Tagged ‘pie’

Bag of Pudding

May 18th, 2013 by KM Wall

Not just any bag – the pudding bag! Pudding in a bag? Isn’t that messy? Not if you know how it’s done.

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

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

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

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Three Rice tarts

May 14th, 2013 by KM Wall

Three tarts of rice, each a little different. They were in three columns to compare and contrast, but they don’t want to seem to stay that way. Sigh.

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.

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Paling

April 7th, 2013 by KM Wall

 

Gerookte paling - smoked eel

smoked eels – gerookte paling 

Gerookte paling is (at least according to an on-line translator app) Norwegian for smoked eels.

In March the eels come forth out of places where they lie bedded all winter, into the fresh streams, and there into the sea, and in their passages are taken in pots. In September they run out of the sea into the fresh streams, to bed themselves in the ground all winter, and are taken again in pots as they return homewards. In the winter the inhabitants dig them up, being bedded in gravel not above two or three foot deep, and all the rest of the year they may take them in pots in the salt water of the bay. They are passing sweet, fat and wholesome, having no taste of mud, and are as great as ever I saw any.” 1622/23. Three Visitors (John Pory), p.7.

Christian IV , King of Denmark and Norway and Anne Catherine

Christian IV , King of Denmark  and Anne Catherine

 

Christian IV was the king of Denmark-Norway from 1588 until his death.  He is sometimes referred to as Christian Firtal in Denmark and Christian Kvart or Quart in Norway.

And his sister married the King of England

 

Anne of Denmark, consort of James I and VI and mother to Charles I

Anne of Denmark, consort of James I and VI of England and Scotland and mother to Charles I

a shilling with the images of Charles I - how most Englishmen see the King

a shilling with the image of Charles I – how most Englishmen see the King

How to make an Eele Pye

“Take two pennyworth of very fat Eeles when they be blead and very faire washed, seeth them in a little faire water, and Salte till they be halfe sodden, that they may slip from the bones, cut awaye the fines on every side, then slip them the bones, and shred them somewhat fine with a knife and take two or three Wardens and shred them very fine to put among them, or Pippins or other apples, if you do want wardens, then take a little Salte, a little Pepper, Sinamon, cloues Mace and Suger, and season it withal put in a quarter of a pound of sweete butter, so put it in paste, and bake it not too rashlye, you maye put in the yolke of an egge and a little verges when it is halfe baked if you will but I think  it is better without.”

The Good Hous-wiues Treasurie. Edward Allde: London. 1588

 

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A little more chewet

February 26th, 2013 by KM Wall

A chewet

Two, two chewets

Two chewets and a coffee mug - a scale image. In Robert May the chewets look like soup cans. If they had had soup cans in the 17th century.

Four chewets on a plate. I somehow missed three.

Hen and a chick in a hen house. Catch, cut, pluck, clean, roast and use in the pies.

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Chewet

February 25th, 2013 by KM Wall

My little pie maker - this is not an endorsement - doesn't it look like a muffin tin????

A chewet pie.
Take the brawns and the wings of capons and chickens after they have been roasted, and pull away the skin; then shred them with fine mutton suet very small; then season it with cloves, mace, cinnamon, sugar, and salt;then put to raisins of the sun and currants, and sliced dates, and orange peels, and, being well mixed together, put it into small coffins made for that purpose, and strew on top of them good store of caraway comfits: then cover them, and bake them with a gentle heat, and these chewets you may make also of roasted veal, seasoned as before shown and all parts of the loin is the best.
-Markham,G. The English Housewife, Best ed, p. 103

  1. Roasted chicken or capon – there’s no reason to avoid a store rotisserie bird  – pull off the skin and shred the meat. Or use roasted veal., should you have some of that around.
  2. Mutton suet is pretty hard to find these days, and we’d probably prefer less fat – a little butter would do, but out chicken are also pretty fat…
  3. Season the chicken with spices – it should smell good and taste great, and a little cloves goes a long, long, way
  4. Raisins of the sun, little tiny currents, (the Plymouth County girl in me wants to say ‘Crasin’. Just saying.)Sliced dates or chopped if you got ‘em
  5. Orange peels  – you might want to grate this.
  6. Mix it all together. Smell and taste.
  7. Make pastry for the coffins (it’s not hard, and these are little pies). If you don’t trust your pastry skills, use one of the several little pie makers on the market or the Texas size muffin tins to act as your forms.
  8. Roll, fill.
  9. Add caraway comfits, which are caraway seeds coated with sugar, or just use regular old caraway seeds. I know at least one of you is thinking, “Caraway in German is Kummel, in Yiddish…..” Yes, you are.
  10. Put on the lids, crimp.
  11. Bake – 350°ish  until the pastry is nice and done (the chicken is already cooked, no danger of raw chicken)
  12. Chewet. Chewet, Good.

another sort of little pie maker...also not an endorsement

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Potato of Canada

January 11th, 2013 by KM Wall

The Story of the English Underground, Colonial Edition.cont

 

Jerusalem artichoke

from the OED:
2. Jerusalem Artichoke: a species of Sunflower (Helianthus tuberosus), a native of tropical America, cultivated in Europe, having edible tuberous roots, somewhat resembling the Artichoke proper in flavour.
‘The name of Jerusalem Artichoke is considered to be a corruption of the Italian Girasóle Articiocco or Sunflower Artichoke, under which name it is said to have been distributed from the Farnese garden at Rome, soon after its introduction to Europe in 1617.’ W. B. Booth in Treas. Bot.
1620 VENNER Via Recta vii. 134 Artichocks of Ierusalem, is a roote vsually eaten with butter, vinegar, and pepper.

1641 R. BROOKE Nat. Eng. Episc. I. iv. 16 Error being like the Jerusalem-Artichoake; plant it where you will, it overrunnes the ground and choakes the Heart.

also in New England:
Champlain at Nauset, 1605
“…and roots which they [Natives] cultivate, the later having the taste of an artichoke.” in Sailor’s Narratives, p. 87.

Jerusalem artichoke before they reach 7' tall and sprout yellow flowers

Gookin, 1674
“Also they [natives] mix with the _____ pottage several sorts of roots; as Jerusalem artichokes, and ground nuts and other roots…”

“We in England, from some ignorant and idle head, haue called them Artichokes of Jerusalem, only because the roote, being boyled, is in taste like the bottome of an Artichoke head: but they may most fitly be called, Potaoes of Canada, because their rootes are in some forme, colour and taste, like unto the Potatos of Virginia, but greater, and the French brought them first from Canada into these parts)…

 

“…but after they [the stalks] be withered, and so all the winter long vntill the Spring againe, they are good, and fit to bee taken vp and vsed, which are a number of tuberous round rootes, growing close together; so that it hath been obserued, that from one roote, being set in the Spring, there hath been forty or more taken up againe, and to haue ouer-filled a pecke measure, and are of a pleasant good taste as many haue tryed.”

-Parkinson, p. 518.

 

Jerusalem artichokes - the root part you eat (and why Parkinson calls them Potatoes of Canada)

The naming confusion continues – now (as in this morning) you can find them called :

  • sunchokes
  • sunroots
  • topinambour
  • earth apples

“The rootes are dressed diverse waies;

some boil them in water, and after stew them with sacke and butter, adding a little Ginger:

others bake them in pies, putting Marrow, Dates, Ginger, Raisons of the Sun, &c.

Others some other way, as they are led by their skill in Cookerie.

But in my judgement, which way soever they be drest and eaten they stir and cause a filthie loathesome stinking winde within the bodie, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented…

1633. John Gerard The Herbal p. 754

 

 


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Two Turtledoves

December 27th, 2012 by KM Wall

Two European Turtle Doves (Streptopelia turtur)

 

To bake Pigeons wild or tame, Stock-Doves, Turtle-Doves, Quails, Rails, & c. to be eaten cold.

Take six pigeons, pull, truss, and draw them, wash and wipe them dry, and season them with nutmeg, pepper, and salt, the quantity of two ounces of the foresaid spices, and as much of the one as the other, then lay some butter in the bottom of the pye, lay on the pigeons, and put all the seasonings on them in the pye, put butter to it, close it up and bake it, being baked and cold, fill it up with clarified butter.

Make the paste of a pottle of fine flour, and a quarter of a pound of butter boil’d in fair water made up quick and stiff.

If you will bake them to be eaten hot, leave out half the seasoning: Bake them in dish, pie, or patty-pan, and make cold paste of a pottle of flour, six yolks of raw eggs, and a pound of butter, work into flour dry, and being well wrought into it, make it up stiff with a little fair water.

Being bakes to be eaten hot, put into yolks of hard eggs, sweet breads, lamb-stones, sparagus, or bottoms of artichokes, chestnuts, grapes or gooseberries.

Sometimes for variety make a lear of butter, verjuyce, sugar, some sweet marjoram chopped and boil’d up in the liquor, put them in the pye when you serve it up, and  dissolve the yolk of an egg into it: then cut up the pye or dish, and put some slic’t lemon, shake it well together, and serve it up hot.

In this mode or fashion you bake larks, black-birds, thrushes, veldifers, sparrows or wheat-ears.

- 1678. Robert May. The Accomplist Cook. Falconwood Press ed. p. 124.

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Idolatry in a crust

December 20th, 2012 by KM Wall

A modern mince pie

Mincemeat, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, was in fact, minced meat. Usually beef, sometime mutton, occasionally veal. Not just the meaty bits we now buy – sometimes tongue as well. But meat alone isn’t mincemeat. It also had copious amounts of raisins (a/k/a ‘raisins of the sunne’) and currents and sometimes dates and prunes, as well as generous amounts of spices and sugar. The weight of the dried fruit might equal or exceed the weight of the meat, and in the 1620 the raisins were much more expensive per ounce then the meat was.
Suet isn’t something we cook much with any more, but fat is another component of the mince pie. The fat is what makes it rich. During the 1700′s butter starts to come in as the fat of choice, and by the 20th century seems to be more common.
If I were making this mincemeat at home (and I have) I would take three pounds of beef, one to one and a half pounds of butter, three pounds of dried fruit, all cut small and well mixed (and be grateful that I don’t have to pick stems off the raisins and take the stones out of them) with some orange peel (two or three oranges worth – well washed, preferably organically grown oranges). Salt, pepper, cloves (this can be strong – not too much) and mace (or nutmeg if you have that – they have a very similar flavor profile). Put it into pastry – you can use pie pans if you want, sprinkle more sugar on top and bake them in your oven.
If you want to risk idolatry, make little rectangle pies and have them symbolize the manger where the Christ child was born. If you don’t want to fall into idolatry, make little rectangle pies just because they’re fun. You could even use frozen puff pastry and ‘let your soul delight in fatness’. And if you want to be thoroughly superstitious, go out on each of the Twelve Days of Christmas to a different house and eat a mince pie in each one to have good luck for each of the twelve months in the year ahead.

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EAT! Minc’t pie

December 19th, 2012 by KM Wall

Still Life Pie with Oysters Joris van Son

A minc’t pie.

Take a Leg of Mutton, and cut the best of the best flesh from the bone, and parboyle it well: then put to it three pound of the best Mutton suet, and shred it very small: then spred it abroad, and season it with pepper and salt, cloues and mace : then put in good store of currants, great raysons and prunes cleane washt and pickt, a few dates slic’t, and some orange pills slic’t: then being all well mixt together, put into a coffin, or into diuers coffins, and so bake them: and when they are serued vp open the liddes, and strow store of suger on the top of the meat, and upon the lid. And in this sort you may also bake Beefe or Veale; onely the Beefe would not be parboyled, and the Veale will aske a double quantitie of suet.

- Gervase Markham’s English Huswife (1623 ed, pp. 103-4)

 

A few quick notes -
orange pills are peels
coffins are stand alone pastry cases (but there is no reason not to use a pie plate),

diuers are diverse or several
liddes are the upper crust of the pie

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Secret Life of Beets:Lumdardy Tarts Revisited

December 10th, 2012 by KM Wall

So, back to Lumdardy tarts…..

If beets are as likely the leafy green, what is a lumdardy? Years later, even after an update and revision and going on-line, the closest the OED gets to Lumdardy is Lumbard – is this a case of close enough?

lumbard

4.Cookery. [ellipt.: see B. 2.] Some kind of dish or culinary preparation. Obs.

1657REEVEGod’s Plea 130 The Hoga’s, and Olies, and Lumbards of these times.

Not terribly descriptive….but there’s more:

2.Cookery. In certain AF. names of dishes as leche lumbard (see LEACHn.1 2); frutour lumbard [frutour = FRITTER]; rys lumbard [F. ris sweetbread]. Also in lombard pie (see LUMBER-PIE).

?c1390 [see LEACHn.1 2]. c1430Two Cookery-bks. 35 Leche lumbarde. 1452Reliq. Ant. I. 88 Frutour lumbert..Lesshe lumbert. 1466-7Durh. Acct. Rolls (Surtees) 91 Et in 2 lib. dell powderlomberd empt. de eodem, 3s. 3d. 14..Anc. Cookery in Househ. Ord. (1790) 438 Rys Lumbarde.Leche Lumbarde.

So on to Lumber-pie…

Lumber-pie

Also lumbar-pie. [See LOMBARDa. 2.]

A savoury pie made of meat or fish and eggs.

1656 MARNETTÈ Perf. Cook II. 1 To make a Lumbar Pye. Take three pound of Mutton [etc.]. 1663 in Jupp Acc. Carpenters’ Comp. (1848) 206 It is..ordered..that the provision be as followeth; vizt..Roast Turkey, Lumberpie, Capon, Custurd, and codling tart. 1688R. HOLMEArmoury III. 83/1 Lumber pie, made of Flesh or Fish minced and made in Balls..with Eggs..and so Baked in a Pye with Butter. 1694MOTTEUXRabelais (1737) IV. lix. 243 Lumber-Pyes, with hot Sauce. 17..E. SMITHCompl. House wife (1750) 150 To make a Lumber pye. Take a pound and a half of veal, &c. 1849W. H. AINSWORTHLanc. Witches III. ix, There were lumbar pies, marrow pies, quince pies [etc.].

Still unclear, but….one never knows what causes light to dawn over Marblehead….

Hit the books – check. Now it’s time to get back into the kitchen.

So, beets as a leafy green – check . Grated bread still seems to be breadcrumbs – check.

Cheese – what would cheese be????

One named cheese that comes up from time to time is variations of ‘Parmysent‘ – Parmesan? The same cheese I would shake over my spaghetti and meatballs at school lunch? The same cheese I now buy in wedges and save the rinds to add to my pasta fazoole? It would fit the pattern of the so-called ‘Old Cheese‘ that is also sometimes mentioned.

This combination of Swiss Chard, breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese sounds vague familiar…what does it remind me of?

Lets cut some beets and go back to the kitchen…..

Beets, cut November 30th...

 

How to make Lumbardy Tarts

Take beets, chop them small, and to them put grated bread and cheese, and mingle them wel in the chopping.  Take a few corrans, and a dishe of sweet butter, and melt it.  Then stir al these in the butter, together with three yolkes of egges, sinamon, ginger, and sugar, and make your tart as large as you will, and fill it with the stuffe, bake it, and serve it in.

1588. The Good Huswifes Handemaide

 

And now my translation:

 

One bunch swiss chard

Breadcrumbs (plain)

Grated Parmesan cheese

Currants or raisins

Butter

3 egg yolks

cinnamon

ginger

sugar

 

Pastry for a top and bottom for a 9 or 10 inch pie.

Wash and dry the Swiss chard carefully. Pull of any sad or buggy bits. Cut off the stems and save for a side dish. Chop the leafy parts very small, nothing larger then ½ square.

Melt 2 – 4 tablespoons of butter; when somewhat cool beat the 3 egg yolks. Toss the butter/egg yolk mix with the chopped Swiss chard. Add enough breadcrumbs so sop up all the liquid (two or three handfuls – it depends on the size of your eggs and the how juicy the Swiss chard). Add enough grated cheese to make it smell good (it depends on how strong your cheese and how much you like it). Add a handful of raisins. If you like things sweet add one or two more handfuls. Mix together ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ginger and ½ teaspoon sugar. Mix everything all together. Smell it and decide – more cinnamon? More ginger? Make it good!

Put this lovely stuff in a pastry lined pie pan and cover with a top crust. Cut some vents for the steam to escape. Bake in a 375 oven for ½ hour. Turn down the heat to 350 until it is done – the pastry should be golden brown-tan and the filling should be a darker, denser green and it should smell wonderful.

Cool on a rack. Serve at room temperature.

 

Jan Steen - The Fat Kitchen (notice the woman eating the pie with her fingers!)

The minute the cheese and the Swiss Chard were mixed together it hit me – tortellini. It smelled like tortellini. If the cinnamon and ginger  were nutmeg….Could Lumdary Tart be a giant early modern English tortellini? Oh, the mysteries of of food. Oh, the power of smell to invoke memory.

Here in Plymouth now, talk  of tortellini  means  it must be getting close to Christmas…..and so it is.

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