Historical Food Fortnightly 2016, Challenge No. 15: A Feast for the Senses

The Challenge:
15. Smell, Sight, Sound, Touch (July 15 - July 28) For this challenge, create a feast for the senses. Cook a dish that is a treat for more than just the tastebuds, whether it is scent, texture, visual appeal, or sound.

Intro
Into
Bursting juicy fruit flavor. Sweet vanilla. Spicy nutmeg. Moist cake. Refreshing frozen cream meets a luscious light cake. In the heat wave we've been having, ice cream cake is just the feast our senses demand.

The Recipe:
From: The Lady's Receipt Book by Eliza Leslie, 1847, page. 206
ICE-CREAM CAKES.--Stir together, till very light, a quarter of a pound of powdered sugar and a quarter of a pound of fresh butter. Beat six eggs very light, and stir into them half a pint of rich milk. Add, gradually, the eggs and milk to the butter and sugar, alternately with a half pound of sifted flour. Add a glass of sweet wine, and some grated nutmeg. When all the ingredients are mixed, stir the batter very hard. Then put it into small, deep pans, or cups, that have been well-buttered, filling them about two-thirds with the batter. Set them, immediately, into a brisk oven, and bake them brown. When done, remove them from the cups, and place them, to cool, on an inverted sieve. When quite cold, make a slit or incision in the side of each cake. If very light, and properly baked, they will be hollow in the middle. Fill up this cavity with ice-cream, carefully put in with a spoon, and then close the slit, with your fingers, to prevent the cream running out. Spread them on a large dish. Either send them to table immediately, before the ice-cream melts, or keep them on ice till wanted.

The Date/Year and Region: 
Early to middle 19th century, mid Atlantic United States

How Did You Make It:
1/4 pound sugar (1/2 cup)
1/4 pound butter (1/2 cup)

6 eggs
1/2 pint milk (1 cup)

add eggs/milk to butter/sugar
1/2 pound of flour (2 cups)

glass of sweet wine (assume wine glass= 1/4 cup)
grated nutmeg

brisk oven until brown ( 425* for 20 minutes)
remove and cool

make a slit in the cake

spoon a scoop of ice cream into the slit and pinch closed

Serve immediately.

Time to Complete: 
About 60 minutes

Total Cost: 
Figure $4.00 for the ice cream and the rest were pantry staples.

How Successful Was It: 
It was great, a very tasty treat. The promised hallows weren't so hallow, so it might have been better split like a shortcake.

How Accurate Was It: 
I'd say it comes close to accurate, with modern ice cream.

Historical Food Fortnightly 2016, Challenge No. 14: Waste Not, Want Not

The Challenge:
14. Waste Not, Want Not (July 1 - July 14) Good housekeeping in any historic era included making the most of your food items. Pick a recipe that involves avoiding waste (maybe reusing leftovers, or utilizing things commonly thrown out) and show us how historically-green you can be!

Intro
If the fellow foodies will remember, I've set an additional challenge to interpret dishes that are listed as served at the 80th Anniversary Dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. Since a restaurant catered dinner would not include left-overs, this challenge was a challenge. Enter Beef a la Jardiniere.

The a la jardiniere designation means in the manner of the gardener, in short, whatever seasonal vegetables come to hand rather than a specific set. There is no hoping for a good crop of a specific vegetable, one can take whatever is at peak. Since the vegetables are presented in small piles, one can use oddly shaped ones in addition to the visually perfect.
As far as a restaurant dish goes, this gives little waste and uses most. Many recipes ...a la jardiniere include odd parts of meat too, like tail and cheek. The menu said beef, so I stuck with beef.

The Recipe:
From: The Modern Cook... by Charles Elme Francatelli, 1846
554. Braized Fillet Of Beef, a la Jardiniere.
Braize a larded fillet of beef according to the foregoing instructions, and when done, glaze and place it on its dish: garnish it round with alternate groups of turned carrots and turnips, to which give the shape of olives, round balls, diamonds, small half-moons, or any other suitable fancy shape—all which must previously be boiled in broth, with a grain of salt, a little sugar, and a small piece of butter; intermixed with these, place also some groups of green-peas, French-beans cut in diamonds, asparagus-heads, and buds of cauliflower. Sauce the fillet of beef round with bright Espagnole sauce, mixed with some of the essence in which the fillet has been braized (previously clarified and reduced for this purpose), glaze the fillet and send to table.


The Date/Year and Region: 
Year

How Did You Make It:
Well, first I made a glaze with which the beef would be braised.

Then making the glazed beef.

Next it's time to prepare the vegetable garnish.

And finally garnish the platter. Presentation is everything! :-)

Time to Complete: 
About an hour, dependent on the size of meat fillets.

Total Cost: 
$20.00+

How Successful Was It: 
It was very well received. I'd choose a different spice mixture for the broth I boiled the turnips and carrots in, but otherwise it was terrific. (...and I really must find that larding tool.)

How Accurate Was It: 
It was as close as I could follow with modern cooking methods.

Historical Food Fortnightly 2016, Challenge No. 10: Breakfast Foods

The Challenge:
10. Breakfast Foods (May 6 - May 19) It’s simple - make a breakfast dish. Get creative, but make sure to provide your documentation for its place at the breakfast table!

Intro
If the fellow foodies will remember, I've set an additional challenge to interpret dishes that are listed as served at the 80th Anniversary Dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. While this dinner menu isn't for breakfast, a few items would be just as welcome to start the day as to end it on a high note.
In Eliza Leslie's The Lady's Receipt Book we read of shad suggested in several breakfast menus.
Delmonico's served grilled shad with a white wine sauce for the fish course at our Anniversary Dinner. So, this challenge will present two preparations of grilled white bass, one to start the day and one to end it.
American Shad is on the protected list and restoration of the Virginia shad populations is on-going. Read more about it here.  The Cook's Thesaurus suggests freshwater bass is a nice substitute.


The Recipe:
From: Directions For Cookery by Eliza Leslie, 1840
To Broil Shad

Split and wash the shad, and afterwards dry it in a cloth. Season it with salt and pepper. Have ready a bed of clear bright coals. Grease your gridiron well, and as soon as it is hot lay the shad upon it, and broil it for about a quarter of an hour or more, according to the thickness. Butter it well, and send it to table. You may serve with it melted butter in a sauce-boat.
Or you may cut it into three pieces and broil it without splitting. It will then, of course, require a longer time. If done in this manner, send it to table with melted butter poured over it.

And:

Wine Sauce
Have ready some rich thick melted or drawn butter, and the moment you take it from the fire, stir in two large glasses of white wine, two table-spoonfuls of powdered white sugar, and powdered nutmeg. Serve it up with plum pudding, or any sort of boiled pudding that is made of a batter.

The Date/Year and Region: 
Early to middle 19th century, Mid Atlantic United States

How Did You Make It:
Grease the pan well and lay the fish skin up.
Broil 10 minutes.

Remove skin and bones.
Prepare butter sauce and white wine sauce.

Time to Complete: 
20 minutes, dependent on the size of your fish and the fillet.

Total Cost: 
$8.00 for the fish

How Successful Was It: 
It was incredibly tasty and hey, I got to make fresh fish... with the bones and everything. :-p

How Accurate Was It: 
I think the wine sauce was not meant for fish, so it was sweet and better suited to the puddings suggested. I'll need to keep looking for a wine sauce meant for fish from this era.
At best, call it an inspiration.

Historical Food Fortnightly 2016, Challenge No. 12: In a Jam.. or Jelly, or Pickle

The Challenge:
12. In A Jam...or Jelly, or Pickle (June 3 - June 16) In a world before refrigeration, preserving food was an important task. For this challenge, make your favorite preserved food.

Intro
If the fellow foodies will remember, I've set an additional challenge to interpret dishes that are listed as served at the 80th Anniversary Dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
No Sucre course of the 19th century would be complete without a jelly. Delmonico's chose a "Gelee Madere" or Madeira Jelly for this important dish. This challenge seemed a good opportunity to give one a try.


The Recipe:
From: Directions for Cookery, In It's Various Branches by Eliza Leslie, 1840
Pink Champagne Jelly
 --Beat half the white of an egg to a stiff froth, and then stir it hard into three wine-glasses of filtered water. Put twelve ounces of the best double-refined loaf-sugar (powdered fine and sifted) into a skillet lined with porcelain. Pour on it the white of egg and water, and stir it till dissolved. Then add twelve grains of cochineal powder. Set it over a moderate fire, and boil it and skim it till the scum ceases to rise. Then strain it through a very fine sieve. Have ready an ounce and a half of isinglass that has been boiled in a little water till quite dissolved. Strain it, and while the boiled sugar is lukewarm mix it with the isinglass, adding a pint of pink champagne and the juice of a large lemon. Run it through a linen bag into a mould. When it has congealed so as to be quite firm, wrap a wet cloth round the outside of the mould, and turn out the jelly into a glass dish; or serve it broken up, in jelly glasses, or glass cups.
Jelly may be made in a similar manner of Madeira, marasquin, or noyau.

The Date/Year and Region: 
Early to middle 19th century, mid Atlantic United States

How Did You Make It:
Beat egg white to stiff froth
3 wineglasses (3/4 cup) of filtered water
12 oz (1.7 cups) loaf sugar
 in a pan

Boil it til the scum stops rising

cool until lukewarm

Add isinglass, pint of madeira, juice of lemon (3 tablespoons bottled juice)

Strain into a mould

Leave to set until firm

Time to Complete: 
15 minutes to prepare, overnight to firm up.

Total Cost: 
About $20.00

How Successful Was It: 
Well... it was tasty, really tasty. We were drunk on alcohol fumes for hours.
Were I to do such again I would use smaller molds and be more careful about the hot and cold chemistry of the gel agent.

How Accurate Was It: 
I think it comes close and was certainly in the spirit of the recipe.