Food History

Firstly and most urgently, we’ve only got a month left for the initial tests. From 1 March if it hasn’t been tested and found delicious it hasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell of seeing the final menu. If it has been tested and found abysmal, it also hasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell, but at least we get to enjoy wondering how our ancestors ate such things.

So far the worst recipe appears to be gingerbread. Any gingerbread. I’m still waiting for the unbaked results and for three other tests, so it may be that there will be a redemptive gingerbread. Right now, I am a tad doubtful. It’s a shame. It looked and tasted like potting mix, but the spices were perfect :).

The Royal Cake was as much of a success as the gingerbread was a tragic failure. We wanted to love the gingerbread and had to throw it out. We wanted to find the Royal Cake dull (because the recipe looked very much like a pound cake) and we ended up proudly serving it to guests and then mourning its demise. It lasted well, and everyone who tasted it had a slice, then another slice and then maybe a third. It was fragrant with mace and currants and looked perfectly even and professional, despite having been made on a crotchetty hot day.

The salad dressing ought to have been called a mustard cream. Thicker than mayonnnaise, and far more yellow. A hint of heat and a little sharpness and perfect on greens. It’s the excuse I needed for getting a green salad on the table for the banquet, and I found the same style dressing in two (possibly three) cookbooks, so this is one of the rare dishes I don’t have to check alternates.

The really handy thing about this dressing is that it sits at the bottom of the dish until people want to eat, so clever diners who knew how rich the food was going to be could skip the dressing or have only a very little bit of it. I didn’t do that for dinner tonight. I had a big, big bowl of salad and entirely enjoyed every bite. The dressing goes particularly well with hard boiled eggs, and takes about three minutes to make (if you’ve already boiled your eggs).

And that’s an end of the recipes I am testing in Melbourne with my mother. Lots of Melbourne friends now have recipes and I will report on their results as I get them.

I need to find more victims. Um. Let me rephrase. Enthusiastic cooks willing to help try these old recipes are still very welcome to join. I will be in Canberra next week and can email recipes to anyone not local. I still have 60 unassigned recipes just begging to be tested. And we have till the 1 March for the tests.

My mind is brimming with cooking statistics. I have read 4000 pages of cookbooks, from 1800-1830. I have 250+ useful recipes. Now it’s just a matter of diminishing the list into “brilliant or essential”, “useful fallback” or “don’t even think of it.” In March I will return to my table layouts and move to the next stage. Mapping food - yum.

Watch this space for incoming test results. Everything from transparent pudding to lemon puffs.