Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #23: Soda Nectar from 1869.

Ingredients for Soda Nectar: sugar, lemon, soda.
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

The Challenge: # 23 -- Sweet Sips and Potent Potables Whether it’s hard or soft, we all enjoy a refreshing beverage! Pick a historic beverage to recreate - remember to sip responsibly!

This is definitely a catch-up posting, but I have a feeling that I'll be re-doing this challenge several times over the next few months, as the weather continues to heat up!  I have been collecting historical beverage recipes, both alcoholic and Temperance, for a while now, and it was really difficult to choose which one to make.  I didn't have all of the ingredients for some of the most interesting recipes, and I didn't have all of the equipment necessary to make others.  I still intend to make drinking chocolate the 18^th century (or earlier) Spanish California way – once I get a chocolate pot and chocolate mill – and also a related drink called Racahout from 18^th and early 19^th century England, as well as some kind of punch and some of those Civil War-era soda powders (especially ginger!).  However, it took a particularly warm spring day, a dinner of Chinese take-out, and a lack of things to drink, to get me to complete this challenge, with things I already had in the kitchen.

Historical Food Fortnightly: Challenge #7 -- The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread -- Raspberry Jell from 1945.

Calves' feet boiling for jelly.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach. 

Having tried (and failed) to make jelly the old-fashioned way from calves' feet, it was a very quick and easy job to make jelly with packaged gelatine.  The calves' feet need to be cleaned, covered in water and boiled gently for 4 hours, until the meat and cartilage fall off the bones and are dissolved into the broth.  Then the bones and meat chunks and any undissolved cartilage need to be picked out of the broth and the broth needs to cool and settle overnight.  Then the fat that rises to the top of the broth needs to be cleaned off the top, and the sediment that sinks to the bottom needs to be scraped off as well.  The resulting jelly is a transluscent, meaty brown color that needs to be melted again and strained through a jelly bag or a few layers of cheesecloth or wet muslin to remove more sediment.  Then the jelly needs to cool and settle again, and if it's not yet clear and flavor-less, it needs to be melted and run through a jelly bag again.  Once it's clear, only then can you add the flavorings and pour it into a mold and let it set into its finished shape!  That takes at least a day, just to prepare the unflavored gelatine! 

A Raspberry Bread Pudding and a Viennese Tea!

Raspberry Jam Bread Pudding.  Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

I've had these croissants taking up space in my freezer for a few months, and with all the fruit I've been bringing home from the farmers' market -- for making jam and freezing for next year -- I needed to get the croissants out.  Then they sat in my fridge for a month; they were wrapped in plastic, but still ...  Then, I got a bunch of raspberries at the farmers' market, intending to make jam with them, but a week went by and they were still there, looking at me sadly every time I opened the fridge!  After spending a lot of time looking through recipes for the perfect ones to use, I finally got the croissants and raspberries out the other day and did something with them!

Originally I was going to make bread pudding with the croissants -- I had been looking for a Victorian recipe (that I never did find) that called for grating the bread before adding the custard -- and jam with the raspberries, but as I was mixing the custard for the pudding, with the jam simmering in a saucepan nearby, I got a brain flash: why not put some of the jam *in* the bread pudding, and have a sort-of-raspberry-cream bread pudding?  I checked the fridge: no cream, but I did have some half-and-half.  Maybe white chocolate chips instead?  Checked the pantry: no white chocolate.  So, it will just be raspberry, or maybe Raspberry Jam-and-Bread Pudding ...