savoury – Deja Food

Onion Soup

17th century, 18th century, 19th century, soup

There’s nothing quite like a hearty soup for filling and warming you up on a brisk winter’s day. I’m patriotic for British food and deep down I must confess being a little resentful of the popularity of French Onion Soup. Nothing against the French, but recently, I starting pondering why we don’t have a decent British Onion Soup? After all, onions have been part of our food landscape for over 1500 years, brought by the Romans, presumably because our native alliums did not, pardon the pun, cut the mustard.

So I leapt, gazelle-like, to my collection of handwritten manuscripts to see what was occurring back in the day, and found many an onion soup, if not alive and kicking, then robustly chopped and simmering for many a decade.

I have selected three such soups for your delectation today, each of them delicious (obvs), each of them different in subtle, surprising ways. In deference to modern eating habits, one is vegan, one is vegetarian and one is whipped up with an unashamedly meaty stock.

Feel free to serve your onion soup with whatever garnishes take your fancy: crusty bread, cheesy croutons, spring onions/chives, grated cheese…

Which ever you choose, I hope you’ll enjoy warming yourself up with some/all of them .

White Onion Soup, circa 1820

Gluten-free.

This recipe caught my eye first and foremost because it is the first recipe in an anonymous, early 19thC manuscript. I like to imagine the author excitedly beginning a new recipe collection and what’s their first choice? Boom! White Onion Soup! I, not unreasonably, assumed this would be a banger of a recipe. I was also intrigued because of it’s title – specifying ‘white’ – unlike the majority of the onion soup recipes. It isn’t in reference to a specific type of onion, so I thought maybe it was for something cream or milk-based, thus resulting in a light-coloured soup. Turns out, it is quite the opposite, as the cooking liquid is made from two very meaty stocks of lamb and beef, and the onions are initially simmered with some lean ham/bacon. After much thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘white’ refers to how the onions are treated, i.e. not browned or coloured. In each white onion soup recipe I found, the onions were either gently stewed in butter or initially parboiled in water. Cream was added at the end, as is recommended in this recipe, but having tasted this soup both before and after the addition of cream, my recommendation is to omit it altogether: the mix of meat broths give a light and delicate flavour that is as savoury as it is surprising, given its dark colouring. It is deliciously complex.

A bowl of onion soup, showing chopped onion in a dark meat broth — White Onion Soup with meat broth

For the stock
2 strong beef stock pots/cubes
2 lamb stock pots/cubes
1 blade of mace
3 whole cloves
1 tbs black peppercorns
2 litres water

800g brown onions
120g unsalted butter
½ gammon steak or 120g lean back bacon

salt and pepper
cream to taste (optional)

Put the ingredients for the stock into a large saucepan.
Bring gently to a boil, stirring until the stock pots have dissolved, then turn down the heat and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour, or until reduced to 1.5 litres.
While the stock is simmering, peel and chop the onions finely.
Melt the butter in a pan and add the onions and gammon/bacon and toss to coat.
Cook the onions in the butter over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent. Stir to keep them from catching any colour.
When the stock is ready, strain out the solids and return the stock to the saucepan.
Remove the gammon from the pan, then add the softened onions and butter to the stock.
Simmer the soup for 10-15 minutes, then taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Since the stock pots are already quite heavily salted, you may not need anything further.
Chop the gammon/bacon finely and return to the soup if liked, or use it elsewhere (sandwich, salad, omelette, etc).
Serve hot, with cream if preferred.

Late Stuart Onion Soup, circa 1700

Vegetarian. Gluten-free.

This onion soup is about a century older than the one above, and is the kind of recipe I love in that it gives several options when making it to tailor it to your own personal tastes. I do love multi-purpose recipes! This is a recipe where the onions are browned/caramelised, and you can feel free to decide how dark to take them, according to your personal preference. The recipe actually calls for them to be ‘blackish’, which I think is a bit far, but certainly they should be brown and maybe a little dark on the edges also.

I love the addition of the fresh herbs in the cooking liquid, adding a real savoury note to the soup. This recipe also suggests ways in which the soup can be enriched, either by the addition of milk or broth for the cooking liquid, but only either one or the other, never both together. Adding milk to hot liquids can be tricky, because it is prone to curdling if you take your eye off the pan for a second and the soup gets too hot. One solution would be to use double cream, as the additional fat content helps to prevent curdling, but this might prove too rich for some palates. I recommend using a small can of evaporated milk: its caramel notes being very complimentary to the browned onions, and also much less likely to curdle.

Creamy caramelised onion soup with fresh herbs

800g onions
1 level tsp salt
125g unsalted butter
1200ml cold water
3 sprigs fresh thyme + more to garnish
12 stalks fresh parsley + more to garnish
EITHER evaporated milk – 1 small tin (170ml) or to taste from a large tin (410ml) OR 500ml beef stock
black pepper to taste

Peel and slice the onions into semi-circles.
Melt the butter in a large pan, preferably non-stick
Add the onions and cook slowly over a medium-low (6 of 9) heat, stirring occasionally, until browned to your liking. This will take a while, probably 30 minutes or more. Sprinkling the onions with the salt will help draw out their moisture and speed up the browning process a little.
When the onions are browned to your liking, add the water, thyme and parsley.
Simmer with the herbs for 20-30 minutes. NB Fresh thyme can be quite potent, so check along the way how your soup is tasting – you might want to fish out the thyme stalks sooner rather than later.
Add your enrichment liquids – either evaporated milk or beef stock – and heat through.
Taste and adjust the seasoning to your palate.
Serve.

Martha Bradley’s Onion Soup with Vinegar, 1758

Vegan. Vegetarian. Dairy-free. Gluten-free*.

This onion soup recipe is the most surprising of the three. I have adjusted it slightly in order to make it vegan (oil for butter), but that’s not what is surprising.

No, the surprising part is the flavour: bold and hearty with a real punch of richness and then brightness brought by the vinegar. I looked up this rather unusual combination, and found several versions, some of which were entitled “Drunk Soup” and emphasized the restorative properties of such a soup when recovering from over-indulgence: the sweetness of the onions providing restorative energy to the body and the vinegar providing balance to the fat/richness.

Another unusual aspect is the use of another soup to give body to the onion soup. ‘Pease soup’ is made from dried peas, not fresh garden peas, and is usually simmered with a ham hock in the making to give a thick and hearty soup. Obviously that wouldn’t do if I was to keep this recipe vegan, so not having any dried peas to hand, I opted for a tin of lentil soup, reasoning that both peas and lentils are farinaceous in texture and also vegan. I figured I could switch things around later if the recipe showed promise. However, it made for such an extraordinary soup I had absolutely no notes, so the recipe neither needed nor got any further tweaks.

It is my favourite of all three soups and epitomises why old British recipes are worthy of perseverance: this recipe was just tucked away in a relatively unknown, mid-eighteenth century book and it turns out to be a classic.

Martha Bradley's Onion Soup with Vinegar, "The British Housewife" 1758 — Martha Bradley’s Onion Soup with Vinegar, “The British Housewife” 1758

600g brown onions
2tbs vegetable oil
2 level tbs cornflour
salt and pepper to taste
1 x 400g tin Heinz Lentil Soup*(See note [1] below)
1-2tbs vinegar (your choice of type)

Peel and slice the onions either in half moons or vertically.
Add the vegetable oil to a large pan and tip in the onions.
Stir the onions over a medium-low heat (6 of 9) until softened and browned. Again, you can take the browning to whatever degree you like, but a mid-brown will take about 30 minutes.
Add the cornflour and stir in. Cook for a couple of minutes.
Open the tin of soup and pour into a bowl. Fill the tin with water and add it to the bowl. Use a stick blender to puree the mixture smooth, then pour the blended and diluted soup into the onion mixture.
Stir the soup/onion mixture. It will thicken quite quickly. Decide whether the soup is thick enough or too thick for your tastes. Add another soup-tin of water to dilute it, if liked.
Add vinegar of your choice. This can be any kind of vinegar: white, distilled, rice, sherry, malt, wine, cider, balsamic – whatever you have to hand. I would caution you to add a teaspoon at a time and stir it in thoroughly before tasting and adding more. A relatively mild white balsamic might require the full two tablespoons, but distilled vinegar merely a teaspoon or two.
Heat through and serve.

[1] Heinz Lentil Soup is vegan, even though it only says Vegetarian on the tin. It contains wheat flour (presumably for thickening purposes), making it not strictly gluten-free. I have developed some sensitivity to gluten, and yet I experienced no adverse effects, which leads me to assume it is only there in trace quantities. Not everyone is the same, so in order to keep this strictly gluten-free, I recommend making your own lentil/split-pea soup. My suggestion is for using yellow split peas due to their colour (a better match to the caramelised onions than green peas – although I could be wrong. Let me know!), dried black Carlin peas or even dried white beans/peas.

Toad In The Hole

18th century, 19th century, 20th century, 21st Century, Main Meal

Toad In The Hole was a favourite dish of my childhood, and also one of the first dishes I made when I began cookery lessons at school, aged 11. Toad in the Hole is a traditional lunch or supper dish combining sausages and a standard Yorkshire Pudding batter.

The earliest mention attributed by the Oxford English Dictionary is 1787¹, but as the digitisation of old books increases, earlier mentions will no-doubt come to light. I’ve managed to find a few.

From 1762 we have a mention in the publication The Beauties of all the magazines selected, a kind of Readers Digest of its day, in an article describing an engraving by William Hogarth. The Hogarth print, published in 1761, is entitled The Five Orders of Perriwigs, and the magazine’s description of the first image (below) is as follows:

The first Capital discovers only a forehead, nose, lips, and one eye, the rest of the face is eclipsed by the Wig’s protuberance, and appears like a small piece of beef baked in a large pudding, vulgarly called, a Toad in a hole.

The other mention is from several years earlier, 1749 to be exact, and is in the form of a footnote to some verse in a play².

In the eighteenth century, ‘Cant’ was secret language or jargon used by certain groups of people, such as gypseys, thieves and professional beggars, for the purposes of secrecy. In this context, it more likely to have been (slightly derogatory) slang. Together with the wig reference, the overall image is of a rather mean piece of meat being padded out to the point of almost being swallowed by a large, voluminous and above all, filling pudding.³

Nearly three hundred years later it is still a very budget friendly dish, as it can make a meal for 4 out of a pack of sausages and a few cupboard staples.

There are a couple of tips when making a Toad which can add both flavour and interest. I was taught to put the sausages in your baking/serving dish and put the dish into the heated oven for 10-15 minutes before adding in the batter. This allows the sausages to start cooking and (hopefully) develop a little bit of colour. Most importantly, however, it will allow the fat in the sausages to start to render, thereby greasing your dish, and thus you don’t need to add any additional fat.

The second is flavouring. Many people like to serve Toad In The Hole with gravy – onion gravy is popular. But not all people are gravy enthusiasts, and so another approach is to flavour the batter. Obviously salt and pepper are a given, but the addition of some fresh herbs can add some big punch flavours, especially if the sausages are also herbed. I think you can’t go wrong with the old “Scarborough Fair” mix of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. As far as quantity, go by your own personal taste: a nice rounded teaspoon of fresh chopped, or half that if using dried is a reasonable amount to start with. Onion in some form is also another option. Pick your preferred strength from what I like to think of as an allium continuum: chives, spring onions, white/French, pink, shallots, red, brown, – and whether to add them raw, softened, browned or caramelised.

This version is time as well as budget friendly, as it cooks in the slow cooker. With only about five minutes work, you can then forget about it and be tucking into a crispy Toad in just two hours.

There are couple of important tips to using a slow cooker for your Toad In The Hole

To avoid a soggy Toad, you need to prevent the condensation that will form on your slow cooker lid from dripping back onto your Toad, so you need to trap – for want of a better word – some kitchen paper or a clean teatowel under the lid to absorb the moisture.
No peeking! Lifting the lid to check on progress will cause the heat to escape, which will adversely affect the cooking of your batter. I peeked several times when first trying this method, and the resulting Toad was decidedly ‘firm’. By not peeking throughout the whole two hours, the Toad had a much lighter crust. Admittedly not quite as puffed as an oven-baked Toad, but perfectly acceptable for such a hands-off approach. As a bonus, the bottom and sides get deliciously crisp and brown.
(Optional) Pre-cooking the sausages. You don’t have to do this, you can just plonk everything in at once, but I find a little colour on the sausages does wonders for the visual appeal of the finished dish. The cooking doesn’t have to be that long either. In a pan on a fairly high heat, they will take a little colour in about a minute (you only need to have colour on one side). Then you can arrange them coloured-side up in your slow cooker before pouring over the batter.

Toad In The Hole – Slow-cooker method

Caveat: I have a large slow cooker, for easy batch cooking, and I appreciate not everyone will have a slow cooker of a similar size. Smaller cookers will require some adjustment in either the quantity made and/or the length of cooking time. Do let me know how you go if you are making this in a small slow cooker.

Batter (based on a 17thC recipe)
2 large eggs
120g plain flour
220ml milk
salt and pepper
herbs (optional)
onions (optional)

12 chipolata sausages.

kitchen paper or clean teatowel

Turn on your slow cooker to High to heat up.
Colour one side of your sausages in a pan. Set aside.
Put the eggs, flour and milk into an appropriate container and whisk into a batter (I use a stick blender).
Season with salt and pepper.
Stir in your herbs and/or onion if using.
Brush the inside of your slow cooker with some of the sausage fat. Remember to include the sides for when the batter puffs up.
Arrange your sausages coloured side upwards. I like to use chipolata sausages because they cover the bottom of the slow cooker more densely than regular-sized sausages.
Gently pour the batter between the sausages, trying to keep them from rolling over, although it’s easy to turn them back if this does happen.
Lay a double-thickness of kitchen roll over the top of your slow cooker and clamp it in place with the lid.
Set a timer for 2 hours and NO PEEKING!
When the time is up, remove the Toad from the slow cooker to a dish or board, and cut into serving pieces.
Serve with salad and/or vegetables and/or gravy.
DejaFood: If you have any leftover Toad, it reheats well. Wrap in foil and put into a 200°C, 180°C Fan oven for 10 minutes.

¹ “Pudding-Pye-Doll, the dish called toad-in-a-hole, meat boiled in a crust. Norf.” Francis Grose · A provincial glossary, with a collection of local proverbs, and popular superstitions · 1st edition, 1787.

² A general history of the stage; (more particularly the Irish theatre) from its origin in Greece down to the present time. (1749), by William Rufus Chetwood, printed by E. Rider, for the author, and sold by Messrs. Ewing, Wilson, Esdall, and James, in Dublin, and Mr. Sullivan in Cork, Dublin, p183.

³ Sidebar: Hannah Glasse’s 1747 book The Art of Cookery contains a recipe for Pigeons In A Hole³, which is definitely a related dish:

The art of cookery, made plain and easy; which far exceeds any thing of the kind ever yet published. (1747), Hannah Glasse, printed for the author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a China-Shop, London, p46.

Almacks

18th century, 19th century, Preserves, Pudding, Tracklements

Almacks (also Almack’s and Almack) is one of many recipes that have originated from people copying dishes they have enjoyed whilst eating out. Almack’s was a Georgian/Regency London club where the great and the good could socialise during ‘the season’, Pontacks is another such establishment, now equally long gone, whose reputation remains only in the names of recipes they have inspired.

By the end of the 18th century, being presented at the Royal court was deemed old fashioned for the up and coming ladies in society, so Almacks provided a setting whereby socialising and marriage alliances could be conducted amongst the ‘Ton’. As an example of the importance of Almack’s in the social life of the capital, when Lady Caroline Lamb published ‘Glenarvon’, with a thinly-fictionalised Lord Byron as the main character, Sarah Villiers, Lady Jersey, was so incensed at the way she had been satirised, she barred Lady Caroline from Almacks in 1816, thereby making her a social outcast *gasps and clutches pearls*. Although Lady Caroline eventually managed to regain membership three years later, thanks mainly to the assistance of her cousin, Emily Lamb (Countess Cowper), her reputation never recovered.

Almacks provided refreshments to its member and this thick fruit ‘cheese’ would have been ideal as it has great keeping qualities and is easy to serve at short notice. It can be eaten a number of ways: as a sweet, with cream or as a savoury, with biscuits and cheese. It is also versatile in its preparation as it can be varied by type of apple, pear and plum, thus giving it subtle changes in flavour with each batch. It is an ideal way to use up gluts of fruit, or to waste-not-want-not with windfalls.

Almack recipe (1785-1825) from MS1827, Wellcome Collection.

This is the earliest recipe I have found, coming from a household manuscript dated 1785-1825. The quantities are huge, even allowing for a loss of volume during the cooking. A peck of apples is roughly 6 kg, so it calls for a total of 18kg of prepared fruit, although it’s probably going to be closer to 20 kg by the time you factor in weight loss due to peeling/coring/chopping.

Almack recipe, (1800-1822) from MS1830, Wellcome Collection

This is a recipe with slightly more reasonable quantities – 3 quarts of each fruit = 7.5kg, but in the end I thought the recipe from Elizabeth Pease (below) was both the simplest and most reasonable in terms of batch size.

Elizabeth Pease’s recipe for Almacks (1802-1871) in MS3824, Wellcome Collection.

Admittedly, it does take a few things for granted such as expecting readers to know the method and how to prepare the fruit, but I’ll be filling you in on those in the recipe below.

So how much Almacks you make is really up to you and what you have to hand. As a guide, I used 750g of prepared apples and pears and 800g damsons (to allow for the stones) and it made 8 generous portions as seen in the photo above, and about 400g in a box for more casual use. The damsons add a real tang to the paste, and the low quantity of sugar means it sits right on the edge between sweet and savoury. Serve (small) portions with a drizzle of cream and a biscuit (ratafias, macaroons, etc) for crunch as a dessert, or with your favourite cheese and crackers.

Almacks

I’ve reduced the quantities, so you can make a small batch to try, but you can scale it up quite easily if you have it in mind to pot and gift it for Christmas.

500g peeled, cored and chopped apples
500g peeled, cored and chopped pears
500g plums/damsons, stones removed if possible
500g demerera sugar.

Cook the fruit. You want it soft enough so that it can be sieved easily. This can be done a couple of ways:
- layer the fruit and sugar into a large casserole (preferably ceramic or enamelled) and put it in the oven, uncovered, at 150°C, 130°C Fan for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring every 15 minutes to make sure the fruit floating on top of the juice doesn’t dry out.
- Put the fruit and sugar into a slow cooker and cook on high for 4 hours. This method generates more juice, as it won’t evaporate as much as it does in the oven, but it has the advantage of being able to be left unattended for an extended period of time.
Sieve the cooked fruit until nothing is left but skin and (possibly) damson pits.
Simmer the puree in a preserving pan until no excess liquid is visible when you draw a spoon across the pan, and it’s just fruit puree. This will take rather a long time, if you used the slow-cooker method, due to the extra juice.
You MUST stir the pan, otherwise the puree will burn. Towards the end, it will turn into fruit LAVA< so have a towel cover your arm handy, to avoid the hot splashes.
When your puree is ready, spoon it into moulds or hot, sterilised jars as you would for jam. Silicone moulds are great, especially if you’re making Almacks to serve at a special meal – although you don’t need a special occasion to serve some delicious fruit cheese in a pretty shape. The flexibility of the silicone makes it very simple to turn out the paste, once cold.

Oaten Biscuits

19th century, Biscuits

The recipes this week come from a classic Victorian book “Biscuits for Bakers” (1896) by Frederick T. Vine. They are essentially two versions of the same biscuit, one sweet, one plain. The method and baking time for both is the same, with the only difference being some of the ingredients: more sugar and butter in the sweet version (above left), different mix of flours, less sugar/butter and the use of lard in the plain version (above right).

Since the recipes are from a book for commercial bakers, the quantities given are huge and the instructions rather scant. For example, instruction to ‘bake in a warm oven’ is very much open to interpretation, forcing me to, in the end, just guess as 150°C Fan.

I chose these recipes for several reasons. Firstly, I love an oat biscuit – who, in their right mind, doesn’t? Secondly, the comment that different mixtures resulted in differing suggested selling price points, with the sweet biscuit selling for 10d a pound, and the plain 8d per pound, so I was keen to see whether the sweet biscuits tasted 2d per pound better (spoiler alert, they did and they didn’t). Lastly, I wanted to use some gadgets – my vintage pastry wheels (aka jagging irons) pictured below, and the lettering stamp set I’d bought last year and not yet used.

One of my pet peeves is wastage, and the rectangular shapes of these biscuits meant that I could cut them out with absolute minimum wastage. There’s nothing wrong with re-rolling – see previous post about Empty Pudding – but you run the risk of the re-rolled items baking mis-shapen, due to poor combining of scraps, or becoming tough, due to over-mixing.

So what are they like? Well, the sweet version is like a sweet digestive – sweeter than the best-selling modern brand, but not overly sweet, and crisp and crumbly. I love the texture, but they are a little sweet for my tastes. Further experimentation with a finer grade of oatmeal and less sugar might refine this satisfactorily. I tried stamping ‘Rich Oaten’ on them, but the slight spreading due to the increased quantities of butter/sugar meant the lettering veered towards the blobby, although they did become more browned during baking. The plain version held the lettering much better, and using the cutting wheel made for a very pleasing contrast between the flour-dusted top of the biscuit and the darker, unfloured cut sides. These biscuits are much more crisp and less crumbly, and although they were perfectly enjoyable plain, they really shine when eaten with a little salted butter, cheese or both.

During experimentation, it became clear that the optimum baking time for these biscuits is much longer than average, at 30 minutes. This is due to the need to ensure that they dry out completely, which in turn gives and maintains their crispness.

Oaten Biscuits

As mentioned above, the method and baking are the same for both types of biscuits, so just pick whichever style you prefer, and follow the method below.

Confession time: I was so engrossed in the lettering, I forgot to brush the biscuits for the photo with milk before baking. I quite like the results, but if you would like a browner biscuit, brush with milk.

Plain Oaten		Rich Oaten
medium oatmeal	170g	medium oatmeal	170g
wholemeal flour	115g	wholemeal flour	56g
plain flour	85g	plain flour	56g
caster sugar	56g	caster sugar	85g
butter	28g	butter	100g
lard	28g	cream of tartar	1½tsp
cream of tartar	1½tsp	bicarbonate of soda	¾tsp
bicarbonate of soda	¾tsp	salt	½tsp
salt	½tsp	milk	to mix
milk	to mix

Put the dry ingredients and fat(s) into a food processor and blitz to combine.
With the motor running, add milk a little at a time, until the mixture comes together in a ball.
Tip out the dough and knead a few times until smooth.
Roll out thinly – about 5mm – and dock (poke holes) all over, either with a docker or the end of a skewer or similar.
Cut out the biscuits. Rich Oaten are rectangles 3cm x 7cm, Plain Oaten are 5cm x 5cm squares.
If you have stamp letting to name the biscuits, use it now.
Chill the biscuits in the fridge for 30 minutes to help them keep their shape.
Heat the oven to 190°C, 150°C Fan.
Arrange the chilled biscuits on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with milk if liked.
Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the baking sheet around and bake for another 10 minutes. Finally, flip the biscuits over so the bottoms can bake well and bake for 10 minutes, for a total of 30 minutes.
Cool on a wire rack.
When cold, store in an airtight container.

Plough Monday Pudding

20th century

In times past, when secular life intertwined much more with the religious, and life was closely linked with the land, Plough Monday was the first Monday after (the) Twelfth Day (of Christmas), the Feast of Epiphany, January 6th. It was supposedly the day when work in the fields resumed for the men with spring ploughing and is a tradition that stretches back centuries. It is mentioned in the writings of Thomas Tusser in 1580:

“Plough Munday, next after that Twelf-tide is past,
Bids out with the Plough; the worst husband is last:
If Plowman get hatchet, or whip to the skrene,
Maids loseth their cocke, if no water be seen:”

An explanation of these lines is provided by Daniel Hilman in 1710 (in his publication Tusser Redivivus) as follows:

“After Christmas (which formerly, during the twelve days, was a time of very little work) every gentleman feasted the farmers, and every farmer their servants and task men. Plough Monday puts them in mind of their business. In the morning the men and the maid servants strive who shall show their diligence in rising earliest. If the ploughman can get his whip, his plough-staff, hatchet, or anything that he wants in the field, by the fire-side, before the maid hath got her kettle on, then the maid loseth her Shrove-tide cock[¹], and it wholly belongs to the men. Thus did our forefathers strive to allure youth to their duty, and provided them innocent mirth as well as labour. On this Plough Monday they have a good supper and some strong drink.”

Despite the mention of ‘a good supper’, I’ve been unable to find any mention of precisely what this consisted of, and most recipes for Plough Monday Pudding, or just Plough Pudding date no further back than the mid 20th century.

In December, 1960, Folklore magazine published[²] the following recipe that had appeared in The Times newspaper on the 8th August of that year. Although titled ‘Plough Pudding’ the introductionry paragraph indicated it was a recipe to be found in Sussex farmhouses.

Subsequent versions all appear to be based on this recipe. Mary Norwak’s 1979 version[³] (below) made the very practical change of transferring the cooking vessel from a cloth to a bowl, and was ascribed to Norfolk. Mary Norwak lived in rural Norfolk, so perhaps this was a nod to her home county. She also quadruples the amount of sausage meat to make a very substantial pudding indeed.

By the time her English Puddings: Sweet and Savoury was published in 1981, she has adjusted her recipe to reduce the cooking time to three hours and included some stock in the filling, for added moisture. She also comments “Some Plough Puddings are suet rolls wrapped around bacon rashers with onions, sage, pepper and a little black treacle.”[⁴]

All other recipes appear to be variations of Mary Norwak’s, although few acknowledge it. The one exception I managed to find was in the Archers’ Country Kitchen by Angela Piper[⁵]. This version uses cold roast beef, presumably the remains of the Sunday roast and nothing like the original: sausagemeat and bacon being a much more believable stout yeoman’s supper than prime beef.

This recipe is also far from perfect in the method, in my opinion. The instructions for using a pudding cloth lack essential details (should be scalded and floured, to prevent the pudding from sticking), the illustration clearly shows a lidless saucepan, which no-one in their right mind would use to cook a STEAMED pudding, and the pan itself is on what appears to be a professional chef’s griddle rather than something more believable for a farmhouse dish. We’ll draw a discrete veil over the ‘pink beef gravy’ serving suggeston, as this page is the only one in the book which mentions it, so it will be forever a mystery.

ANYHOO…

Plough Monday Pudding 2021

My version of Plough Monday Pudding is yet another adaptation, this time for individual steamed puddings. My version also includes an alternative cooking method: the slow cooker. The great danger with the long steaming a suet pudding requires is the need to ensure the water doesn’t boil dry. Honestly, I find it rather stressful. Enter the slow cooker, where you can leave your pudding blissfully unattended, secure in the knowledge that the water will remain largely unevaporated from the moment you switch it on, to the time you haul out your golden delights.

It’s actually better than the traditional method. In support of this statement, I’d like to offer the following photograph:

The pudding on the left was cooked for 4 hours in the slow cooker on High. The pudding on the right was steamed for 2 hours. Both are fully cooked, but the longer, slower approach of the slow cooker makes for a richer, more golden crust. Another option is to cook on Low for 8 hours – perfect to come home to on a cold, winter’s night.

Don’t think you HAVE to cook your Plough Monday Pudding in individual dishes, or indeed in traditionally-shaped bowls. I have acquired a number of Victorian and later jelly moulds, which sadly sit unused for weeks at a time. Although the pastry needs care to ensure it nestles in all the nooks and crannies of the mould, the result is delightfully grand. Best of all, it can sit quite happily for up to 12 hours in the slow cooker on Low.

Jelly-mould Plough Pudding — Jelly-mould Plough Monday Pudding

Plough Monday Pudding

You can choose any of the above recipes, or follow mine below. I have cherry-picked from all.

For 4 individual puddings or 1 large one.

250g self-raising flour
125g suet
½tsp salt
melted butter for the moulds
1 pork sausage per individual pudding, or 6 for a large one.
2 large onions, chopped finely
125g lean bacon, chopped finely
2tbs chopped fresh sage or 1tbs dried
150ml chicken stock
1tbs treacle

Mix the flour, suet and salt together and add sufficient cold water to bring it together in a soft dough.
Grease your pudding moulds well with the melted butter.
For individual puddings, divide the pastry into 4 and roll out and line your dishes. Let the excess pastry hang over the edge until your puddings are filled. If you’re making a large pudding, cut off 1/4 of the dough for the lid and roll the rest and line your mould.
Remove the sausage skins. For each individual pudding, roll one sausage between clingfilm to about 5mm thickness. Line the pastry in the moulds with the sausage meat. For the large mould, you can press the sausagemeat in by hand, or roll them out and ‘patchwork’ it in.
Mix the chopped onion and bacon and add the sage and black pepper.
Spoon the onion mixture into the middle of your puddings.
Press down gently but firmly. You don’t want to be too rough, because you might tear the pastry, but the filling needs to be firmly packed to give structural integrity when they are turned out, and the raw onion will soften and shrink during cooking.
Add the treacle to the stock and heat gently until the treacle melts in.
Spoon the dark brown stock into your puddings, allowing time for it to seep down into the gaps, until you can see liquid level with the top of your filling. It should be 2-3 tablespoons for each individual pudding.
Cover the ‘top’ of your puddings. You needen’t be too precious about this, because when the puddings are turned out, this ‘top’ will be hidden underneath. For the small ones, fold over the excess pastry from the sides, and use water to moisten and seal the edges. For the large pudding, roll out the reserved pastry to size and again, use water to moisten and seal the edges.
Tear off some parchment for each pudding. Brush the underside with melted butter and make a large, single pleat in the parchment, then press on top of your puddings. Repeat with some foil. The pleat will allow the pastry to expand as it cooks, without running the risk of the foil tearing and allowing water to get in. Press the foil closely around the pudding basin to keep both parchment and foil in place.
For ease of lifting from the hot water at the end of cooking, you might want to tie string around the edge of the foil and create a loop over the top to grab onto.
Put your puddings into your slow cooker, ensuring there is space around them for the water to circulate.
Add sufficient water to the cooker to come ¾ of the way up the bowls/mould.
Turn the heat to High for 4 hours, or Low for 8 hours.
When ready to serve, lift the puddings from the cooker and set on a towel to drain and rest for 10 minutes.
Turn the puddings out and serve with either a hot tomato sauce (Norwak 1979) or gravy (Norwak, 1981).
Top Tip: If your puddings are looking a bit anaemic, you can brush them with melted butter and set into a 200°C, 180°C Fan oven for 5-15 minutes (depending on size), to give them a bit of colour.

Top Tip: If you’re making the version of the pudding using cooked beef, toss your diced beef in cornflour before mixing with the onion. It will thicken the stock, stop your pudding becoming waterlogged and help hold it together when turned out.

[¹] It was a tradition that the local lord gave a gift of a cock hen to the woman of the house at Shrovetide. The Plough Monday friendly competition was a race to see who could get up earliest on that day, and either have their work implements ready (men) or have water on to boil (women). The winner received the prized chicken for that year.

[²] Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Dec., 1960), p262. All thanks to Dr Annie Gray for helping me get my hands on this article.

[³] The Farmhouse Kitchen, Mary Norwak, (1979), Warwick Press, p49.

[⁴] English Puddings: Sweet and Savoury, Mary Norwak, (1981), London : Batsford, p109

[⁵] Archers’ Country Kitchen, Angela Piper, (2011) Newton Abbot : David & Charles, p84

Venison Pie

19th century, Game, Savoury Pastry

This is a great Deja Food way to transform the cooked venison from a joint into another meal. Since the filling has already been cooked, there is little shrinkage during baking, thus making it a fabulously sturdy picnic pie once cold.

Whichever way you choose to enjoy it, remember to serve with redcurrant jelly.

Venison Pie

500g cooked venison
salt and pepper
300g cooked potatoes
venison, beef or lamb stock, thickened with a little cornflour
beef or lamb dripping pastry, made with stock instead of water.
1 large egg to glaze

A 24cm spring-form tin.

Divide the chilled pastry into two pieces, one large than the other.
Cut off about 1/3 of the pastry and roll out for the lid of the pie. Cut it to size with 2cm extra all round. Cover with cling film and set aside.
Gather the trimmings together with the rest of the pastry and roll out for lining your greased pie tin. Be sure not to have your pastry too thin, as it will have to support a lot of filling – no less than 1cm on the sides and a little thicker over the bottom half of the pie. Let any excess pastry lie over the edges of the tin.
Chill the tin in the fridge until required.
Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6.
Cut the meat into cubes, discarding any fat or connective tissue.
Season well with salt and pepper.
Cut the potatoes into cubes roughly the same size as the meat.
Add the cubed potatoes to the seasoned venison, together with enough gravy to coat.
Add the filling to the pie and press down firmly. Spoon over a little extra gravy.
Moisten the top edges of the pastry with water and cover with the pre-cut lid. Press firmly to seal, then crimp the edges either by hand or with the tines of a fork. Use the offcuts of pastry to form decorations and secure to the lid using a little water.

Venison and Potato Pie decoration — Pie decoration example

Cut a vent hole for steam, then whisk the egg and brush over the top of the pie.
Bake for 30-40 minutes until the pastry is crisp and brown and the filling hot.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove and serve, or if eating cold, allow to cool fully in the tin.

Radnor Cranberry Tart

19th century, 20th century, Savoury Pastry

If you have an extended social life in the run-up to Christmas, and sample nothing but mince pies throughout December, by the time you get to the 25th, what with the Christmas Cake and Christmas Pudding, you can be all mince-pied out.

Also, sometimes you find yourself fancying something a little savoury at the end of a meal, and this is why this recipe is perfect. It’s simple and straightforward – just two main ingredients of fresh cranberries and juicy raisins. The raisins take the edge off the sometimes eye-popping sharpness of the cranberries and the little dash of vanilla also gives the aroma of sweetness, so only the merest sprinkle of sugar is required. It’s festively reminiscent enough of a mince pie to deserve a place on the table, its fresh-tasting, palate-cleansing, sweet but not too sweet, can be served hot or cold, but ALWAYS with a slice of cheese. I’m thinking some vintage cheddar, crumbly white Cheshire or even one of the fruited cheeses – white Stilton and apricot anyone?

It is a traditional (Welsh) border tart, ideal for Christmas – just look at that glorious colour! The original 1930s recipe in Mrs Arthur Webb’s Farmhouse Cookery didn’t specify any particular pastry, so I’m taking the opportunity to offer for your delectation and amusement, a new pastry recipe! Yes, I know I love the cornflour pastry – and I really do, both sweet and savoury versions – but I can’t resist something that has the potential to add a new arrow to my pastry quiver, as it were, and in this case, I’m really glad that I did.

It’s Eliza Acton’s 1845 recipe for cream pastry and it has my seal of approval for several reasons:

Simplicity – in its basic form, it can be whisked together with just two ingredients.
Taste – when baked, it is crisp and dry, without any hint of greasiness or stodginess.
It can be enriched with butter, but at a ratio of just 1/4 fat-to-flour, it is not as indulgent as it tastes. When enriched with butter, the texture is moving towards the flakiness of flaky pastry, yet with the ‘dryness’ and crispness of the cornflour pastry – Nom!
And on the practical side, it handles and rolls really nicely.

You can, of course, use your own favourite pastry instead.

Radnor Cranberry Tart

Eliza Acton’s Cream Pastry
This quantity makes enough for a 20cm pie.

225g plain flour
0.5tsp salt
300-450ml double cream
56g butter

Put the flour and salt into the bowl of a food processor.
With the motor running, gradually add in the cream, a little at a time, until the mixture comes together.
Tip the mixture out and knead until smooth.
Roll out the pastry into a long rectangle.
Using the same method as for Flaky Pastry, dot over half the butter.
Fold the ends over, turn the pastry 90 degrees and repeat.
Roll out one last time, and fold the ends inwards.
Wrap in plastic and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Make the filling (see below).
Remove the pastry from the fridge and cut into 2 pieces (2/3 + 1/3 is about right).
Roll out the large piece and use it to line a greased, 20cm loose bottomed tart tin. Ease the pastry into the sides, rather than just stretching it by pressing down too hard. Leave the excess hanging over the edge of the tin.
Roll out the smaller piece of pastry to make the lid, and lay it onto a cutting board.
Chill both pieces of pastry in the fridge for 20 minutes. This will make sure it is relaxed and less prone to shrinkage in the oven.
By this time, the filling should be cool enough to use.
Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
Remove the two lots of pastry from the fridge.
Fill the lined tin with the cooled filling and smooth over.
Using a pastry brush, wet the edges of the pastry, then lay the lid across the top and press the edges together.
Trim off the excess using the back of a knife.
Crimp the edges to your liking – I used the tines of a fork to make for a good seal.
Brush the surface of the tart with milk and sprinkle with caster sugar.
Cut a steam vent in the middle of the pastry lid using a sharp knife.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden brown.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove to a wire rack to cool, if not serving warm.
Serve with a nice wedge of cheese.

Filling
450g fresh cranberries
225g raisins
30g sugar
60ml cold water
0.5tsp vanilla extract

Rinse the cranberries and put them in a pan with the raisins, sugar and water.
Cover and warm on a low heat until the mixture comes to the boil and you can hear the cranberries starting to pop.
Simmer for just five minutes, then turn off the heat.
Taste to make sure of the sweetness, but remember, this is not supposed to be a really sweet tart, however, it shouldn’t be too sour either. If you think it needs a little more sugar, add it by all means.
Stir in the vanilla and leave to cool.