Early Spring in the Kitchen

Spring is here. It is what we have been eagerly awaiting all winter. Why am I not more inspired to cook?

The garden is full of promise, but not full of food. The cellar has a few mushy vegetables that have been sitting around for half a year. We rely on those, and what we have been industrious enough to preserve by way of dehydrating, pickling, salting, brining and smothering with sugar and booze.

Not being particularly inspired by the food at hand, I have found inspiration in other sources. I strayed away from the well worn pages of Amelia Simmons, and found some delightful variation in The Virginia Housewife, The American Frugal Housewife, and the Van Rensselaer family receipts.

Under a suggestion from Lydia Child, I added brandy to my shrewsbury cakes. I brined some pork, with instruction from Hannah Glasse. I am inspired to try the Van Rensselare "Amlet", an omelet with sweet spices.

Foodways is in a constant flux. The way that we as modern Americans eat, cook, purchase and produce our food is always changing. Likewise, the way that we look at historical foodways is always changing. What we eat changes from season to season, and from year to year as certain dishes and food movements come and go in fashion. Figuring out the foodways of a decade two hundred and twenty years past sometimes seems like too complex a task, so I focus on the simplicity and regularity of cooking. Looking into and experimenting with these other cook books is helping to put Amelia Simmons in a context of time and place. They also share many receipts, providing some creative variations to old favorites. 

For Brewing Spruce Beer

Disclaimer: Finished product contains alcohol. 

A brew of spruce essence and molasses. Afraid of how the final results might taste, I cut the molasses and added some brown sugar in its place. According to my calculations a half gallon of molasses has 1,792 grams of sugar, nutritionally, and that is how many grams of sugar went into this brew. If you would like to try substituting maple syrup or honey, let that be a guide.

This was a surprisingly easy recipe to follow. I thought that I would have to search high and low for spruce essence, but I found some right at my local brew supply.  

For Brewing Spruce Beer

Take four ounces of hops, let them boil half an hour, in one gallon of water, strain the hop water, then add sixteen gallons of warm water, two gallons of molasses, eight ounces of essence of spruce, dissolved in one quart of water, put it in a clean cask, then shake it well together, add half a pint of emptins, then let it stand and work one week, if very warm weather less time will do, when it is drawn off to bottle, add one spoonful of molasses to every bottle.

¼ batch= 5 gallons

• Water 4 Gallons
• Hops 1 Oz. whole hops (mine were assorted hops courtesy of farmer friends Katie and Ryan)
• Molasses 35 Fl Oz.
• Brown Sugar 1 ¾ Lb
• Spruce Essence 2 Fl oz
• Yeast Brewers yeast enough for 5 Gallons (I used White Labs English Ale Yeast)

1. Boil your hops in a gallon of water for ½ hour.
2. Meanwhile, fill your sterilized brew tub with 3 gallons of water, your sugars, and the spruce essence.
3. Strain the hop water into the brew tub and “shake it well together” (luckily you are only dealing with a quarter batch).
4. Test the gravity. Ensuring that the temperature is appropriate, add your yeast. Give it one big stir and cover with a lid and air lock. My initial gravity reading projected an 8% brew. Maybe I'll add a little less sugar next time.
5. Let it bubble till it stops. This should take a few days/weeks.
6. Add sugar for secondary fermentation (I don't recommend trying to get spoonfuls of molasses into individual beer bottles, that sounds like a messy plan).
7. Bottle! (I know that this is an 18^th century recipe, but please sterilize your equipment and bottles somehow!) 

Initial taste prior to fermentation is surprisingly similar to cola. I think that this might be due in part to the spruce essence, which has some modern things in it like sodium benzonate, gum acacia & alginate, whatever those things are. Amelia Simmons has us dissolve the spruce essence in water, which leads me to believe that it was something more solid, and I am also thinking much stronger. Would 18th century spruce essence be concentrated spruce sap, or concentrated boiled foliage? When you boil spruce sap, do you get something similar to pine tar? 

I'll let you know in a few weeks how this is doing, and post details about secondary fermentation and such. I feel like a wimp for substituting some of the molasses, but I was kind of worried about the taste. I would really like to try this with maple sugar next time. It would be a far from historically accurate thing to do, but it would probably taste pretty good.

Happy Brewing! 

UPDATE (May 23rd)


The spruce beer has been bottled and tasted. It took for ever to finish primary fermentation. Maybe the molasses ferments super slowly because it is harder and more complex for the yeast to eat? In any case, it actually tastes pretty decent. And decent is good enough, when we consider the options for home brewing ladies of the 18th century. 


What we have is a drinkable fermented beverage that would have been easily made by house wives all over New England at the turn of the 18th century. I can see how this drink would have become quite popular. Beer and cider are farmers drinks. For cider, you need an orchard, a mill and a press. For beer, growing, harvesting, milling and malting your barley is a complex process. However, any housewife in New England at the turn of the 18th century could find herself some good cheap molasses and a handful of hops. When drinking our spruce beer at our comfortable table, we can take pleasure in the fact that we hardly had to lift a finger for the making of our drink. While we sit with our flowing bowl, the slaves on the sugar plantations are toiling away under the hot sun to send us the thick dark molasses that we will ferment, bake into our indian puddings, and smear on our jonny cakes. It is no wonder that people like Jefferson were advocates of maple sugar.


 Coming soon: maple beer. 

  

The Past Few Months... Winter Update

In historical American cookery, all four seasons have their perks. This winter has been extremely enjoyable, as roaring hearth fires are quite pleasant in the colder months, our supplies of fresh meat are plentiful and our vegetables have kept moderately well. I have been able to cook in relative peace, not having to worry about weedy garden beds or a thousand flies in the kitchen. Naturally, winter also has its anxieties, as we have to keep a diligent eye on the food stores to ensure their quality and rationing.

Among this winters most pleasant experiences was Coggeshall Farm's Winter Frolic. While cooking alone is sometimes fun, cooking with friends & for friends is so much more rewarding. I have stayed busy and kept the kitchen warm by revisiting lots of old favorites, and experimenting with a few new receipts as well. Some of my more recent explorations include Amelia Simmons' spruce beer, molasses gingerbread cakes, and potato pudding.

The American Citron

Candied watermelon rind that is used as an ingredient in some pies.

The American Citron

Take the rine of a large watermelon not too ripe, cut into small pieces, take two pound of loaf sugar, one pint of water, put it all into a kettle, let it boil gently for four hours, then put it into pots for use,

• Watermelon Rind How big is a large 18th century watermelon? I will let you know next summer when we grow some. For now, I used half of a huge grocery store one. 
• Sugar Two Pounds (4 cups)
• Water enough to cover

1. Cut off the rind and cut into little pieces (I made mine about 1 inch squares) 
2. Put in pot, cover with water and add the sugar
3. Boil gently, adding more water as needed, for a couple of hours
4. Let the water boil off gradually, until you are left with a syrup. Use very low heat during this stage, and stir regularly.
5. Let cool slightly and pour off into your container (a glass canning jar works).
6. Clean your pot immediately, you know you won't want to deal with that later...
7. Store in a cool place

Indian Slapjack

So Good! These are creps made with corn, or "Indian" meal. They are my favorite breakfast food so far. Also good for supper and dinner. This recipe makes enough to feed the regiment.

Indian Slapjack.

One quart of milk, 1 pint of indian meal, 4 eggs, 4 spoons flour, little salt, beat together, baked on griddles, or fry in a dry pan, or baked in a pan which has been rub'd with suet, lard or butter. 

• Milk 4 cups
• White (flint) corn meal 2 cups
• Eggs 4 "large" or 3 "super jumbo"
• Flour 1/2 cup
• Salt
• Butter

1. Soak the corn in the milk for a few minutes, add the eggs flour and salt. 
2. Heat up your pan and melt a spoon of butter in it. Pour in your batter, enough to just about fill the pan. Flip. Eat. Repeat. 

Observations:

When first experimenting with these, I tried to cook them all the different ways she suggests. They come out the best when you cook them on the griddle with lots of butter. It gets a little confusing when you don't quite know the difference between a griddle and a pan, or what she means by frying or baking. Am I supposed to put the griddle in the oven? How do you fry something without fat? I am thinking that a pan has sides, where a griddle does not. Frying is on the hearth, where baking is on the oven. 

Minced Pie of Beef

Wonderfully Traditional. This is what you do with your leftover boiled dinner. Great for making in the fall and eating all winter. Amelia's recipe will make about eight pies. Mine will make about 2.

Four Pound boild beef, chopped fine; and salted; six pound of raw apple chopped also, one pound beef suet, one quart of Wine or rich sweet cyder, one ounce mace, and cinnamon, a nutmeg, two pounds raisins, bake in paste No. 3, three fourths of an hour. 

•  Boiled Beef (naval beef or corned beef) 1 Pound
•  Apples (cored and lightly peeled) 1 1/2 pounds
• Lard (Yum!) 1/4 pound
• Fresh Cider (or wine) 1/2 pint or 1/4 cup
• Raisins 1/2 pound
• Mace
• Cinnamon
• Nutmef 
• Paste No. 3

1.  Chop your beef and apples and put them in a large bowl
2. Add the remaining ingredients 
3. Assemble in crust
4. Bake 45 Min at 375 

Please tell me where to get some good Newfoundland naval beef (the kind that comes bone in, brined, in a big plastic bucket). I tried to take some on the airplane but they did not like that. Corned beef is just not the same!

Pompkin Pie No. 1

Delicious! This pumpkin pie is made with a top crust, and it has the consistency of pumpkin quiche.

Pompkin. 

No. 1. One quart stewed and strained, 3 pints cream, 9 beaten eggs, sugar, mace, nutmeg and ginger, laid into paste No. 7 or 3, and with a dough spur, cross and chequer it, and bake in dishes three quarters of an hour. 

To make one pie

• Stewed Pumpkin: 1 pint (2 cups)
• Cream or half and half: 1 pint (2 cups)
• Eggs: 4 beaten
• Sugar: 1/4 pint (1/2 cup)
• Ground Mace
• Ground Nutmeg
• Powdered Ginger 
• Paste No. 3  

1. Peel and cut up your pumpkin, then put the pieces in a pot with just enough water to keep it from scorching. The pumpkin will lend a lot of its own liquid. The longer you cook it, the sweeter it will be. Cook it until the liquid is evaporated. 
2. Take the pumpkin off the heat and mash it up. Add the cream and wait for it to cool. While you are waiting, make the crust.
3. Add the beaten eggs, sugar and spice to taste. 
4. Put the bottom crust and the filling in the pie plate. Carefully add the top crust and pinch up the edges to make a mote-like barrier. Take a good knife and make a few parallel lines in the top crust. It will feel like a water bed. Now make perpendicular marks, but don't let them intersect. 
5. Bake for 45 Min in a hot oven. Let it set up while cooling.