Possible the most famous bag pudding is the Christmas Pudding that Mrs Cratchit serves in Dicken’s The Christmas Carol:

“Mrs Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up and bring it in… Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper which smells like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.”

Christmas Pudding – IN A BAG

Often the bag is a linen napkin ……. bag is a verb as well as a noun…..

Bag Pudding (OED)

[f. BAGn.¹ + PUDDING.]

1. A pudding boiled in a bag.
1598 in FLORIO. 1600HEYWOOD1 Edw. IV, Wks. 1874 I 47 Thou shalt be welcome to beef and bacon, and perhaps a bag-pudding.

1641W. CARTWRIGHTOrdinary II. i, A solemn son of Bagpudding and Pottage.

And if there’s bag pudding, could pudding bag be far behind?

Puddingbag (OED)

A bag in which a pudding is boiled. Also transf. and fig. Cf. pudding-poke.

c1597 T. DELONEY Jack of Newberie (1619) iv. sig. G3, The other maide..with the perfume in the pudding-bagge, flapt him about the face.

1626 in NARES (Halliw.), [A piece of Sail-cloth] about half a yard long, of the breadth of a pudding-bag.

And now for what very well be the most comprehensive pudding recipe in any English cookbook ever, no matter the century. I have added the numbered and letter divisions to help you keep track of the possibilities:

Oatmeal Puddings, otherwise of Fish or Flesh Blood.

Take a quart of whole Oatmeal, steep it in warm Milk overnight, and then drain the groats from it, boil them in a quart or three  pints of good Cream; then the Oatmeal being boyled and cold have Tyme, Penny-royal, Parslee, Spinnage, Savory, Endive, Marjoram, Sorrel, Succory, and Strawberry-leaves of each a little quantity, chop them fine and put them to the Oatmeal, with some Fennel-seeds, Pepper, Cloves, Mace, and Salt,

1. boyl it in a Napkin,

2. or bake it in a Dish,

3. Pie,

4. or Guts:

   1. sometimes of the former Pudding you may leave out some of the herbs, and add these, Pennyroyal, Savory, Leeks, a good bigg Onion, Sage, Ginger, Nutmeg, Pepper, Salt, either for fish or flesh dayes, with Butter or Beef-suet, boyled or baked in Dish, Napkin, or Pie

1661. William Rabisha.  The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected. p. 184.

Rag Pudding – a 20th century dish that may hearken back to the 19th century, but is a pudding in a pie

You are he that did eat the pudding and the bag.

Proverbs Collected by J. H. Esqr. London 1659

Prunus domestica – ordinary plum, the fruit that, when dried, is a prune.

“THE USE OF PLUMS”

“The great Damaske or Damson Plummes are dryed in France in great quantities, and are brought to us here [London] in Hogs-heads, and other great vessels, and are those Prunes that are usually sold at the Grocers, under the name of Damaske Prunes: the blacke Bulleis are also these (being dryed in the same manner) that they call French Prunes, and by their tartnesse are thought to binde, as the other, being sweet, to loosen the body.”

John Parkinson, Paridisum in Sole, 1629, p.573.

”There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.”says Falstaff  in Henry IV, First Part, act 3, sc 3, l 12-3. Is he talking about fruit, the fruit that is (reputed) to be often served in brothels and there associated with ill-repute? Or is stewed another way to say inebriated? Or is the analogy merely to a lumped thing?

Prune – not stewed

A Pruen Tart

Take of the fairest damaske pruens you can get, and put them in a cleane pipkin with faire water, suger, vnbruised cinamon, and a branch or two of Rosemarie; and if you have bread to bake, stew them in the ouen with your bread; if otherwise, stew them on the fire: when they are stewed, then bruise them all to mash in their sirrop, and straine them into a cleane dish; then boyle it ouer againe with suger, sinamon, and rosewater till it bee as thicke as Marmalad; then set it to coole, then make a reasonable tuffe paste with fine flower, water, and a little butter, and rowle it out very thin; then having patterns of paper cut in diuers proportions, as Beasts, Birds, Armes, Knots, Flowers, and such like; lay the patterns on the paste, and so cut them accordingly; then with your fingers pinch vp the edges of the paste, and set the worke in good proportion: then prick it well all ouer for rising, and set it on a cleane sheete of large paper, and so set it into the Oven, and bake it hard: then draw it, and set it by to coole: …..then against the time of services comes, take off the cofection of pruens before rehearsed, and with your knife, or a spoone fill the coffin according to the thickness of the verge: then strow it ouer all with caraway comfets, and pricke long comfets vpright in it, and so taking the paper from the bottome, serve it on a plate in a dish or charger, according to the bignesse of the tarte, and at the seconde course, and this carrieth the colour blacke. .

- 1623.  Gervase Markham. Covntry Contentments or The  English Huswife. p. 108

Pretty pre-prune plums

But the line divisions did remain, so compare away.

BTW – Oranges are pretty unlikely for New England in 1627, but rice is a common commodity on ships; eggs easy to come by in May; and milk – from goats, if not from cows – would be new enough to New England, and still scarce enough to be special .

To make a Tart of Ryce.

Boyle your Rice,

and put in the yolkes of two or three Egges into the Rice,

and when it is boyled, put it into a dish,

and season it with Suger, Sinamon

and Ginger,

and butter,

and the juyce of two or three Orenges,

and set it on the fire againe.

1596. T. Dawson. The Good Housewifes Jewell

To make a Tart of Rice.

Boyle your Rice, and pour it into a Cullender, then season it with Cinnamon,

Nutmeg,

Ginger,

and Pepper,

and Sugar,

the yolkes of three or four Eggs,

then put it into your Tart with the juyce of an Orange,

then close it, bake it, and ice it,

scrape on Sugar,

and serve it.

1653. W.I. A True Gentlewomans Delight.: 1991.p. 51.

To make a Tart of Rice.

Boil the rice in milk or cream, being tender boil’d pour it into a dish, & season it with nutmeg,

ginger,

cinnamon,

pepper,

salt,

sugar,

and the yolks of six eggs, put it in the tart with some juyce of orange; close it up and bake it, being baked scrape on sugar,

and so serve it up.

1671. Robert May. The Accomplist Cook (third edition). p.245.

pies

Now we tend to think of tarts as being open, and pies being closed, even though there are pies without a top crust….think lemon meringue, coconut cream, tarte tartin ,….

Thomas Dawson doesn’t mention pastry or baking, yet both W.I and Robert May have an upper crust as in, “close it, bake, it, ice it” and “close it up and bake it”.

There are clearly tarts with tops on.

]]> http://blogs.plimoth.org/pilgrimseasonings/?feed=rss2&p=4261 0 http://blogs.plimoth.org/pilgrimseasonings/?p=4248 http://blogs.plimoth.org/pilgrimseasonings/?p=4248#comments Mon, 13 May 2013 07:29:33 +0000 KM Wall http://blogs.plimoth.org/pilgrimseasonings/?p=4248 If the 1627  Winslows had wanted to celebrate their six years of marriage with six pies, they had some spring-time options, based on what is available in May and in New England.

Pie the first:

An herb tart

Take sorrel, spinach, parsley, and boil them in water till they be very soft as pap; then take them up, press the water clean from them, then take good store of eggs boiled very hard, and, chopping them with the herbs exceedingly small, then put in good store of currants, sugar, cinnamon, and stir all well together; then put them into a deep tart coffin with a good store of sweet butter, and cover it, and bake it like a pippin tart*, and adorn the lid after the baking in that manner also, and so serve it up.

-         Markham, Best ed. p. 109

 

Pippin Tart design from Robert May

May 12 1621

 May 12. was the first mariage in this place,which, according to the laudable custome of the Low-Cuntries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the scripturs, Ruth4. and no wher found in the gospell to be layed on the ministers as a part of their office. “This decree or law about mariage was published by the Stats of the Low-Cuntries Ano : 1590. That those of any religion, after lawfull and open publication, coming before the magistrats, in the Town or Stat-house, were to be orderly (by them) maried one to another.” Petets Hist. fol: 1029. And this practiss hath continued amongst, not only them, but hath been followed by all the famous churches of Christ in these parts to this time,-Ano : 1646.

William Bradford. Of Plymouth Plantation.

This is the day that Edward Winslow married Susanna White in 1621.

17th century Flemish wedding

This was a second marriage for each of them.  Edward’s first wife, Elizabeth (Barker) died on March 24 and Susanna was widowed on February 21st when William White died. Susanna is also the mother of Peregrine White, born November 1620 shortly after the Mayflower arrives at Cape Cod. This was probably not a  festive, rollicking good time.

Wedding Days

Samuel Pepys writes:

Monday 3 February 1661/62
After musique practice I went to the office, and there with the two Sir Williams all the morning about business, and at noon I dined with Sir W. Batten with many friends more, it being his wedding-day, and among other froliques, it being their third year, they had three pyes, whereof the middlemost was made of an ovall form, in an ovall hole within the other two, which made much mirth, and was called the middle piece; and above all the rest, we had great striving to steal a spooneful out of it; and I remember Mrs. Mills, the minister’s wife, did steal one for me and did give it me; and to end all, Mrs. Shippman did fill the pye full of white wine, it holding at least a pint and a half, and did drink it off for a health to Sir William and my Lady, it being the greatest draft that ever I did see a woman drink in my life.

Notice that

1. My bold
2. What he calls the wedding day , we call the anniversary – so 17th century people might consider that they have more then one wedding day
3. They have 3 pies, one for each year of marriage. This is a totally awesome custom and needs to be revived. Invite me to your wedding  day ‘frolique’ and I’ll bring one of the pies….instead of gifts, have the guests bring pies…..
4. At the end they turn the pie into a drinking game…how does one fill a pie with a pint and a half of white wine?

Jan Steen – Village Wedding

Samuel Pepys also writes….

6 January 1662. (Because I’m working from transcripts, I’m a little unclear if this is eleven months AFTER the last passage or if it is four weeks before. I just wish people would stop ‘adjusting’ for the calendar change and just put things in the order in which they actually happened.)

This morning I sent my lute to the Paynter’s, and there I staid with him all the morning to see him paint the neck of my lute in my picture, which I was not pleased with after it was done. Thence to dinner to Sir W. Pen’s, it being a solemn feast day with him, his wedding day, and we had, besides a good chine of beef and other good cheer, eighteen mince pies in a dish, the number of the years that he hath been married.

Jan Steen – Vrolijke huisgezin – a frolicking good time. I could see this crowd drinking wine out of pie coffins

Notice also:

1. My bold again

1. The wedding day/anniversary is called ‘a solemn feast day’.

1. Little mince pies in a dish:

A plate of mince minces – seven instead of eighteen – from T. Hall’s The Queen’s Royal Cookery of 1703

Jan Steen – Peasant Wedding

Asparagus – formerly family Liliaceae; now Amaryllidaceae

The alternate title to this post: Drawing Lesson.

Lily

Lily, in this case, refers to the plant family that asparagus belongs. Or did belong. Before things were reclassified.  Asparagus, it seems isn’t really a lily.Anymore. Once, like onion and garlic, all part of one big Liliaceace, sperage/sparagus/sparrow-grass/asparagus  is over in the Asparagaceae train, and the onions and garlic are on the Amaryllidaceae bus.

 And what can make that spearage better? Butter!

1499 This is titled “Making Butter” but she’s not. She’s making medicine, or maybe pesto, but one does not make butter with a mortar and pestle

Buttered Sparagus

Take two hundred of sparagus, scrape the roots clean and wash them, then take the heads of an hundred and lay them even, bind them hard up into a bundle, and so likewise of the other hundred; then take a large skillet of fair water, when it boils put them in, and boil them up quick with some salt; being boil’d drain them, and serve them with beaten butter and salt about the dish, or butter and vinegar.

1678, Robert May. The Accomplist Cook. (4^th ed) Falconwood Press:1992. p. 255.

Asparagus with Hollandaise sauce – a butter based sauce…

Here are several beaten butter/thick butter/drawn butter English sauces:

How to draw your butter thicke.

Put to every pound of butter, sixe spoonfulls of vinegar, a branch of Rosemary, a little whole mace, & a few cloves, put them into an earthen pipkin or a pewter dish, and set them vpon a few coales, and when the butter begins to melt, take a ladle and powre it vp a high till it be melted, and then it will bee as thicke as creame, and serve to butter any fresh fish.

-         Murrell, John. A Booke of Cookerie. London: 1621. Falconwood Press:1990. p. 32.

English butter

To draw Butter.

Take your butter and cut it into thin slices, put it in a dish, then put it upon the coals where it may melt leasurely, stir it often, and when it is melted put in two or three spoonfuls of water, or Vinegar, which you will, then stir and beat it untill it be thick.

-         1653. W.I. A True Gentlewomans Delight. Falconwood Press (1991) p. 54.

To draw butter of only use in sauces.

Take the butter and cut it into thin slices, put it into a dish, then put it upon the coals where it may melt leisurely, stir it often and when it is melted put in two or three spoonfuls of water or Vinegar, which you please, then stire it and beat it until it be thick. If the colour keep white it is good, but if it look yellow and curdly in boiling it is noght, and not fit to be used to this purpose.

- 1664. Mrs Cromwell’s Cookery Book. (1983) p. 77.

This all sounds an awful lot like Buerre blanc, this melted butter/vinegar/emulsified butter sauce. Buerre blanc also has shallots, and was in theory invented in France in the 20th century ……

And it’s Samuel Pepys who provides the sparrow-grass reference on April 20, 1667:

So home, and having brought home with me from Fenchurch Street a hundred of sparrowgrass,—[A form once so commonly used for asparagus that it has found its way into dictionaries.]—cost 18d. We had them and a little bit of salmon, which my wife had a mind to, cost 3s. So to supper, and my pain being somewhat better in my throat, we to bed.

Lily Tomlin.Birth name – Mary Jean . She didn’t used to be a Lily, but is now. Always golden.

Rooster and Hen – these guys might be a little old to be considered chickens.

Ba-dum.

Chicken, and it’s grown up over-grown soprano brother were been paired with asparagus throughout the 17th century in England.

Chickens and capons are different growth stages of the same bird. We now call them all chicken, but how the birds are raised and how they grow is so different from the 17th to the 21st centuries…think of the Julia Child episode where she had all the little birds lined up – pullets, chickens, fryers, roasters, and the old stewing hen. These are all growth stages, different sizes being better for different usages.

Recipes also have growth stages – persistence as they carry over time, precedence as on come before another, each with clues of flavor profile, status, commonality.

Because it’s not just the food it’s the ways.

To boyle Chickens with Sparagus.

Boyle your Chikens in faire water, with a little whole mace, put into their bellies a little parsley, and a little sweete butter, dish them vpon sippets and powre a little of the same broath vpon it, and take a handfull of  sparagus being boyld, and put them in a ladle full of thicke butter, and stir it together in a dish, and powre it vpon your chickens or pullets, strew on salt, and serve it to the Table hot.

-         1621. John Murrell. A Delightful daily exercise for ladies and Gentlewomen. Falconwood Press: 1990. p. 33.

1.  A chicken is a young bird, and are often referred to in the plural in recipes. Young would be small, tender, and a little bland by 17th century standards.
2. Why have we stopped boiling? Roasted birds do look prettier….but boiled chicken sure tastes good.
3. Parsley in the belly of a bird is always a good thing – take it out, mince it fine, add a little butter and instant sauce, even if you nothing else.
4. Boil the asparagus separate from the chicken. Boiling it in chicken broth is a nice touch. Chicken takes much longer to cook then asparagus.
5. Sippets are little sops. If there is broth there is also most always sippets. Or sops.
6. Thick butter is also know as drawn butter. More on that latter.

The Poultry Dealer (after Cesare Vecellio)

To boil a Capon or Chicken with Asparagus.

Boil your capon or chicken in fair water and some salt, then put in their bellies a little mace, chopped parsley and sweet butter; being boiled, serve them on sippets and put a little of the broth on them; then have a bundle or two of asparagus boiled, put in beaten butter and serve it on your capon or chicken.

-         1654. Mrs Cromwell’s Cookery Book (1983)p. 57.

1. Now there is an option – little tender chickens or big, also tender capon.
   
2. Again, parsly in the belly. Again, mace. Again, butter.
3. Again, cook the asparagus separately.
4. Again, sippets.
   
5. Beaten butter is another, other name for thick butter or drawn butter.

Day old baby chick – a little too little to be called a capon

To boyl a Capon with Asparagus

Boyl your Capon, or Chicken in fair water, and some salt, then put in their bellies a little Mace, chopped Parsley, and sweet Butter; being boyled, serve them on Sippets, and put a little of the Broath on them: Then have a bundle or two of Asparagus boyled, put in beaten butter, and serve it on your Capon, or Chicken.

                        – 1675 Hannah Woolley. The Accomplish’d lady’s delight in preserving, physick, beautifying, and cookery.

1.  Capon or chicken, boiled again.
2. Bellies full of mace, parsley and butter.
3. Sippets.
4. Boil the asparagus.
5. Beaten butter.
6. 54 years of essentially the same recipe.

I found the Hannah Wooley recipe on the Gastronomy Archaeology blog (which is now on the blog-roll, check it out) when I realized that ‘sperage’ and ‘sparagus’ show up in almost as many references as ‘asparagus’….she’s the one who clued me into the Richard Brome play, The Sparagvs Garden which led me to this
website Richard Brome Online .

Asparagus was supposed to be quickly done…..and now there’s butter sauces….

* My Uncle Al couldn’t let a cold day go by without saying,”It’s so cold, even the chicken has a capon.”  When I became a Pilgrim he would also say, “She’s so old, that even this chickie has a cape on.” 

Vaudeville isn’t dead, it just moved to the suburbs.

Or are they?

Green beans, like unto asparagus

Chap 457 Of Spearage, or Asparagus

1. The first [illustration] being manured, or garden Sperage, hath at his first rising out of the ground thicke tender shoots very soft and brittle. Of the thicknesses of the greatest swans quil, in taste like vnto the greene beane, having at the top a certain scaly soft bud.”

- 1633 John Gerard. The Herbal. Johnson, ed. (Dover) p. 1111.

Chap V

Sperage

 But in this place I think it necessary to be remembered, that the Sperages require small boiling, for too much or too long boiled, they become corrupt or with delight in eating.

Of which the worthy Emperour Drusus, willing to deomonstrate the speedy success of a matter, was wont to say, the same should be sooner done then the Sperage boiled.

- 1577/1652. Thomas Hill. The Gardener’s Labyrinth. Richard Mabey, ed (1987) p. 136-7.

This isn’t the same Roman Emperor….never mind, the point is – it has ALWAYS been known, even the Romans knew,  that asparagus – or sperage or sparagus – must be cooked quickly.

The Time

The bare naked tender shoots of Spearage spring vp in Aprill, at what time they are eaten in salads; they floure in Iune and Iuly; the fruit is ripe in September.

-1633. John Gerard. The Herbal. Johnson, ed. (Dover). p. 1112.

But also image a time – and place – where the alleged aphrodisiac effects are well known. Well known enough for satire. And not just the ‘bare naked’ part.

Richard Brome, author of The Sparagvs Garden, 1635

bare naked shoots

bare naked shoots

Because, according to the Doctrine of Humours,  being cold and moist, it good for the ladies.….and then there’s the Doctrine of Signatures to consider, gentlemen……

Good advice for the asparagus,  no matter what the century – cook that sperage quickly. No mushiness allowed. Just the taste of green -  and a little butter, perhaps.

About Asparagus.

Asparagus are just boiled, not too well done, and then eaten with Oil, Vinegar, and Pepper or otherwise with melted Butter and grated nutmegs.
- 1661. The Sensible Cook, Rose ed. p. 48.

And now in the original Dutch:

Van Aspergies.

Aspergies worden flechts ghekoockt/ niet al te murruw/en dan gegeten met Olie/ Azijn/ en Peper/ of anders met gesmolten Boter en geraspte Notemuskaten.
- (p. 63 . fasc page)

Ortus sanitatus.
Moguntiae: J. Mayenbach, 1491.
Leaf: 27 x 20 cm.; Illus.: 10.5 x 6.5 cm.
Woodcut
Wangensteen Historical Library of Medicine and Biology

illustration from  University of Minnesota Libraries.

Tip of the sperage

ASPARAGUS OR SPERAGE

“The first sprouts or naked tender shoots hereof be oftentimes sodden* in flesh broth and eaten, or boyled in faire water, and seasoned with oyle, vinegar, salt and pepper, then are served at mens tables for a sallad; they are pleasant to the taste, easily concocted, and gently loose the belly.”

John Gerard. The Herbal.1633 ‘Johnson on Gerard’ edition.  p.1110.

Louise Moillon – Fruit Basket with asparagus – 1630

Louise Moillon was a French painter who worked for King Charles I of England, no doubt on the recommendation of his wife the French Princess Henrietta Maria.

Back to asparagus…….

Adriaen Coorte loved to paint the stuff:

with red currants…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

with a butterfly (and a cherry)

by its beautiful sperage self