Historical Food Fortnightly: Challenge #10 -- Let Them Eat Cake! with Rice Cakes With Butter

Mrs. Hale's Rice Cakes With Butter, from 1841.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

The Challenge: #10 -- Let Them Eat Cake! October 5 - October 18

"The 16th is the anniversary of the beheading of Marie Antoinette (zut alors!). In honor of Madame Deficit, prepare your best cake from a historic recipe. And then eat it, bien sur."

This challenge came along at a good time, because my brother and I each attended a wedding in the past fortnight, and therefore wedding cake played a small part in our thoughts recently.  My friend, the bride at one wedding, is allergic to wheat, so she had a completely wheat-free wedding brunch menu and had locally-made gourmet ice cream instead of wedding cake.  My brother's friend, the groom at the other wedding, is from the U.K. and he and his bride had two receptions, according to my brother: one with tea and cakes directly after the wedding ceremony and church service, and a dinner later in the evening.  My brother couldn't tell me what kind of cakes there were, only that they were fairy cakes (cupcakes) and brownies.  But a tea-and-cake wedding reception – how fun!  I'm pretty much up for tea and cakes any time, wedding or not.

My friend is a "foodie" and is always looking for good recipes, especially so now that she has been diagnosed with a wheat allergy.  I made her some wheat- and gluten-free Italian cookies for part of her wedding gift, and when I started researching recipes for this challenge, this rice flour cake recipe caught my eye.  Bonus: it doesn't contain any "wierd" ingredients that some modern gluten-free baking recipes have!  Everything apart from the rice flour comes from a normal pantry, and even the rice flour is relatively easy to find in areas with large Asian communities.

Invalid Cookery, from 1841.

Lemon balm.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

Aargh.  Still fighting off this cold, or virus, or whatever it is.  Treating colds with chicken soup is a proven, old-time remedy, but Victorian cookbooks and household manuals are filled with other recipes and hints.  Some involve ingredients that are known to be harmful, or illegal (like opium!), but others are still in use today, albeit under other names.  Indian meal gruel is really polenta or grits.  Tapioca and rice pudding are still familiar, but we like them sweeter and with more flavoring than is called for by Victorian recipes.  Beef tea is basically broth.  Herbal teas are made by the same method today.

These recipes are from The Good Housekeeper, by Sarah Josepha Hale, 1841.

TO MAKE GRUEL.--Sift the Indian meal through a fine sieve; wet two spoonfuls of this meal with cold water, and beat it till there are no lumps; then stir it into a pint of boiling water, and let it boil half an hour, stirring it all the time.

History for dinner: To Fricassee a Chicken.

Instead of a picture of Chicken
Fricassee, here is a picture of
one of the ingredients, lemon.
Image: www.public-domain-
photos.com

I read a lot of old cookbooks and occasionally a historic recipe sounds great just as it is, and once in a while, there will be one that sounds easy enough that I actually make it (I avoid beating egg whites until they're stiff, for example).  Here is one that is easier in this historic form than it is in it's modern form: Chicken Fricassee.  What is that? It's basically chicken stewed or braised with herbs and vegetables in liquid (water, wine, or broth) and butter, so that it makes its own gravy, which is thickened with dairy and egg at the end.  You can serve it with rice or noodles, or by itself.

To Fricassee a Chicken.--Wash and cut the chicken into joints; scald and take off the skin, put the pieces in a stewpan, with an onion cut small, a bunch of parsley, a little thyme and lemon-peel, salt and pepper--add a pint of water, a bit of butter as large as an egg.  Stew it an hour; a little before serving, add the yolks of two eggs beaten up, with a tea-cup of sweet cream, stirring it in gradually; take care that this gravy does not boil.
-- from Early American Cookery: "The Good Housekeeper" by Sarah Josepha Hale (1841).