Historical Food Fortnightly and A History of Royal Food and Feasting -- Tartes owt of Lente

ingredients for Tarte owt of Lente.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach.

So, I haven't exactly fallen off the end of the earth (again), but I haven't had much energy after working all day at the school.  Now that summer has arrived, though, I'm only working half-days at the summer school, and also taking two online classes through FutureLearn.  One class is called The History of Royal Food and Feasting, and it's really interesting.  This week the class discussion was about the Tudor period and Hampton Court Palace, and we were challenged to cook one of the recipes that the Hampton Court Palace staff of Tudor kitchen interpreters has made on one of their promotional and educational YouTube videos: Tartes owt of Lente.  It's from a manuscript from around 1500, probably in the Bodleian Library and not published (except on the Hampton Court Palace web page) in modern times.  It also happens to be a pie, and I also happened to get it done within the time limit for this challenge, so YAY!  The first challenge I have been able to complete this year ... 

Challenge #13 Pies (June 17 - June 30) -- Make a pie! Meat, fruit, sweet or savory; traditional pies, hand pies, standing pies, or galottes - get creative, but make sure it’s documented!

Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #18 Descriptive Food -- Tuff-Taffity Cream from 1670.

Ingredients for Tuff-Taffity Cream.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

The Challenge: # 18 -- Descriptive Food We all know those recipes that come attached to interesting and imaginative names - slumps, crumbles, buckles, trifles, flummery. Pick a historic recipe that has a descriptive title.

There were so many interesting-sounding recipes that I considered for this challenge, but I decided on Tuff-Taffity Cream because I wanted to know why it had that name!  Other descriptive recipe titles are a bit more clear, but this one ... I have read about a fabric called "taffety" – which became our modern "taffeta" – but I don't know what period taffety was like, and why a custard would be called by that name.  And the "tuff" part?  Modern taffeta is a stiff, glossy fabric that is used to make women's formal gowns, but it's also lightweight and can be luxurious, and I thought that might be the clue to the relationship between the fabric and this recipe. 

The Dictionary of Traded Goods and Commodities defines "tuftaffeta" (also spelled "tufted tafata") as a silk taffeta (a fabric which has a smooth finish), that has a pile or nap arranged in tufts, to create a decorated pattern: "creating a pile and then cutting some of it only so as to form a pattern was very popular in the sixteenth century and early seventeenth, but largely died out thereafter as different ways of finishing became available.  ... Tuftaffetas were normally made of silk and were therefore valued highly, but some were made of half-linen." So, "tuff-taffity" is really "tufted taffeta", which is a decorative silk fabric.  I guessed that the custard called "tuff-taffity cream" must have a silken, "tufted" texture, then.  I don't know that I've ever eaten a food with a "tufted" texture! 

Food historian Ivan Day contributed his opinion on the subject on his blog, Historic Food: "Quince marmalade or sliced quinces were added to apple pies and taffety tarts to improve their flavour. The taffety tart filling ... also contains preserved orange.Taffety tarts borrowed their name from the textile material called taffety, but why this was the case is not understood. A more elaborate taffety called tuff-taffety was popular for making hats in the Tudor period. Hannah Wooley, the seventeenth century writer on domestic matters gives a recipe for a tuff-taffity cream, which is a smooth frothy cream garnished with red current jelly." So there you have it!  Maybe "tufted" is the same as "frothy"?  Let's find out.

Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #20 -- Eggs a L'Exposition

The Palace of Fine Arts, from
_Splendors of the Panama-Pacific Exposition_.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

The Challenge: #20 -- Foods served at notable events in history 

What kind of food was served at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth? What did Benjamin Franklin eat at the Constitutional Convention? Find a food item that was served at a notable event in history, research the recipe, and recreate the dish.

The Tower of Jewels, from _Splendors of the Panama-
Pacific Exposition_. Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

This year is the 100^th anniversary of one of the most iconic events in California history: the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.  Held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the Pan-Pacific Exposition was California's message to the world that the city of San Francisco, and the entire state, had completely recovered from the catastrophic earthquake and fire in 1906, and that California had not only recovered, but surpassed its previous accomplishments to become a cultural, economic and technological leader of the United States, on a par with New York City, Boston, Chicago, and other eastern cities.  The fair lasted an entire year, and the city was transformed by the beautiful buildings, gardens, walkways, public art, and evening light shows, not to mention the exciting and wonderful international exhibitions in each of the pavilions.  The fairgrounds became the most fashionable place to be, and the fair was absorbed into San Francisco life and California culture to an extent that, when it came time to close the fair and remove all the buildings and gardens, Californians felt like the heart of the city was being destroyed.  Residents protested the removal of the buildings – which had been built of plaster and chicken wire over wooden frames, and never intended to last more than a year – and succeeded in saving the Palace of Fine Arts and the Temple of Art, which were kept in their original locations until several years ago when they needed to be re-created in concrete due to deterioration.  The re-created buildings are still there, part of an art museum complex, and are used for countless photographs and concerts to this day.

The Tower of Jewels at Night, from _Splendors of the Panama-
Pacific Exposition_.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

The fair was so popular that souvenirs of all kinds were created, from replica glass "jewels" to imitate those decorating the Tower of Jewels, to illustrated picture books – one of which I have! – to special "Exhibition" cookbooks.  I decided to make one of the recipes in the souvenir cookbook, The Pan-Pacific Cookbook: Savoury Tidbits from the World's Fare, which features international recipes as well as ones apparently created especially for the Exposition. This recipe is on the Pan-Pacific Exposition website. The book is available for free in PDF form on OpenLibrary, and available in paperback re-print for $13 or so on Amazon.

Playing catch-up with the Historical Food Fortnightly: Challenge #17 -- Tea caudle.

Chinese teapot.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

 The Challenge: #17 -- Revolutionary Food. The theme is revolution, and it’s all about ch-ch-ch-changes. Food can be inspired by revolution, can showcase a revolutionary technique, or come from a revolutionary time. Give us your best documented interpretation of revolution.

Of course, being a tea drinker and tea blogger, I am interested in the history of tea, and I'm very aware of the part tea played in English and American history.  Although tea was advertised as early as 1658, it was officially introduced to England in 1662, as part of the dowry of the new Queen of England, Catherine of Braganza, who married King Charles II.  A Portuguese princess, Catherine also brought to England trading rights at all of Portugal's trading posts around the world, including the ones where tea could be purchased.  Tea became extremely popular at court almost immediately, and spread to the aristocracy within the first few years.  Within twenty years, the upper middle classes were also familiar with it, and drinking it enough to provoke articles and dire warnings against it in newspapers and the increasingly popular domestic manuals and recipe books, aimed at the aristocracy and the upper-middle classes, as well as their servants.  By 1750 tea was being called "unwholesome" or even "of a poisonous nature", and said to cause "distempers, tremors, palseys, vapours, fits" and other nerve damage, when "drank to excess;" people were encouraged to put "cream, &c." in their tea to counteract the "corroding" nature of the lime and alum used to make loaf sugar (when people sweetened their tea), or to use lavender oil, nettle flowers, or quicksilver-water, in making their tea, to "prevent the rise of vapours"!  But how was the tea made?  

There is some suggestion in the earliest books, that people were drinking tea, or perhaps ordering it ready-made, along with the other fashionably new drinks, coffee and chocolate, in tea and coffee houses, more often than making it at home, since the recipe books from those first 20 years don't contain any recipes for making tea.  The diarist Samuel Pepys wrote in 1660 that he sent for a cup of "tee, a China drink" one day when at home, but it's not clear where he got the tea, whether it was made in his own kitchen, or brought from a tea house.  These tea and coffee houses became wildly popular, rivaling taverns in their customer numbers, but more fashionable than taverns because they sold the exotic, expensive, imports, so they were patronized by the aristocracy and upper middle classes, as well as anyone else who could afford the price of a cup of tea or coffee, including women, in many cases. 

Home remedies for the common cold, ca. 1870.

Image from ClipartETC.

Aaargh!  With the changing weather -- the usual autumn winds, and unusual amounts of rain -- it's cold season again at The Cup That Cheers!  That means another seasonal foray into the antique domestic manuals and cookbooks for advice.  The following tips come from the Excelsior cook book and housekeeper’s aid, from 1870.  Beware the liberal use of paregoric (opium) and other dangerous ingredients!

TREATMENT OF COLDS.
If feverish, bathe the feet in warm water, take some hot herb tea, or hot lemonade, but use no spirits, as this will only increase the fever.  Get up a perspiration, and be careful about exposure the next day.

Gluten-free cuccidate: can it be done?

My regular cuccidate.

I love to bake traditional treats during the holidays.  So far, I've done gingerbread cake (recipe from good old Betty Crocker), nut-free fruitcake with dried fruit instead of candied fruit, cake mix cookies made with a spice cake mix and topped with cinnamon red hot candy, my great aunt's cocoa-anise cookies, and my nut-free version of cuccidate, or Sicilian fig cookies.  I bake so that I can have some good things, but not *the whole batch* and so that I will have something to give to my adult relatives (I only buy gifts for the kids).  My aunt and cousin, however, have multiple food allergies (as I do, but they have different ones than I have) and they almost never get to eat baked goods because their allergies include wheat, gluten, yeast, eggs, dairy (except they can have butter, weirdly enough), corn (both starch and syrup) and cane sugar.

Recipe from March 1860: A dish of spinach on toast.

Often, the recipes I find in my vintage and antique cookery books seem heavy and unpalatable, especially without a wood fireplace to roast and bake in! The following recipe, however, sounds as tasty made with modern appliances as with 19th century ones, and I may well try to make it one of these days! It is from the March 1860 issue of Godey's Lady's Book:

A Spring Dish. -- Upon a toasted bread place a layer of well-boiled spinach about an inch thick; upon this place at equal distances poached eggs. This forms a pretty, light, and nourishing dish; but be careful that the yellow of the egg is not broken, or the appearance will be lost, and the eggs not worth eating.

I think this would make a good breakfast or lunch dish for this time of year. It's nice to see in the spring and summer issues of ladies' magazines, many fruit and vegetable recipes; it is a myth that the Victorians only ate bland, heavy food! They ate what was available in season, and many people are in agreement with this idea, although we have so many more fruits and vegetables available year-round, both fresh and frozen or canned. Frozen spinach would work well for this recipe, I think!