about 2 kg (4 lb) Jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed
olive oil
butter
salt, pepper
1 large or 2 small cloves garlic
small bunch parsley
The very best way of cooking artichokes: it emphasizes their exquisite flavour and the golden-brown crust holds their tenderness in shape so that there is no squash of texture to spoil the dish. Serve them on their own in small dishes, or as a vegetable with veal, lamb, chicken, beef, so long as you can leave the meat to keep warm while you spend time just before the meal attending to their cooking only. The method is a combination of frying and steaming: once you grow used to it, there is no need to concentrate quite so hard. It is a superb way of cooking root vegetables of quality – new potatoes, for instance, and very young turnips – as it concentrates the flavour. For this reason it is no good for older roots; they would taste too strong for pleasure and need blanching before being finished in an open pan in butter.
Pick out the smoothest, least knobbly artichokes you can find. Cut off any oddities, then peel them into fairly even pieces the size of Queen olives; the larger artichokes can be cut to this kind of shape and then halved. (Keep peelings and cuttings to flavour stock for soups or stews.) Aim to end up with at least 1½ kg (3 lb) of prepared pieces. Put them into acidulated water as you go to prevent discoloration.
As the artichokes need to be cooked in a single layer, you may need to use a couple of pans. Heat them over a moderate flame, putting in enough oil to cover the bases comfortably. Put 1 heaped tablespoon of butter into each pan, or 2 tablespoons if you are using one large pan. Drain and dry the artichokes and put them into the sizzling fat. Cover them for the first 10 minutes, but not too tightly, so that they partly fry and partly steam. Turn them over after 5 minutes, and keep the heat steady so that the fat does not burn although the artichokes begin to turn a nice golden-brown. Remove the covers from the pans, and give the artichokes a further 10 minutes, turning them over from time to time to colour evenly. Remember that they are far more tender than, for instance, new potatoes, and may collapse on you rather suddenly. The idea is to keep the softness inside the skins; you can always remove them gradually from the pans.
Put the artichokes into small individual pots, or round the meat, sprinkling them with salt and pepper. Have ready the garlic and parsley chopped finely together and scatter this evenly over the top. Serve straightaway if possible, though the artichokes can be kept warm for a while, so long as the oven is not too hot, which is helpful if they are being served with the main course. [Vegetable Book]
Cabbages have been eaten in this country since the time of the Celts and Romans. These were probably of the loose-headed, green-leaved type. Then round about the 1570s we seem to have had the first Savoys – not from the Savoie but from Holland and as Evelyn pointed out, they were ‘not so rank but agreeable to most palates’. The name of Savoy cabbage was introduced into the English language by Henry Lyte in his Niewe Herball of 1578. This was not an original work, but a translation of Dodoens’ Cruydeboeck, and the name was a direct translation of the Dutch Savoyekool (kool as in coleslaw, etc.). Sir Anthony Ashley, of Wimborn St Giles in Dorset, is recorded as planting in England the first cabbages from Holland, which may have been Savoys or perhaps the white, smooth, hard-packed cabbage that we still call Dutch cabbage today.
Cabbage as a food has problems. It is easy to grow, a useful source of greenery for much of the year. Yet as a vegetable it has original sin, and needs improvement. It can smell foul in the pot, linger through the house with pertinacity, and ruin a meal with its wet flab. Cabbage also has a nasty history of being good for you. Read Pliny, if you do not believe me.
How the Celtic inhabitants of Europe regarded the virtues of the cabbage is not known. Wild cabbage is native to the sea coasts of northern France and Great Britain, and they ate that before the Romans arrived. Wild cabbage is very nasty indeed; the rest of the diet must have been stodgy and dull for the Celts to have tolerated it. In The Englishman’s Flora, Geoffrey Grigson remarks that wild cabbage used to be sold in Dover market, and that it needed several washings and two boilings before it could be eaten. The garden varieties of cabbage brought in by Roman settlers can only have seemed an improvement, as being somewhat less bitter than the wild sea cabbage and larger-leaved. Whether they regarded it as medicine or food, one cannot know.
As Ireland settled into farming, cabbage asserted itself and became an even more important part of people’s diet than elsewhere in Europe. So much so that it came to have a share in celebrations at Hallowe’en, the great festival of the year’s end, in the form of colcannon (page 62).
Another favourite Hallowe’en dish was champ, a splendid buttery version of mashed potatoes mixed with greenery including cabbage. On the Isle of Man at Hallowe’en mummers would go round and bang on doors with cabbages and turnips stuck on the end of sticks.
Then they sang and sang until silence was bought by the householder, with a scone or a potato.
Cabbage, in a number of varieties, is with us the year round. Usually firm solidity is the thing to look out for, although young cabbages such as ‘spring greens’ and some early Primo cabbages are much looser. I am a recent convert to the tight round cabbages, and prefer to buy them still in their dark green outer leaves. Dutch white cabbage is always sold trimmed though it seems to taste all right so long as it is not overcooked. Nonetheless if there is any choice in the matter, go straight for the mild and crisp Savoy, with its dark wrinkled outer leaves that look as if they were fresh from some porcelain factory. It is the ideal cabbage for raw salads – always excepting the delicious Chinese leaf – on account of its mild flavour and crunchy texture.
Because of the compact form, cabbage should be sliced before it is rinsed. First cut away the outer leaves and the stalk; discard the withered stringy parts, and slice the rest of this hard part rather thinly. Then slice the inner heart across. Rinse the two lots of cabbage separately and briefly.
If you intend to stuff a cabbage whole, washing it properly is impossible. Rinse the outside as best you can in a bowl of salted water and hope that insects and grubs have found it as difficult as you have to get at the centre. A really firm, unblemished exterior usually denotes a wholesome interior. The problem about stuffing individual cabbage leaves is to get them away from the cabbage without tearing their tight roundness. You can blanch the whole thing, as you do for stuffed cabbage, and then remove the leaves – but this means that you have to use up the inside of the cabbage the same day. It is more convenient to cut away as many leaves as you require, plus a few extra to allow for damage, and blanch them for 3 minutes on their own; they should be pliable enough to roll without breaking, but not completely cooked. In cutting away the leaves, it helps if you first cut the stalk right out and ease the leaves from the base end.
There are a good number of exceptions to the brief cooking rule, but one has to emphasize it in a book for this country as most of us have such appalling memories of overcooked cabbage in childhood. In France and Germany, long-cooked cabbage dishes are much approved. I suppose that perdrix aux choux could be described as the best of all cabbage recipes: in it the cabbage is given time to absorb the meaty juices of the partridge. Many peasant dishes depend on the lengthy cooking of cabbage. Soup-stews such as potée and garbure require the slow blending of all the vegetables together for the right flavour; nonetheless you may prefer to keep back half the cabbage and put it into the pot at the end of cooking time, so that the soup may also benefit from its crispness. The Christmas cabbage from Schleswig, and a similar dish from the French Marais, are thick purées of cabbage that must first be thoroughly cooked, then squeezed of all juices: this essence or soul of cabbage is finally enriched with butter or cream and is very good. [Vegetable Book]
1 bowlful cooked potatoes
1 bowlful lightly cooked cabbage
1 large onion
dripping, lard or butter
salt, pepper
In Ireland, colcannon was a favourite dish for fast-day celebrations, when meat could not be eaten. At Hallowe’en, the eve of All Saints’ Day, a wedding ring would be pushed into the crusty mass; whoever found it would be married within the twelvemonth. It is best to make it from freshly cooked vegetables, best of all from cabbage and potatoes straight from the garden.
Push the potatoes through a mouli-légumes, sieve or ricer. Chop the cabbage. Mix the two together thoroughly. Cook the onion in the fat in a frying pan – a non-stick one, if possible. When it is soft and lightly browned, press in the potato and cabbage to form an even layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. When it is nicely coloured underneath and crusted, cut into pieces – with a wooden spatula if you’re using a non-stick pan – and turn them over to form a fresh layer. Repeat until you have a green and white marbled cake, speckled with crisp brown bits. (At this stage the wedding ring was pushed into the colcannon.)
Turn it on to a heated dish to serve, with lightly fried slices of beef if you like. We sometimes have it with sausages. Or have it on its own with a bit of butter.
Note: Brussels sprouts and other forms of cabbage can also be used. [Vegetable Book]
Slice half a large cucumber thinly. Stew it in a heavy pan with a good tablespoon of butter and about 60 g (2 oz) cooked spinach, or twice that amount of raw spinach. When cooked, drain and purée in the blender. Add to about 300 ml (½ pt) béchamel or velouté sauce, and finish with a spoonful or two of double cream. Reheat gently.
Serve with hot salmon, salmon trout, chicken and veal. It is also good with fat fish such as herring and mackerel, which have been stuffed and baked in a hot oven.
The idea of the spinach is mainly to add colour, but the flavour is pleasant too. It can be omitted, and you could in that case complete the sauce with some chopped cucumber, lightly cooked in the sauce before you add the cream. [Vegetable Book]
Large leeks can be useful for stuffing and for making soup. On the whole – I risk north-eastern wrath in saying so – medium or small leeks have a much better texture and taste. A thing to watch is leeks at the end of the season in March and April; they may look fine, but the centres can be a hard yellow stalk. Buy them ready lopped if you can, as this exposes the centre core and you can see and feel what you are buying. The rest of the winter, leeks with earth, roots and a bit of reality to them are likely to be fresher than the trimmed, washed, neat cylinders in a plastic pack. Of course this means waste and extra cleaning, but it is worth while. You will notice that most recipes are for prepared leeks, so always buy more than you think you will need.
When you start cleaning, do not slice the top green leaves off recklessly with one stroke. Slit round the outside layer beneath the first green leaf, and you will often find that the white part goes up inside further than you had thought. By judicious cutting away of the layers, you waste less. When the leeks are free of the coarse green part – it can be used in soups and stews – chop off the roots. Then stand the leeks, root end up, in a large jug of water to soak for a while, so that the grit has a chance to float out. If any remains as a dark shadow under the white skin, make small slits so that it can be rinsed away without spoiling the shape of the leek.
If the recipe demands sliced leeks, this soaking can be dispensed with. Just trim and rinse them, then cut them into slices and give them another rinse in a colander. You can soon see any earth remaining, and separate the layers to release it.
Avoid overcooking. Leeks can still be slightly resistant in the middle, but only slightly. Watch them. [Vegetable Book]
Scrub, top and tail the parsnips – 1 medium-sized parsnip per person – and cook them in boiling salted water until just tender. Run them under the cold tap, and strip off the skins. Cut across into slices, about 1 cm (½ inch) thick if you like them soft in the middle, thinner if you like them crisp all through, then roll the slices in seasoned flour and cook them in butter until they are golden-brown. If you can regulate your burners to a steady moderate temperature, you can finish the parsnips in butter straight from the packet; if you feel uncertain, clarify the butter first. You should end up with nice clean fat in the pan and the parsnips a golden-brown. No charring. The flour will form a light delicious coating. Use two pans, so that the cooked parsnips do not have to wait around a long time; this is also convenient if you are making both thick and thin slices. If they do have to be kept warm in the oven, line the dish with kitchen paper to absorb surplus butter.
Have ready two bowls, one with melted butter in it, the other with 1 heaped tablespoon of sugar mixed with 1 heaped teaspoon of cinnamon. Serve these with the parsnips for those who like the extra flavouring.
I find that a watercress salad, or watercress sandwiches, goes well after this dish. Pepper-tasting greenery refreshes your appetite, after the sweet spice and buttery softness. If you intend to serve the parsnips with beef or ham, make a watercress and chicory salad, with a few raw sliced mushrooms, to eat afterwards.
Note: you can also sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon over the parsnips towards the end of cooking time. [Vegetable Book]
‘Now it is autumn and the falling fruit’ … The opening words of one of D. H. Lawrence’s great poems runs through my mind continually as the countryside turns to shades of gold and tawniness. ‘The apples falling like great drops of dew’… I reflect that in spite of concrete and six-lane highways, we all feel that we have a particular stake in autumn. Pointless, if you think about it rationally, since our shops and supermarkets are bulging all year round with the harvests of other countries. Evidently our emotions have not yet caught up with our condition of life. Perhaps they never will, since this feeling for harvest which hits us every year just refuses to go away.
In France, and no doubt here, since our ways have been so closely linked, under forest law people had the right to gather, from wild and ungrafted trees, blackberries, quinces, crab apples, plums, walnuts, chestnuts, sorb apples (Sorbus domestica) and the tiny fruit of the alisier (S. torminalis – distilled in Alsace to make the most delicious almond-flavoured spirit). The family parties out picking blackberries in every untamed lane at this time of year are the last observers of these older and more serious rituals of the autumn – rituals that provided grace notes to a diet that was scanty and stodgy.
Our joy in fruitfulness is muted in part by rain and the vagaries of climate. Not that we do too badly in this country these days. The idea of harvest-home supper invades the soul of even the dullest greengrocer. Suddenly the shelves display a daring pumpkin or two, an extra variety of apples, perhaps from local trees, a tray of filberts from Kent in their frilled jackets, a box of wet walnuts, all giving a feeling of plenty and celebration. Churches smell of an unaccustomed ripeness that mutes the dusty odour of old hassocks; dahlias and bright fruit appear on the sills of lancet windows and apples balance precariously on the font.
Oddly enough, the parish harvest service celebrated in church is a modern institution – 130 years old in 1987, to be precise. Of course, there have been harvest feasts for centuries, since the first crops were brought home in the Middle East thousands of years ago. Experience of today’s vendange feasts, held when all the grapes are picked and the juice flows from the presses, gives me an idea of what those occasions must have been like before gentrification tamed them into a single parish celebration.
Splendidly licentious and boozy affairs, with dancing, singing, dirty jokes and the occasional fight; such things were tolerated until the nineteenth century laid its civilizing hand on us all. It must have been this spectacle of unbridled revelry that led Archdeacon Denison of East Brent in Somerset, to channel the individual farm feasts into a single parish rejoicing. The idea soon caught on. Hymns were written – We plough the fields and scatter, The sower went forth sowing, Come, ye thankful people, come – to tunes that have everyone bellowing cheerily.
If you come to think of it, Somerset was just the right fruitful place for the first harvest festival. There would be figs from a sheltered tree in a south-facing corner; muscat grapes from the vicarage or manor house conservatory; peaches from the kitchen garden wall; blackberries for everyone; and many different apples and pears – the choice then was much wider than it is now.
For a while harvest-home suppers for the farm workers and harvest festival existed side by side, though people could see it might not last. Some did not approve of the church’s intervention. They thought it weakened the bond of hospitality that made the labourer think, once a year, that his boss was tolerable after all. In 1864 it was written that ‘the modern harvest festival as a parochial thanksgiving for the bounties of Providence is an excellent institution, but it should not be considered as a substitute’.
Over a hundred years on, however, harvest festivals are still celebrated in churches throughout the land, while riotous farmhouse feasts are no more. What has completed Archdeacon Denison’s success is the mechanization of farming over the past century. It would be a feeble party these days: most farmers would have difficulty in assembling more than twenty-five people, including wives and children. [Taste]
‘This being the commonest wild fruit in England is spoken of proverbially as the type of that which is plentiful and little prized.’
That is how the great Oxford Dictionary rounds off its definition of blackberry. It is unfair, with a touch of class consciousness, as if in manor houses grapes from the hothouse were to be expected and not blackberries from the back lane. Large and very black and shiny and very juicy, blackberries in a good season are as delicious as any of the related soft fruit we cultivate. After all, a basketful costs nothing except the pleasure of blackberrying; and there they are, ready to be eaten with sugar and cream by themselves, ready to add to breakfast muesli, ready to combine with apples, ready for tarts and pastries, for jam, jelly. And ready for some jeu d’esprit like pheasant and bramble or a sauce with duck.
Blackberries are world-wide, but it is in the north that they are most plentiful, where there are not so many juicy sweet wild fruits. So for thousands and thousands of summers, blackberrying must have been going on. And indeed, when a neolithic burial was excavated at the beginning of the 20th century on the Essex coast, there was about a pint of seeds found in the area of the stomach – with blackberry seeds predominating.
What can be done with blackberries can be done with the best of their wild relatives, dewberries, the fruit of Rubus caesius, which are blue-grey instead of black. The flavour of dewberries is delicious and individual; it is more delicate than blackberry flavour. But dewberry brambles are not so common, and it is often disappointing that each berry is made up of only a few drupelets.
This is something most people know all about, from their earliest years. But there are one or two points that are perhaps not so commonly thought of. When picking blackberries, make a point of picking some red ones as well. They are not ripe, of course, but they fortify the flavour and help the set if you make jelly.
When making blackberry jelly, you will get a better set by adding a proportion of apple; sour windfalls are best, up to equal weight with the fruit. I find a proportion of 2 parts blackberries with 1 part apple gives a good result. Strain off the liquid if you want to make a clear jewel-like jelly in an abundant year. Strain off the liquid and push through as much of the pulp as you feel inclined for a thicker but equally delicious jelly in a meagre year.
Blackberry jelly can be used in apple pies in place of liquid and sugar; it makes a pleasant surprise in February. In one family I know, February is a sort of carnival month: the precious store cupboard, with all its jars that have been carefully guarded, can be raided without thought of tomorrow. This way the shelves are clear for the new season. [Fruit Book]
I used to think – see Good Things – that the word fool came from the French fouler, to crush. It seemed logical, as to make a good gooseberry fool the berries should be crushed rather than sieved. But I was wrong. It is a word that goes with trifle and whim-wham (trifle without the custard) – names of delightful nonsensical bits of folly, jeux d’esprit outside the serious range of cookery repertoire. The kind of thing that women are said to favour, but that men eat more of.
In Kettner’s Book of the Table (1877), the author, E. S. Dallas, quotes a passage from an old recipe book which connects the pudding with Northamptonshire:
‘The good people of Northamptonshire maintain that all our best London cooks, in making gooseberry fool, are themselves little better than fools. There is no way, they insist, equal to their own, which is as follows: After topping and tailing – that is, taking off clean the two ends of the gooseberries – scald them sufficiently with a very little water till all the fruit breaks. Too much water will spoil them. The water must not be thrown away, being so rich with the finest part of the fruit, that if left to stand till cold it will turn to jelly. When the gooseberries are cold, mash them all together. Passing them through a sieve or colander spoils them. The fine natural flavour which resides in the skin no art can replace. The skins must therefore remain unseparated in the general mash. Sweeten with fine powdered sugar, but add no nutmeg or other spice. Mix in at the last moment some rich cream, and it is ready. The young folks of Northamptonshire, after eating as much as they possibly can of this gooseberry fool, are said frequently to roll down a hill and begin eating again.’
In spite of E. S. Dallas’s strictures, I do sometimes add a little muscat de Frontignan to the gooseberry mash, or cook a couple of elderflower heads with the gooseberries. [Fruit Book]
Extremely difficult. Pears should be picked firm and then ripened in the house. A ripe pear gives very slightly round the stem, but should be in no way squashy. All this provides problems for the shopkeeper and supplier. The result is that most people have never eaten a decent pear in their lives. And anyone who read the pear introduction in my Fruit Book may well be wondering what on earth the fuss was about when the Doyenné du Comice was first produced.
When commerce was less efficient, I suspect that many more people grew pears. My husband remembers being taken by his mother to the Midlands before the First World War, and visiting house after house where pears were produced from back garden trees, as a special treat. They were sampled and compared as knowledgeably and thoughtfully as wine at a tasting.
Perhaps we shall return to this pleasant occupation of pear growing, now that family trees are on sale. In one bush, three varieties are grafted and the size makes them suitable for the smallest garden. Then at least you may be able to experience perfection. Doyenné du Comice is bound to be one of the three varieties (Williams’ Bon Chrétien and Conference the other two). ‘The tradition is to pick them on or soon after 1 November and then watch them as they come to perfection (the old legend that towards the end it may be necessary to get up at 3 a.m. to find absolute perfection is not a great exaggeration)’ according to R. H. L. Gunyon, who wrote and sent me much information on pears.
Meanwhile, as your family tree grows, you will have to continue with shop supplies. Buy pears firm, and keep them in the kitchen until they are ripe. Eat them as soon as possible, storing them if you must in the bottom of the refrigerator wrapped in newspaper as protection.
One thing I learnt in Italy, in Florence, was that fine pears should be set off by fine cheese. That was thirty years ago. Now the idea has spread. French pear salads are dressed with Roquefort vinaigrette, and at Locket’s in Westminster, they serve a pear and Stilton savoury.
I read the other day that the pear in cooking always needs help from another fruit, even if it is only lemon juice to prevent its flesh discolouring as it is peeled and quartered, or lemon peel in the poaching syrup. On reflection, I suppose it is true – think of pears with sauce Melba or simmered in a white wine syrup, finished with orange juice, or mixed with blackcurrants or the red juice of quinces. A pear sorbet requires lemon sharpness, even if the finishing touch is a dosage of Williams’ pear eau de vie. [Fruit Book]
1 kg (2 lb) stoned plums or damsons or greengages
250 g (8 oz) sliced apple
250 g (8 oz) sliced onion
125 g (4 oz) raisins
125 g (4 oz) coarsely shredded carrot
250 g (8 oz) demerara sugar
1 level tablespoon salt
1 level teaspoon ground cloves
1 level teaspoon ground ginger
1 level teaspoon ground allspice
1 small red dried chilli
600 ml (1 pt) white wine vinegar
A good spicy traditional recipe, which is much improved by using wine vinegar rather than the usual malt. The fruit should be prepared before weighing.
Mix the fruit, onion, raisins, carrot and sugar together in a basin (use your hands). Put salt and spices into a pan, and pour in the vinegar. Bring slowly to the boil and add the basinful of fruit, etc. Stir up well, and bring again to the boil. Leave to simmer steadily until thick and chutney-like. Remember it will become a little thicker as it cools down. Pot and cover with plastic film or the usual jam pot covers, rather than metal lids which will turn very nasty in contact with the vinegar. Store in a cool dark place for at least a month before using. [Fruit Book]
The raspberry is that rare thing – a delicious improvement of a wild northern fruit. It is nice to think of Eskimos eating raspberries in Alaska, even if they’re the wild, unimproved variety, and of children picking wild raspberries in the woods of Scotland. When we were young, a particular pleasure of ours was being let loose amongst a neighbour’s raspberry canes on a sunny afternoon – I understand what Parkinson meant when he said that raspberries were an ‘afternoon dish’ in summertime. Buzzing and warmth and crushing raspberries with your tongue against the roof of your mouth and everyone pleased that the crop should not be finished by the birds.
It is children, in fact, who come to the aid of the cultivated raspberry crop, commercial raspberries. School holidays are timed to coincide with the six-week harvest. Young heads bob up and down among the raspberry canes of Perth in the Carse of Gowrie and of Angus, all 7,947¼ acres of them, as they pick what amounts to ninety per cent of all the raspberries we eat in Britain. Scottish raspberries are the best in the world, the long summer day in the north, not too hot, suits them exactly. Machines of the sort they have in America to pick raspberries have not been widely used. Our raspberries are juicier and too delicate for mechanical treatment on the whole; though adaptations are being studied, it seems that raspberries are often destined to rot by the ton on the canes of Scotland.
Many gardeners claim that for flavour, the yellow raspberry is superior to the more common red one. This is so, I agree. I have a book written in 1920 about the good things of France, taken month by month, and I read that when the raspberry crop of the outskirts of Paris is exhausted in September, ‘the fruit growing between Metz and Thionville is covered with the golden grains of the yellow raspberry, which is mild and sweet’. I wonder if that is still true, sixty years later? It must be a sight, the first of the golden displays of autumn. We had a corner of yellow raspberries once, but the canes were exhausted after a number of years and never replaced. Raspberries of blessed memory.
Buy them, if you see them; if you intend to grow raspberries, ask your nurseryman for a yellow-fruiting variety. You will not be disappointed. In the shops, though, to keep life easy, I imagine that raspberry-coloured raspberries will always be preferred. They are a difficult fruit to sell in any case, red or yellow, turning so easily to dampness and mildew. Some growers have the pleasant habit of picking them into punnets lined with soft green leaves which cradle the berries more gently than the white cardboard punnet on its own.
Raspberries are above all the fruit for eating raw, preferably on their own with Jersey cream and sugar. They are companionable with peaches and melon, if there are just a few of them, or with cream cheese mixtures. These remarks do not of course apply to people who grow so many raspberries that they are desperate to use them up, freezers overflowing, children stuffed and redmouthed beyond their desires. They will not mind a loss of quality in exchange for variety.
The cooking berry par excellence is the loganberry, which can be harsh when raw if not absolutely ripe. It tastes like a cross between raspberry and blackberry but is, like the boysenberry, a cultivar of the Pacific blackberry. Any raspberry and blackberry recipes can be adapted to these two berries, one named after Judge J. H. Logan in whose garden at Santa Cruz it was raised, and the other after Rudolf Boysen who helped to introduce it, in the Twenties. [Fruit Book]
24 fresh ripe apricots
60–90 g (2–3 oz) sugar
60 g (2 oz) blanched, split almonds
125 g (4 oz) flour
90 g (3 oz) sugar
125 g (4 oz) ground almonds
175 g (6 oz) butter
Many other fruits can be used instead of apricots. It is a good recipe for pears, but they should first be stewed in a very little water (just enough to prevent them sticking) with the sugar in the first list of ingredients. Tinned peaches are particularly successful, so long as they are drained well and then rinsed under the cold tap before being arranged on the dish – they will not need the sugar.
Pour boiling water over the apricots, leave them for a few minutes and peel off the skins. Slice them and, if you have the patience, crack the stones and remove the kernels – this is well worth doing. Arrange the apricots in a shallow baking dish, scatter them with sugar and the kernels. To make the crumble, mix flour, sugar and almonds. Rub in the butter to make a crumbly effect, and spread it over the fruit evenly. Arrange the split almonds on top. Bake at gas 6, 200°C (400°F), for 20 minutes, then lower the heat and leave for another 20 minutes at gas 4, 180°C (350°F). In fact crumble puddings are very good tempered – they can be cooked for a longer time at a lower temperature if this suits you better. The only thing to make sure of is that the top is nicely browned, and not burned. Serve with cream. (English Food)
90 ml (3fl oz) golden syrup
30 ml (1 fl oz) treacle
125 g (4 oz) soft brown sugar
125 g (4 oz) butter
175 g (6 oz) self-raising flour
175 g (6 oz) medium oatmeal
2 level teaspoons ground ginger
a pinch of salt
1 egg beaten in 125 ml (4 fl oz) milk
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
extra egg to glaze (optional)
The best recipe for parkin I’ve tried: it results in a cake of tender consistency unlike those hard, round parkins which I detested as a child (and still do), though I suspect they are in an earlier style. The texture of parkin is nubbly with oatmeal, the taste dark with treacle.
The origin of the name is unknown. The big Oxford Dictionary suggests that it may come from Parkin or Perkin, and the first quotation it gives is from the second edition of the Craven Glossary of 1828. I would say it is a much, much older cake than that – perhaps it lurked under the name of gingerbread, for that is what it is, gingerbread made with oatmeal, the grain of the north where wheat was a trickier crop altogether than in the south.
This version from Joan Poulson’s Yorkshire Cookery shows the modern softening of parkin, oatmeal cut with wheat flour, treacle replaced largely by golden syrup and brown sugar (I use light brown).
The easiest way to get the right quantity of treacle and syrup is to put a saucepan on the scales and weigh it, then add extra weights as you pour in the golden syrup, then the treacle. If you have scales with a needle, put the pan on the scales, then turn the needle to zero and start from there. To the pan containing the syrup and treacle, add the sugar and butter. Warm gently, stirring, until you have a smooth thick liquid.
Have ready the rest of the dry ingredients in a bowl, and pour on the treacle mixture. Beat the egg and milk and add the bicarbonate, then tip into the bowl and mix to a dough. Pour into a well-buttered tin about 32 × 21 cm (13 × 8½ inches). Brush the top with beaten egg – this can be tricky as the surface is soft, but it gives a good dark glaze; an alternative is to brush it half-way through.
Bake in a preheated oven, at gas 4, 180°C (350°F) for 1 hour, or until firm. Wrap in greaseproof and foil for a few days before eating. [British Cookery]
125 g (4 oz) butter
125 ml (4 fl oz) golden syrup
125 g (4 oz) granulated sugar
a pinch of salt
125 g (4 oz) flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons brandy
300 ml (½ pt) double cream, whipped
There are many versions of these biscuits in English cookery, because they were popular as fairings – along with eel pies and gingerbread. Indeed at some fairs, like the Marlborough Mop, you can still buy them in flat, irregular, lacy rounds, much better than candy floss to sustain you on the Big Wheel or at the boxing booth. Old versions use black treacle – golden syrup, a refined product, did not come in until the 1880s.
Melt butter, syrup and sugar over a low heat in a medium-sized pan, stirring until you have a smooth mixture. Do not allow it to become really hot. Remove the pan from the heat, and when the mixture is barely tepid, stir in salt, flour, ginger, lemon juice and brandy.
Spread baking sheets with Bakewell paper and put teaspoons of the mixture on to it, allowing room for them to spread a great deal. About 6 teaspoons a sheet is right – although this will depend on whether the teaspoons were generously measured. Bake at gas 3, 160°C (325°F), for 8–10 minutes.
Press the brandy snaps round the handle of a wooden spoon into cigarette shapes while they are still hot. If they cool and become difficult, replace them in the oven to regain their suppleness. When cold store them in an air-tight tin. Fill them with whipped cream, piping it in at both ends, not long before they are required. [English Food]
180 g (6 oz) wholemeal breadcrumbs
300 ml (½ pt) double cream
250 ml (8 fl oz) single cream
125 g (4 oz) icing sugar, or pale brown sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon rum (optional)
2 egg whites (optional)
Spread the breadcrumbs out on a baking tray and toast in a moderately hot oven. They should become crisp and slightly browned. Meanwhile beat the creams with the sugar. Mix the yolks and rum, if used, and add to the cream mixture, beating it in well. When the breadcrumbs are cool, fold them in gently and thoroughly, so that they are evenly distributed. Lastly, whip the whites of the eggs stiff and fold into the mixture. Freeze in the usual way, at the lowest temperature. There is no need to stir up this ice cream. [English Food]
Make a quince purée, by cooking the fruit whole in water, and then cutting it in quarters and pushing it through a sieve. Sweeten with sugar and add some ginger to taste. Beat 300 ml (½ pt) of cream, double, single or the two mixed, with 2 egg yolks; then add to it a generous 150 ml (¼ pt) of quince purée. Adjust the seasoning of sugar and ginger to taste. Cut 60 g (2 oz) of butter into little pieces and stir into the mixture.
Butter a baking dish, pour in the quince mixture and bake at about gas 5, 190°C (375°F), or less, until set. Eat hot. As this pudding is a kind of fruit custard, it’s important not to cook it so fast that the mixture boils – this will curdle the eggs. The proportion of fruit purée to custard may be varied to taste. It’s important that the purée should be on the dry side, not in the least sloppy. [Good Things]
250 g (8 oz) flour
125 g (4 oz) pale soft brown sugar
2 level teaspoons ground ginger
¼ level teaspoon baking powder
150 g (5 oz) lightly-salted butter, melted
In the early autumn, you may have the luck to find Rydal Mount almost free of visitors. You can wander round the steep garden that Wordsworth designed himself, a garden as beautiful as any I have seen, to be ranked – though entirely different – with Monet’s at Giverny. Along the terrace you may reflect that Wordsworth liked to walk on smooth lawn when composing, whereas Coleridge preferred the rough tufty ground. The house sits at the top surveying the small kingdom: in the dining-room which was the living-room of the original house, there is a spice cupboard with a carved door. It was there long before the Wordsworths.
I imagine Dorothy taking out the ginger to make gingerbread, which her brother liked so much. When they lived at Dove Cottage, cramped but again with a delicious garden, William would sometimes have a longing for gingerbread. Once they set out at night in January to walk to the gingerbread seller’s house: they were going to make it themselves next day, but William could not wait. There were usually two kinds; the Wordsworths obviously preferred it thick – as in the recipe below – but all the seller had was the thin. This I take to have been similar to the kind sold today, in The Gingerbread Shop in the village, where Mrs Sarah Nelson started her business in 1855, right by the churchyard where William and Dorothy are buried.
Mix dry ingredients to a dough with the melted, tepid butter. Spread out in a layer about 1½ cm (½ inch) thick, in a square pan lined with Bakewell paper. Bake until golden brown at gas 4, 180°C (350°F), 30–35 minutes. Cut into oblong biscuits, but leave to cool in the tin.
Serve as they are, or as a pudding topped with whipped cream flavoured with slivers of preserved ginger and some of the syrup. You can also put a butter cream on top, flavoured in the same way, but make it properly with eggs and unsalted butter, not with salted butter and too much icing sugar in the English teashop style. [British Cookery]
500 g (1 lb) slab of puff pastry
300 ml (½ pt) milk
4 level tablespoons crumbs from 2-day-old white bread
125 (4 oz) butter, cubed
2 level tablespoons sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
60 g (2 oz) blanched, ground almonds
3 standard eggs
The story is that these little puff pastry cheesecakes were first made at court in Henry VIII’s reign. Whether or not this is true, they are the most charming and stylish little cakes. The best ones are to be found in Kew, at Newens, 288 Kew Road. The following recipe, based on Theodora Fitzgibbon’s in her Art of British Cooking, is the closest I can find to the real thing. Well worth making if you are not within reach of London.
First decide on the tartlet tins – 8 cm (or just over 3 inches) is the ideal, but most domestic tins are either 6¼ cm (2½ inches) or 10 cm (4 inches). I use the smaller size which means about 30 tarts from this recipe.
Roll out the pastry and cut circles to fit the tins. You will have some left over. Chill while you make the filling.
Bring milk and crumbs to the boil, remove from heat and leave for 5 minutes. Beat in the butter, then the sugar, rind and almonds. The mixture should have a texture to it, from the almonds and crumbs. Lastly, beat in the eggs.
Preheat the oven to gas 6, 200°C (400°F).
Half-fill the pastry cases and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the pastry is cooked and light and well contracted from the tins, and the filling is patched appetizingly with golden brown. The secret of success – though the maids of honour will be agreeable anyway – lies, I suspect, in the oven temperature, getting the right colour in as short a time as possible. Everyone’s oven varies, and it is worth taking the prudent measure of a trial run and baking a few maids of honour first, to see what adjustment of temperature might need to be made. [British Cookery]
175 g (6 oz) butter
175 g (6 oz) caster sugar
1 rounded dessertspoon of caraway seeds
3 eggs
1 level tablespoon ground almonds
250 g (8 oz) self-raising flour
a little milk
I had been reading a family manuscript recipe book compiled between 1705 and 1730, in which there were five recipes for seed cake, when I saw this recipe in a copy of Woman magazine. The ingredient that set this recipe apart from the many other seed cakes of English cookery, was the ground almonds. And when I made the cake it was indeed the almonds which made it moist and delicious and quite exceptional.
The recipe was given in a series of farmhouse cakes by Mrs Dorothy Sleightholme, who frequently appeared on Yorkshire Television. She had had the cake from a Somerset family, but thought that it needed something extra and added the ground almonds – which make all the difference.
Cream the butter and sugar, and stir into it the caraway seeds – if you are not sure about the tastes of the people likely to eat the cake, use a level dessertspoonful the first time. Separate the eggs. Whisk the whites until they are stiff, but creamy rather than dry. Beat the yolks together and fold them into the whites carefully, until they are mixed together. Add to the butter and sugar. Lastly stir in the ground almonds and flour, adding a little milk if the mixture doesn’t fall off the spoon when you shake it with a firm flick of the wrist.
Line a 1-kg (2-lb) loaf tin with Bakewell paper. Pour in the cake mixture and smooth it down with the back of a spoon. Bake it at gas 4, 180°C (350°F), for 1 hour 5 minutes. It should spring back when pressed lightly with a finger, and if you stick a larding needle into it, it should come out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 20 minutes, before removing it to a wire rack.
A few blanched, slivered almonds can be put on top of the cake before baking. [English Food]
750 g (1½ lb) stone-ground wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon salt
60 g (2 oz) lard
1 tablespoon golden syrup
3 tablespoons very hot water
150 ml (¼ pt) milk
150 ml (¼ pt) boiling water
30 g (1 oz) fresh yeast
Sieve flour and salt into a basin, and rub in the lard. Make a well in the middle. Melt the syrup in the water. Mix the milk and boiling water, and add a little of this to the syrup so that there is about a teacupful. Into the syrup and milk, fork the yeast. Leave it to work for 10 or 15 minutes. When it is creaming and frothy, tip it into the flour, plus the remaining milk and hot water – go slowly with this, as you need a fairly soft but not sloppy dough. On the other hand, you may need to add extra milk and water – if you add boiling water to the milk in equal quantity, you will end up with the right blood temperature of 37–38°C (98–100°F).
Leave to rise until doubled in volume. This should be done in a draught-free place; temperature doesn’t matter – dough will rise in a refrigerator, it merely takes longer. Roll out the risen dough on a floured board, and cut out rounds with a scone cutter. Leave to rise again, to ‘prove’, for another 30 minutes, then brush with milk and bake in a hot oven, gas 7, 220°C (425°F), for 20 minutes. Eat hot with plenty of butter, honey, or a savoury mixture of chopped hard-boiled eggs and parsley. [English Food]
500 g (1 lb) raspberries
125 g (4 oz) icing sugar
cinnamon
8 slices white bread
175 g (6 oz) butter
175 ml (6 fl oz) whipping cream, or 90 ml (3 fl oz) each double and single cream
1 heaped tablespoon caster sugar
Before the last war, when tea was an occasion for enjoyment and not for guilt, we often used to have home-made raspberry jam sandwiches at my grandmother’s house. There were always too many – raspberry jam being her favourite – and next day they would appear as a pudding, having been fried in butter. I always thought, and still do think, that their latter end was more glorious than their debut. This recipe is my adaptation of her economy. It works well, too, with really ripe apricots and peaches. In winter one can use a really good jam, but I find this too sweet.
Sprinkle raspberries with the icing sugar and about a ½ teaspoon of cinnamon. Leave until they produce some liquid and look like a slightly runny whole-fruit jam. Taste and add more cinnamon and sugar if necessary.
Cut the crusts off the bread. Bring the butter to the boil in a small pan, then pour it, through a muslin-lined sieve, into a frying pan; fry the bread in it. This sounds laborious, but it is quickly done, and avoids the risk of the bread browning too much – it should look golden, and be crisp.
Keep the bread warm in the oven, while you whip the creams together and sweeten them to taste with the sugar. Sandwich the bread with raspberries, and top with a generous swirl of whipped cream. You have a delicious contrast between the keen, buttery heat of the bread, and the keen cold of the raspberries, softened by the whipped cream. [English Food]
150 g (5 oz) fresh brown or white breadcrumbs
1 heaped tablespoon vanilla sugar
grated rind of 1 large lemon
600 ml (1 pt) milk
60 g (2 oz) lightly salted butter
4 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons blackcurrant jelly, or raspberry jelly
4 large egg whites
125 g (4 oz) caster sugar, plus 1 extra teaspoonful
A pudding which deserves its name for the perfect combination of flavours and textures, a most subtle and lovely way to end a meal.
Put breadcrumbs, vanilla sugar and lemon rind into a pudding basin. Bring the milk and butter to just below boiling point and stir it into the crumbs. Leave for 10 minutes, then beat in the egg yolks thoroughly. Grease a shallow dish which holds about 1½ litres (2½ pt) with a buttery paper, and pour in the breadcrumb custard. Bake at gas 4, 180°C (350°F), for 30 minutes, or a little less, until just firm – the time will depend on the depth of the dish, and remember that the custard will continue to cook a little in its own heat so that if the centre looks runny underneath the skin do not feel anxious. Warm the jelly (if you use jam, warm it and sieve it) and spread it over the custard without breaking the surface. Whisk the whites until stiff, mix in half the caster sugar, then whisk again until slightly satiny. With a metal spoon, fold in the rest of the 125 g (4 oz) of sugar. Pile on to the pudding, sprinkle with the extra teaspoonful of sugar and return to the oven for 15 minutes until the meringue is slightly browned and crisp. Serve hot with plenty of cream. [English Food]
30 g (1 oz) butter
250 g (½ lb) shortcrust pastry
1 kg (2 lb) gooseberries, young and green
175–250 g (6–8 oz) sugar
1 egg white
extra sugar
Do you follow the country tradition of eating the first gooseberry pie of the season at Whitsunday lunch? If you do, here’s a nice proposition of Robert Southey’s to stimulate some quiet post-prandial reflection: ‘Two gooseberry pies being supposed, their paste made at the same time, and indeed of one mass, the gooseberries gathered from the same bushes and of equal age, the sugar in just proportion, and clotted cream to eat with both, it follows that the largest is preferable. I love gooseberry pie, … and I think the case is plain.’
Grease a 1-litre (2-pt) pie dish with the butter. Roll out the pastry; moisten the edges of the pie dish and fasten a strip of pastry round it. Top and tail the gooseberries, put them into the pie dish with sugar between the layers (very sharp gooseberries will need 250 g [8 oz]) and mound them up in the centre above the rim of the dish. Brush the pastry edge with egg white before laying on the pastry lid; knock up the edges, brush the pastry with egg white and sprinkle it with an even layer of caster sugar. Bake at gas 6, 200°C (400°F), for 30–40 minutes. Serve with plenty of cream. [Good Things]
1 kg (2 lb) blackcurrants, or raspberries, or a mixture of raspberries, redcurrants and blackberries
175 g (6 oz) caster sugar
good quality white bread, 1-day-old
This pudding can be made successfully with frozen blackcurrants – though it seems a shame. One family I know always has it on Christmas Day, after the turkey, as a reminder that summer will come.
Put the fruit and sugar into a bowl, and leave overnight. Next day tip the contents of the bowl into a pan, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 2–3 minutes to cook the fruit lightly. It should make a fair amount of juice.
Cut the bread into slices 1 cm (¼ inch) thick. Remove the crusts. Make a circle from 1 slice to fit the base of a 1½ -litre (2½-pt) pudding basin or other bowl. Then cut wedges of bread to fit round the sides. There should be no gaps, so if the wedges do not quite fit together, push in small bits of bread. Pour in half the fruit and juice, put in a slice of bread, then add the rest of the fruit and juice. Cover the top with one or two layers of bread, trimming off the wedges to make a nice neat finish. Put a plate on top, with a couple of tins to weight the whole thing down, and leave overnight – or for several days if you like – in the refrigerator. (If the bread is not thoroughly impregnated with the brilliant fruit juices, boil up a few more blackcurrants or raspberries and strain the liquor over the white bits which will occur at the top of the pudding.) Run a thin knife round between the pudding and the basin, put a serving dish upside down on top, and turn the whole thing over quickly. Remove the basin and serve with a great deal of cream; cream is essential for this very strong-flavoured pudding, which because of its flavour goes a long way and should be served in small slices. [English Food]
250 g (½ lb) weight shortcrust pastry, made with lard and sour milk
125 g (4 oz) butter
60 g (2 oz) sugar
250 g (8 oz) curd cheese (not cottage or cream cheese)
125 g (4 oz) seedless raisins, or currants
1 rounded tablespoon wholemeal breadcrumbs
a pinch of salt
grated nutmeg to taste
2 well-beaten eggs
Line a 20–25-cm (8–10-inch) tart tin with the pastry – use the kind with a removable base. Cream butter and sugar together, mix in the curds, raisins or currants and breadcrumbs. Add the salt and nutmeg and lastly the eggs. Taste and adjust nutmeg. Add a little more sugar if you like (I find most recipes too sweet). Pour into the pastry case and bake for 20–30 minutes at gas 7, 220°C (425°F). The pastry should be a nice brown. [English Food]
Can there have been life in the north before tea? There was always a brown pot of it, a dreadful brew, on the stove. I would not be surprised to go back home and find the same pot, under a flowered woolly cosy, sitting on the microwave. As early as 1767, the tea-break had been observed in full operation by Arthur Young, but food to go with tea, a special meal with special times known as ‘tea’, belongs to the mid-nineteenth century. Only then were the Indian tea gardens well established and all set to overtake exports from China. This was the time, especially in the north where temperance movements were strong (and necessary), for chapel teas and church teas, Sunday School teas, missionary teas, charity teas, and the enormous development of home baking.
Looking back, to Sunderland in the Thirties’ depression, I find it startling that so wretched a town should have had room for three high-class bakeries, Milburn’s, Smythe’s and Meng’s, with cakes of a quality I never saw again until we reached Vienna three years ago on the European tour. An afternoon tea party or a bridge tea, I now realize, was a highly-developed art form, gastronomically speaking, with rigorous rules of behaviour, dress, and food which was exquisitely small and delicious. A foreign visitor once described our thin bread and butter as being like poppy leaves, a perfect description. Children’s party teas often included a cake in the shape of a cottage (complete with a water butt and hollyhocks) or a ship. One May I convinced my mother that asparagus rolled in brown bread was the thing for my sister’s birthday: to our ruthless infant delight, nobody else ate it and we lived on asparagus rolls for three days (my mother’s reaction after all her work, I do not recall). For the less well-off, teas were more of a triumphant blow-out, a chance to show off with propriety, and at least one was expected to eat (at polite teas, one nibbled). There were teas with tea in a can and gingerbread during haymaking, tea at the beach with apricot and sand sandwiches, egg sandwich and thermos teas on long Northumberland walks. Whatever else one did without, tea could be counted upon, down to bread and scrape, bread and dripping or just bread.
A pleasure of going back to the north again was tea at Betty’s in Harrogate, a place of elegant art nouveau twirls, good cakes, unique sizzling rabbits and deep curd tarts: you can have Brontë fruit cake and Wensleydale cheese, too. [British Cookery]