Food History

I have lots of test results to report. I’ll post them all over the next twenty-four hours, as time permits. Many thanks to Jane and Mik and my mother and all our respective tasters.

Suddenly, from having two dishes on our long list, we have eight. And my ‘must be tested’ list is significantly less. As a recipe comes up trumps, I can go through and dump all the potential alternate versions of it. I wish we could do this for gingerbread, but the gingerbread Mum and I tried this week had perfect seasoning and would - as two people have said - have made perfect plant mix. It has a bizarrely dark lumpy texture and it won’t hold together. My feeling about it is that it’s a fabulously fragrant failure.

Fortunately for us, three of the other dishes we made are much nicer, and a vegetarian soup is in the fridge, glowing with potential.

Rice custards are like a wonderfully superior and super luxury gourmet rice pudding. Definitely on the long list, though I’m not at all sure what to match it with to make it work on a menu.

The almond cakes have a marzipan flavour and a dense cakey texture.. Nice but not glorious to my taste, but other tasters ate and kept eating and eating, so it’s on the long list. It’s perfect for lovers of almond.

What’s amazing abut this recipe is that it has so many possible variants. Everyone who tasted it said “Um, wouldn’t it be nice like…â€? While less rich than the other small cakes and custards, it’s still very rich.

Almond custards when warm and fresh from the oven to die for (and in large portions to die from the recipe starts with 45% cream and then boils it down). Cold, its nice but no more than nice. It loses that magic it has when slightly warm. It also loses the lovely almond texture it had when it was straight from the oven: it felt like roughened cream. There’s something almost citrus about it. Very yummy. Perfect eaten with a spoon in tiny portions. What I most loved about this was the mouth feel it had when war. Even ten minutes later, that creamy almond lingered.

Jane sent me her comments three weeks ago, so I’ll post hers next and then Mik’s.

Just for the record, I’m not blogging the recipes which are identical to modern eg there is a nice asparagus recipe that’s basically steamed vegetable served with butter. I’ll include them on the full long list in March.

March. Five more weeks and all those recipes. Thank goodness for all of you who are trying these things out - it’s not a job for just one person.