Category Archives: 18th century

Snapshot: A Few 18th c. Treats

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Right: Cooking ingredients from Deborah’s Pantry; I love the packaging.

I’ve recently become interested in the chemistry of cooking and how it has changed over time.  How did we gel things before gelatin?  How did cakes rise before baking powder?

With this idea in mind, I ordered a bundle of 18th century ingredients from Deborah’s Pantry: Pearlash, the first form of chemical leavening for baked goods; gum arabic, a hardening agent used in confectionery; and isinglass, a jellying agent extracted from the swim bladders of sturgeon.  Stay tuned as I attempt to turn these items into food…

Gum Arabic.
Isinglass.

Travelogue: Chickens Cooked in Bladders

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Left: My teacher proudly displays a chicken stuffed into a bladder.

The weekend before Pancakes Aplenty, I took a trip down to Pennsbury Manor, the recreated historic homestead of William Penn.  I attended a hearth cooking workshop by Past Masters in Early American Domestic Arts to brush up on my skillz.

The featured recipe we recreated was from an 18th century source, “Chickens in Bladders.”  You essentially take two small chickens, stuff them with a bread crumb and oyster dressing, then tuck meatballs under the skin, then shove the whole thing in a cow’s bladder.  Our teacher, Clarissa, stretched out the cow’s bladders by cutting off one end and forcing her hands inside, in procedure that looked either like a reverse birth or an old timey freak show.  The chickens were then coerced inside and the whole thing was boiled for about two hours.  When they came out, they looked like human balloons.

Forcing a chicken into a cow bladder. Photo by Carolina Capehart.

The finished chicken.  The bladders were cut open, the chicken removed and carved.

The bladders acted like a sausage casing, keeping all the stuffing in place.  The chicken meat was very tender, and flavorful, but the flavor was predominantly of oysters (not my favorite food).  It was served atop a “Coolio,” and I was so distracted thinking about the rapper, that I think I may have missed what it actually was.  The full recipe, for your enjoyment, is below.  You can see more photos from the class here.

Take Ox-Bladders that are ready dry’d, and put them into warm Water to supple them: Cut off the Necks of the Bladders, to make Room for your Fowl to go in, but be sure to leave Room enough to tie them up close; then let your Fowl be drawn, singed, and truss’d to boil, the Legs* cut off, and truss’d close: Take Oysters, if three Fowls, to each a Quart, to a Chicken a Pint, set them, and beard them; take Lumps of Marrow, Chestnuts blanch’d, or Pistachoe-Nut Kernels; season with Pepper, Salt, and Nutmeg, Thyme and Parsly minc’d, and a little Onion; work this up together with grated Bread, a little Cream, and the Yolks of Eggs, and fill the Bellies full of it, and force under the Skin of the Breast with a little light forc’d meat: Put them in your Bladders, and tie them up fast, leaving Room that the Bladders may not break; boil them well, for they will require as much more boiling as without Bladders; then make a Coolio with a Sweetbread or two, a few Cocks-combs, a few Morelles and Trouffles; do not make it too thick; pout it in the Bottom of your Dish; lay your Fowl on it: You may cut off the Bladders, when they are cut up, the inside Forceing will mix with the Coolio: Garnish with Forc’d- meat and sliced Orange or Lemon, and serve it away hot. (The Complete Practical Cook by Charles Carter; London, 1730)

Events: Havemeyer Sugar Sweets Sale Wrap Up!

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Jumbles, stacked and ready to eat!


This post is belated, but I wanted to share the results of the Sugar Sweets Festival last weekend.

I made about 300 cookies, wrapped in snazzy packages of three, and 90% of them sold! I was thrilled, not only to make a little money for the Reliquary, but because I was afraid the recipes I selected would be too strange for the modern pallet. On the contrary, they were a big hit.

I worked on a simple, professional package design.
I made four kinds in total. The Cayenne Gingerbread was the best seller. In Mrs. Beeton’s Book Of Household Management, she says: “…a great

authority in culinary matters suggests the addition of a little cayenne pepper in gingerbread. Whether it be advisable to use this latter ingredient or not, we leave to our readers to decide.” I say YES, Mrs. Beeton! The gingerbread cookies I baked from her recipe were familiar, yet spicy and complex, with a little kick to the aftertaste. They received rave reviews at the bake sale.
I also baked up a batch of Jumbles, a mid-19th century butter cookie, that are rolled in a loop and sprinkled with powdered sugar. The recipe comes in endless variations; I decided upon a batch flavored with lemon and mace.
I attempted a few dozen Almond-Rosewater Macaroons as well. Although I thought they were the tastiest, the cookie was too delicate to survive transport to the bake sale. Most of them crumbled upon arrival, and did not look as fetching as they could have. The recipe needs work, but I think it still has potential.

The most pleasant surprise of the day was finding out the my Chocolet Puffs, an 18th century meringue cookie, won Best in Show in the baking contest!

Yay!

My prize was a $25 gift certificate to Whisk, a cooking supply store in Brooklyn. I think I might use it to invest in a pair of cookie sheets; I’ve been baking on borrowed sheets!
I was delighted to be a part of the Sugar Sweets Festival. It allowed me to work the kinks out of my recipes and to develop sensible packaging for my product. Most importantly, I discovered that people actually liked these cookies and were interested in their story. I don’t know where these lessons will take me next, but I’m willing to keep going.
Next: The story behind my award-winning Chocolet Puffs.

Travelogue: Mt. Vernon

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The Whiskey Distillery at Mt Vernon.

On day two of my travels in our nation’s capitol, I piled in the car with my friends Bryan and Katie, and made the drive to George Washington’s home, Mt. Vernon.
It was a spectacularly beautiful fall day, and there was no where I would have rather been that driving along the Potomac with the windows down. The three of us lunched at the Mt. Vernon Inn, which offers “…six intimate dining rooms, two with fireplaces, all with colonial charm, colonial servers, and delicious regional and colonial cuisine.”

I had the “Colonial Turkey Pye,” (the “y” makes it old timey) which was ok, but unimpressive. I think the vegetables were from a frozen bag mix, and it had a giant Ritz cracker hat. Bryan had a cup of peanut soup, which I had tried before at the cafeteria at Gettysburg. I had liked it at Gettysburg, but here it tasted like warm peanut butter. Gross.
The main disappointment was that the menu had foods that could have been eaten in the 18th century, like roasted chicken and corncakes, but the foods weren’t at all different from what we eat today. There wasn’t even an effort to use spices appropriate to the 18th century. It’s dull; I never understood why “historic” restaurants never make the effort to offer interesting, delicious historic food.
We spent a few hours touring the grounds, and took a fairly boring tour of the Mansion itself. The house sees a high volume of visitors each year, and the staff handles this by scooting a continuous line of tourists along a velvet-roped route through the interior of the building, while reciting the interpretation for each space on a continuous loop. You would enter the room at the beginning of the interp, and leave approximately when it would start repeating. It was weird. One fact did catch my attention: Washington died suddenly of an inflammation of the throat, that suffocated him in 36 hours. I got a little freaked out when I felt a cold coming on a few days later.
Next, we went to Mt. Vernon’s second site which features a reconstruction of Washington’s Gristmill and Distillery. I had been looking forward to visiting the recently opened distillery for awhile, and it really was a treat. A knowledgeable interpreter talking us through the distilling process while we toured a truly beautiful building. I learned that in the 18th century, whiskey was made from rye, with a little corn. It was not aged; the entire distilling process took only two weeks before it was casked and sold. The liquor was clear, and our guide described it as tasting surprisingly sweet. Mt. Vernon will begin selling its whiskey sometime in the next year, and I am excited to try it when they do.
The gristmill was also neat, as gristmills are. Every time I stand before a spinning water wheel, and all those gears and grindstones, I’m impressed by human ingenuity. Who thinks of these things??

Looking down from the second floor of the gristmill, to the stream below.
I picked up a little souvenir treat for myself: a 5-ounce block of American Heritage Chocolate, a product of the Historic Division of Mars, that is made from an authentic Colonial recipe. I’m going to use it to make “Chocolet Puffs,” a receipt from a 18th century manuscript that is one of the earliest instances of chocolate being used in another manner than for drinking. If the recipe turns out well, they will be sold at The City Reliquary’s 1st Annual Haveymeyer Sugar Sweets Festival on Saturday. But more on that tomorrow.
See more images from my trip below.