More Regency recipes
I’m still more than a little unwell. I managed to teach today and yesterday and make hypocras for my class yesterday, but the effort has left me rather wiped out. (Don’t you like the way Australians and Brits say ‘rather wiped out’ when we mean completely obliterated?)
I don’t want to give you more of my grandmother’s recipes so soon after the last batch, and I don’t want to leave you with lame apologies two days running, so today I’m going to give you some entirely different recipes.
Over the weekend I’ll start handing out recipes for testing for the next dinner I’m designing (the Prohibition feast, New York 1921) so today I thought you’d like some more of the Regency dishes we didn’t use for the banquet. For as long as I remain less-than-well, I’ll give you more early nineteenth century English recipes. It’s easier for me and means you build up quite a collection for your own cooking.
ALMOND CUSTARD
Blanch and beat four ounces of almonds fine*, with a spoonful of water. Beat a pint of cream with two spoonfuls of rose-water, put them to the yolks of four eggs, and as much sugar as will make it tolerably sweet. Then add the almonds, stir it all over a slow fire till of a proper thickness, without boiling, and pour it into cups.
*almond meal
HEART CAKES
500g butter.
6 eggs
6 egg yolks
3 cups flour
3 cups sugar
4 tbsp brandy
500g currants
60g candied orange and citron**
Preheat oven to 150°.
Cream the butter. Beat the eggs and yolks well. Mix the butter, eggs, flour, sugar, brandy, and currants. Pour into two lined cake tins. Add the dried citrus; continue beating the cake until you put it in the oven.
Bake for 50 minutes.
**candied mixed peel will do, though citron and orange mixed is nicer. One tester used dried pineapple and it was fine.
ALMOND CUSTARDS
Boil 600 ml of cream with a stick of cinnamon, 2 blades of mace. Let it cool. Mix 60g of ground almonds with rosewater. Mix into the cream sweetening to taste and stir over slow heat until it is pretty thick. Bake in small cups (very rich).
food history, regency food, Jane Austen, recipes, recipe testing, Conflux, banquet
Leave a Reply