Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

We are delighted to wake this blog from a few restorative weeks of hibernation with a guest post from Salada. Her other posts can be enjoyed here and here.

No muffin recipes appear in the VCBT list. Honestly, I checked.  Patricia H White is, assuming she’s still with us, an American who moved to England in the 1960’s.  This book was first published in 1975, and encourages the tradition of taking a bit of trouble with your gifts, or DIY as it’s known.  The recipes are divided into eight categories such as preserves, potted foods, sweetmeats and baked goods.  Ms White gives advice on packaging and storage, and how long the produce will last.

This recipe looks like a standard muffin mixture.  Commercial muffins nowadays have expanded to massive proportions, but these seem to come from a more frugal era.  Apple and cinnamon is a classic flavour match.

Oeufs Mollet or Soft Boiled Eggs Mornay

Another book bought on last year’s Highland trip was Lady Barnett’s Cookbook by Isobel Barnett, a successful, educated middle class woman who married a successful middle class, educated man who was knighted and whose title was used by his spouse to further her career. Yes, this is a celebrity cookbook, 1960s-style.While the airbrushed version of her life appears on the dust jacket in CV form (click on image to enlarge). The internet tells a story which induced my co-bloggeuse to exclaim ‘Oh, she’s tragic!’  (though far more sympathetic than Premiership footballer who pinch supermarket doughnuts).

This book is something of a mixed bag. It’s a guide to entertaining for people who already have a large encyclopedia-type cookbook and are now seeking to bless others with their efforts. I wonder how much it owes to the personal tastes of its author and her guests? Some dishes seem like a genuine treat, others are more along jelly, cream and bananas lines. (Actually, what am I talking about? If someone served me jelly, cream and bananas, I would probably kiss them.)

(The ‘more out-of-the-ordinary’ way of using them ‘a l’Indienne’ i.e with curry sauce. No.)

According to my (admittedly limp) grasp of food hygiene, eggs should either be hot or cold, so please don’t keep them in warm, salted water. Salmonella is a real downer, or so I’ve heard.

This dish may seem like something one might put together from bits found at the back of the fridge (a couple of eggs, a bit of bechamel, some greens where it doesn’t matter if they’re a bit old because they’re going to be wilted, chopped and covered in hot cheese) but it results in something filthily delicious and incredibly filling. I had it as was, but you might want a triangle or two of crisp toast on the side. Recommended now the nights are miserable.

Mollet’ed by Elly

ETA: I have just only just realised that I could see her in her prime – voila! A clip of What’s my Line from 1955. Enjoy!

Rhubarb or Gooseberry Cake

This book was a present (cheers Anna!) and is fitting for these straitened times, being divided into three sections according to budget – cheap, not so cheap and simply extravagant, each being sub-divided by starters, mains and puddings. There is a short section of salads and vegetable side dishes at the end.

Published by in 1979 by the New English Library, the introduction states that this is not intended to be a foundation for new cooks, but something to extend the repetoire of people who already know their way round a ladle. She begins ‘When I last wrote a book on the subject of ‘entertaining’, things were very different. It was still reasonable to recommend a bottle of Chateau Margaux with the grouse (it was still reasonsble to recommend grouse!)  and I could assume that on special occasionals a helper could be hired or bullied into back stage duties‘.

Austrian Chestnut Cake

Today, a guest post by Martha (her others are here, here, here and here.)

This recipe comes from Robert Carrier’s Kitchen part 17 (series published by Marshall Cavendish 1980-81). I bought this gem from a market stall in Camden Passage, Islington, just metres from where its author opened his eponymous restaurant in 1959. The stall boasted several titles from the series and I have to confess it was hard to choose only one. My goodness, the pictures! The chicken apparently roasted in candle wax! The prawns as garnish! The tomato skin roses!

Celebrity chef and ‘bon viveur’* Robert Carrier OBE (1923-2006) was the first to print his recipes on practical wipe clean cards. So indirectly we have him to thank (?) for Alison Burt. Good work Bob!

Soupe Menerboise

Today, a guest post by Martha (her others are here and here).

I bought Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking sometime last year and we haven’t really had a summer since.  So I hadn’t got around to making anything from this until a week ago when after a day of sun I remembered that it was June.

Ms David is of course famous for her cookery writing as much as her recipes, and for shocking post-war English palettes with her re-introduction of the long-lost concept of flavour.  Her achievements also include persuading Le Creuset to  increase the number of colours in which its cookware was available, pointing at a pack of Gauloises and stating “That’s the blue I want,” (source).

Dark Treacle Pudding

Today’s recipe (actually made on Sunday night) is from a collection of Edwardian pudding recipes published by Copper Beech books who do several of this sort of thing. This volume was edited by one of their regulars, one Julie Lessels, about whom the internet refuses to give me any more information. Many of the puddings in this book are steamed, although there are a few tarts and some fritters.

Initially, I was going to make ‘half-pay pudding’, but you have been spared this flippant nod to the horror-story that is the current socio-economic situation, when I realised it would be more expensive to make than the first pudding in the book.

Rice Paste for Sweets

This is a vintage cookbook trial, error and rescue mission. After deciding to make rhubarb tart, I wondered if there was a suitable pastry recipe in the same book. I saw one which included rice flour, of which I’ve had a bag lying around for ages, being only a sporadic shortbread maker.   I’ve already had a successful attempts at plain and enriched shortcrusts, tart paste and cream crust, and was optimistic about trying a new method:

Rice paste for sweets

A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs Rundell (first published 1806, reprinted by Persephone Books 2009)

Boil a quarter of a pound of ground rice in the smallest amount of water; strain from it all moisture as well as you can; beat it in the mortar with half an ounce of butter, and one egg well beaten, and it will make an excellent paste for tarts, &c.

Gainsborough Tart

Today we are delighted to publish another guest post from commenter Salada! She knows her way round a pie.

With Pie Month in mind, I went in search of something savoury from yesteryear. At the same time and out of nowhere, I’d had a recollection of my mum’s coconut tart from long, long ago. I didn’t expect to find a recipe for it anywhere. I was so wrong.  In the Radiation Cookery Book, “compiled for the special benefit of the many thousand satisfied users of ‘Regulo’-controlled ‘New World’ cookers”, there it was, with a posh name I’d never heard before. The book is venerably old, being the January1935, 18th edition. This is a very comprehensive cook-book which includes menu planning and oven-cooked breakfasts.

It fell open at Invalid Cookery to reveal Raw Beef Tea, a concoction to give every food hygienist the vapours, being made of lean, raw beef soaked in cold water with a little salt for 2-3 hours (no mention of popping it into the fridge; who had one in 1935?) then, “Stir, strain and serve in a red glass.” What style!

Asparagus omelette

I was recently given copy of Jane Grigson’s English Food, as regular readers will know I have a very high opinion of both her recipes and her writing  (the interspersing of history and personal anecdotes  is much imitated but never matched). English Food was first published 1974, but I have the 1992 edition, which contains both a new introduction by her daughter Sophie Grigson, as well as a caustic introduction from the 1978 edition, in which she rails against the loss of cooking skills, bland convenience food and patronising food writers.

Omelettes were one of the first things I learned to make and of course all my early attempts were horrific. Now I can make them (the way I like them) on autopilot, likwise frittata, tortilla and even occasionally pajeon.

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