recipe | Shannon Donnelly's Fresh Ink

I love old cookbooks–they are a glimpse into a past era. They also often have great recipes. Reading Dorothy Hartley’s wonderful Food in England got me thinking about how there are certain foods and drinks we no longer ask for when dining out, such as:

Meat and fish hanging, bread, cooked eggs, glassware, parsnips, lemon, platters on a side table all in a larder or kitchen

A joint of beef — we have all sorts of fancy cuts these days.

Johnnycakes — these are actually delicious…they are basically a cornmeal fried bread, meaning like a pancake but with more crunch. Easy to make, too.

Mutton — it is still possible to find lamb in some supermarkets, but mutton has gone completely out of fashion (no old sheep for a low cost meal).

Pig cheeks — still available in some parts of the world, and by all accounts, the best part of the pig. Also called pork cheeks, and this goes along with calf cheeks or beef cheeks, a specialty of the Café Procope, one of the oldest cafes in Paris.

cucumber or parmesan ice cream — it is difficult enough these days to find real parmesan cheese.

watercress and egg sandwiches — these can be found in some tea shops still (thankfully), but watercress can be difficult to come by in many modern supermarkets (at least in the US).

gruel — this is an unlovely name and the food has a bad rep from the Victorian era, but some recipes call for butter, brandy, and enough spices to make this a very tasty mean (it’s basically think oatmeal).

A pot of ale — while ale is still around, it usually comes in cans, bottles, or a pint or half pint. The pint pot has long ago been replaced with glass.

A bowl of punch — this used to be a highly alcoholic drink, but these days folks are more likely to think of punch being a fruity drink without brandy, champagne, rum, and other spirts all mixed together. The bowl is no longer with us either for dipping into with a mug or cup.

A posset — this was a hot drink made from curdled milk and sack or a sweet sherry.

A flip — another drink (more alcohol) usually made with beer, rum, eggs, and heated with a poker (not the one used to stir the fire, but a special poker used just to heat drinks).

A purl — another hot drink made with beer, gin, nutmeg, and sugar.

That is just a few things we generally must make ourselves if we want to sample something from the past (unless we find a place that also likes to keep going with what were once old favorites).

Thomas Rowlandson Naval Officers and a bowl of Punch

There’s always a big question with any writing—what do you put in and what do you leave out? This is not just confined to scenes and characters, but also to information, particularly to research to make a story come to life.

This may be why I’m also drawn to cooking—it is still the same idea of what do you put in and what is better left out. Food in general is just a terrific topic. When it comes to history, it is fascinating both how tastes change and how much stays the same. For example, the English classic ‘Toad in the Hole’ (such an odd name, since it has no toads and not much in the way of holes) goes back at least to the 1700s. That was a time when cookbooks really started to flourish.

Rolandson Bird Eye View Covent Garden 1811

Cookbooks are both an insight into a period and also something of an insight into a way of thinking. I love that earlier cookbooks use measurement such as “a good handful”. Is that my hand? A small hand? A man’s big hand? And then there’s ingredients such as “blade of mace” (I had to look that one up). Then there’s the spellings to deal with, and how sometimes the instructions leave out some steps, assuming that everyone knows the obvious.

Assumptions—that brings me back to thinking about recipes and the idea of leaving in or out. We sometimes assume someone will know something, but what if the reader doesn’t get it? What if the assumption is wrong? The opposite can be just as bad. We assume the reader doesn’t know so now we slip into overexplaining. Too much detail can be as bad as too little.

One of the keys I find is to make certain the details are always interesting. I find this is true when I did into those old cookbooks.

Two different authors will have the same recipe, but one manage to infuse energy and interest into the writing. This can be done with a point of view put onto the writing. It can also be done with a just a little finesse. There’s a difference between “put the chicken in the pot and boil until done” and “put a fine chicken into a gentle simmer of water and cook until plumped”.

In May I’m doing a workshop for Regency Fiction Writers on Regency Food and Seasons—always good to put those two together (sometimes I think very few people these days know what a truly ripe summer peach tastes like). It’s a workshop I’ve done before, but with history you can always learn more. That means dusting off the writing for the lectures, and more dives down research rabbit holes…and having to make that call as to what should be put in and what is better taken out.

The workshop covers far more than seasons, with a look at kitchens of the era, markets (particularly those in London), a jaunt across the seasons of the year and holiday fare, shops for food in London such as the Italian Warehouses, the eating houses available in places such as London. It’s a broad look at an even broader topic, covering cookbooks of the era which offer up some great recipes, and just some things I couldn’t leave out just because sometimes it’s the cool details that add that spark of insight into a time and place.