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This is where I note my efforts as I try to recreate some old recipes. Most are taken from my small collection of handwritten recipe books which date from the late 1700's to around 1922. I also have a collection of old tatty old recipe books, well thumbed and heavily splashed from years of use. I love all of them.

The old-fashioned very stylised handwriting writing is sometimes difficult to decipher, measurements and cooking instructions are minimal, no tin sizes given. Luckily I enjoy a challenge. Just to complicate things I cook and bake on my wood-fired Rayburn, which can be... unpredictable.

I suspect this blog is less about the food and more about my passion for these lovely old books and the wonderful women who wrote them.


Friday, 11 March 2016

Aunt Nelly's Pudding


I was looking for an easy pud and came across this recipe for Aunt Nelly's Pudding.    The name sold it to me, so did the simple ingredients.

The recipe was in the big black volume with  1840 embossed on the spine which you can see in the header photograph.





The ingredients:


  • 3 oz bread crumbs
  • 3 oz suet
  • 3 flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoonful syrup
  • Treakle (sic)
  • little sugar
  • One tea spoonful essence of lemons
(Boiling milk is also required but that is not listed.)

Method:

Pour boiling milk on breadcrumbs (?how much), mix well together, a mould well-buttered, pour all in and steam for two hours and a bit.


I decided to put the syrup in the bottom of the buttered basin, then pour the mix on top.   I covered the pudding bowl, tied it up and lowered it into a pan of boiling water.   This is where having the Rayburn comes in handy, it is always on anyway, so it doesn't feel as though it is costing a fortune in fuel bills.

The texture was definitely a little doughier than the steamed puddings I am used to, I assume that is down to the use of breadcrumbs in the mix.


Once I had made a large jug of custard to go with it, the pudding was soon demolished by the family.

Thank you Aunt Nelly, whoever you were!


So from a rather homely pudding to something quite different.

Stuck in a back page of the book is a list of the food served for a meal at Croxton Hall around 1850.


Colds
  • Round of Beef
  • 4 pheasants
  • Cold Beef Pie
  • Pigeon Pie
  • Other Pies
  • Stewed Beef
  • Boar's Head
  • Ham 

Hot

  • Kedgeree
  • 4 pt Grouse
  • 4 pt Pheasants
  • Broiled Chicken & Pheasants
  • 1 dish Potatoes
  • Sausages on Potatoes
  • Hot Cakes
  • Cutlets
That was above stairs.

The servants were given a round of beef and a shoulder of mutton! 



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5 comments:

  1. Sol15 March 2016 at 21:16

    just shows you that kedgeree has been around for yonks. I was talking about this with my sister before christmas and we couldnt understand when we were younger what "fried breakfasts" had in them. You'd see it on Eastenders or something and we really didnt know what it was. We had kedgeree, which was the fish left over from friday, remade into rice. yum. We didnt eat any meat from thursday till sunday evening. So it was eagerly devoured.

    We dont have it anymore. Maybe we should revive it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Elaine16 March 2016 at 06:55

    Revive it, it's a great favourite of ours, too. I don't eat meat but I hold my hand up to eating fish and we are both very partial to smoked haddock, which is what I use to make it. In my parents house, fried breakfasts were a very occasional treat - rather predictably, my favourite part was the... fried bread!

    (The Eastenders programme is probably responsible for some extremely skewed views on life in England, I only ever see the occasional trailer for the programme and that is bad enough.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sol16 March 2016 at 16:20

    I dont eat meat now. Probably not for a year now. Plenty of fish and shell fish (I buy it frozen...). I think I will con my sister into making kedgeree when we stay.... I may even blog about something! lol I love commenting but putting a post up... I just dont seem to get to it... maybe kedgeree will be the one?

    Loving the recipe books. the script is very hard to read I bet. so you are doing well. my nephew is having lessons from an older lady down the road as his cursive is not so good and he is determined to win the end of school year thing for best writing! lol the lady used to be a teacher in France and he says she is very strict! lol

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sol16 March 2016 at 18:30

    I dont eat meat now. Probably not for a year now. Plenty of fish and shell fish (I buy it frozen...). I think I will con my sister into making kedgeree when we stay.... I may even blog about something! lol I love commenting but putting a post up... I just dont seem to get to it... maybe kedgeree will be the one?

    Loving the recipe books. the script is very hard to read I bet. so you are doing well. my nephew is having lessons from an older lady down the road as his cursive is not so good and he is determined to win the end of school year thing for best writing! lol the lady used to be a teacher in France and he says she is very strict! lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Elaine17 March 2016 at 06:49

      Hi Sol, You once said something to me about 'blogging without obligation' - I let that thought settle and have enjoyed the freedom ever since - so thank you.

      I'll photograph some pages; some writing is beautiful and fairly easy to read, other hands are tricky and get trickier as the writer gets older or has less patience for writing down recipes.
      Best wishes to your nephew, I love a young man with such determination and I hope he achieves his goal.

      Delete

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