To make an Orange Pudding

This exquisite pudding attracted a lot of interest. The taste is not what we are used to in the 21st century, it's not overly sweet and very rich and spiced. It has all the favourite 18th Century flavours in it : Roses, orange blossoms and sack. You close your eyes and take a bite, let the different tastes open themselves to you and you are nearly back in the age of enlightenment. I would have stayed if I could!

To make an Orange pudding

TAKE the yolks of sixteen eggs, beat them well, with half a pound of melted butter, grate in the rind of two fine Seville oranges, beat in half a pound of fine sugar, two spoonfuls of orange-flower-water, two of rose-water, a gill of sack, half a pint of cream, two Naples biscuits, or the crumbs of a halfpenny roll soaked in the cream, and mix all well together. Make a thin puff-paste, and lay all over the  and round the rim, pour in the pudding and bake it. It will take about as long baking as a custard.

Eggs are larger than they were in Hannah Glasse's day, I suppose they were the size that Bantam's eggs are now. For the pudding I used the yolks of twelve large eggs and it was really more than enough.

 A gill of sack (sherry)  - a gill is about a quarter of a pint. It seems like a lot really and I sloshed in most of it but was a bit concerned that the pudding would be too runny but Hannah knew what she was doing and it turned out fine, the consistency was pleasingly solid. I had made several batches of Naples biscuits for the banquet itself so I used two of them instead of a halfpenny roll soaked in cream, the rosiness was just right and complemented the orange blossom beautifully. The recipe for Naples biscuits is one of my previous blog posts, they are very quick and easy to make.

I rolled out ready made puff pastry ( don't look at me like that, my pastry is rubbish and this pudding had to work, otherwise think of the egg waste, also the guests were arriving in a matter of hours), until it was a thin soft sheet and lined a flan tin with it. I I followed the instructions for cooking exactly, apart from the amount of egg yolks and I used ordinary oranges not Seville, which are notoriously bitter, but if you want to try them please do - If you love marmalade you should be fine. I put it in the oven at 180 degrees and kept an eye on it. It swelled like a souffle while cooking and then when I took it out of the oven it subsided to the way it looks in the photograph.

 It's rich, so best served in thin slices.

To Roast a Fowl with Chestnuts

The fowl (it was a chicken) eaten the quickest of all the dishes I prepared, save the Orange Pudding.

To roast a fowl with chesnuts.

First take some chesnuts, roast them very carefully (make sure you make crosses in the skin that go through the skin, some of mine exploded in the oven and all over the kitchen) so as not to burn them, take off the skin,and peel them, take about a dozen of them cut small, and bruise them in a mortar; parboil the liver of the fowl, bruise it, cut about a quarter of a pound of ham or bacon, and pound it;then mix them all together, with a good deal of parsley chopped small, a little sweet herbs, some mace, some pepper, salt and nutmeg;mix these together and put into your fowl, and roast it.  The best way of doing it is to tie the neck, and hang it up by the legs to roast with a string, and baste it with butter.  For sauce take the rest of the chesnuts peeled and skinned, put them into some good gravy, with a little white wine, and thicken it with a piece of butter rolled in flour:then take up your fowl, lay it in the dish, and pour in the sauce. Garnish with lemon.

In Georgian kitchens they cooked over the open fire in a big fireplace, kitchen ranges were not invented until the end of the eighteenth century or thereabouts so when Hannah Glasse wrote this book she was speaking from her experience of cooking in the only way she knew how which was over the roaring open fire. There were ovens built into the side of the fireplace, for bread and so on, but most of the dishes in her book are cooked over the flames - that's why the fowl had to be strung up by it;s feet ( so the stuffing didn't fall out), something I couldn't really recreate so I put it in the oven.  I followed her recipe exactly even down to the roasting of the chestnuts and bruising things in the mortar ( that was the fun part).
When the chicken had done in the oven, I made the sauce from the gravy that came from the roasting with all the butter and different flavours in it from cooking and added some sliced mushrooms and Madeira and a bit of salt and cracked pepper ( in the mortar again) with the essential mace and nutmeg. It was very good, and a good one to remember for Christmas.

The banquet recipes...Cheshire Pork Pie.

Cheshire Pork Pie.

To make a Cheshire Pork Pie.
Take a loin of pork, skin it, cut it into steaks, season it with salt, nutmeg and pepper; make a good crust, lay a layer of pork, then a large layer of pippins pared and cored, a little sugar, enough to sweeten the pie, then another layer of pork;put in half a pint of white wine, lay some butter on the top, and close your pie. If your pie be large, it will take a pint of white wine.

I mustadmit I was very wary of tipping in a pint of wine. I was sure that my 'good crust' would not stand it, and the lot would be a soggy mess. My good crust was frozen puff pastry that I defrosted and rolled out into a sheet. Hannah Glasse has recipes for all kinds of crust, but they usually call for large amounts of lard. I preferred a buttery puff pastry that I knew would work, but just on the top.  So I covered the pie with a lid of puff pastry ( and some fancy cut out leaves) and didn't encase it, and it was all the better for that.

Cheshire Pork Pie before the crust is added.

I used pork chops and cut out the bones, seasoned them according to the recipe, then I added the thick layer of peeled apple slices ( Cox's Orange Pippin or Elstar are especially good for this) and sprinkled a bit of sugar on them. Then came another layer of pork chop slices. I didn't put in a pint of wine, but just a couple of good glugs of it so the pork chops simmer in a thin layer of white wine. I then added the butter and closed it with the puff pastry. Put it in an oven at 180- 200 degrees for about forty minutes or so, half way through I covered it loosely with tin foil to make sure the pastry didn't blacken too much and that the pork chops were thoroughly cooked.

It was well received!

The Banquet

Gentle reader, it was a delightful evening. The eighteenth century briefly resurrected. The smells and tastes of the food along with the scent of wood smoke from the fire and the autumnal twilight outside.I felt back in a time I belonged - I even got the hairstyle right and it took me about ten seconds to do. I tell you 1789 lived again that evening. Some of my friends wore hired costumes which looked terrific by candle light, and their efforts on behalf of Miss Posset were much appreciated!

The menu was altered and changed a fair bit but that was because I had overdone things as usual, as my sister informed me when I asked why I do this sort of thing to myself, she replied succinctly ' I don't know, you're a doughnut'.

The menu I had originally thought up was far too large and complicated (the stuffed cucumbers were so stuffed with ingredients and sauces that the cucumbers themselves merely served as limp, greenish holders for the complicated fricassee of meat and butter and cabbage within) and I could certainly not have done it alone. This menu was in the realms of one woman's achievement  and after having contemplated the task ahead with my morning pipe,a cup of tea and a linen apron covering my dress by the kitchen fire, I roused myself to cook and create all Saturday, The cooking was not finished on Saturday and I continued until mid- afternoon on Sunday when I was pretty sure my feet would drop off and I would burst into wracking sobs.

 As it was a scullery maid was much needed, especially when the chestnuts exploded and covered the kitchen in tiny pale granules as Miss Posset removed them from the oven.

I was going to add broccoli done the french way but to be honest when all the dishes were on the table, no one was that bothered about the vegetables. 

The menu was as follows:

On the evening of October 4th 17-

Miss Posset had prepared for her guest's delight the following

:

Onion Soup - a deliciously done up in the Georgian style
Salmon pie
Cheshire Pork Pie
Roast Chicken with Chestnuts
Orange pudding
 Naples biscuits
Stilton and Cheddar with Chutney
Plenty of Sack and Burgundy

and a Sack Posset by the fire for the guests that stayed 'til late.
 I'll write the recipe for each dish I haven't written about before in separate posts.