A traditional relish/dinner recipe found on recipes,history.org
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this recipe is Mary Randolph’s direction to boil the potatoes with skin on to keep the starch in for frying. In many historic recipes, the technique is not spelled out as one would require in modern recipes. However, 18th century cookbook authors assumed that the reader was already a cook and familiar with a variety of processes.
A recipe from “Famous Florida Chefs’ Favorite Citrus Recipes”
published by Florida Citrus commission in 1970
A soufflé (French: [su.fle]) is a baked egg-based dish which originated in early eighteenth century France. It is made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savory main dish or sweetened as a dessert. The word soufflé is the past participle of the French verb souffler which means “to breathe” or “to puff”
The earliest mention of the soufflé is attributed to French master cook Vincent de la Chapelle, circa the early eighteenth century. The development and popularization of the soufflé is usually traced to French chef Marie-Antoine Carême in the early nineteenth century
This is one of the clippings and notes that Mrs. F. S. Gover had tucked into her copy of The Ladies’ Home Cookbook published in 1896.
Image found at “Centuries of Advice & Advertisements”
A classic breadpudding recipe fond on recipes.history.com
Bread pudding lovers will smack their lips at this recipe. Simple but hearty, it combines basic ingredients to make a dish that is rich and satisfying. The sauce is the crowning touch.
18th Century recipe
Cut a loaf of bread as thin as possible, put a layer of it on the bottom of a deep dish, strew on some slices of marrow or butter, with a handful of currant or stoned raisins; do this until the dish is full; let the currants or raisins be on top; beat four eggs, mix them with a quart of milk that has been boiled a little and become cold, a quarter of a pound of sugar, and a grated nutmeg — pour it in, and bake in a moderate oven — eat it with wine sauce.
— Randolph, Mary – “The Virginia Housewife”
A delicious dessert recipe found in “Fransk Bondekost”
(French Farmhouse Cooking) published by
Hjemmets Kokebokklubb in in 1980
A soufflé (French: [su.fle]) is a baked egg-based dish originating from the early eighteenth century France. It is made with egg yolks and whipped egg white combined with various other ingredients and served as a tasty main course or sweetened as a dessert. The word soufflé comes from the French verb souffler which means ‘to breath’ or ‘to puff’.
An eighteen centure sickbed recipe found on Revolutionary Pie
Karen Hammonds who runs Revolutionary Pie writes: Modern custard recipes usually call for vanilla, but that wasn’t used in America in colonial times. Thomas Jefferson first brought vanilla beans back from France in the 1890s, and as Richard Sax noted in Classic Home Desserts, vanilla extract wasn’t widely available until the mid-19th century. Eighteenth-century custards were flavored with wine or brandy, tea, or spices. I added nutmeg to Simmons’s recipe since it seemed so bland — but I guess that was sort of the point.
An 18th centure dessert recipe found on evolutionarypie.com
Karen Hammonds who runs https://revolutionarypie.com writes: John Campbell Loudoun’s apple pudding recipe first caught my eye because it was written in verse. A rarity today, rhyming recipes were common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when they were supposedly used by housewives to help them remember recipes. Loudoun’s poem, attributed to him by Kristie Lynn and Robert Pelton, authors of The Early American Cookbook, is much older, dating back to the 18th century.
A shellfish dinner recipe foungd on recipes.history.org
“Put a bit of butter into a stew-pan, throw in large oysters and some mushrooms, with pepper, salt, pounded cloves, parsley, and sweet herbs chopped, a dust of flour; stir these about half a minute, then put the oysters on silver skewers, a mushroom between each; roll them in crumbs of bread; broil them; put into the stew-pan a little good gravy, let it be thick and palatable; a little lemon-juice. Serve the oysters on the skewers; the sauce on the dish.”
—From “The lady’s assistant for regulating and supplying the table: being a complete system of cookery… including the fullest and choicest receipts of various kinds.”
by Charlotte Mason (1787)
A classic hot beverage recipe found at historyextra.com
In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. Here’s a recipe for the Negus served at the balls in Mansfield Park and The Watsons.
A fascinating bread recipe found on 18thC Cuisine
Carolyn Smith-Kizer who runs ‘18thC Cuisine‘ writes: It seems the way to a man’s heart has always been through his stomach. If the lady who supplies the bread and honeyed wine is also good in other wifely arts, so much the better.
Here is a plate of barley bread & goat cheese with honey, served with that infamous Pramnian wine in honor of Novel Food, an event celebrating food immortalized in prose or poetry, and a dish that Circe served Odysseus, hoping to tempt him to stay.
A 18th century dessert recipe found on revolutionarypie.com
Karen Hammonds who runs revolutionarypie.com writes: “Pudding” was once a general term for dessert (and still is in Great Britain), but there were plenty of recipes in old cookbooks for “cake,” so why wasn’t this one of them? The answer seems to be that although it was a cake, this dish was served with a sauce that was poured over the top, resulting in a slightly mushy, pudding-like dessert. The cake itself was also very moist.
As for the term “cottage,” it probably identified this dish as simple and affordable — suitable for farmers or laborers who lived in modest cottages. (It is similar in that sense to cottage pie, an early name for shepherd’s pie.)
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Authentic ships bisket recipe found on savouringthepast.net
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Jas Townsend who runs savouringthepast.net writes: This Ship’s Bisket is known by many names. Most of the time it was called just bisket, sometimes it was called hard bisket or brown bisket, sea bisket and ship’s bread. Now many today might want to call it hard tack, but hard tack is really a 19th century term that was popularized during the American civil war.
These 18th century biskets are not like today’s buttery flaky version that we serve along with sausage gravy for breakfast. These biskets were not made to be enjoyed; they were made out of necessity.
Ship’s captains faced a continual challenge of having enough food on board to feed a large crew for a long journey. Food spoilage was really his greatest concern. Fresh bread rapidly became moldy on long trips and stored flour would go rancid and bug ridden, so hard bisket was really born out of necessity.
It was a means of food preservation. If it was prepared and stored properly it would last for a year or more. In addition to preservation, the bisket form also helped in portability and in dividing the rations when it came time. Soldiers and sailors typically got one pound of bread a day and biskets were usually about four ounces so when it came time to distribute them, each sailor or soldier would get four biskets.
Biskets from London were considered to be the highest quality. They were the most resistant to mold and insects. They were really the standard by which all the other bisket maker’s aspired to, but not all biskets were the same quality.
A retro drink enjoying renewed interest found on food52.com
The Rickey is a highball drink made from gin or bourbon, half of a lime squeezed and dropped in the glass, and carbonated water. Little or no sugar is added to the rickey. Originally created with bourbon in Washington, D.C. at Shoomaker’s bar by bartender George A. Williamson in the 1880s, purportedly in collaboration with Democratic lobbyist Colonel Joe Rickey, it became a worldwide sensation when mixed with gin a decade later.
A recipe for the rickey appears as early as Daly’s Bartenders’ Encyclopedia (1903, p. 57) by Tim Daly:
GIN RICKEY. Use a sour glass. Squeeze the juice of one lime into it. 1 small lump of ice. 1 wine glass of Plymouth gin. Fill the glass with syphon seltzer, and serve with small bar spoon.
This rickey on the other hand is alcohol free:
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A classic British dessert recipe found on bbc.co.uk/food/
This modern version of the retro classic is cooked in the oven
instead of steamed.
A cake recipe inspired by a book by Philip Pullman
found on theguardian.com
Lunch, in their Bohemian household, consisted of a jug of ale, the remains of a large joint of roast beef, a fruit cake and a bag of apples, which Rosa said she had been given the night before by one of her admirers, a porter in Covent Garden market. They ate it, with the help of one large pocket knife and their fingers.
– From “The Ruby in the Smoke” by Philip Pullman
RecipeReminiscing 