Tag: traditional

New College Puddings

Pudding, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century

New College Puddings is a recipe that has been around for centuries. It’s been on my radar for years, and when indexing recipes in manuscripts, it made frequent appearances. I was aware of the recipe basics – breadcrumbs, dried fruit, suet, fried – I acknowledged them, but never really paid much attention beyond wondering whether ‘new college puddings’ was just an updated version of a mysterious older recipe for ‘college puddings’. And the answer?

After some sleuthing, I discovered that they are named for New College, Oxford, founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, as The College of St Mary of Winchester in Oxford. It became known as ‘New College’ in order to distinguish it from the other college dedicated to St Mary (Oriel College), which had been founded in 1326. So the recipe was actually ‘NEW COLLEGE puddings’ rather than ‘NEW college puddings’. It’s funny to think that an almost-650 year-old institution was, at one time, considered the Johnny-come-lately, modern upstart. Disappointingly, searching the modern New College website brings up precisely zero references to puddings.

Moving on…

For a long time, the earliest recipe for New College Puddings was in the “The Compleat Housewife” by E___ S___ (thought to be by Eliza Smith, but the book originally only ever had the author’s initials, until she passed away that is, whereupon the publishers had free reign to make up any old tosh, which they did). Below is the recipe from the 1728 Second Edition.

New College Puddings recipe from “The Compleat Housewife” by E.S., second edition, 1728.

Later in the century, Hannah Glasse included a recipe for Oxford Puddings (see below) in her 1747 “The Art of Cookery”, which is essentially the same recipe, except these puddings are served with a butter/wine sauce, whereas E.S.’s included sack in the mixture itself.

Recipe for An Oxford Pudding from Hannah Glasse’s “The Art of Cookery” (1747) p102

Both recipes consist of dry crumbs, suet, currants, sugar, nutmeg, with eggs to bind the mixture together, which is then shaped and fried in butter. Interestingly, the Glasse recipe is entitled “An Oxford Pudding” (singular) when it is very clearly made up of a number of small puddings, suggesting that this should more accurately be called “A pudding from Oxford”, thus tying in with the original E.S. recipe.

In the 21st century, an earlier recipe of impeccable provenance has emerged as a number of handwritten manuscripts have come to light. Radolphus (Ralph) Ayres was head cook at New College, Oxford in the early eighteenth century (approx. 1714-1725) and kept a manuscript of the many recipes he used. There are at least four known copies of this manuscript collection, which includes New College Puddings. His serving suggestion is to present them surrounding a wobbly, creamy Quaking Pudding.

Recipe for New College Puddings, Ralph Ayres Manuscript dated 1722. Images: Bellmans Auctioneers.

In addition, the manuscripts at the Wellcome Collection contain over 50 New College Pudding recipes, and when you add in recipes printed in books as well, there’s close to 100 recipes to choose from. For over three centuries this recipe was included in all the popular cookery books of the age, but their popularity waned in the 20th century, as more exotic sweet options became available.

This is a shame, since they are a wonderful example of making something delicious and satisfying  from almost nothing. Stale breadcrumbs, suet and dried fruit, a bit of sugar, an egg or two and suddenly it’s a hearty, warm and comforting winter treat. Minor details have changed over time – little additions to improve the taste or changes in cooking methods. With the cold winter days fast approaching, and high food prices forcing our hand with affordable food choices – whatever your situation, there is a New College Pudding recipe for you!

New College Puddings have all the warmth, comfort and flavour of a steamed pudding, but without the hours and hours of boiling/steaming. Using breadcrumbs instead of flour means that the cooking time can be drastically reduced and the only ingredient that actually needs any cooking is the egg. The mixture can be fried, baked and/or steamed and no cooking method requires more than 30 minutes. The texture and flavour is a cross between a steamed pudding and Christmas cake, and if that sounds like something you’d enjoy, you’re not going to be disappointed.

I’ve selected four subtly-different recipes for you to try, ranging from the earliest recipe I could find, to the most elaborate. Whichever one you choose – and I do hope you’ll choose at least one – you’re in for a tasty and comforting treat.

A College Pudding – 17thC

17thC College Puddings, from MS8097, Wellcome Collection

This is the earliest recipe I could find, definitely pre-1700, and its also one of the simplest. This quantity makes just 6 puddings – ideal for trying out to see if you like the style. There is no seasoning spice in this recipe, and, for me, it is noticeable by its absence. You might want to add 1tsp mixed spice just to get into the the steamed pudding mood.

17thC College Puddings from MS8097, Wellcome Collection

85g stale breadcrumbs
60g currants
50g dried suet (Atora brand in the UK, vegetarian or beef)
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp mixed spice (optional)
2-3 tbs packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 large yolk
2tbs milk

milk to mix
butter for frying
caster sugar for sprinkling

  • Put all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir together.
  • Whisk the egg and yolk together, and add 2tbs milk.
  • Stir the wet ingredients into the dry. Add more milk if required. The mixture needs to be moist enough to hold together if pressed, but still hold its shape.
  • Rest for 15 minutes, to allow the liquid to be absorbed. If it’s still a little dry, add milk 1tbs at a time, until suitably moistened.
  • Shape your puddings. I used my silicone mould of cylinders, but I appreciate that not everyone has as much kitchen stuff as I do, so an alternative method would be to
    • divide the mixture into six.
    • Form each roughly into a sausage shape.
    • Wrap/roll each portion in plastic wrap.
    • Twist the ends tightly, shaping the mix into a smooth cylinder.
  • Chill the shaped mixture for at least 30 minutes in the fridge.
  • When ready to cook, remove the chilled puddings from their moulds.
  • Melt a generous lump of butter (about 50g) in a non-stick pan. Several of the recipes I’ve read advocate for huge quantities of fat – up to and including a pound of butter (but also suet, dripping and lard) – and for the pan to be constantly shaken to ensure the puddings don’t stick. Non-stick pans are our modern convenience for this.
  • Fry the puddings over medium-low heat (5 on an induction hob) until browned on all sides.
  • Remove the browned puddings from the pan and drain on paper towels.
  • Sprinkle a little caster sugar over the puddings and serve hot.

New College Puddings – c1798

New College Puddings recipe c1798, from MS960, Wellcome Collection

These puddings might be considered the next level in that there is a move to the overwhelmingly most popular/traditional shape, that of an egg. Other recipes I have read specify a turkey egg in size, which is roughly as broad as the palm of your hand, so a little more substantial in size. We also have the addition of spice in the form of nutmeg, and either some rosewater or sack to moisten the mix.

Finally, the dish is complemented with a wine and butter sauce. I chose to thicken the sauce with arrowroot, to give it a bit of body. You could substitute cornflour, but arrowroot is great for sauces as it thickens and clears, and also retains liquidity when cold, so the sauce pours well both hot and cold (in contrast to cornflour, which thickens a sauce when hot, but tends to set solid when cold). Arrowroot also thickens at a much lower temperature, well below boiling, and will actually lose its thickening qualities if it does boil, so you need to keep an eye on it.

For the puddings
75g dry breadcrumbs
60g dried suet
75g currants
½ tsp salt
30g soft dark brown sugar
1tsp ground nutmeg
1 large egg
1tbs rosewater or sherry/mead/ginger wine/Madeira/any favourite fortified wine
2-3tbs single cream,

Sauce:
60g unsalted butter
2-3 tbs packed soft dark brown sugar
120ml sherry/mead/ginger wine/Madeira/any favourite fortified wine
2tsp arrowroot
1tbs water

water to dilute (optional)

  • Put all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir together.
  • Whisk the egg, alcohol and milk together.
  • Stir the wet ingredients into the dry. Add more milk if required. The mixture needs to be moist enough to hold together if pressed, but still hold its shape.
  • Rest for 15 minutes, to allow the liquid to be absorbed. If it’s still a little dry, add milk 1tbs at a time, until suitably moistened.
  • Shape your puddings.
    • Divide the mixture into 4 and place each portion onto some plastic wrap.
    • Wrap the plastic around the mixture and press together into an oval shape.
    • Set aside in the fridge until required
  • Make your sauce:
    • Melt the butter in a pan.
    • Add the sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
    • Mix the arrowroot with the water until smooth, then add the wine.
    • Pour the liquids into the sugar/butter mix.
    • Stir together over medium heat until the sauce loses it’s milkiness and thickens.
    • Taste your sauce and add water if liked. Since the sauce thickens below boiling point, a lot of the alcohol from the booze will still be present, so water it down if it’s all a bit much.
    • Set aside until required.
  • Fry your puddings:
    • Melt 50g butter in a non-stick pan.
    • Remove the plastic wrap from your puddings and place them in the pan.
    • Fry gently on medium-low heat (5 on an induction hob) until browned on both sides and hot in the middle.
    • Place puddings on/in a serving dish and sprinkle with caster sugar.
  • Reheat your sauce and pour over the puddings, or pour into a dish/jug and serve alongside.

Baked New College Puddings – 1840s

Baked New College Puddings, 1840s, MS4066 Wellcome Collection

These puddings are pretty similar to the above recipe, but have been adapted to being baked in the oven in buttered teacups. Nowadays we have a plethora of baking tins and moulds to choose from, so these are easily the most ‘hands-off’ puddings of the four.

Baked New College Puddings, 1840s, MS4066 Wellcome Collection

New College Puddings
120g breadcrumbs
60g currants,
30g raisins,
30g flaked almonds,
60g dried suet
30g candied orange or lemon peel, chopped fine
3-4tbs packed soft dark brown sugar
100ml double cream
2 tbs brandy
2 large eggs

4 individual pudding tins/large ramekins
butter for buttering the moulds
caster sugar for sprinkling

  • Butter your moulds generously and set aside.
  • Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
  • Whisk the eggs, cream and brandy together and stir through the rest of the ingredients. Don’t worry about having the mixture wet enough to stick together – the shape of the moulds will do all the work. It is enough just to have the crumb moist.
  • Divide the mixture into four and spoon into your pudding moulds/ramekins. Avoid pressing the mixture down, as it will make the resulting pudding dense and heavy. Cover each mould with foil, to retain moisture while baking.
  • Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan.
  • Arrange the moulds on a baking tin and bake for 30 minutes, turning the tin around halfway through, to ensure even baking.
  • Remove the puddings and allow to cool for 5 minutes, then turn out onto plates/serving dish.
  • Sprinkle with caster sugar and serve.

Boiled and Fried Georgian New College Puddings – 1820s

Georgian New College Puddings, 18820s, MS1839, Wellcome Collection

There’s nothing very surprising with these puddings as regards ingredients, other than perhaps all the extra flavourings, but I was taken with both the quantities – the original recipe was for 16 small puddings – and the suggested improved cooking method of half boiling (steaming) followed by frying. These puddings are served with a butter-wine sauce, exactly the same as the sauce above, but this time made with white sugar.

Georgian New College Puddings, 1820s, MS1839, Wellcome Collection

It was very straightforward to scale down this recipe and make just four puddings, but they turned out to be, relative to the other New College Puddings – enormous. The same egg shape mentioned in other recipes, just much larger. I’ve deliberately used the same flatware in each of the photos to give some idea of scale, so you can see that I was unable to get even three on the serving plate without stacking them. Having made these, I think the reason for suggesting boiling (steaming) first, before frying, is two-fold: to heat the puddings through and also to help the puddings hold together better. Steaming cooks the egg, which holds the fruit and breadcrumbs together, and frying gives the outside a delicious crisp and buttery finish. I steamed the puddings in plastic wrap before removing it and frying.

Georgian New College Puddings

You don’t HAVE to make four puddings – use the mixture to make smaller ones (either 6 or 8), depending on what you are serving beforehand, as well as your guests’ appetites.

For the puddings
115g currants
115g currants
225g breadcrumbs
100g soft dark brown sugar
1½ tsp ground nutmeg
1 large egg
2tbs sherry/Madeira/Marsala or other fortified wine
60ml single cream, plus more to moisten

100g butter to fry
caster sugar for sprinkling

Sauce
60g unsalted butter
2-3 tbs white caster/granulated sugar
120ml sherry/mead/ginger wine/Madeira/any favourite fortified wine
2tsp arrowroot
1tbs water

water to dilute (optional)

  • Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
  • Whisk the egg, wine and cream together and stir through the rest of the ingredients.
  • Divide the mixture into four and spoon onto squares of plastic wrap.
  • Twist the plastic wrap around the filling and shape into an oval.
  • Place the shaped puddings into a steamer pan, with the plastic wrap ‘seal’ underneath. Cover the pan with a lid.
  • Bring a saucepan of water to a boil and place the covered steamer pan on top. Steam for 20 minutes.
  • While your puddings are steaming, make the sauce.
    • Melt the butter in a pan.
    • Add the sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
    • Mix the arrowroot with the water until smooth, then add the wine.
    • Pour the liquids into the sugar/butter mix.
    • Stir together over medium heat until the sauce loses it’s milky appearance and thickens.
    • Taste your sauce and add water if liked. Since the sauce thickens below boiling point, a lot of the alcohol will be retained, so water it down if it’s all a bit much. Set aside until required
  • Remove the steamer pan from over the hot water and set aside for 5 minutes to cool a little.
  • In a large frying pan, melt the butter.
  • Unwrap each pudding and place into the pan. Fry a golden brown on each side.
  • Remove the puddings from the pan and drain on kitchen paper.
  • Reheat the sauce and pour into a mall serving jug.
  • Transfer the puddings to your serving dish and sprinkle with caster sugar.
  • Serve the puddings with the sauce alongside.

Apploffi Pie

20th century, 21st Century, Pudding

Recipe inspiration can come from many quarters. The prompt for today’s recipe comes in the form of four words in a newspaper article over 20 years ago.

Back in March 2006, The Guardian published a piece by Ian Dowding entitled “I Invented Banoffi Pie”. Dowding then spends the rest of the article chronicling how he did NOT invent the classic pudding loved by millions, rather how it evolved from an original pie – Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie – from the famous Blum’s Bakery and Restaurant in San Francisco in the 1940s.

The owner of the restaurant where Dowding was employed felt that the dessert needed a little something extra, so experiments were conducted introducing various ingredients, including fruit.

“Apple was quite good”  is the phrase that set me experimenting. There was no recipe included, although I have found examples by other people out there which involve a simple substitution of apple for banana, but I felt the dish deserved something more to set it apart.

There were a number of points to ponder:

  • The base.
  • The caramel.
  • The fruit.
  • The cream topping.

The Base

The original Banoffi Pie recipe called for shortcrust pastry, whose plainness was just the foil needed against the richness of the filling. Could this be improved upon in some way? I’m a real fan of the original shortcrust pastry, especially my version using cornflour for a proportion of the flour, as it makes it fabulously crisp and dry, and it is a great foil against the very rich sweetness of the caramel and banana. But using apple is a whole different kettle of fish. Banana is a really strong flavour, and  while apples are characterised as being crisp and juicy they’re not really  strongly flavoured. So I started thinking about a different kind of base that might contribute to the mix a little more than plain pastry. Since salted caramel is very much a thing in recent times, leaning into the savoury seemed a promising direction. I was reminded of the saltine crust of the Atlantic Beach Pie that was all the rage back in 2014, decided to mix in some pretzels for extra crunch, and then make the whole crust gluten-free, because why not? The Italian company Schar produces a wide range of gluten-free products, many of which are available on UK supermarket shelves. I chose their Salti crackers, which are like a cross between a Ritz cracker and a Saltine, and their pretzels. Obviously, regular crackers/pretzels are fine too.

With the addition of a little salt, this was still pretty much a regular crumb crust, except I had a brainwave and opted to use browned butter. It turned a fairly straightforward crumb crust into a buttery, crunchy, salty, rubble-y, nutty delight that is just incredible against the caramel/apple/cream, and positively addictive on it’s own. Very autumnal and just the perfect pairing with all the other elements. I’m slightly obsessed with how good it is and am now thinking of all the other dishes I can use it with.

The Caramel

Classic. Not to be messed with. No notes.

That being said, you can choose whether to buy tins of caramel, or make your own, which is cheaper and less sweet than the tins of caramel. To make your own, put unopened tins of sweetened condensed milk into a slow cooker and add water to cover. Cook on Low for 8-10 hours. Switch off the slow cooker and leave to cool overnight. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES open a tin while it is hot. Buy your unbranded condensed milk from Aldi – other supermarkets seem to be carrying the (much more expensive) named brand only these days.

The Apple

Which apple to choose? There are so many, dessert and cooking types. Jazz apples are my current favourite dessert apple with a crisp, clean and juicy bite. Rough-skinned russet apples have an almost nutty flavour, and go great with a variety of cheeses. My number one pick of fresh apples, however, is Bramley apples – a British cooking apple that is pleasantly sharp and breaks down into billowy apple fluff when cooked. You could slice and use it raw, but the juice might become a problem if left for a while, not to mention the discolouration, so cooked apple is probably the best way to go here. If you prefer a dessert apple, consider using a little lemon juice to sharpen it. To help prevent the juice from weeping out of your cooked apple, you can thicken your pulp with a little cornflour.

Other Apple Options

I thought of this after finishing up all the taste testing and using up all my apples, but you could also use gelatine to set your pulp. Bloom it in water, either sheet or powder, and then add to your hot apple pulp and stir well until it melts and is well combined. Pour over your caramel.

A third option would be to use Apple Butter, a favourite autumn preserve made mainly in the United States, which is already seasoned and spiced, and solid when cold. The apple flavour is much more rich and concentrated and is definitely something I would have chosen, had we not already scoffed all of the last batch I made.

The Cream

The unsweetened cream flavoured strongly with coffee was the original, classic recommendation. I was puzzled after reading the above article – and wasn’t sure if it was it supposed to go with the apple version as well. I had my doubts, so I decided to taste-test a number of flavouring options for the cream as follows:

    • Coffee, (unsweetened) – Not a fan. I was going to go as far as ‘revolting’ but that seemed a bit harsh. For my palate, the bitterness just jars against the sharpness and freshness of the apple.
    • Lemon (sweetened juice) – Had potential, as it goes well with apple, but it did not tie in with the caramel at all.
    • Vanilla (unsweetened) – Pleasantly surprising. Having it unsweetened made it  a little unusual, but it was great with both the apple and the caramel, and the sweetness of both more than made up for it.
    • Unflavoured – I don’t know whether it was because all my flavouring thoughts had turned out to be less than a roaring success, but I decided to try just plain whipped cream – no flavourings, no sugar. And, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. It was great with the apple, great with the caramel, and great with the brown butter base. Sometimes the simplest idea is the best.

So there we have it. A cracking autumnal variation on a classic crowd-pleaser whipped up from just a 4-word prompt!

Apploffi Pie

If you already have a favourite Banoffi Pie recipe, you can just swap out the banana for the cooked apple. However, I strongly recommend trying the brown butter cracker crust – it’s a taste sensation!

Use whatever tin/dish you prefer. I used a rectangular, loose-bottomed fluted tart tin. As in the picture, you want to aim for roughly the same depth for each of the layers – crumb/caramel/apple/cream – Mine is about 1.5cm.

Browned Butter Pretzel/cracker base

250g unsalted butter – divided
60g GF pretzels
90g GF Salti crackers
2tbs soft dark brown/muscovado sugar
½ tsp salt

  • Put the block of butter into a pan over a medium (level 5 on my induction hob) heat. You’re not going to use all of the browned butter, but it’s difficult to calculate how much fresh butter will make just the right amount of browned butter, because the water content of the butter isn’t set in stone. Much simpler to make a whole block into browned butter, use what you need and then you have delicious browned butter to use on other things.
  • Allow the butter to melt, and continue to heat, stirring occasionally. The milk solids will eventually start to turn brown and will release an amazing, nutty caramel aroma. This will take about 10-15 minutes. It will happen quicker if you raise the heat, but this will also speed up the browning, making the line between toasty brown and burnt very sudden.
  • Stir more frequently as the solids brown, and remove from the heat once they are sufficiently toasty.
  • Set aside to cool.
  • Prepare the tin you are going to use. I like to line the tin with foil to help remove the pie once set and ready to serve.
  • Put the pretzels, crackers, sugar and salt into a food processor and blitz to crumbs. NB if you’re using salted butter, reduce the salt to ¼ teaspoon.
  • Tip the crumb mixture into a bowl.
  • Stir your browned butter and measure out 75g. Save the rest to use on popcorn or to make more crumb mixture! NB Keep giving your butter a stir as it cools, so the delicious browned bits are mixed throughout – otherwise they will just all sink to the bottom.
  • If your butter has started to solidify, warm it with a brief zap in the microwave.
  • Stir the butter into the crumb mixture until well mixed. It should clump together if you press it firmly.  Press the crumb into the bottom and sides of your tin. Use a flat-bottomed glass to get a smooth, compact finish on the bottom. Fingertips are probably best for the sides.
  • Heat your oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
  • Bake your crumb shell for 10 minutes, then set aside to cool. The baking will help solidify and firm up your tart shell.
  • Chill in the fridge until needed.

Caramel

1 tin sweetened condensed milk OR 1 tin caramel.

If you are catering for large number, you might want to use 2 tins, but in all honesty, the dish is so rich, one tin is enough for 8 servings.

  • As I’ve already mentioned, making your own caramel from sweetened condensed milk is both cheaper and better than buying it pre-made – the finished caramel is firmer and not as sweet. You do whatever suits your situation.
  • To recap making your own: put unopened tins (do several at once and keep the spares in the cupboard for EBS (Emergency Banoffi Situations)) of sweetened condensed milk into a slow cooker and add water to cover. Cook on Low for 8-10 hours. Switch off the slow cooker and leave the tins to cool overnight. And, just to belabour a safety point UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES open a tin while it is hot.
  • Warm your caramel gently in a pan so that it is easier to pour. As it warms, stir to remove lumps. If you are using your home-made caramel, which has a firm set, you might want to use an immersion blender or hand mixer to get rid of any lumps. Tins of ready-made caramel have a softer consistency.
  • Pour your smooth, warmed caramel over your chilled crumb shell. Spread it evenly and smooth over.
  • Cover with plastic wrap so that it touches the surface of the caramel and chill until required.

Apple Layer

300g OR 1 rounded cup of fresh apple pulp (made from 3 Bramley apples OR 5-6 dessert apples) OR apple butter

OPTIONAL: the juice and/or zest of one lemon to sharpen the pulp

EITHER 1tbs cornflour mixed with 1tbs water OR 2 tsp powdered gelatine OR 2 sheets gelatine

  • Put your apple pulp into a pan and heat through.
  • Taste your pulp and add the lemon zest/juice if liked.
  • If using cornflour…
    • Mix the cornflour with the water until smooth.
    • Stir the cornflour slurry into your warm apple pulp and cook for 1-2 minutes until the pulp thickens and no white from the slurry remains.
  • If using gelatine…
    • Bloom your gelatine in water according to instructions.
    • Add the bloomed gelatine to your heated apple pulp and stir thoroughly to combine.
  • If using apple butter, just warm it enough to make it pourable.
  • Pour your thickened apple over the caramel layer and spread smooth.
  • Cover your apple layer with plastic wrap and chill thoroughly in the fridge until set.

Cream Layer to finish

300ml chilled double/heavy cream
ground cinnamon to sprinkle

  • Whip the cream until it holds its shape.
  • Spread the whipped cream over the apple layer of your pie and swirl it artistically. Alternatively, just spread it like I did.
  • Sprinkle the top of your Apploffi Pie with ground cinnamon and serve.

 

Carrot Soup

19th century, soup

One of the main attractions of old recipes is the lack of messing about that goes on. For the most part, what you see is what you get. The ingredients are largely  wholesome and unadulterated. Flavours are clear and crisp and very reminiscent of a much simpler time.

However some recipes that sound simple in my indexed spreadsheet, turn out to be surprisingly complicated when I come to look them up.

Take this recipe for pottage, for example. Back in the early part of the year, I thought a recipe for the humble dish of pottage might be just the thing for the blog during Lent – tasty, but abstemious and possibly even pious. I was going to look so good adapting this recipe. Many, many Lenten brownie points were going to be headed my way.  I selected one of many recipes entitled just ‘pottage’ that appears in an anonymous manuscript from the late 17th century, and bustled off, as much as one can when reading a PDF document, to see what it was all about.

Recipe to make Pottage, MS7892, 1675-1725, Wellcome Collection

Turns out, it is quite the Palaver, possibly even bordering Malarkey! We have beef, we have mutton, we have veal, we have a range of unspecified poultry and we also have bacon. And this is just to make the broth! Then we need to add seasoning and greens, specifically spinach, lettuce, sorrel, young beets, asparagus tops and artichoke bottoms. And while all that is going on, we have a quick side-quest to prepare the serving dish and rustle up garnishes by dicing up the meat that was boiled, making and slicing fresh meatballs. and boiling and slicing cabbage lettuces. *mops brow* I’m exhausted just from typing that all out!

I’m also quite amused by the apparent ‘three stages of pottage’ handwriting styles. It’s almost as if we too have been on something of a journey with the recipe writer, who starts out using a calm and flourishing hand in the beginning, with just a couple of smudges, where it’s all ‘throw it in a pot’ – simple, straightforward. When I first re-read the recipe, I actually thought it ended after the first paragraph, and was rather puzzled that my notes said it was a very detailed recipe. Because then we enter what is obviously a manic phase, where greenery is having to be prepped and shredded and simmered. The handwriting style is all over the place. Perhaps it all got too much for the cook and she delegated to an underling when the frenzy of pottage-making took a bit of a turn. The final section, on the second page, is much more sedate and calm: the neat handwriting has returned and you just know that, even though there is quite a bit of detail in finishing off the dish, this part of the account has been written in a much less frenzied atmosphere, after the author has almost certainly had a bit of a lie-down in a dark room and possibly a stiff drink to calm the frazzled nerves. All in all a veritable pottage saga! Who knew cooking soup could be such a rollercoaster!

All of which is in complete contrast to the recipe we’re actually doing today, namely Carrot Soup.

Recipe for Carrot Soup, 1829, MS4645, Wellcome Collection

Helpfully including details such as provenance (Sarah Mathews) and a date of 1829, this late-Georgian recipe is the epitome of simplicity: vegetables in a pan, add stock, cook, puree, garnish, serve. Bish, bash, bosh. Done.

It is also, however, slightly sneaky in that it includes lots of vegetables that give body to the soup and round out the flavour but are undetectable in the final serving. There’s no need for flour thickening – great for anyone with a sensitivity to gluten – and just some slight adjustment with the finishing can easily make this vegetarian soup vegan by swapping out the butter for a suitable alternative

Carrot Soup

This is a scaled-down version of the above recipe, which makes four generous meal-sized servings. You can add more vegetables if you like – another similar recipe I found suggested adding 2 leeks, which I didn’t have, but I did have a bunch of spring onions that needed using up, so in they went. The garnish is a mixture of a swirl of cream and diced celery tossed in sage butter.

500-600g carrots
2 onions
1 turnip (and/or small swede)
1 small celeriac
(optional) 2 leeks/bunch of spring onions
60g butter
1 litre vegetable stock (1 litre of water + 2 stock cubes)

To finish
150ml cream
3 sticks celery
60g butter
10-12 sage leaves (optional)
coarse-ground black pepper

  • Peel and chop all the vegetables to roughly the same size – I used my trusty mandolin slicer fitted with the wide/large blade.
  • Put the vegetables in a pot with the butter and cook gently until softened.
  • Add the vegetable stock and cover.
  • Simmer until all the vegetables are tender. (about 30 minutes, depending on how large the pieces are).
  • Use a stick blender or liquidiser to puree the soup smooth. For extra smoothness, pass the soup through a sieve.
  • Rinse the pan, pour the pureed soup back in and heat gently.
  • To Garnish
    • While the vegetables are cooking, cut each of the celery sticks into 3 pieces and add to a pan with enough water to cover.
    • Simmer for 20-25 minutes until tender. Drain.
    • Using a sharp knife, cut the cooked celery lengthwise into strips about 1cm wide, then across making 1cm cubes.
    • Melt the butter in a pan and toss in the sage leaves. Fry until just crisped.
    • Add the cubed celery and heat through.
  • Serve the heated soup with a swirl of cream and a spoonful of the celery/sage butter. Finish with a sprinkling of black pepper.

 

Floating Islands

17th century, 18th century, Pudding

Confession Time: When it comes to recipe history, I’m afraid I’m bit of a “Well, actually…” person.

I’ll read some guff online about a recipe ‘backstory’, or some offhand comment not being sufficiently respectful of a British recipe, or even another country’s claim to something that originated in the UK and I really have to exercise great self control in order to refrain from leaving a comment beginning “Well, actually…”.

Then again, sometimes I just can’t help myself, and I’ll make a blog post, and so here we are at the dessert topic of Floating Islands.

The initial thing I take issue with, is Wikipedia’s assertion that “The earliest known English-language reference to a floating island is in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747)”. As will be shown below, the recipe is much older than that. What they probably meant was ‘first published in English’, because I have found a slew of manuscript recipes (OK, so it’s six. Is six a slew?) predating this claim, some stretching back well into the seventeenth century. Now you might quibble that manuscript recipes are not the same thing at all, and therefore don’t count, but these manuscripts have been dated, verified, digitised and made freely available online for over a decade, so *snaps fingers impatiently* get with it, Wikipedia.

The most delightful aspect of these early recipes is that they are much easier to make than the custard/poached meringue/caramel version of modern times.  For such a simple dessert, there’s a lot of stress involved in making a lump-free custard, making shaping and poaching meringues so that they look  neat and don’t collapse, making a caramel that doesn’t taste burnt, not to mention all the time it takes do do all of the above. Contrast this with, no exaggeration, if you have the ingredients to hand, you can serve up your dessert in 12 minutes – and that’s including 10 minutes of your kitchen gadget machine doing the whisking.

Floating Island recipe attributed to Lady Anne Cholmley (1637-1705), in MS3341, Wellcome Collection.

The earliest Floating Island recipe I have found dates from 1675, and is attributed to Lady Anne Cholmley (1637-1705). Lady Anne married Sir Hugh Cholmeley, 4th Baronet (1632 – 1688) in 1665, so this recipe attributed to her married name, appearing in a manuscript dated to 1675, fits the dating very well, and the “My Lady” honorific suggests the author was personally acquainted with Lady Anne herself.

As already mentioned, this recipe is very quick and easy to prepare: fresh currant juice, sugar, egg-white and a little gum dragon (gum tragacanth), whisked together and served floating on a dish of fresh cream. It is very similar to the Dairy-Free Cream already published on this blog. I particularly like the later annotation that “This way you can make of any other fruit a cream” at the bottom. Gum tragacanth is still used in recipes today, giving durability in decorative sugarwork. However, in this recipe, it is employed to give structure (due to the liquidity of the juice). I had some in the cupboard (because of course I did) and tried using it in the recipe, but compared to the other methods, it didn’t appear to have a significant effect. Plus you have the extra Faff™ of having to soak it overnight to make a paste before proceeding.

Mrs Tyndale’s Floating Island of codlings, circa 1690-1750, Ms V.a.680, Folger Shakespeare Library

Mrs Tyndale’s Floating Island recipe is dated a little later ( circa 1690-1750), and uses apple pulp of codlings (cooking apples) instead of the fruit juice.

Floating Island, from an anonymous manuscript, dated 1700, MS1811, Wellcome Collection.

This version, from a manuscript dated 1700, offers yet a third variation of Floating Islands: Raspberry and apple jelly is stirred into egg-white and left overnight. The following day it is whisked over hot water until thickened, and then served in spoonfuls on a dish of raw cream. This is how Dairy-Free Cream is made, and using fruit juice already sweetened and set into a jelly, rather than straight fruit juice, gives the resultant foam a much longer ‘shelf life’. As can be seen on the Dairy-Free Cream post, I left the whipped foam on the counter top – for SCIENCE! – and it holds it shape, albeit slightly deflated, for over five hours. Great if you need to prepare your dessert in advance.

Floating Island recipe from 1720, MS Wb.100, Folger Shakespeare Library

This recipe returns to the apple pulp version, albeit with a much smaller proportion of pulp. There’s proportionally rather a lot of sugar, but the addition of the lemon juice can balance that out. This version is leaning towards another classic British dessert, Apple Snow, an ethereal confection with which to treat any guests who have a sensitivity to dairy produce.

Molehill Cream or Floating Island recipe from the manuscript book of Mrs Frances Rawson, 1734, MS7747, Wellcome Collection

This particular recipe highlights one of the difficulties of old recipes – the names. Luckily, in this instance, the author has given us two names, one of which is Floating Island, but imagine if they had not? And this isn’t an isolated incident. The same recipe can be known by many different names all over the country. Conversely, the one name can refer to sometimes drastically differing dishes depending on location. In addition to all of the recipes listed here, other fruit/sugar/egg-white mixtures I’ve read have had the titles Irish Cream, Currant Cream, Spanish Butter, Blossom Cream and the very impressive The Rock For A Dessert (below). There are no  doubt many more variations out there, for what is essentially the same recipe.

The Rock for a Dessert recipe, a version of Floating Island using apple pulp, 1760, MS1813, Wellcome Collection

And finally, the last of the slew of pre-1747 Floating Island recipes, dating from 1741, is another apple-pulp-based version.

Floating Island recipe, 1741, Ms499, University of Leeds Library, Special Collections

It’s interesting to note that the ingredients have, in general, moved from currant juices and jellies in the 17th centuries, to fruit-pulp-based versions in the 18th centuries.

Choose Your Own Floating Island Adventure!

The best version of this fruity cloud delight is the one for which you have the ingredients to hand, so I thought I’d offer a few suggestions and then you can make an informed choice.

  • Egg-whites : You can use fresh, by all means – most people have eggs on hand, and all you need is a single large egg-white to make enough billowy clouds of fruit meringue to serve up to 8 people. The downside of this is that the lack of cooking might not be something everyone enjoys, plus you now have a solitary egg-yolk to keep/use. The solution is, of course, to use pasteurised eggwhites in a carton. Everyone’s happy and no pesky yolk to clutter up the fridge.
  • Sugar : White, granulated or caster sugar is my recommendation. It adds sweetness but without impacting the delicate pastel colour of the whipped mixture. Some of the above recipes add sugar to the cream, but I feel this is unnecessary, and the cool richness of, say, double cream is a great counterpoint to the ethereal nature of the whipped meringue.
  • Fruit juice vs fruit pulp : Both are delicious. The deciding factor to consider should be, how long until I serve it? If you are serving it immediately, then fruit juice is fine. When whipping up (no pun intended) the versions for the photos, I thought I’d make them all first, then photograph. But by the time I was on the third batch (so 15-20 minutes after finishing the first batch), the first batch was already collapsing. The fruit pulp gave the finished meringue more body, and a slightly longer standing ability.
  • Fruit jelly : If you need to have some time between making your dessert and serving it, using a fruit jelly is optimal – the juice has already been sweetened and set, and is therefore much better at holding it’s shape when whisked. You can also warm and then sieve jam.
  • Which fruit? : Honestly? Almost any. The main guideline here is that it should be tart/sharp. As can be seen in many of the recipe above, using lemon juice can add the necessary acidity if needed. Gooseberries, rhubarb, apricots (jam), and for jellies – all colours of currants, raspberries, quince, cooking apple, cranberry, pomegranate. Even though the meringue is sweetened with sugar, you still want to be able to taste a hint of sharpness.

Floating Islands

This recipe is a general guide, in that you can substitute whatever fruit/jam/jelly/juice you have. It makes a large volume, but it disappears in a puff, so you can serve giant portions to four, or more elegant servings to eight. Another idea I had that might appeal, would be a ‘flight’ of islands, each one flavoured differently, all floating on a sea of cream. Garnish with fresh fruit and berries if liked, but I must say, I prefer the simplicity of just fruit cloud and cream.

1 large/40ml egg white
100g/ml sharp fruit puree/juice/jelly/sieved jam
50g white sugar (omit if using jelly/jam)
Juice of half a lemon (optional)

To serve
Double cream
sugar (optional)
Fruit garnish (optional)

  • Put all of the ingredients, except the cream, into a bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk for 10 minutes.
  • Sweeten the cream if liked.
  • Portion out the meringue onto your serving dishes and pour round the cream. Some of the recipes above say to pour the cream first, but having tried that myself, it makes it very difficult to then place the meringue neatly. Much better to add the meringue to the dry plate and then pour round the cream.
  • Garnish with fruit if liked.

 

Close-up images from the top picture.

    • With white currant juice.
    • Black currant juice.
    • Cranberry jelly. Yeah, don’t do this. I only tried it because I picked up cranberry jelly at the supermarket by mistake instead of redcurrant jelly (they were next to one another on the shelf). The colour was deep, but the flavour was just not there. Probably something to do with the gelling agents used in manufacture. Home-made cranberry jelly might be worth trying.
    • Bramley Apple pulp.

Manchets

19th century, 20th century

Another two-for-one recipe for you this week, based on traditional regional recipes: Guildford Manchets and Lardy Buns, both from the county of Surrey.

Both of these recipes come from Elizabeth David’s classic English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1980). I’ve grouped them together because, with one slight difference, they are made the same way. Also, I like how they are related to two other recipes I’ve already published, from other countries.

According to Mrs David, the recipe for Guildford Manchets originates from “The Surrey Cookbook”, a collection of recipes gathered and published by the Women’s Institute in 1932. The Lardy Buns are listed immediately following, and so the inference is that these too come from Surrey. Whilst it is conceivable that these recipes stretch back into the 19th century, I think it would be a mistake to claim they are medieval in origin, just because they are called ‘manchets’. Yes, there were, of course, medieval manchets, but I’m not entirely sure these are them. I am reminded of the furore that occurred back in 2020 when an American researcher claimed the Cornish pasty was actually ‘invented’ in Devon – the audacity! – merely because he had found the word ‘pasty’ in a 17thC document in the Devon archives.  (Sidebar: I almost got a detached retina from the degree of eye-roll that bit of guff precipitated, especially given the fact that, for starters, the National Archives at Kew hold a document from 1296 that mentions “Simon Le Pasteymaker”.)

ANYHOO…

Both buns are made in the same way, by rolling in additional fat to plain bread dough, the only difference being that Guildford Manchets are made with a combination of lard and butter, and Lardy Buns are made solely with lard. The method is similar to that used to make flaky pastry: rolling out the dough, dotting over the fat, then folding and re-rolling, repeated three or four times. In times past, housewives could buy plain dough from the local baker, and use it for their own needs. It’s a shame that nowadays, the only non-standard purchase we are able to make from a bakery is fresh yeast.

Guildford Manchets

These two recipes are similar to two other traditional recipes I’ve already published. The Guildford Manchets bear a close resemblance to the Kouignettes, the small versions of Kouign Amann, except for the type of fat used and the lack of sugar. Whilst the ones I made for the photo are rolled round, a simpler method would be to cut the rolled dough into squares, fold the corners into the middle, and bake them in small foil baking tins. In Mrs David’s version of Lardy Buns, the use of cutters and the cross-hatching on the top make them very similar to Hungarian Pogácsa, minus the fresh dill. Lardy Buns are still made today, in a small village bakery in Surrey: “Celebration Cakes” in Cranleigh. They make them their own by poking two holes in the top, instead of using the cross-hatching. To my mind, it makes the baked buns look like the snouts of pigs (very cute and very appropriate, given the use of lard in their making).

Lardy Buns

In terms of flavour, the Lardy Buns are definitely on the savoury side, and pairs well with meats and cheeses. Fantastic for ‘breakfast sandwiches’, if that’s something you like. The insides, whilst bready-y, are layered and soft, and the outsides are crispy, like the crust of a pork pie.

The Guildford Manchets have a much richer flavour, thanks to the butter, and are crisp, but also slightly softer overall. More towards a flaky pastry texture. They are equally suited to both sweet and savoury toppings/fillings.

I’m going to combine the methods for both recipes. Best started the night before, the recipe below makes about a dozen (12) of each item. Re-rolling the offcuts from the Lardy Rolls won’t give you the same polished finish, but they will be just as tasty. Baker’s perks! No waste!

Manchets Two Ways

Makes 12 of each type of manchet. You can scale the recipe down by halving it, if you’d prefer to make just one. To make the dough easier to handle all the rolling and folding, chill overnight in the fridge (covered) after the first rise.

For the dough
600g strong white bread flour
1 sachet fast-action yeast
1 tsp salt
water to mix

For Guildford Manchets
60g lard, softened
60g butter, softened

For Lardy Buns
120g lard, softened

To glaze
whole milk

  • Mix the flour, yeast, salt and water (400-500ml, depending on the moisture content of your flour) into a dough.
  • Knead for 10 minutes until smooth, then cover and set aside to rise for 1 hour.
  • Tip out the dough and flatten with the palm of your hand. If you’re chilling the dough overnight, fold the dough into a neat rectangle, wrap in plastic and place in the fridge.
  • When ready to make up the rolls, if making the Guildford Manchets, mash the softened butter and lard together with a fork.
  • If you’re making both types of manchet, divide the dough in half and repeat the following with each half, using the different fats.
  • Roll out the dough into a long rectangle.
  • Dot one third of the fat over the top two-thirds of the dough.
  • Fold the bottom third of the dough upwards and the top third downwards. Turn the folded dough 90° to the left.
  • Repeat the rolling and folding two more times, until all the fat has been used.
  • Roll and fold the dough one final time, without adding any fat.
  • Roll the dough out into a rectangle about 2cm thick
  • For Guildford Manchets
    • Cut the dough into 12 squares.
    • Fold each corner into the middle, then repeat with the ‘inbetween’ edges, pinching them together firmly.
    • Turn the folded dough over, and roll under your cupped hand to form into a smooth ball.
    • Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment.
    • Alternatively, use mini foil pie tins like these, as used in this recipe, and simply fold in the four corners before dropping them into the foil tins. This will help preserve the layers by keeping the fat from running out of the dough and also reduce the possibility of the buns bursting at the seams. No need to cut the buns before baking is using this method.
  • For Lardy Buns
    • Use a small (5 or 6cm diameter) round cutter to cut out the buns.
    • Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment.
  • Set the buns aside to rise for 30 minutes.
  • Heat the oven to 220°C, 200°C Fan.
  • Brush the risen buns with milk, then cut a criss-cross of diamonds into the top of the Lardy Buns and a single deep cut across the top of the Guildford Manchets. OK, here’s the thing. The original instructions for the Guildford Manchets, as reproduced by Mrs David, were to ‘dock through the centre only’ – the logic of which is understandable –  it both lets out steam during baking and exposes the wonderful layers beneath. But as may be observed from the photo, it does also mean that the end result is a bit  ‘Georgia O’Keef’. If you don’t see it, then I urge you to remain in blissful ignorance – it’s probably for the best. Because as we have learned before, baking can be a bawdy business at times. *coughs awkwardly* Moving on…
  • Bake the buns for 20 minutes, turning the trays around after 10 minutes to give an even colouring.
  • Cool on a wire rack.
  • Best served warm.
  • Store in an airtight container.

 

Sticky Toffee Crumble

20th century

It struck me recently that I haven’t posted many pudding recipes of late – and this is a bit of a failing, because who doesn’t enjoy a nice pudding for breakfast at the end of a delicious meal? Consequently, I thought I’d pick a recipe from one of the books on my shelf, and so here we are with a tale of one recipe, two puddings. Two variations on classic British dishes that are sure to delight young and old.

Now – SPOILER ALERT! – I have a few cookbooks  and I must confess I have not read all of them cover to cover. So I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to dig into them more frequently, to hunt out the culinary gems that might be languishing inside.

My current selection is a slim paperback volume entitled “Party Treats: Ulster Home Cooking At It’s Best”. No author, no publication date (my guess would be 1980s/1990s), no introduction, in fact none of the conventions of a published book, it’s just straight into the recipes, no messing about.

In all honesty, some of the recipes leave a bit to be desired in terms of details: the lack of oven temperatures and timings in this book reminds me of the classic manuscript recipes of the 1700s which end with an airy “and so bake it”.

ANYHOO…

The recipe that caught my eye – because it was mentioned on the back cover – was Sticky Toffee Crumble. Quite piqued my interest, because I am a fiend for a good crumble, especially one including oats.

However, when I turned to the relevant page, what I found was a recipe for, essentially, Banoffi Pie Crumble. Not what I was looking for, but then again, nothing to be disappointed about either.

Sticky Toffee Crumble recipe, from Party Treats (Anon., date unknown)

I decided I was still going to try it, and just to make things interesting, make it gluten-free. I also substituted my own crumble topping recipe from this pie (also very delicious – you should go try this one as well!) and my favourite cornflour shortcrust pastry. Since I also renamed the recipe and added baking times and temperatures, I managed to replace practically everything in this recipe bar the initial inspiration. That’s just the way the pudding crumbles.

And it was everything I hoped, with added crumble! The dry crispness of the cornflour pastry is a fantastic contrast to the richness of the caramel filling, and the buttery saltiness of the crumble. The oats add great texture and the cooking of the bananas really intensifies their flavour. I experimented with the placement of the bananas, since the original Banoffi Pie called for them to be placed on top of the caramel, but beneath the caramel is definitely the way to go: as can be sen in the top picture, their colour and texture are preserved. Bananas placed on top of the caramel (and under the crumble) became dark and chewy – not altogether a bad thing – but having tasted both, the way stated in the original recipe is by far the best.

All these positive points notwithstanding, it wasn’t the original Sticky Toffee Crumble, which had originally drawn me to this recipe.

So I set off on a hunt for a Sticky Toffee Pudding recipe that could be adapted to the crumble pudding of my imagination. I didn’t have to look far because I came across “The Flavour of Britain” (1978) edited by Kenneth Mitchell (available at The Internet Archive). Not because it is a best seller – I have no idea how successful it was – but because of the provenance of the recipe, in small text, at the bottom of the page:

Acknowledgement to: Sharrow Bay Country House Hotel, Lake Ullswater, Cumbria.

As some of you may know, the Sharrow Bay hotel was where Sticky Toffee Pudding (STP) was popularised in the 1970s by Francis Coulson and Robert Lee. Sidebar: the Wikipedia page claims the pudding was invented in Yorkshire in 1907, with no reference to back the claim, which is disappointing in several ways. Do better, Wikipedia.  As far as recipe provenance goes, this is pretty definitive, in my opinion, so it is the one I’m going with.

Now, aficionados  and experienced makers of STP will already be aware, the raw mix for the pudding is incredibly liquid, much more so than even a sponge cake batter, so adding crumble to the raw mixture is just not going to work. After a bit of experimentation, the solution is to add the crumble during baking, when the mixture has cooked enough to support it, but also while there’s still time enough for the crumble to bake through.

And so with all that, LET’S GET READY TO CRRRRUUMMMMBLLLLLE!!! (I am so sorry)

Banoffi Pie Crumble whole and sliced, showing the effect of baking on banana position: top slice with (pale) bananas under the caramel, bottom slice with (darker) bananas on top of the caramel.

Banoffi Pie Crumble

Serves 4-8 people

(In the UK) You can buy tins of Carnation Caramel (sweetened condensed milk transformed into the toffee filling) in the supermarket. I find it sweeter than the older, traditional method of making your own, and the set is not as firm unless well chilled in the fridge. Alternatively, you can make your own by putting tins of regular condensed milk into a slow cooker filled with water (enough to cover the tins well), and cooking on Low for 8-10 hours (I usually cook them overnight). NB DO NOT open tins until completely cooled.
Serving suggestion: Just to reinforce the origins in Banoffi Pie, you could serve this crumble, warm or cold, with the original topping of unsweetened whipped cream flavoured with espresso coffee powder, on the side.

I made 4 x 10cm square small-ish tarts. The resulting tarts were quite substantial and one tart would make a generous serving for 2 people, hence the range of serving portions suggested above.

Cornflour Shortcrust Pastry
60g cornflour
225g plain gluten-free flour (I used Doves Farm GF White Bread flour) [1]
140g butter
ice-cold water

  • Put all the dry ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
  • Gradually add the water, one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture comes together in a ball.
  • Knead smooth, then roll out thinly (3-4mm).
  • Cut baking parchment to fit your tart tins.
  • Line your chosen tart tins, first with the parchment paper, then with the pastry, easing the pastry into the corners/sides.
  • Leave the excess pastry overhanging the sides and put the tart tins to rest in the fridge until required.

Crumble Mixture
30g butter
30g lard
30g light Muscovado sugar
90g Doves Farm gluten-free plain white flour
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/4 tsp of salt
60g gluten-free steel-rolled oats[2]

  • Put everything except the oats into a food processor and blitz briefly until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
  • Pour the mixture into a bowl and add the oats. Stir to combine.
  • Set aside until required.

1 x 397ml tin sweetened condensed milk (OR a tin of Carnation caramel)
2-3 bananas

To Serve
300ml double cream
1-2 tsp espresso coffee powder

  • (The day before) Turn your condensed milk into caramel by cooking in a slow cooker for 8 hours. Allow to cool.
  • Make the shortcrust pastry as above.
  • Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
  • Retrieve the tart tins from the fridge and trim and crimp the edges.
  • Slice the bananas and arrange the slices in the bottom of the tart tins.
  • Open your tin of caramel and tip into a small pan. Warm gently (it makes it easier to spread).
  • Add just under 90g of caramel to each tart. Spread evenly over the bananas.
  • Spoon ¼ of the crumble mixture onto each tart.
  • Arrange the tins on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, turning the tins around after 15 minutes to ensure even colouring.
  • Set aside to cool.
  • If liked, chill in the fridge once cooled, until required.
  • To Serve: Whisk together the double cream and the espresso powder and serve on the side.
Sticky Toffee Crumble

Sticky Toffee Crumble

I used a 20cm square tin for this. The recipe says it serves six, but when I measured out the dimensions for six servings, they were alarmingly large. Of course, serving numbers are just arbitrary numbers. With a spoon and a can-do attitude, referring to this as a ‘serves one’ recipe could prove just as valid. ANYHOO… What with the overarching sweetness, the addition of the crumble and the rich indulgence of the sauce, I’m going to recommend this as sufficient for 8-12 servings. Whether those servings are subsequently all consumed by the same individual is beyond my purview and we can gently lower the cone of discretion over the whole subject.

60g Stork margarine or softened butter
175g soft, dark brown sugar
1 large egg
200g Doves Farm gluten-free plain white flour
1tsp xanthan gum
1tsp baking powder
250ml water
175g pitted dates, cut into small cubes
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp vanilla extract

Crumble mixture (see above)

Toffee Sauce
150g unsalted butter
200g soft, dark brown sugar
100ml double cream
¼ tsp salt

  • Line a 20cm square tin with baking parchment.
  • Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
  • Pour the water into a small pan and bring to the boil.
  • Remove the pan from the heat and add the chopped dates, bicarbonate of soda and vanilla. Stir. Set aside to soften for 5 minutes.
  • Sift together the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder.
  • Put the fat, sugar and egg into a bowl and whisk until combined.
  • Add the flour mixture in two batches, stirring well until combined.
  • Add the date mixture – yes, including the water – and mix thoroughly. Get right to the bottom of the bowl with a spatula to ensure everything is fully combined.
  • Pour the mixture into your prepared tin.
  • Bake for 25 minutes.
  • After your cake has been baking for 25 minutes, lide the shelf with the tin on halfway out of the oven and sprinkle over the crumble mixture. Make sure it gets right to the edges/corners.
  • Gently slide the shelf back into the oven and bake for a further 20-25 minutes, until the cake is cooked through and the crumble on the top crisped and lightly browned.
  • Remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly.
  • Mix the toffee sauce.
    • Put all of the ingredients into a small saucepan and heat gently, while stirring, until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved.
    • Simmer over a gentle heat for 3-5 minutes until ready to serve.
  • Slice the cake into portions and serve with the sauce either poured over, or on the side.

 

[1] You can also use plain gluten-free plain flour, but be sure to check if it contains xanthan gum. Doves Farm Gluten Free Plain White Flour does not. You can add it yourself – 1 teaspoon for this quantity of flour. Xanthan gum is available in the gluten-free aisle of most supermarkets.

[2] I prefer the gluten-free oats sold in Morrison’s because they look like regular steel-rolled oats. Whatever process is involved in removing the gluten, it seems to take a very large toll on the gluten-free oats sold by other brands, and they come out looking very crumbly and ¾ of the way to flour. The Morrison’s GF oats look altogether prettier.

Easter Baking

17th century, 19th century

Two recipes for you this week, both of which are ancestors of recipes we still use today: a Good Friday Cake, and Easter Cakes. Both recipes come from manuscripts held by the National Library of Scotland.

Good Friday Cake recipe, from the manuscript of Dorothy Best, circa 1688, National Library of Scotland.

The Good Friday Cake is a yeasted saffron bun, lightly spiced and speckled with either currants or raisins. Links to our modern Hot Cross Buns are obvious. The use of saffron gives the cooked buns a wonderfully golden crust. The recipe doesn’t give an exact quantity of saffron, rather it suggest “two penny-worth”. In terms of translating this into a modern recipe, it’s probably better to go by the quantity of dough your working with to guide you.  I’ve scaled this recipe down to 1/14th scale, working with just 1lb/450g of flour. Consequently, I suggest just a pinch of saffron. Sidebar: in culinary terms, a pinch is usually the quantity of whatever you’re measuring that can be picked up using two fingers and your thumb. However, due to the strength/expense of saffron, the smaller finger-and-thumb pinch is all that is required here.

For the Easter Cakes, we revisit the eccentrically-spelled Bakery Book (my own nickname for it) dating from the early 19th century. Easter Cake recipes are still being made today, with modern variations including a range of spices and/or lemon zest. To avoid confusion, they are nowadays usually referred to as Easter Biscuits. As I’ve mentioned before, back in the day, the word ‘cake’ was used to refer to anything round and relatively flat in shape. I’ve read ‘cake’ recipes for sugar drops, lozenges, incense pellets, fruit drops, biscuits, buns, crackers, small cakes, large cakes and preserved herbs.

Easter Cakes recipe from an anonymous, hand-written commercial bakery book, dating from 1827, National Library of Scotland.

I’ve spent so much time reading handwritten manuscripts, and many laborious hours with this manuscript in particular, I can now read the above recipe at something resembling a ‘normal’ speed, but for anyone interested but deterred, I offer the following ‘translation’:

Easter Cakes for shops or for tables.
First, take 1½lb butter and 1½lb of coarse sugar rolled clear of lumps, and clean currants and finely sieved cinnamon, then rub that all fine into 4lb flour and then make a bay in the flour so and take ½oz volatile salts and dissolve it into a little milk and then pour that into it and enough milk for to wet that into a good stiff paste and roll that out into a thin thin sheets and cut them out round with tin cutters and crimp the edges of them all round so [diagram] and then put on very slightly-greased tins so far apart [diagram] and slightly wash the tops over with fine sieved loaf sugar and a little milk and bake in a sharp oven and stand on the tins until cold and keep dry and clean.

So! We meet again, Mr Volington Salts.

There are but a few tweaks of this recipe required in order to bring it into something usable by today’s standards.

  • Volatile salts (aka Baker’s Ammonia)  were used for aeration in the years before the invention of baking powder. During baking, the heat of the oven causes the ammonium carbonate/bicarbonate to decompose into ammonia, carbon dioxide, and water, providing both puff and crispness to baked goods, without any aftertaste. You can still buy it today (it is especially good for certain gingerbreads), although your kitchen should be well ventilated in order to disperse the ammonia properly. Substituting baking powder for the volatile salts is a straightforward swap.
  • We no longer need to smash out the lumps in our coarse sugar – Demerera sugar is an excellent substitute.
  • Cinnamon can easily be purchased finely ground and lump-free.
  • Hand crimping biscuits is no longer required and a fluted, round cutter will do the job in a fraction of the time.
  • Using parchment paper ensures your biscuits do not stick to the baking sheets and also reduces washing up afterwards.
  • Caster sugar can be used for the finely-sieved loaf sugar.

I hope you enjoy trying these two Easter resurrections from times past.

Good Friday Cake

Delicious sliced, toasted and spread with salted butter.

200ml milk
a pinch of saffron strands
1lb plain flour
50g unsalted butter
0.5 tsp ground cloves
0.5 tsp ground mace
100ml warm water
1 sachet fast-action yeast

35g raisins
35g currants

milk to glaze

  • Put the milk into a small pan with the saffron and bring to a simmer.
  • Remove from the heat, cover and allow to steep for 20 minutes.
  • Put the flour, butter, cloves, mace and yeast into a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
  • Pour the saffron mixture and the water into the bowl of a stand mixer.
  • Add the flour mixture and knead for 10 minutes.
  • Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 1 hour.
  • Tip out the risen dough and divide in half.
  • Flatten the dough and sprinkle over the dried fruit – currants in one half, raisins in the other.
  • Shape into rounds and flatten slightly. Each bun will be about 15cm in diameter.
  • Cover lightly with a cloth and set to rise for about 30 minutes.
  • Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
  • Cut a deep cross into the centre of each bun. Be sure not to cut through the edges. My dough scraper is just about the perfect width for this.
  • Brush the tops with milk and bake for 30-40 minutes, turning the tray around after 25 minutes to help even the colour.
  • Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container.

Easter Cakes

Makes about 35 biscuits.

I made these gluten-free with a mixture of gluten-free flour and xanthan gum. If you’re fine with gluten, just use regular plain flour.

225g gluten-free flour + ½ tsp xanthan gum
1 rounded tsp ground cinnamon
2 level tsp baking powder
85g unsalted butter
85g Demerera sugar
85g currants

milk to mix & glaze
caster sugar to sprinkle

  • Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
  • Put the flour, xanthan gum, cinnamon, baking powder and butter into the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
  • Tip the mixture into a bowl and add the currants and sugar.
  • Moisten with milk and stir until the mixture comes together into a dough.
  • Knead briefly and turn out onto a floured surface.
  • Roll out thinly (5mm) and cut into biscuits using a crimped, 5cm diameter cutter.
  • Lay the biscuits onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
  • Brush the tops with milk and lightly sprinkle with caster sugar.
  • Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the edges are a light golden brown, turning the tins around after 10 minutes to help even the colour.
  • Cool on the tins for 10 minutes, then finish cooling on a wire rack.
  • Store in an airtight container.

Pepper Gingerbread

17th century, 18th century, Cakes, Small Cakes

What’s this? Two posts in one week? Yes, I’m spoiling you. But it was something I came across when looking for recipes to celebrate Mothering Sunday, and just couldn’t resist.

To Make Gingerbread My Mother’s Way, c1675, MS7849, Wellcome Collection

Apart from the whole ‘Mother’ connection, I like that this recipe page is rather splattered and smudged, indicating that it was well loved, and it now proudly displays its battle-worn scars from many a baking day. The manuscript has been dated as circa 1675. Whilst this particular manuscript might well have been started around then, I’m no handwriting expert (I’ve just read thousands of recipes), but I’m thinking that this recipe is written is a more modern hand, so I’ve suggested both 17th and 18th centuries as suitable source dates.

This recipe require only the slightest tweak in order to bring it to a 21st century palate, namely switching the raising agent from barm to bicarbonate of soda. As mentioned numerous times in my writings, initially I like to bake recipes as they are written, as far as is possible. I also invariably reduce the quantities of ingredients, as recipes from times past tend to be on the large side, baking as they were for entire households: you don’t want to expend great expense on large quantities of ingredients only to find you have a complete dud of a recipe on your hands.

I’ve had to guesstimate ‘spoonful’ quantities for the spices and I must have been doing something right, because the first batch I made tasted delightful. The texture was what let it down: even using an entire sachet of fast-action yeast (which I suspect is much more sprightly than traditional barm) failed to make any noticeable impression on the soft gingerbread paste, and it clunked heavily onto the counter top when I turned it out of the tin. I suspect the weightiness of the treacle was just too much for the yeast to handle. However, adding just half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda produced a close-textured but pleasantly spongy result.

The spices are a fantastic, if rather unusual, mixture: ginger, caraway seeds, pepper and nutmeg. The overall flavour is definitely ginger, but it is also rounded out with hints of the other spices. Don’t skimp on the caraway seeds – for one batch I made I put less than the recipe indicated because I ran out, and the difference was noticeable and not as full-bodied as the original.

My final tweak was to add a shiny glaze, to really bring out the jewel-like colours of the candied peels. You can use a variety of sweet syrups and/or honey to achieve a great shine, but I like the gelatine glaze as it gives shine without stickiness, and you can store any excess glaze in the fridge for use with other things.

Pepper Gingerbread

This is, conveniently, a one-pot bake, as everything is gradually mixed together in a single saucepan before being turned into the tin for baking. I have used a small, low-sided pan, but a long, narrow tart tin would also do. If you’re not in the mood to make your own candied peel, you can buy large piece peel online.¹

150ml treacle
75g unsalted butter
75g soft, dark-brown sugar
1 large egg – beaten
1 tbs caraway seeds
1.5 tsp ground ginger
1.5 tsp grated nutmeg
0.5 tsp ground white pepper
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250g plain flour

Topping
2 quarters of candied lemon peel – sliced thinly
2 quarters candied orange peel – sliced thinly
1 medium piece candied citron – sliced thinly

Glaze (optional)
150ml water
50g caster sugar
1 sheet leaf gelatine

  • Line a shallow 18cm x 28cm baking tray with parchment paper.
  • Put the treacle, butter and sugar into a small pan and set over low heat (2) until the butter is melted.
  • Remove from the heat, stir, and set aside to cool to body temperature (you don’t want to cook the egg by having it too hot).
  • Whisk in the beaten egg.
  • Sift the spices, seeds, bicarb and flour together.
  • Add to the saucepan and stir until well combined, with no flour visible at all.
  • Pour the mixture into the parchment-lined pan and smooth over. The paste will be quite soft and will ‘settle’ into the pan on its own accord.
  • Heat the oven to 170°C, 150°C Fan.
  • Lay the thin strips of candied peel onto the top of the gingerbread. To reproduce the pattern in the top photograph, lay a ‘stripe’ of orange peel the length of the pan, then repeat with lemon and then again with citron. Repeat these stripes until the whole of the gingerbread is covered.
  • Bake the gingerbread for 25 minutes, turning the tin around halfway through.
  • Remove the gingerbread from the oven and brush with the gelatine glaze.
  • Allow to cool in the tin.

Glaze
While the gingerbread is baking,

  • Bloom the sheet of gelatine in water.
  • Put the sugar and water into a small pan and stir over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved.
  • Remove from the heat and add the bloomed gelatine. Stir until melted.

Cutting the gingerbread into bars:

¹ Websites I have used for orange and lemon caps include Wholefoods Online and Wilton Wholefoods. Citron is rather tricky. I made some a while ago, buying the fresh fruit from My Exotic Fruits, and still have some left, but it seems that sourcing it in Europe might be the only way to buy it ready-made nowadays. You could just use orange and lemon, or make some using grapefruit/pomelo peel.

Apple Cream

18th century, Pudding

Recently, I was browsing my collection of manuscript recipes, looking for something suitable for the upcoming Mothers Day, also known as Mothering Sunday.

I have already posted about the original Simnel Cake, which has more recently morphed into a marzipan-layered fruit cake. But to be honest, my reaction to thoughts of doing anything with marzipan is, pretty much as it has always been:

Blanche from The Golden Girls sighing heavily.

I know it’s very much a part of traditional baked goods in the UK, but exposure to the neon-yellow, heavily almond-flavoured monstrosity of my youth has left its scars. Some day I shall get around to rehabilitating my taste-buds, but for now, to paraphrase the words of Syrio Forel: What do we say to things with marzipan? Not today.

So I decided to go another way and make something that many manuscript authors decide is important enough to be recorded in their book: a recipe from their own mother. The recipes they wish to preserve are many and varied, ranging from jams and marmalades, custards, pastry, cheesecakes and puddings, to spiced meats, possets, biscuits, cakes and more.

Handwritten recipe for Apple Cream, from a manuscript dated circa 1725, MS1343, at the Wellcome Collection
Apple Cream, circa 1725, MS1343, Wellcome Collection

This recipe from Deborah Branch’s manuscript, dates from 1725, the early years of the Hanoverian Era. It is a simple recipe, with arguably just three ingredients, and it suggests to me that it is a treasured childhood memory: Cooked apples, bread, custard. It is served cold, and can be assembled just before serving, if more suited to your circumstances. The textures play a large part in the enjoyment of this recipe: the firm, coldness of the cooked apple, the lightness of the cream and the crunch of the toasted bread are very ‘toothsome’, as they used to say. The recipe suggests assembling and then chilling, however this will impact the crispness of the toasted bread, so I would recommend making and chilling everything, then assembling when required.

A word or two about the ingredients.

  • Apples: I’ve tried this recipe with both Bramley cooking apples and (Cox’s) eating apples. Both are good in different ways. The Bramleys are much bigger (so fewer are needed) and are less prone to holding their shape. Time the cooking just right and they have a fantastic texture, soft on the outside and firm yet still cooked in the centre, but even if they tip over into fluff, their flavour is still wonderful, especially if you’ve used either light or dark brown sugar. Eating apples hold their shape much better and are a great contrast against the crisp bread and creamy custard. Personally, I prefer to use Bramley apples – their sharpness is a great contrast against the sweetness of the toasted buns and cream.
  • Bread: the original recipe just calls for ‘slices of bread’ to act as a base, but this didn’t seem to offer much, especially not in texture. I recently read a recipe for a trifle that had the bread toasted, and I thought that sounded much more exciting (yes, dearest gentle reader, I really did just admit to toast sounding exciting. Hey, I live in the wilds of the countryside, we gotta take our entertainment where we can!). You can tinker with this recipe merely by changing the bread you choose – airy sourdough,  an enriched brioche, even dark rye bread or malt loaf. I chose to go with spiced hot cross buns, as a nod to the Easter season in general, and I can highly recommend this option.
  • Cream/Custard: despite the title, the cream proved to be a rich custard made with egg yolks and cream. I’m always pondering the type of cream they mean in old recipes, because here in the 21st century we’re rather spoiled for choice. But you can use the same tweaks here as for the bread option: I used single/pouring cream, but you could enrich it by switching to whipping, double, extra thick or even clotted for a real indulgence. The ‘set’ wasn’t very firm – and I liked that – but if you prefer a set to your custard cream, just add a rounded teaspoon of cornflour (mixed to a slurry with milk) to the eggs and sugar.

Apple Cream c.1725

This recipe can be customised to both your liking and your needs. I offer the following quantities as a guide to serving four people, but the quantities of each can be doubled for large appetites/extra portions.

Bramley Apples x 2 ( ½ an apple per person)
OR
Eating/Dessert Apples x 4 (1 apple per person)
4 tbs sugar – caster, light or dark brown

2 x Hot Cross Buns

300ml single cream
3 large egg yolks
1-2 tbs caster sugar – or more to your taste
flavouring – 1tsp rosewater/orange flower water/vanilla/lemon zest – or other
1 rounded tsp cornflour & milk to mix (optional)

  • Cook the apples: Peel the apples and cut into halves. Remove the cores. Sprinkle over sugar to your taste. About 1tbs per half-apple.
  • Add the apple halves to a pan with a lid (preferably a glass one so you can easily keep an eye on the apples as they cook.
  • Sprinkle 1tsp water per apple into the pan, just to keep the sugar from scorching until the juices start to run.
  • Cover the pan and turn the heat to low (4 on my hob).
  • Allow the apples to poach gently until just cooked through – for Bramley Apples about 15 minutes, eating apples will be closer to 20 minutes.
  • Switch off the heat and allow the apples to cool in the pan. When cold, transfer them and any juice to a dish and chill in the fridge until required.
  • Toast the bread. Tear your buns/bread into small pieces and spread out on a baking sheet.
  • Toast the bread under the grill until crisped and turning brown at the edges.
  • Cool on the baking sheet and when cold, transfer to a ziplock bag or airtight container until needed.
  • Prepare the cream. Pour the cream into a small saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer – when the edges are just bubbling.
  • While the cream is heating, whisk the yolks with the sugar. If you’re using cornflour, add the slurry now.
  • Pour the scalded cream onto the yolks, whisking, then return the mixture to the pan.
  • Whisk the custard over medium heat until it has thickened. Take care it doesn’t boil, as it will turn the cream grainy.
  • Remove from the heat, stir through your flavouring and set aside. If not assembling immediately, cover the surface with plastic wrap to prevent a skin forming.

To Assemble

You can make this recipe in a large trifle bowl, but I think individual servings are much more attractive.

  • Cover the base of your dish with toasted bread/buns. If your bread has softened put it into the oven to crisp it up. Alternatively, prep and chill the cream and apples beforehand and toast the bread just before serving.
  • Arrange your cooked apples (or apple fluff if your Bramleys went a bit too far) over the toast. Drizzle any juices over as well.
  • Spoon your custard cream over the apples. I like to leave gaps here and there to allow the other ingredients to peep through.
  • Top with chopped/flaked nuts, sugar crystals, candied fruit or whipped cream as liked.

 

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.

A Georgian White Onion Soup, circa 1820, MS7854, Wellcome Collection

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.

Late Stuart Onion Soup, circa 1700, MS1811, Wellcome Collection

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.