Though once considered the food of the poor, by the end of the 18th century, brown bread and course-grained flour were popular alternatives for the wealthier classes who began to reject the mass-produced, super-fine flours imported from the United States. Britain has retained its demands for less-conventional flours into the 21st century, with recent revivals for artisan grains such as spelt, rye, buck-wheat and gluten-free alternatives including rice, potato and oat flours. The latter sustained day-to-day bread making in Scotland and Ireland for centuries.

The phrase ‘bread tin’ or ‘loaf tin’ was not commonly used until the early 1800s, roughly around the same time as the origination of the tin can for the preservation of food.

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Prior to the standard bread tin we are all familiar with today, loaves shaped in crude rustic ball shapes, or ‘boules’, were baked on a wooden tool called a ‘peel’ in large earthenware crocks. As bakers began to understand the science of bread-making – understanding that too much heat from below would burn the goods and that coarser flours required longer cooking times – bread ovens slowly became more progressive and integrated into the standard oven range in the 19th century.

This progression was also seen in 19th-century legislation pioneered by the great German chemist, Friedrich Accum, that would subjugate the appalling and widespread use of harmful additives in baked goods.

Biscuits evolved out of small, baked necessities used as substance for long journeys. The most famous of these are perhaps the ‘ship’s biscuits’ eaten by Tudor sailors. These were concocted from flour, salt and water, prebaked on land and then rehydrated in stews or beer while at sea. Often alive with weevils and hard as door posts, this culinary ‘delight’ was almost certainly the precursor for the staple biscuit that we are all familiar with today.

Gingerbread was traditionally the biscuit of popular choice, reigning supreme from its roots in the 13th century, right up until the 19th century. There were whole fairs and fetes dedicated to this sweet treat. The most popular of these, the Birmingham Fair, took place each year until the mid-1800s. Other major fairs known for their significant gingerbread and toy stalls, such as Oxford St Giles and St Bartholomew Fairs in London, had also petered out by the middle of the century. These consisted of rows and rows of market stalls displaying gingerbread in all its forms, interspersed with booths selling toys, including Gingerbread men, which were known as ‘husbands’ in England.

Early tin biscuit cutters like the one pictured above would often have little holes drilled into them to help circulate air, as well as aiding the release of the biscuit following cooking. In the 19th century, small biscuit cutters shaped like leaves, flowers, birds and animals were popular, used to produce fine, fancy almond pastes or other luxury delicacies.

The ‘docker’ was once an essential tool for the baking of biscuits. It looked like an instrument of torture – sharp spikes attached to a wooden handle. This would perforate the biscuit dough to prevent trapped air from making the mix bubble up or rise too much.

By the early 20th century, it became hugely popular to ice biscuits using the new-fangled metal syringes, which could be purchased in the icing kits manufactured by Tala and Nutbrown.

The term ‘cake tin’ did not emerge until tin manufacturing had become the popular choice for kitchenware during the mid-19th century. Prior to this, ‘patty pans’ made from steel were used to bake small cakes and tartlets in a variety of shapes and sizes.

During the Second World War, cake tins became equally popular for storing money as well as spongey delights. The media at this time reported on the high number of burglaries that prompted housewives to hide their loot in this most convenient of saving banks.

In 1921, the Dundee Evening Telegraph reported that the favoured receptacle also saved the life of a little German girl, who was travelling alone by train in the UK. Having panicked after just missing her stop, the child threw open the outer carriage door as the train departed, shielding herself from the fall by holding out her cake tin. Despite falling out while travelling at a speed up to 20 miles an hour, she survived, albeit with some serious injuries.

Pies are as ancient as the Egyptians and Greeks. The earliest of these wondrous and versatile of baked goods consisted of meat wrapped in flour and water pastes to seal in the juices when cooking, or honey concoctions which were coated in mixed grains and baked over hot coals. In early British pie-making, wooden hoops were used to shape the pie mould itself, though by the Victorian period, any dish that was deep enough to contain meat, vegetables, a gravy, capable of being covered by a pastry crust was termed a pie.

This was also the era of the decorative pie collar and functional pie funnel, designed to both release steam and support the pie crust. In an 1806 edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper, the early 19th-century cook Elizabeth Raffald recommended that raised pies should be cooked in a well-sealed oven, quickly to prevent the sides from falling down. “Light pasted pies” were considered most successful if cooked at moderate temperatures for a period of time that was neither “too long, nor too short” (resulting in the pastry becoming either “sad” or quick to burn).

Two of the earliest mass-produced baking tools are the rolling pin and pastry jigger (jagger), with a history of mass production starting in the 1600s, possibly earlier.

Glass rolling pins were used in the preparation of pastry-making, and they were often filled with ice to maintain the temperature when rolling. Apart from producing baked goods, decorative rolling pins were often used by sailors as superstitious good luck charms at sea. The Nailsea glass factory near Bristol produced a huge range of beautiful and decorative glass rolling pins (main picture).

The pastry jigger, or cutter, was originally carved from scrimshaw [bone or ivory objects], another pastime of sailors who would create these wonderfully intricate items for their waiting wives and girlfriends ashore.

The popular French rolling pins of the Victorian era were thicker in the middle and tapered at the ends in order to enhance the rolling process. In 1866, two Americans, Theodore Williamson and Chas Richardson, applied for a patent to create the ultimate rolling pin: one that acted not only as a roller, grater, and steak tenderiser, but also as a butter print. Whether it was commercially successful or not remains a mystery.

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Moulds are the backbone to any kitchen and used to create many historical treats, from ancient Chinese rice cake sculptures to traditional jellies, ices and delicate confectionery.

One of the most famous historical moulds in the UK is that of the Biddenden twins, Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst. This stems from a Kentish legend of twin girls, born joined at the hip and shoulders. Each Easter, the town of Biddenden would distribute cakes shaped in the image of the twins, taken from moulds carved in their image.

Other notable moulds include the traditional gingerbread hornbooks, based on the wooden and leather educational hornbooks, which were popular between the 16th and 19th centuries. These were blocks of alphabetical letters or Roman numerals designed as learning tools for children. The edible versions were incredibly popular in the 18th century, with London street sellers touting them for around half a penny.

Gelatine is the stuff of early civilisations and blancmange is not, as we might believe, a 1960s British brainchild. Rather, it is thought to have originated in the Middle East from almonds, chicken, rice and sugar and introduced to Britain by the crusaders. It is also understood that a Frenchman in the 1600s widely communicated the method of boiling animal bones to extract its benefits, with the use of fishbones and innards to produce an adhesive (Isinglass), patented by the British in 1750.

Springerles are German biscuit, cake or confection moulds that exist in many designs and forms, originally carved from wood and wax. This is a typical traditional recipe taken from German National Cookery for English Kitchens, 1873:

Half a pound of fine flour, half a pound of sifted sugar, two eggs, an ounce of butter, and a pinch of carbonate of soda dissolved in a teaspoonful of milk, or a little more if necessary. Form with these a dough, which must be well kneaded. Roll it out a quarter of an inch thick. Mix the anise-seeds into the dough… The more general way of moulding the springerle is with various figures cut in wooden blocks. These are dusted with flour, the paste rolled out and cut into small pieces, which are then pressed into the shapes, the surface shaved off with a knife, and the devices turned out by knocking the blocks as they are held upside down. Bake them very pale.

Emma Kay is the author of Vintage Kitchenalia (Amberley Books, 2017). If you want to try your hand at baking more historical delicacies, including a Marlborough pie and Tiger Nut Balls, click here to see our pick of historical recipes.

This article was first published by HistoryExtra in May 2017

Fancy cooking something different this Christmas? Turn your hand to one of these historical recipes… 

Take a leg of beef and a good slice of mutton and put it in a pot with some water and set it over the fire, and when it boileth put in some grated bread and some prunes and a little whole spice.

An hour after put in some raisins and currants and let it boil leisurely.

And when it is boiled enough season it with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger mace, and salt, and then sweeten it with sugar to your taste.

Put in some verjuice. Serve it up with a little bread put in the dishes.

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One quart of Brandy 2 quarts of water & lemons & 4 ounces of sugar.

Take a large fat neat’s tongue, parboil it, and take off the hard outside. Then take two pound of the choicest of it, then put it to two pound and a half of the best beef kidney suet, two pound and a quarter of the best currants, half a pound of raisins of the sun, stoned and minced very fine, six of the best largest pippins – either scrape them or mince them till they are a perfect pulp.

Put in a quarter of a pound of dates sliced, of orange, lemon and citron peel, of each a quarter of a pound, two whole nutmegs, three drams of mace, two of cinnamon and one of cloves. You must dry your spice before the fire, then beat it and sift it.

You must put in one or two large maligo lemons – the peel must be grated amongst the sweetmeats, that is all the yellow of it, and the juice must be squeezed among the sack and rosewater. Put in six pennyworth of ambergris and let it be bruised among the spice. You must put in salt, sugar, sack and rosewater according to your taste.

The tongue must be chopped as fine as is possible. The suet must be shred very fine and sifted through a coarse hair sieve. You may put in great lumps of marrow but then less suet will serve. You may slice all your sweetmeats thin but do not cut the pieces too small.

17th-century mince pie designs:

Take your turkey and take the wings off close to the shoulders. Draw it, put your turkey between a cloth, and beat the breast bone flat.

With a cleaver take out the gizzard and liver, and season the outside and inside very well. Put it into your pie. Fill your pie up with butter. Then close your pie and bake it six hours.

If you bone your turkey you must take ducks or capons and bone them and fill your turkey whole as it was with them, and put in one ounce and a half of pepper mixed with salt.

When your pie is drawn and almost cold, you must put in three pound of clarified butter and when it is cold you must stop up the funnel with raw butter.

Recipes courtesy of The Wellcome Library.

This article was first published on History Extra in December 2013

The many scenes of eating in the novels of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) are useful ingredients of Victorian social history, particularly his scenes of the young, who are hungry for food and security and are let down by the well-fed adults and, crucially, the institutions who should be caring for them.

Dickens knew the agony of childhood hunger and loneliness. He loved convivial meals and we know his wife Catherine gave a lot of thought to them, because she published a little book of ‘bills of fare’ called What Shall We Have for Dinner? In their London home, she oversaw the cook sweltering over a coal-burning cast-iron range in a cramped basement kitchen, to produce an impressive variety of dishes for a dinner party. To help balance the books, family menus featured economic and filling puddings.

Dickens’ knowledge of domestic details is unusual in a Victorian man: in A Christmas Carol, he knows that Mrs Cratchit, too poor to have an oven, sends her goose to the baker’s and the washing copper doubles up as a pudding pan; in Martin Chuzzlewit he makes a joke about making a beefsteak pudding pastry with butter. This is all part of a picture he loved to paint – a rosy-cheeked young woman learning to cook for her brother or husband.

Victorian food may have a reputation for being either stodgy or unnecessarily fussy, but recreating the dishes that Dickens and his characters tuck into shows that it can be delicious, savoury and warming, light and elegant – and always best shared. With new book Dinner with Dickens, fans of Victorian cooking can try their hand at recreating more than 60 dishes featured in the author’s work, including ‘charitable soup’, oxtail stew and pineapple rum…

Catherine Dickens’ menu book is most indebted to the recipes of the celebrity chef Alexis Soyer. In 1847, in the midst of the Irish potato famine, he travelled to Dublin to set up a famine-relief kitchen and wrote Soyer’s Charitable Cookery, the proceeds of which he gave to charity. He later travelled to the Crimea to change the diet of soldiers, particularly those in hospital.

SERVES 6

• 2 onions, sliced
• a little olive oil, for frying
• 2 leeks, sliced and washed free of grit
• 2 sticks of celery, chopped
• 2 lb 3 oz/1kg shin of beef or neck of lamb, bone in, cut into pieces by your butcher, plus some stock bones
• 2 small turnips, chopped
• bouquet garni or 2 bay leaves and a few sprigs of thyme and curly parsley, tied together
• 8½ cups/2 litres water (or beef stock if you are using meat without bones)
• 6 tablespoons pearl barley
• 3 carrots, chopped
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven, if using, to 325°F/165°C/Gas 3.

Sauté the onions in a little olive oil in a skillet/frying pan until they begin to soften, then add the leeks and celery and continue to soften for 5 minutes.

Tip this into a saucepan. Add a little more oil to the pan and brown the meat lightly on all sides in two batches—don’t let it sweat in the pan—then add it to the onions. Add the turnips, herbs, and either stock or cold water plus the stock bones. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a simmer and simmer on a very low heat, or cover and put it in the preheated oven, for 1½ hours.

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Add the pearl barley and carrots and continue to simmer for 45 minutes, or until the pearl barley is cooked. Toward the end of the cooking time, take the stock bones and herbs out of the pan and discard.

Take the meat out of the broth, pull it off the bones and shred it, then return the meat to the pan.

In The Old Curiosity Shop, Nell, her grandfather, and their eccentric fellow travellers are revived at The Jolly Sandboys with an equally eccentric “stew of tripe… cow-heel… steak… peas, cauliflowers, new potatoes, and sparrow-grass [asparagus] all working up together in one delicious gravy.” Margaret Dods’ dish of oxtail rather than cow-heel, served with peas and root vegetables, is also good for a hungry crowd on a rainy night.

SERVES 4

• 1 oxtail, about 3¼ lb/1.5kg, cut into short lengths (your butcher will do this for you)
• 4 slices of unsmoked streaky bacon, chopped
• olive oil, for frying
• 2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 small turnip, peeled and roughly chopped
• a sprig of thyme, a few stalks of parsley, and a bay leaf, tied in a bouquet or in a muslin
• 1 quart/1 litre organic beef stock
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• sauce hachée (see right) or horseradish sauce, to serve

For the sauce hachée

• 2–3 gherkins, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon flat-leaf parsley, leaves only, finely chopped
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Optional extra flavourings for sauce

• 2 scallions/spring onions, very finely chopped
• or ½ teaspoon grated horseradish
• or a little lemon zest

Rinse the oxtail pieces and then leave to soak in salted cold water for an hour or two.

Drain the oxtail, place in a pan of fresh water and bring to a rolling boil for 10–15 minutes, skimming the scum from the surface (this removes the bitterness).

If you are cooking the stew in the oven, preheat it to 300°F/150°C/Gas 2. Fry the bacon in a very little olive oil in a large flameproof pot. Add the onions and garlic and sweat until they begin to soften, then add the rest of the vegetables.

Add the drained oxtail pieces to the pot, fry them a little in the fat until they start to color, then add the herbs, the beef stock, and enough water to make sure the meat is completely covered. Bring to a simmer, check the seasoning, and add a little salt if necessary. Cover and either keep on a very low heat or put in the oven for 4 hours. Add a little water if the oxtail is becoming dry.

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When the meat is falling off the bone, take the stew off the heat or remove from the oven. If the gravy is too thin, remove the meat and vegetables with a slotted spoon and boil it fast to reduce it until it is the depth of intensity you like, then add salt and pepper to taste and return the meat and vegetables.

Serve with peas, mashed carrots, and parsnips. For the sauce hachée, simply mix the ingredients and any extra flavouring you select together and serve separately, along with a bowl of horseradish sauce. Or make horseradish mash by infusing warm milk with grated horseradish root while the potatoes are cooking.

In Martin Chuzzlewit, Ruth Pinch – the sort of ingénue housekeeper that Dickens loved writing about – is worried that the beefsteak pudding she cooks for her brother Tom will “turn out a stew, or a soup, or something of that sort.” Tom enjoys watching her cook, but later teases her when they realize she should have used suet for the pastry. Eliza Acton gives Ruth the last word by devising “Ruth Pinch’s Beefsteak Pudding,” made with butter and eggs.

SERVES 4

For the pastry

• 3½ cups/450g self-rising flour
• a pinch of salt
• 2/3 cup/150g cold butter, cubed, plus extra for greasing
• 3 eggs

For the filling

• 1 lb 2 oz/500g stewing steak, cubed
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons freshly chopped thyme
• 2 teaspoons freshly chopped parsley
• 3 level tablespoons all-purpose/plain flour
• about 2/3 cup/150ml beef stock (or water plus a tablespoon of  Worcestershire sauce or mushroom ketchup)
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

And any of Eliza Acton’s suggested additions:

• a few whole oysters
• or 5½ oz/150g kidney, chopped (Eliza recommended “veal kidneys seasoned with fine herbs”)
• or 6 oz/170g “nicely prepared button mushrooms”
• or a few shavings of fresh truffle
• or 5–7 oz/150–200g sweetbreads, chopped

Start by making the pastry. Sieve the flour and salt into a basin; add the butter and rub it in. Beat the eggs together with a dash of cold water, then stir them into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon. Pull the mixture together with your hands, adding a little more water or flour as necessary. When you have an elastic dough, turn it onto a lightly floured board and roll out into a large disc. Cut a quarter out and put to one side.

Fold the two outer quarters over the middle quarter and put into a well-buttered 2-pint/1.2-litre basin, with the point in the bottom. Unfold the two outer quarters and push the pastry into the sides of the basin, wetting the edges so that they seal together and the whole basin is fully lined. Trim the top edge so there is ½–1 inch/1–2cm of pastry overhanging the edge of the basin.

Roll out the remaining quarter to make a circular lid.

Mix the meat with the remaining ingredients except the liquid, making sure the flour is well distributed. Turn it into the pastry-lined basin and pour the stock or liquid over. Brush the top edge of the pastry in the basin with water and put the pastry lid on top, pinching it around to seal.

Put a lid of buttered foil or a circle of parchment or greaseproof paper and a cloth on top, adding a pleat to give room for the pudding to puff up.

Place the basin in a saucepan so that the water comes halfway up the side of the pudding. Cover and steam for up to 4 hours, checking and topping up the water level every half hour or so.

Serve straight from the bowl or turn it out and cut it into segments. The butter crust makes this easier to do than the traditional suet one.

The French Plums that Scrooge sees in the greengrocer’s are “blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes” (which, if “exceedingly ornamental,” even Mrs. Beeton concedes might be put directly on the dining table). Port and cinnamon turn too-tart plums into a Christmas delight. Candied French plums were Christmas gifts, but should not be confused with “sugar plums,” which are, in fact, sugared nuts or seeds.

Put the water or orange juice, port, sugar, cinnamon stick, and lemon rind in a pan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved and you have a syrup.

Add the plums, cover, and stew gently for 15 minutes.

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Serve with cream, Italian Cream (see page 157), or custard. Alternatively, make into a plum pie by mixing the ingredients together in a pie dish, adding a pastry lid (see pastry recipe on page 129), and baking at 400°F/200°C/Gas 6 for 30–35 minutes.

SERVES 4

• 3 tablespoons water or juice of 1 orange
• 3 tablespoons port
• 1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
• a cinnamon stick
• a small piece of orange or lemon rind
• approx. 1 lb 2 oz/500g French plums, halved and stones removed

The feast of currant wine, biscuits, fruit, and almond cakes that Steerforth persuades David Copperfield to provide feeds David’s infatuation with the charismatic older boy. A subsequent gift from Peggotty, of cake, oranges, and cowslip wine, he lays at the feet of Steerforth for him to dispense. William Kitchiner’s light almond cake pairs well with oranges, berries, or other fruit.

SERVES 8–10

• butter, for greasing
• 5 free-range eggs
• 1 cup minus 1 tablespoon/180g golden superfine/caster sugar (or granulated sugar, if you cannot find golden superfine/caster sugar)
• finely grated zest of 1 lemon or orange
• 1 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
• a pinch of salt
• a pinch of cream of tartar
• 2 cups/200g ground almonds
• ¼ cup/35g all-purpose/plain flour

For the frosting

• 1 tablespoon orange or lemon juice
• ¾ cup/100g confectioners’/icing sugar, sifted
• To serve
• fresh fruit, such as raspberries or cherries, or fruit compôte, such as orange, apricot, or plum (see  below)

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4. Grease a 9-inch/23-cm bundt pan/tin or ring mold, or a plain springform pan/tin. Separate the eggs and leave the whites to come to room temperature.

Make sure there is no yolk or fat in the whites, which would prevent them from beating properly.

Beat the yolks with ½ cup/100g of the sugar until pale and fluffy, then beat in the lemon or orange zest and the almond extract, if using.

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In a completely clean bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff (you should be able to turn the bowl upside down and they won’t fall out!). Add a quarter of the remaining sugar, the pinch of salt, and the cream of tartar, beat again, then fold in the rest of the sugar.

Fold the whites into the batter, a quarter at a time, followed by the almonds and flour. Scrape the mixture into the mold or pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 35–40 minutes until the cake is shrinking from the sides of the pan.

Remove from the oven and leave the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out.

To make the frosting, stir the orange or lemon juice into the sifted confectioner’s/icing sugar, then drizzle over the cake. Fill the centre of the cake with fresh fruit such as raspberries or cherries.

Alternatively, keep it plain and serve it with a compôte of fruit such as oranges, apricots, or plums.

Compotes of fruit

Eliza Acton recommends a compôte of fruit as a more elegant dessert than the “common ‘stewed fruit’ of English cookery.” The fruit, being added to a syrup, better retains its structure and taste, and the syrup is beautifully translucent. She recommends serving the redcurrant compôtes with the substantial batter, custard, bread, or ground rice puddings Victorians loved.

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The preparation is simple. Gently boil white granulated sugar and water together for 10 minutes to make a syrup, skimming any scum from the surface. Add the fruit and simmer until the fruit is lightly cooked. If the syrup is too runny, remove the fruit with a slotted spoon and arrange it in a serving dish. Reduce the syrup over a medium heat, let it cool slightly, and then pour it over. It may also be served cold, and it keeps for a day or two in the fridge. Cinnamon, cloves, vanilla beans/pods, or a little orange or lemon peel can be used as flavourings when you make the syrup.

Eliza Acton recommends the following proportions and timings:

Rhubarb, gooseberries, cherries, damsons – syrup made from ¾ cup/140g sugar with 1¼ cups/280ml water; add 1 lb/450g fruit and simmer for about 10 minutes. Redcurrants and raspberries – syrup made from ¾ cup/140g sugar with 2/3 cup/140ml water; add 1 lb/450g fruit and simmer for 5–7 minutes.

Mrs. Beeton recommends the following proportions and timings:

Oranges – syrup made from 1½ cups/300g sugar with 21/3 cups/570ml water; add 6 oranges, skin and pith removed, cut into segments. Simmer for 5 minutes. Apples—syrup made from 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons/225g sugar to scant 1¼ cups/280ml water; peel, halve, and core the apples and simmer in the syrup with the juice and rind of a lemon for 15–25 minutes.

Dinner with Dickens: Recipes Inspired by the Life and Work of Charles Dickens by Pen Vogler (CICO Books, £16.99) is on sale now. Pen Vogler is a food historian whose other books include Dinner with Mr Darcy and Tea with Jane Austen.

This article was first published by History Extra in October 2017.

Imagine that you are a master chef, working for a celebrity who wants to throw a wedding dinner for their daughter, with 200–300 guests. Next imagine that you have no electricity – no refrigerators, no freezers, no light – and no gas. Your suppliers have to get everything to you fresh, and you don’t want to use salted meat for this important occasion. You are not sure exactly how much of any ingredient you will need until very close to the day. What’s more, the guests may stay on for several days. Among them there will be vegetarians or people needing special diets. To top this all off, the only transport available is horse and cart, so nothing can be brought at the last minute.

Want to try your hand at some historical recipes? Find more here, including: 

• Sam’s historical recipe corner: Marlborough pie
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Sounds difficult? Working recently on a book on the feasts and festivals of the Middle Ages, I encountered an extraordinary handbook which described exactly how to deal with this situation. Fortunately for us, in 1420, Amadeus VIII, count of Savoy (on the borders of France and Italy) asked his cook – a Master Chiquart – to record his experiences. The house of Savoy had had a reputation for magnificence and stylish living since the mid-14th century, and Chiquart had been employed by Amadeus VIII since the late 1390s. Yet initially, Chiquart was reluctant to set pen to paper and refused to do so. He was a cook, not a learned man who wrote books and nothing like it had ever been done before. However, the duke persisted. Eventually, Chiquart set down what he had learnt in the course of his service, stylishly and with eloquence, in Du fait de cuisine.

Medieval recipe books

By the time Chiquart became the count of Savoy’s master chef, there was a common stock of recipes circulated in manuscript cookery books, and by word of mouth, which were found in princely courts throughout western Europe. What is striking is that we are nonetheless in the presence of a creative chef; Chiquart goes far beyond this basic repertoire. He either elaborates on the standard recipes, or provides new ones that have no parallel elsewhere.

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Furthermore, unlike many earlier recipe books that were vague about how to actually cook a particular dish, Chiquart gives the kind of instructions that we find in a modern cookery book. The only difference between his recipes and today’s cookbooks is that Chiquart does not suggest quantities, possibly because they would have varied so hugely between the count’s private dinners and his greatest feasts. Chiquart is instructing his readers in what he has learnt of his art, part of which is to know the amounts to use. One recipe specifies that the cook should put in “just the right amount, so that there is neither too little nor too much”, implying that knowledge only comes with experience, and cannot be written down.

Preparing for a “most honourable feast”

Unlike any earlier writer, Chiquart begins his treatise on cookery with notes on how to organise a “most honourable feast”. These notes at once open a window on the mundane matters on which the success or failure of such an event depended. Cattle, sheep and pigs were to be bought from the butcher, “and for this the butcher will be wise if he is well supplied, so that if it happens that the feast lasts longer than expected, one has promptly what is necessary; and also, if there are extras, do not butcher them so that nothing is wasted.” In other words, the butcher would buy in animals and keep them in his fields until he needed them.

The quantities were massive: for each day of the feast Chiquart recommended 200 kids and lambs, 100 calves and 2,000 poultry birds; for a major feast lasting a full week, these figures would be multiplied by five, and fish would also be needed for two fast days (Friday and Saturday).

While these numbers may sound huge, comparing Chiquart’s figures against those from English royal feasts in the 13th and 14th centuries shows that they are indeed realistic. At Christmas 1251, Henry III and his guests were served 830 red, fallow and roe deer, 200 wild boar, 1,300 hares, 385 young pigeons (squabs) and 115 cranes; and that was merely the wild game. For the knighting of Edward II in 1306, the cattle required numbered 400 oxen, 800 sheep, 400 pigs and 40 boars.

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• Wartime Christmas: 5 First World War recipes

Preparations had to start early. Chiquart suggests that “subtle, diligent and wise” poulterers should have 40 horsemen at their disposal to get game, river birds, and wild birds, and “whatever they can get”. “They should turn their attention to this two months or six weeks before the feast,” he says, “and they should all have come or sent what they could obtain by three or four days before the said feast so that the said meat can be hung and each dealt with as it ought to be.” The birds must have been held in pens, just as the butchers kept their cattle at pasture. Keeping live wild birds as a kind of larder was quite normal. When Edward III went to war in France in 1346, his huge train of carts included several which were caged to hold poultry.

Spices were a vital ingredient of luxurious dishes in the Middle Ages. Chiquart divides these into “major spices” such as white and Mecca gingers, pepper, cinnamon and grains of paradise (a west African spice somewhere between cardamom and pepper); and “minor spices” such as nutmeg, cloves, colouring agents and decorative items. Also under this heading came practical items, such as wheat starch, as well as almonds, rice and candied fruits, pine nuts and dates. So that the cook could work faster, “one should grind to powder the aforesaid spices and put each separately into large and good leather bags,” Chiquart instructed.

Read more:

• Fit for a queen: 3 medieval recipes enjoyed at English and Scottish royal courts
• 17th-century ‘Great British Bake Off’ recipes

Kitchen equipment is vital for any cook, and Chiquart provides a detailed list with practical comments such as “check the space for making sauces”, and “do not trust wooden spits because they will rot and you could lose all your meat”. Equally there must be enough fuel: “one thousand cartloads of good dry firewood, a great storehouse full of coal. If the feast is held in winter, the kitchen will need 60 torches, 20 pounds of wax candles, and 60 pounds of tallow candles to be used as lights when visiting all the various parts of the kitchen, including the separate building which houses the pastrycooks.”

“In order to better prepare the said feast without reprehension or fault, the house-stewards, the kitchen masters and the master cook should assemble three or four months before the feast to put in order, visit, and find good and sufficient space to do the cooking. This space should be so large and fine that large working sideboards can be set up in such fashion that between the serving sideboards and the others the kitchen masters can go with ease to pass out and receive the dishes.”

Tricky guests

The stewards were evidently in charge of the guest list. They appear in Chiquart’s book to tell the cook how many partridges in tremollete sauce (evidently regarded as a special delicacy) should be put in front of each important guest, ranging downwards from six for a king. These birds were not necessarily for his own personal consumption: a treatise on etiquette explains that a lord’s plate must be piled high so that “you can share your plate courteously to right and to left along the whole high table, so that if you so wish, everyone can have the same food as you”.

Read more:

• Tudor tunes: music at the courts of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and James VI and I
• Tudor dining: a guide to food and status in the 16th century

There could be complications: “there could be some very high, puissant, noble, venerable and honourable lords and ladies who do not eat meat, for these there must be fish,” records Chiquart. The need to serve fish would also apply if the feast fell on a fast day. Furthermore, some of the guests would have arrived with their own cooks who would prepare certain dishes. Space and provisions would need to be found for these cooks so that they did not hold up the service of the feast as a whole. Another challenge was invalids: “it would be a miracle if there were no ailing or sick people, nor afflicted with any infirmities or maladies”, writes Chiquart. So, having talked to the doctors, he offered 16 recipes for restoratives and special fortifying dishes, including stuffed crayfish and a purée of spinach and parsley.

Chiquart describes a festival to be held over two days. A real event of this kind was held in 1403, when his master the count of Savoy married Mary, daughter of Philip the Bold of Burgundy. Chiquart’s team was required to present a dinner on the first day, as well as dinner and supper on the second day. The wedding celebrations were held on a Friday and Saturday, so meat was not included. These were ‘lean days’, when eating meat was prohibited by the church. Meat was also banned for the whole of Lent and other specific dates in the church calendar.

Read more:

• A drink for the devil: 8 facts about the history of coffee
• Pig-chickens, beavers’ tails and turtle soup: 8 weird foods through history

Colour-coordinated menus

Menus were arranged according to certain basic principles, and the order of service generally conformed to an accepted pattern. At a great feast, the dishes would also be colour-coordinated to demonstrate the cook’s skill. In Chiquart’s first menu, the predominant colours for the first course were gold and green; produced by saffron, egg yolk, green vegetables, herbs and gold serving dishes. The second course of ‘bruets’, or almond milk stews, was white, while the third – lampreys in beef gravy – was red. This was followed by a course of German stews cooked with onions or fish in batter in a green sauce, which had to be carefully judged to come out as a bright and festive green, not a sombre dark green. Decorative pies made up the final course. In another menu, the final course was a spectacular four-coloured blancmange, in which the colours were sharply defined by cooking the four sections separately.

Meat and fish were the most important dishes on the menu. If served roast or boiled, they were always accompanied by a sauce, and Chiquart gives 15 recipes for them. The value placed on sauces is indicated by the name given to a cinnamon sauce in a German cookery book, called a “sauce for lords”. Interestingly, cinnamon seems to have been very rare in Germany, but was used quite widely elsewhere in Europe.

Soups and stews, which might be based on almond milk or eggs, formed the majority of dishes. Yet they were complex, requiring a careful balance of meats, colours and spices. The list of ingredients for Chiquart’s German stew is as follows: “Capons, pork or lamb, kid or veal; onions; bacon fat; almonds; beef stock; good white wine, verjuice; white ginger, grains of paradise, a little pepper, nutmeg, cloves and mace, saffron for colouring, a lot of sugar; salt.”

All this had to be carefully supervised by the master chef. The kitchen staff on the count of Savoy’s payroll was 20 strong, compared with 34 at the much larger and grander court of the fabulously rich dukes of Burgundy. Chiquart had a kitchen clerk who instructed the cooks as to the number of portions to be prepared: throughout his book, he refers to directing “your companions”, and a high degree of organisation and teamwork was essential. Individual cooks were usually specialists in a particular area with their own assistants, the most skilled being the pastry-maker and sauce cook.

Read more:

• Podcast: The history of manners
• Bad manners and a game of thrones: inside the court of Napoleon Bonaparte

Food as theatre

At this time, the presentation of feasts could be very theatrical. Between courses, there were often dramatic interludes, full of elaborate symbolism, with musicians and members of the court taking part. The most famous feasts at the court of Burgundy involved all kinds of creatures, played by men in pantomime horse fashion:

“My lord the duke was served at table by a two-headed horse ridden by two men sitting back to back, each holding a trumpet and sounding it as loud as he could, and then by a monster, consisting of a man riding on an elephant, with another man, whose feet were hidden, on his shoulders. Next came a white stag ridden by a boy who sang marvellously, while the stag accompanied him with the tenor part.”

Part of the responsibility for these interludes fell to the cook’s department: pies containing 24 musicians, statues made of special sugar and pastry, and even elaborate moving devices for which carpenters were brought in.

Considering the immense resources and skills needed to create such an elaborate feast, it is easy to see why Stuart playwright and poet Ben Jonson, two hundred years later, praised Chiquart’s successors in the kitchen to the skies:

“A master cook! why, he is the man of men


He’s a professor; he designs, he draws, 


He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies,


Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish.” 

Richard Barber is the author of The Prince in Splendour: Court Festivals of Medieval Europe (The Folio Society, 2017)

This article was first published on HistoryExtra in May 2017

Middle Ages

In the medieval period baking was a luxury few were able to enjoy. But those who could afford a wood-burning stove (and to heat it) would start with bread. The better the quality, the higher up the social order you were

Ovens were not a standard fixture in any household, so bread-baking never really entered the home in the medieval period, says Pennell. It was a niche, commercial activity. For example, you had bread-bakers in London.

Rich people ate fine, floured wheat bread. But if you were poor you cut your teeth on rye and black bread, says Walter. Only the very wealthy ate the cakes we tend to think of today. But they were much heavier – 10 to 20lbs. This was subsistence-focused baking, with an emphasis on bread and pies.

“If you were wealthy, your baked goods would be rich in exotic colour. But if you were poor, you were grateful if you could afford meat for your pie,” says Walter.

Read more:

• What was life like for a medieval housewife?
• In pictures: medieval life
• 10 medieval dates you need to know

15th century

Britain saw an explosion of expensive spices, such as saffron, in the 15th century. Sweet dough, with lots of cream and butter, started to be enjoyed by those who could afford it

The wigg – a small bun made with sweetened dough and herbs and spices – became popular.

But mince pies were made with minced beef or mutton, and biscuits were “the equivalent of Ryvita – pretty nasty stuff,” says Walter.

Meanwhile, gingerbread was made with breadcrumbs.

16th and 17th centuries

Baking was transformed in the 16th and 17th centuries by globalisation, which heralded an explosion of treacle and currants. Plump cake and bready dough with lots of butter, cream and raisins became popular

Economic growth prompted an emerging middle class, and baking ‘trickled down’, says Walter. Amid growing wealth and social change, people could think about eating things other than bread, and imitate the upper-class diet.

Baking became more accessible, and so more people started to bake cakes and biscuits.

By the late 17th century sugar was cheap, and so you saw the emergence of mince pies as we know them, made with sugar and spices. And with the refinement of flour you saw the development of gingerbread as we know it.

From the 16th century came the first cookery literature, in which you start to see recipes for things we might recognise today as small, yeasted cakes and buns, says Pennell. They would be eaten as part of the dessert course, to help you digest the rich meal you had eaten beforehand.

You also started to see the emergence of kitchen equipment, such as the ‘cake hoop’ – that is, a cake tin. The tin was lined with buttered paper.

But cakes were made with ale and were very solid. The modern-day equivalent, in terms of the yeast-bread-based dough, would be a lardy cake. Seed cakes were also popular.

Pastries, too, were considered fashionable in the late 17th century. The English prided themselves on their pastry-making and it was considered a skill all good housewives should have, says Pennell. London cookery schools also began to teach pastry-making – it was a fashionable skill.

18th century

Cake-making soared in popularity in the 18th century, but the industrial revolution from 1760 saw a return to more stodgy baked goods

The 18th century was when cake-making really took off, says Dr Pennell.

The Art of Cookery, written by Hannah Glasse and published in 1747, contained a catalogue of cake recipes. Integral to this was the development of the semi-closed oven. “The development of baking is as much to do with technology as it is taste,” says Pennell.

Fast-forward to the industrial revolution and Britain saw a return to heavy baking, where the working class ate bread and jam, says Walter. But at Easter, Christmas and other seasonal occasions, a richer diet would be available to even the poorer members of society.

Merchants and shopkeepers could afford ovens by the 18th century, and to bake.

Read more:

• Biscuit tins, rolling pins and pastry jiggers: a brief history of baking utensils
• Top 5 Dickensian recipes
• When beans were the food of lust (subscription)

19th century

Convenience food grew in popularity in the 19th century, and the advent of baking powder saw cakes become lighter

As more working-class women were employed in the 19th century, they had less time for elaborate food preparation, says Walter. “We often think of the ‘fast food culture’ as being a recent thing, but women in Britain in the 19th century increasingly relied on convenience food such as pasties and pies.”

Meanwhile, the introduction of baking powder saw the style of cakes change from dense, yeast-based bakes, into cakes made with flour, eggs, fat and a raising agent.

Professor John Walter is Emeritus Professor in the Department of History at the University of Essex, specialising in popular political culture in early modern England.

Dr Sara Pennell is a senior history lecturer at the University of Greenwich who specialises in social and cultural histories of 17th and 18th-century Britain, with particular interests in food cultures, health and architecture.

This article was first published by History Extra in October 2013

Food historian and author Pen Vogler explores the Victorian diet and recipes through the life and works of 19th-century Britain’s best-known writer, Charles Dickens.

Made from a mixture of vanilla ice cream and caramelised wholemeal breadcrumbs, brown bread ice cream was a popular treat among the upper-class in the late 19^th century.

To read the Cook it! recipe in full, click here

Possibly the most popular teatime treat in Britain, the Victoria sandwich is made of two simple sponges, with lashings of strawberry jam and cream layered in-between.

To read the BBC Good Food recipe in full, click here

British colonials based in India first created kedgeree during the 19th century. After they passed on their recipe to their friends back home, kedgeree became the staple of many breakfast tables across Britain. The dish is made of rice, smoked haddock and plenty of spice.

To read the Cook it! recipe in full, click here

Syllabub is a boozy yet creamy dessert, popular among the elite during the 17th and 18th centuries. Usually made with fortified wines such as sherry, this sweet treat also featured at high society banquets during the Victorian period.

To read Mrs Beeton’s recipe on the BBC, click here

Made from suet pastry, dried currants and raisins, spotted dick first appeared in The Modern Housewife cookbook by French chef Alexis Soyer in 1849. Serve this pudding with lashings of hot custard.

To read the BBC Good Food recipe in full, click here

The perfect accompaniment to a strong cup of tea, teacakes are sweet buns filled with dried fruit. Usually toasted and smothered in butter, a recipe for teacakes is mentioned in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management – the bestselling guide to running a home in the 19^th century.

To read Mrs Beeton’s recipe on the BBC, click here

Made out of a thin mixture of oats and water or milk, gruel is famously affiliated with the Victorian workhouse, as seen in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

To read the Cook it! recipe in full, click here

Rys Lumbard Stondyne

Period: England, 14th century
Description: Sweet Rice and Egg Pudding

Original recipe

And for to make rys lumbard stondyne, take raw yolkes of
eyren, and bete hom, and put hom to the rys beforesaid, and
qwen hit is sothen take hit off the fyre, and make thenne a
dragée of the yolkes of harde eyren broken, and sugre and
gynger mynced, and clowes, and maces; and qwen hit is put
in dyshes, strawe the dragée theron, and serve hit forth.

Modern recipe

• 1 cup rice
• 2 cups beef, chicken,
or other broth
• 4 raw egg yolks
• 2 tsp sugar, or to taste
• 1/8 tsp saffron
• Salt to taste

Dragées

• 2 hard-boiled egg yolks
• 1 tsp sugar, or to taste
• 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 1/8 tsp each cloves and mace

1) In a heavy saucepan or pot combine rice, broth and salt. Over medium heat, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes, or until all liquid has been absorbed.

2) When rice is done, stir in raw egg yolks, sugar and saffron, and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture gets very thick. Dish into a lightly oiled mould or bowl, cool, and turn out for serving.

3) To make the dragées, in a bowl combine hard-boiled egg yolks, grated fresh ginger, sugar and spices, and blend into a paste. Roll this paste into little balls about half an inch across, and decorate the moulded Rys Lumbard with them.

Great Pie

Ingredients

• 1 kg mixed game (venison, pheasant, rabbit and boar)
• 2 large onions, peeled and diced
• 1 garlic clove
• 120 grams of brown mushrooms, sliced
• 120 grams smoked back bacon, diced
• 25 grams plain flour
• Juice and zest of 1 orange
• 300 ml chicken stock
• 70 ml of Merlot wine
• Salt and pepper

Modern recipe (serves eight to 12)

1) Preheat oven to 180°C.

2) In a frying pan, brown the game.

3) Soften the onions and then add the garlic, mushrooms and bacon and fry for a few minutes. Add the stock and orange juice and zest. Raise it to a boil then simmer for an hour until the meat is tender.

4) Let the mixture cool and add it to your short crust pastry case. Add a pastry lid and press it onto the lip of the base then trim it. Cut a steam hole or two and brush with a beaten egg all over.

5) Put the pie in the oven and bake for one hour. Cool before serving.

_{An early 14th-century royal meal; illustration from Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages from the Seventh to the Seventeenth Centuries by Henry Shaw, (London, 1843). (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)}

Malaches of Pork

Period: England, 14th century
Description: Pork Quiche

Original recipe

Hewe pork al to pecys and medle it with ayren & chese
igrated. Do therto powdour fort, safroun & pynes with salt.
Make a crust in a trap; bake it wel therinne, and serue it forth.

Modern recipe (Serves eight to 12)

• Pastry dough for 1 nine-inch pie crust
• 1 pound lean pork, cubed
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup grated, hard cheese
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Pinch of each, cloves, mace, black pepper

1) Preheat oven to 230°C.

2) Line a nine-inch pie pan with the pastry dough, and bake it for five to 10 minutes to harden it. Remove it, and reduce oven temperature to 175°C.

3) In a frying pan, over medium heat, brown the cubed pork until it is tender.

4) In a bowl, beat the eggs and spices together.

5) Line the bottom of the pie crust with the browned pork, grated cheese, and pine nuts. Pour the egg and spice mixture over them.

6) Put the pie in the oven and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick draws out clean. Cool before serving

In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates a healthy snack thought to have been enjoyed in Egypt around 3,500 years ago.

If you, like me, have a sweet tooth but are trying to be healthier then try tiger nut balls.

I found lots of references to this being one of the first Egyptian recipes that we know of, found written on an ancient ostraca (inscribed broken pottery) dating back to 1600 BC. Although I haven’t found a definitive source for this (or why tiger nut balls don’t contain tiger nuts!) they sounded too delicious to pass over. As your average ancient Egyptian seems to have had a very sweet tooth and often added dates and honey to desserts, I like to think that this is a sweet that would have been made thousands of years ago.

This recipe is very straightforward, requires no cooking and is a lot fun to make (ideal for younger members of the household who might want to help).

Ingredients

• 200g fresh dates (I used dried, which worked really well)

• 1 tsp cold water

• 10–15 walnut halves

• ¼ tsp of cinnamon

• small jar of runny honey

• 75g ground almonds

Method

Chop the dates finely (use seedless, or make sure to remove the stones first) and put them into a bowl. Add the water and stir. Then mix in the chopped walnuts and the cinnamon.

Shape the mixture into small balls with your hands. Dip the balls in honey (I warmed it first so the honey coating wouldn’t be quite so thick) then roll the balls in the ground almonds.

Chill them in the fridge for half an hour before serving.

BBC history Magazine team verdict:

“Like historic energy balls.”

“I think Tiger nut balls roar with flavour.”

“They’re as indulgent as a chocolate truffle!”

Difficulty: 1/10

Time: 45 mins

Recipe courtesy of Cook it!

This article was first published in the January 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine.

Christmas is today the biggest food event of the year, and things were little different in the 1910s, when abundant courses and elaborate French cuisine were de rigeur. But wartime from 1914 made things tricky, and put a new moral emphasis on economy.

Imports were restricted by naval warfare, and food producers were fighting at the front. Shortages soon appeared, and the Ministry of Food Control was set up in 1916. Initially advocating voluntary rationing, it was forced to introduce compulsory rationing in the last year of the war.

From popular magazine The Bystander, here are some of the Christmas recipes Britain enjoyed during the First World War.

Oysters were eaten in astounding quantities during the 19th century: supplies were bountiful, and they were known as a cheap meat alternative for the poor. They were so popular in fact, that by the end of the 19th century oyster stocks had collapsed, and native oyster beds became exhausted.

By the 20th century oysters had become an expensive delicacy, as this wartime recipe from December 1914 shows. This festive starter, a delicate ‘oyster soufflé’ calls for six oysters:

Put 4 oz. of whiting or sole through a sieve. Make a panada of 1 oz. of butter, 1 oz. of flour, and a quarter of a pint of milk. Stir into this two yolks of eggs and the fish. Beat the whites very lightly, and stir well. Add half a pint of fish stock (made from the bones), one tablespoonful of cream, and six oysters cut up, steam slowly for one and a half hours. Turn over very carefully, pour a rich white sauce round, and decorate the top with a sprinkling of red pepper.

‘Panada’ was a paste made of flour, breadcrumbs or another starchy ingredient, mixed with liquid.

‘White sauce’ was defined as a plain sauce based on melted butter, whisked with flour. Milk is slowly added over a low heat until the sauce becomes thick and creamy.

This would be a side dish on modern tables, but during the First World War it formed its own course, emulating the French style of table service. Creamy baked celery with a cheesy crust was a rich platter, worthy of the Christmas occasion, and the ingredients were still relatively affordable. This recipe from December 1914 reads:

Stew some celery in milk till tender, then make a white sauce, into which grated Parmesan should be stirred, and then place the celery in the dish it is to be served in. Pour the white sauce over then a layer of grated Parmesan, then a thin layer of breadcrumbs, and over all put pieces of butter, brown in the oven, and serve very hot.

This December 1914 recipe is from a special feature in The Bystander, ‘Four methods of cooking a turkey’. Turkey was emerging as a popular Christmas dish, but it did not dominate the Christmas table as it does today. Other fowl – particularly goose – were also popular.

The following recipe is for what was a particularly elaborate dish, recommended for a special public occasion like ‘a ball supper’. While many of The Bystander’s recipes were intended to be practical guides, it seems unlikely that the magazine’s readers would have followed this recipe in large numbers. We can think of this as early food entertainment; the equivalent of watching modern cookery shows. In this case, variety and interesting ideas were just as important as practicality.

Bone a turkey and lay it with the inside uppermost, cut the meat from the thick parts, and distribute it equally all over the inside, season with salt and pepper. Make some forcemeat with veal, ham, and truffles, put a layer of this over the meat of the bird, then a layer of sliced tongue, then another layer of turkey, then forcemeat, then tongue and truffles.

Roll it up, and tie it with tape, and put it in a well-buttered cloth into a stew pan, with two carrots, two onions, a stick of celery, some parsley and peppercorns, and sufficient white stock to cover it. Let it simmer gently for three hours, strain, and let it get cold; remove the cloth, and glaze it all over; if any glaze is left, cut it into various strips and lozenge shapes and garnish the dish with it. This dish is excellent for a ball supper.

‘Forcemeat’ was a mixture of uncooked ground or pureéd meat, similar to paté, while ‘white stock’ was a clear meat stock (as opposed to brown stock). The glaze in this instance would be a sweet jelly, brushed over the meat while warm and liquid. When cooled, the jelly would be firm enough to ‘cut into various strips’.

Chestnuts were a traditional Christmas ingredient by December 1915, being grown in abundance on home soil – particularly handy for the wartime cook. But this recipe’s dependence on sugar makes it an extravagant dish all the same.

Roast three dozen large chestnuts, peel them, and put them into a stewpan; add 4 oz. of castor sugar and half a gill of water; cook slowly till the nuts absorb the sugar; then pile them up on a glass dish, squeeze over with the juice of a lemon, and dust rather thickly with castor sugar.

A ‘gill’ was an old unit of measure, equivalent to about 120ml.

This recipe, which dates from November 1915, is a classic response to wartime shortages and economy. Unlike some of the exciting recipes above, this is a cheap, practical method for cooking Christmas pudding.

Sugar and eggs were both in increasingly short supply, and this recipe uses only one large spoon of sugar, and no eggs. Instead, the inclusion of a mashed carrot brings some essential sweetness and moisture to the recipe – just like in modern carrot cake.

Although fruit, like everything else during the war, has gone up in price, every English household must have a Christmas Pudding, but today, when eggs are so very expensive, it is necessary to be as careful as possible to try and obtain good results with fewer in the pudding. The secret of success is in the boiling, and the longer a Christmas pudding is allowed to boil the richer it will be.

Six spoonfuls of flour, ½ lb. of beef suet, ½ lb. of currants, one large spoonful of sugar, one large carrot to be boiled and mashed finely and mixed with the above ingredients, and the pudding to be boiled five hours. No milk or eggs are to be used in mixing the pudding. Serve with sweet sauce [almond or brandy sauce – popular accompaniments to Christmas pudding].

A 1915 Yuletide menu

The addition of olives with anchovies, and two extra dessert courses, promised to satisfy the most eager Christmas diner. Here is a typical 1915 festive menu:

Hors-d’oeuvres
Clear Ox-tail Soup
Oyster Souffle
Roast Turkey, Chestnut Stuffing
Boiled Ham
Plum Pudding, Mince Pies
Orange Jelly
Olives with Anchovies
Dessert
Coffee, Liqueurs

This article was first published by History Extra in December 2014.