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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.


Saturday 16 April 2016

Do Not Try This at Home!


This set of ingredients looks innocuous enough and the recipe intrigued me enough to want to bake it.

A Seventeenth Century Recipe for Cauliflower Pudding.

Well, given all the hype about cauliflower, I simply had to try it out, especially as all the ingredients were to hand.


Cauliflower, milk, cream, sherry, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and eggs, sounded ... interesting.

It came out of the Rayburn looking like a slightly lumpy baked egg custard, or rice pudding,  with a promising wobble and the slight aroma of nutmeg and spices.


It was disgusting.   The worst pudding I have ever tasted.

I got Max to sample it, after all, it could just have been that it was not to my taste.    He was not impressed, to put it mildly.  

The hens and wild birds made short work of it though.

More next time.
x

ps It was so disgusting that I haven't bothered to write out the recipe but if anyone would like to try it just drop me a line.

4 comments:

  1. Just the combination of Cauliflower and sugar is enough to spell 'Danger'. Still, at least you tried it; well done.

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    1. Hi Cro, I know what you mean, but I had to try it out. It was pretty bad. Still, I have plenty more old recipes to work through. I am really enjoying the experiments.

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  2. it looks like scambled eggs. the texture was odd?

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    1. Hi Sol, The odd texture is just caused by the shape of the cauliflower florets in the custard. The custard itself was fine, but there was absolutely no way that the two tastes worked together. Perhaps the cauliflowers of 400 years ago were a little different from those of today.

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