part, because it was a wet day, and our clammy wood was burning erratically. 

 

I started by peeling 5 russet potatoes, with help from a friend. We set the potatoes on to boil, and (as the fire was very slow), left them on the back of the stove for over an hour, moving them up as the other dishes eventually finished. When the potatoes were soft, they returned to the back of the stove until closer to serving time.

 

Maybe an hour before serving time, we took the potatoes off the stove and I sliced them into rounds (<1/4" thick). I also chopped a generous double-handful of parsley. When a front burner was free and the fire finally going strong, I melted 1.5 Tbsp butter and browned it, then sprinkled on 1 Tbsp flour, stirring constantly to make a brown roux. When this was a nice color, I added 1 cup of broth [cheated and used a beef bouillon cube in water], which promptly started boiling. We gave it a minute to boil while I stirred, which I kept doing as my friend put in the potatoes and parsley, with a generous dash of salt and pepper [~1-2tsp salt, ~1/4-1/2 tsp pepper]. The sauce continued to boil this whole time, and had by then reduced sufficiently, that we pulled it off the heat and let it start to cool. We omitted the egg because the sauce was already quite thick, and there wasn't enough of it to mix the egg in around the potatoes.

Time to Complete: Under 4 hours based on our start and end times. Hard to say exactly how long. It'd estimate 10 minutes to peel the potatoes and getting them in water (less today, since I had help). They boiled while I worked on other projects, and then maybe 20-30 to make the roux and sauce, and stew the potatoes (once the fire was behaving).  It worked fine to cook the potatoes well in advance and let them sit in their water on the back of the stove until we were ready.

Total Cost: $2 or less

How Successful Was It?: Quite. It's tasty, and was popular with the all the volunteers. Despite having a large spread of dishes, all of the potatoes were eaten. I thought the dish tasted very rich and buttery (especially relative to how much butter actually went into it), but the most common comment was that it tasted like scalloped potatoes.

I think the recipe worked well as we made it, and I'm not in a hurry in to change anything. No potato or parsley amounts were given, and the butter was quite subjective. While our quantities worked, I suspect that fewer potatoes per unit liquid would make it easier to add the egg, and also more necessary to use the egg for thickening. It's also possible that the wide dish we used made the liquid cook down faster, as it increased the surface area.

How Accurate Is It?: I omitted the egg at the suggestion of my mentor, as noted. There was so little liquid in the dish relative to the potatoes, that we thought it'd end up as scrambled egg rather than thickening the sauce (which was already a nice consistency just from natural reduction and the potatoes). As noted before, most of the quantities were guesses, but they seemed to work.

Potatoes a la Maitre d'Hotel, or stove-top scalloped potatoes.

An American Breakfast, 1865

I came across this description while research a cooking challenge:

 "Breakfast in America is peculiarly a family meal. At this more than any other there is an unrestrained enjoyment of the home circle The breakfast party is almost unknown among us being confined to a very limited circle of the fashionable class not that we are less socially inclined than the English but that the busy active life of this new country forbids the devoting the early hours of the day to merely social enjoyment It is usually a hearty meal consisting of coffee, meats, fish, toast, a variety of hot cakes, and in the Southern States, hominy, and rice cooked in various ways, and several kinds of hot bread..."

           -—Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea: Viewed Classically, Poetically, and Practically (1865)

Book Review: Ladies in Waiting

A book review in honor of Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford, who was executed 481 years ago today, and has been treated shabbily ever since.

Ladies in Waiting: Women Who Served in the Tudor Court by Victoria Evans is a fairly light and easy introduction to the households of Henry VIII's queens. The period covered is 1501-1547, beginning with Catherine of Aragon's arrival in England. This 193-page book is divided in 14 chapters, with a short introduction and epilogue. The first section (4 chapters, 70 pages) lays the groundwork for how Tudor royal apartments were arranged and staffed; the remainder of the book (10 chapters, 123 pages) looks more closely at each queen's household. Three chapters each are allowed to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, in order to discuss how their households changed over time: before marriage,  as queen, and while out of Henry's favor. The other four queens each get one chapter.

The information presented in this book was mostly not new to me, which was a little disappointing. It draws a lot on secondary sources I was already familiar with, notably biographies of the queens and of their attendants--including Jane Dormer, Jane Parker, and Mary Boleyn. The material I was most excited to find were longer quotations from the Lisle letters than I've read elsewhere. The bibliography is helpfully divided into primary and secondary sources.

I found the writing style a little choppy, particularly in the transitions between paragraphs. The paragraphs themselves are mostly quite short, and the pages are double spaced, so the text reads quickly and doesn't feel dense. The author does adhere closely to the subject headings and chapter divisions, so even without a strong narrative structure, the current topic always remains clear.

I think I would have liked this book more if I wasn't expecting it to be something else (a dense history book focused more on the maids of honor and ladies in waiting than on the queens themselves). As it is, I think this book would be a good choice for introducing someone to the workings of the royal court and to research based on primary sources.

Score: 3.5 stars. The material's pretty solid, but the narrative is a little rough.

Accuracy: Good. Primary and reputable secondary sources are cited and quoted.

Strongest Impression: It's a good introduction to the subject, but there's not much new material if you're already familiar with the biographies of Henry VIII's queens. Highly recommended for a quick review on the royal households. If you're looking for serious academic writing or new research, this probably isn't the book for you.

Revisiting Loaf Cake

Also for yesterday's tea, I once again tried making Elizabeth Loaf Cake from The American Matron: or Practical and Scientific Cookery (1851).

Previously, I made a full batch, using sour dough starter for the fresh yeast. This time, I used active dry yeast proofed in water, and made a half batch:

2 tsp active dry yeast in 1/4 cup (1/2 gill) water 
1.5 lbs flour
10 oz  sugar
10 oz  butter
2 large eggs
12 oz currants (substituted zante currants)
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup milk

I let the yeast proof; mixed the flour, sugar, and spice together; melted the butter; combined the yeast, butter, milk, and (beaten) eggs with the dry ingredients, and finally stirred in the currants. I set the batter/dough to rise for 1 hour, then baked at 325F for 1:45. I used a glass loaf pan lined in parchment paper.

The cake did not come out of the oven looking very pretty. The batter had quite filled the pans, and I really should have divided it into two, as well as giving it a slightly longer rise time. As a single loaf, this cake was dense, and not quite baked through the center. The ends, however, did bake fully and were well-received for both the texture and flavor.

Next time I try this cake, I'll probably divide this same amount of batter between two pans (or 3-4 if making a full batch, though this half-sized filled my largest mixing bowl). This will hopefully help with the baking time issue. Id' also like to see how it goes with a longer rise (2 hours?). Otherwise, the spice proportion and amount of currants worked really well. I'd just like to get it a bit prettier and a little less dense.

Pickles Revisited (Beeton's Universal Pickle, 1861)

 I finally opened the pickles I made summer-before-last using Beeton's Universal Pickle receipt.

 

 

 

Pickled cucumber and radish pods

As expected from the pickling experience, these ended up very sour, but also strangely compelling. Both the radish pods and cucumbers were well-received, especially with a chaser of bread-and-butter. It being February, the pickles made both a badly-needed vegetable addition to the table and an excellent opportunity to talk about the seasonality of foodstuffs in the mid-19th century. All of the fruit and vegetable material on our table were preserved in some form (such as the dried currants in the cake), or else capable of being stored over the winter (carrots, potatoes, and onions in the pasties). 

A Winter Tea Spread, 1857 (ish) Style

I provided the tea, cake, hard cheese, and pickles. My companion made the pasties, the Dutch cheese, bread, and also shaped the butter (with clever use of a cookie-stamp and a crumpet ring for want of a butter mold).

HFF 6.1: Keep It Simple

And we're back for round 6!

The Challenge: Keep it Simple: Ease back into the new season with something simple: few ingredients, straightforward instructions, easy to clean up, or whatever makes a dish "simple" for you. 

The Recipe: Welch [sic] Rarebit from Mrs. Putnam's Receipt Book and Young Housekeeper's Assistant. I previously made three versions of Welsh Rarebit from Soyer, but decided to try a new one because I like bread and cheese, and wanted to see how a different receipt would play out.

WELCH RAREBIT. Cut a pound of cheese in slices a quarter of an inch thick, put a piece of butter the size of an egg in a small frying pan, lay in the cheese, cook it about five minutes, add two eggs well beaten, a dessert spoonful of mixed mustard, a little pepper, stir it up, have ready some slices of buttered toast, turn the cheese over it, and send it to the table very hot. It is also very good cooked without the eggs.

[Fun fact: the spelling error is corrected in the 1869 and later editions of Mrs. Putnam's book. I haven't found an earlier printing of the revised 1858 text, so I'm not sure when the error was caught.]

The Date/Year and Region: 1849, Boston

How Did You Make It: On a quarter scale, I melted ~4oz of cheddar cheese in ~1.5Tbsp of butter, then added ~1/2 tsp of yellow mustard, and a dash of black pepper. While this was melting, I toasted a half-dozen slices of baguette in the oven; when the bread was toasted, I buttered it and then poured the cheese over the bread.

Time to Complete: 15 minutes

Total Cost: $3

How Successful Was It?: Quick and tasty. The mustard flavor came through, which added a fun complexity to the delicious standard "bread and cheese" flavor. The cheese texture was perfectly smooth when the bread was done, and unfortunately started clumping once I took it off the heat (to keep it from burning while buttering the toast). The butter on the toast was unnecessary, as there was a ton of melted butter in the cheese. The amount of mustard used was quite suitable, and I think I guesses right on the proportion of cheese to bread (another slice wouldn't have been amiss, but no more than that).

How Accurate Is It?: I used the given variant without eggs, because the scaled down version would need 1/2 egg. Mrs. Putnam doesn't specify bread or cheese varieties, so I opted for a baguette (French, but also the tastiest bread option at the store) and cheddar (because all of the other British-origin cheese varieties had additional flavors in them). Soyer's receipt had specified Gloucester cheese for Welsh rarebit, but I couldn't find one without chives in it. For the 'mixed' mustard, I used yellow mustard out of the bottle.

Melting the cheese in butter on the stovetop.

Welsh Rarebit: melted cheese over bread.

Original: Banyan, 1840s

Banyan, c. 1840s, from The Met..

 This month's antique garment of choice is an 1840s man's banyan (see also dressing gown, smoking jacket...there's a lot of terms for the group of loose, casual garments worn at home). The mannequin's a bit creepy, but I love the print, the matching trousers, and the excellent tassel on the smoking cap.