Apple Pudding-Pie

Of course I made this. I have a ready supply of apples and LOOK AT THE NAME:

Apple or peach pudding-pie or pie-pudding, no. 2, Yankee style

Amazing.

Recipe
Sweet milk, 1 cup
1 egg
Butter, 1 tablespoon, heaping
Baking powder,  1 teaspoon
Flour 1 cup or sufficient to make a rather thick batter (‘batter’ means like cake, better to handle with a spoon or easy to pour  out)
A little salt
Tart juicy apples to fill half an earthen pudding dish

The Bakers’ ABC: D is for Dumb Cake

According to tradition, a species of dreaming bread prepared by unmarried women. When baked it is cut into 2 divisions. A part is eaten and the remainder placed under the pillow. When the clock strikes twelve the votary must go to bed backwards and keep perfect silence. Should a word be uttered a charm is broken. Those who are to be married fancy they see visions of their future partners; those who are to live and die old maids see nothing.

From The Baker’s ABC by John Kirkland, formerly Head Teacher of National School of Baking, published 1927 by Gresham

Alu and Methi

This marvellous book was given to me by Alix for my birthday a couple of years ago and I have used it regularly since, although always skipping or substituting an ingredient or two, as is the way with weekday cooking. For you, gentle readers, I shall do things strictly as Ms Chowdhary instructs! I have the fourth imprint from 1963, though it was first published in 1954, with the author reassuring readers that they do not need to add plenty of chilli, can omit onions and garlic, and that the majority of ingredients can be obtained ‘from my local grocer, chemist and corn merchant’. She also states that there are 3 or 4 well-known Indian grocers in London.

The Bakers’ ABC: Castor sugar

A white granular sugar, adapted for table use (also spelt caster). The word caster is defined as  small vessel for holding condiments at table, and the use of the same word applied to sugar seems only to mean that it is a suitable form to use with a caster. It consists of the smaller crystals made in the process of refining, and is separated from slightly larger crystals – sold as granulated sugar – by the mechanical action only of long rotary sieves. It has the same properties as loaf sugar but is prepares at the last stages of manufacture in a different form. It may consist of from 99.8 to 99.9 of pure sugar, the other consituents being a minute proportion of ash or water, or ash and water.

For every recipe we’ve cooked with castor sugar, click here.

From The Baker’s ABC by John Kirkland, formerly Head Teacher of National School of Baking, published 1927 by Gresham

To make a Curry the Indian Way

Despite the fact that I really like Indian food, I don’t think I’ve made any Indian recipes for the blog yet, so typically I’ve now done two, the first is chicken curry, Britain’s Most Popular Dinner (according to every arm of the food industry with a finger in the pie of Indian food retail. Wait, hang on…).

I’m not going to go into how curry is not actually a dish and trade routes between England and India are hundreds of years old, because other people have done that already and better. (I found a fantastic concise history of all this on an old website, but then my virus software went berzerk, so you’ll have to make do with Wikipedia.)

Hannah Glasse was one of the first famous English ladies of domestic writing, pre-dating Eliza Acton by almost a  century (this is a cracking article about her).

Bacon Cornettes

Look at this wonderful thing! A friend liberated it from his grandmother’s bookshelves for me and I appreciate it so very much. If I had unlimited shelf space and an extra few hours in the week, I’d probably collect and blog about etiquette and entertaining manuals as well, but there’s only so much time a person should devote to horrified chuckling at kaleidoscopic interiors, conformist gender roles and devilled ham.

 

The Bakers’ ABC: B is for Bap

A Scottish word to describe any plain, very light roll. The word is very old. Jamieson defines is as follows: “A thick cake baked in the oven, generally made with yeast; whether it be made of oatmeal, barley meal, flour of wheat or a mixture.” ‘Bapper’ , the same authority says, is “A vulgar, ludicrous designation for a baker”.   Morning rolls made light and very soft, are called baps in some localities. A roll – a small round or oblong loaf of wheaten bread.

Herman the German Friendship Cake

Initially I had no plans to blog this as it’s not from a book, but after live-tweeting its assembly I thought I might as well. I remember my mother being given some of this starter about 25 years ago and I (who didn’t have to stir it daily or move it when doing other things in the kitchen), loved the resulting cake. The internet seems a little conflicted as to the origins – certainly Amish Friendship Bread is very similar.

Anyway, I was very pleased when a friend gave me some Herman starter in a yoghurt pot, in a Liberty’s bag, along with the strict advice that it was Day 3, and a piece of paper stating:

Spicy Apple Fritters

Elly and I were very kindly invited to talk about the blog and do some live cooking recently by the lovely A Playful Day for her podcast (naturally the whole thing is well worth a listen, but if you’re particularly eager to hear us we appear around 29 minutes in). We cooked Spicy Apple Fritters from the TREX cookbook (which doesn’t appear to have a date of publication). The fritters turned out to be surprisingly tasty and looked like this:

Custard Sauce

Another part of Christmas dinner, I volunteered to make this  reasoning that being very proficient in cheese sauce and having had one successful attempt at crème pâtissière, I wouldn’t disgrace myself or annoy other people. I consulted the oracle (emailed my mother) and received this reply:

Are you making ‘proper’ eggy custard or just Bird’s outa the
packet?  Only two things to remember – eggy, don’t boil or it’ll curdle;
powder, boil or it’ll not thicken well (both – stir like mad!).