Cooking Marathon! - 18th Century Cooking Season 3

in this week's episode we're going to be making a standing paste the kind of paste you'd use to make a standing crust pie these pies held their shape without a pan or a mold probably the earliest kind of pie crust you'll see in English cooking let's get started [Music] thank you [Music] our standing crust has the same kind of ingredients as all the other pie crusts it just has a flour has a little bit of salt it has butter and in this case we add a little bit of lard and and that's all that's really here in the pie crust but it's completely different from other pie crusts in that instead of having a very cold butter that keeps a very delicate and soft easy to eat crust this does just the opposite and we boil the butter in the water so for water we're gonna need a half a cup of water plus two tablespoons and in that we're going to boil three tablespoons of butter and three tablespoons of lard let's keep this boiling [Music] okay our water and butter are boiled up here I'm going to add our salt to our our flour about a three finger pinch there I'm gonna mix up salt a little bit I'm going to make a pocket in the middle and pour in our liquids here [Music] we're using two and a half cups of all-purpose flour this is very hot we don't want to burn ourselves but I'm going to start the mixing around the edges it should mix up into a very thick kind of gooey dough a bit a lot like Play-Doh very uh stiff and firm okay I've got this gathered up let's uh put it out on our work surface [Music] we're going to need we're going to have to knead this for a good five or ten minutes [Music] it's nice and easy to work while it's warm now let's roll this up [Music] put that in half in two equal portions and then pull off of each ball not a walnut size piece these will turn out to be our lids here we go make these into patties we're going to cover these with a damp cloth and we're going to let them sit and rest at least four hours even better overnight these pieces have rested so let's get them into our final shapes got our two little Lids here [Music] and let's roll these out to the side or our top about an eighth of an inch thick and five or six inches in diameter [Music] the other one those are the lids we're going to put on now we're going to do the bottom sections we need to have a form to work around to form our our cavity with I've got a a glass here it's two and a half or three inches in diameter you'll need something similar size to this for this single serving shell so let's put it right in the very center of our our Patty of dough and we're going to press down until we get about an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch underneath it's hard to tell we can't tell exactly but we can get a good guess and it's going to squish up around the glass so now we're going to form this up around our glass slowly kind of pulling and squeezing it up if your dough splits on you here's a little split here you can kind of heal that crack with a little bit of water [Music] kind of feel around and see that the thickness is about the same and the bottom is about right about a quarter of an inch thick so so here we have our cup and our lid that will go up on top and get crimped on depending on what kind of contents we have uh on the inside and those will cover in future episodes where we'll have recipes that use this kind of shell [Music] let's take a look at exactly what this puff paste looks like when it's finished again break off a little piece here you can see how layered and textured this stuff is it's very similar to a modern croissant type of dough that's what we're going to be making today I've got in our Bowl here three and a half cups of cake flour which is about a pound this is uh Swan's cake flour uh here that we're using uh today you can use a pastry flour but you want something that's definitely a soft wheat flour that won't fight you like all-purpose flour well we're gonna add a three finger pinch of salt and now we're gonna mix in some egg whites so there's about one cup worth of egg whites here we're going to start out with this as our beginning dough here the egg whites are going to help us roll this out really thin this turned out to be a little too sticky so I'm going to add in just a little bit more flour it's a much easier to add in a little bit of flour than it is to add more water and if it's too stiff now that we've got this dough mixed up we're gonna actually need to bring it out onto our work surface and knead it a little bit so [Music] you want to get it out nice and soft foreign [Music] now to prepare our butter I've got a pound of butter here four sticks laid out side by side it's nice and cool it's chilled butter and we're going to cover this up with our cloth I'm just pushing down here to mold this butter together in one big pad [Music] we want to get this into a Square that's about a half inch thick [Music] thank you here is our butter so let's set this aside I want to take a break here for just a second and talk about butter butter in the 18th century was definitely different than the kind of butter that we see in our grocery stores today if you want to get closer to an 18th century butter flavor I suggest trying out a kerrygold butter it's going to be a lot closer to that kind of 18th century taste now it's time to work with our dough again we're going to take our dough and roll it out about a quarter of an inch thick [Music] I'm purposefully leaving the middle of our dough a little thick and you'll see how that works a little bit later [Music] okay I've rolled this out to about an eighth of an inch not not a quarter inch but an eighth of an inch and this stuff really wants to fight you you roll it out and it kind of relaxes back but just keep working it and it'll work out if you are using all-purpose flour instead of the cake flour you'll have a lot more trouble with it this is really where the the two there's a lot of difference now what we're going to do is put our pad of butter right here in the middle and now we're going to fold our dough up over the top of it [Music] we want this wrapped up tight with no air bubbles if we can help it [Music] thank you [Music] now let's roll it out a little bit [Music] foreign foreign now we're going to fold this up in thirds then we're going to turn it 90 degrees and roll it out some more [Music] foreign [Music] one more time [Music] we're going to put it in our cloth [Music] we're going to set this aside in a nice cool place to rest for about 30 minutes after 30 minutes of rest we can do this whole operation over again we roll it out into a long rectangle fold it up turn it 90 degrees roll it out again fold it up and then rest you want to do this three more times so that four times all together during this whole time make sure to keep this nice and cool there this one has been rolled out and rested it's been rolled out four times and it's ready to be uh taken out to its final thickness we're gonna roll this out to a uh our useful quarter inch thick [Music] foreign there we go we got it rolled out to our nice finished thickness this can be used for all sorts of things a call for this in 18th century cookbooks for meat pies toppings of other pies sometimes you'll have two kinds of crust you know the standing crust with a puff pastry on the top so there's all kinds of things that this kind of pastry is used for we'll use this crust in a number of recipes in upcoming episodes in previous episodes we made both a standing paste and a puff paste in this week's episode we're going to be doing the third popular kind of paste that you will see in 18th century cooking this one is called the short paste very similar to a modern pie crust usually used in the 18th century for Tarts and fruit pies let's make some [Music] okay we're starting off here with two cups of all-purpose flour and to that I'm going to add a little three finger pinch of salt to that I'm gonna mix this up just the hair and now we're going to add in our butter this uh flour I've got two cups it's unsifted it's about 12 ounces in weight and here I've got six ounces of butter we're gonna add to this the ratio is about two to one by weight 12 ounces of flour in this case six ounces of butter if you want to double this up it's easy to double just as long as you know the ratio of two to one I want my butter to be mixed in perfectly with this flour but not melted in any way I'm just trying to uh crumble the butter up with the flour with my fingertips hold on my fingers don't touch the butter for any great period of time for fear of melting that butter and get all those lumps broken up now that this butter is all Incorporated it's time to add our water we're going to add this just a tablespoon at a time to get to the right consistency foreign [Music] we used about three or four tablespoons maybe a little more a little less you wanted to make sure it's nice cool water too now let's gather this up into a ball and roll it out and we're going to flour our surface here we want to keep rolling this out to we're about an eighth of an inch thick here we go we've got enough for a single crust we need a top crust you're going to need to make another one of these so double up your recipe this is perfect for use in our redware pie pan or in our tart tins we're going to be using this crust in several upcoming episodes foreign we're going to be cooking an 18th century pear tart this is a wonderful little fruit pie let's get started we're going to start today with the crust and you're going to need a short crust for this recipe we've done a short paste in a previous episode so you need to refer back to that about how to make your crust and you're going to need a tart tin here's a 5 inch tart tin that's available on our website and we've got it well buttered let's press this crust into place be sure to press this well into the corners now that that's ready let's make our filling this recipe is from Hannah glasses the complete confectioner the recipe calls for pears we can use pears or we can use apples before we start peeling our pear and and chopping it up there's an easy and quick way to tell whether or not your pear is ripe which you really want to use right pears in this recipe you can squeeze it up toward the stem area if it gives a little if it's a little squishy up here the pear is ready if it's if it's still hard at the at the tip here it's not ripe yet now we need to have a slice of lemon peel that we put in our saucepan first that all the pears go on top of we're going to peel core and slice these pears up and put them on our saucepan now we're going to pour in just enough water to cover them let's put these on the fire to simmer until they're soft our pears are nice and softened now it's time to separate them from their liquid content so I've got a a screen here a sifter and we're going to pour those out good and they're still warm uh if you don't have a sifter like this or a screen you can use a piece of cloth to separate these out we want to take pick out our our lemon peel because that's not going to stay in there now we're going to take our pie tin with our crust in it and we're going to take two tablespoons of powdered sugar we're going to spread it in the bottom of our dish here spread nice and evenly now we're going to take our contents here and we're gonna transfer our pears into crust there are pairs now we're going to take another two tablespoons of powdered sugar and spread it on top now we're going to add just a spoonful of our pear juice back into the shell and now we're going to finish up with some lemon juice right up on top to give it a little zing now it's time to put our top crust on now we're going to need vent holes in that top crust now it's time to bake this in a camp setting this is easily baked in the Dutch oven we can bake it in our Earthen oven or in a modern oven you need to bake it at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes [Music] and here is our pear tart right out of the oven and it looks really good we managed to get it separated from its little pan we turned it up and tipped it out let's cut a little slice out of this see how it tastes [Music] that's really great it's a great little tart [Music] Christmas is very soon Ivy oh I'm so excited so you like Christmas huh yes my favorite holiday is it really now why do you like Christmas so much it's your turn is it the presents yes and Christmas tree and the food [Music] Grammy really the food what kind of food do you like what kind of food do I not like it's your turn I've been wanting to make a special dish that was a favorite for Christmas for hundreds of years really pretty I want to make a mince pie using an old recipe from Elizabeth raffald's 1769 cookbook the experienced English housekeeper audience housekeepers can I help well let's clean up [Music] so what is mince pie dab it usually has lots of raisins in it it's got nice tart apples uh it has Brandy sometimes it even has a little meat in it and of course spices what kind of meat well they usually have something that has a very smooth grain to it so tongue or tenderloin Captain I like cow tongue yeah I know you're a funny little girl aren't you are we going to use not in this recipe this particular recipe is a meatless mince pie so how do we make it well we need to start with about a pound of currants and about a half a pound of raisins currents are kind of like little tiny raisins why don't we just use raisins well you can use raisins instead of currants if you can't find them in your grocery store let's get these mixed up let's pour them out and what we need to do is chop these all these down into a very minced up form doing it this old-fashioned way it might take up to to a half an hour to get these all minced up in their tiny little form but if you're in a more modern kitchen well you can use a food processor and it will only take a minute or two [Music] so here are our raisins and currants all chopped up to this we're going to add about a pound of our finely minced Apple that we need to chop up the same kind of way and then we have about four ounces of candied orange peel put that in here too and then we have about a half a cup of regular white sugar mix it up there not yet first we need to add some spices we've got a teaspoon of cinnamon a half a teaspoon of nutmeg and a quarter teaspoon of clove all ground up and then we have four ounces of this Brandy that we need to put in here so let's put these all in too there we go [Music] now we can mix it up [Music] that's hard isn't it here let me give it a try you're gonna really get that stuff off the bottom and all mixed up the last thing we need to add to this is the suet winter yes suet is a special hard kind of fat that comes from the kidney area of cows and sheep it not only makes the pie much more moist but it also gives it an interesting texture are we going to use to it no we're not going to use real soot today in this recipe because so it can be very hard to find in the United States if you ask your local butcher he might be able to keep some suet out for you or you might be able to order some online but today we're going to use a substitute about 10 ounces of vegetable shortening that we froze and then we grated let's just dump this in and get it mixed in looks like butter foreign [Music] ready to go now it's time to put it in our pie shell what we're going to be using today is a puff paste I saw that video so this puff paste has been rolled out pretty thin about an eighth of an inch and I've got a bottom and a top right here let's put our our mince meat in here we've we've prepared enough for about two pies this size so we'll only use about half of this [Music] when will it be ready to eat well first we're going to have to bake it and this pie will need to bake in a modern oven about an hour at 375 or until nice and golden brown we're going to bake this in our Earthen oven you could also bake it in a dutch oven well let's cooking to decorate is this ready yep it's ready this pie you can eat hot or cold I think we should eat it now okay let's cut it up foreign there's your ears let's give it a little taste [Music] These are nice wow that is great oh you want to try the crust yeah how's that puff paste I can't get it you got it [Music] is that good sweet but it's not too sweet it's got a nice texture it's very moist really really good welcome to another episode of 18th century cooking with James Townsend and son today we're going to be cooking an 18th century lemon cheesecake let's get started [Music] this recipe is from Hannah glasses the art of cookery made plain and easy we're going to need a tart tin this is a five inch tart tin we've already well buttered it and we're we've got it filled with a short paste or short crust which is something that you'll find in a previous episode on how to make a short paste there is a bit of a trick to this recipe if you follow the recipe right out of Hannah glass's book it's not going to work out right things need to be done in a very particular order so what we're going to start off with here is so we're going to start whipping two egg whites and as soon as they start getting stiff then we're going to add in six tablespoons of powdered sugar this can take quite a while if you're doing it by hand looks like it's about ready let's start with the second half of our batter we're going to be mixing in four tablespoons of melted butter with three egg yolks [Music] now that this is all mixed we can put in the juice of one lemon this is a little more than what the recipe called for but the recipe seemed a little tame at least with modern lemons now let's add two to three tablespoons of cream and finally the zest of one lemon now we're going to fold this in to our egg whites that we prepared earlier [Music] foreign and put it over a low fire stirring it the whole time while we have this over the fire we do have to be careful it needs to be stirred constantly and when it changes and stiffens it will do so all at once now this is really thickened up we've taken it off the fire and we're going to pour it right into our shell now it's time to bake this we can bake this in a dutch oven or we can bake this in our Earthen oven that we've got here that's what we're going to do today if you're doing it in a modern oven it needs to be baked at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes there our pie is all baked up now this is called a lemon cheesecake 18th century cheesecakes aren't really like modern cheesecake it's a lot more like a custard pie you know normally you eat these when they're cool I don't think I can wait that long where's my Fork here we go let's take a little taste see how this turned out nice and Lemony this is really excellent you need to give this one a try in a recent episode we made this meatless mince pie and we used vegetable shortening vegetable shortening is a late 19th century invention but we suggested its use when suet is unavailable in today's episode of 18th century cooking with James Townsend and son we're going to be following up on this mince pie Episode by looking more closely at suet we're going to be looking at exactly what it is what it isn't how to prepare it and the many 18th century uses for suet both culinary and otherwise thanks for watching [Music] first of all let's look at exactly what suet is suet is the fat from the loin or kidney region of beef and mutton it's going to be a completely different sort of fat that you're going to find on other parts of the animal muscle fat it's completely different although it looks the same they're not the same at all they have completely different properties they taste different they smell different and most importantly they have a very different texture when they're finished here's a block of rendered suet this is very much like a piece of soap or almost like a soft wax it's very very hard and set up at room temperature but the uh the regular fat that you're going to get the muscle fat when it's rendered this is very different this is um it never really sets up unless it's very cold at room 10 temperature this is kind of cold in here right now but at room temperature it's almost liquid so it's a completely different thing suet is also different than lard it's definitely going to have a different flavor to it and a different melting point when you're shopping for suet it's likely you're going to have to ask your butcher you aren't going to see it out on the Shelf when you ask your butcher you can't just ask for suet he'll Trot out a bag of this hard uh regular muscular fat which of course isn't going to give you the right product you really need to be specific and you need to ask for kidney fat when you're shopping for your suet you also want to look at the quality of the suet you want really very fresh suet you're looking for something that's creamy white in texture you don't want a suet that is discolored in any way you don't want a brown or a yellow suit now let's talk about preparing it whether you're going to use it rendered or in its raw State we need to prepare our suet here and let me show you what's going on cut off a chunk here foreign [Music] and you can see inside of this suet there's all this connective tissue and all this stuff needs to be gotten rid of or at least as much as possible inside of this connective tissue or little segments of suet and even inside those little segments are smaller pieces of connective tissue sometimes you'll also run into blood vessels and other things that you need to separate out so you just want to end up with these little cubes of the suet inside now that we've got this picked it's really time to take all those pieces these larger pieces and dice them up very very fine but we've already done that with this batch that I've got here we can take a look at this now you can tell from this it's got a very particular texture it's uh very fine but it holds its shape that's one of the reasons why they use it in pudding recipes it makes little holes in the pudding it stays its shape and then as the pudding Cooks it turns into a liquid and leaves a little hole behind giving it a light texture you can get online from the UK a modern processed version of suet this is similar and it's very similar in its texture but it is a little different it does have 15 percent flour put into it and it's a it's a dehydrated product so it's been sort of industrially produced and it probably won't exchange one for one into 18th century recipes it's going to be a little bit different one advantage to this modern suet product is that it's uh prepared and it will last a long time it's shelf stable and will probably last a year or two our suet that we've got here is fresh and it will not last very long it has to be refrigerated or it will grow rancid very rapidly unless we further prepare it to render this suit we're going to need to heat it up very slow you're going to need a a pot a cast iron pot is really good for this because it it can withstand a lot of abuse you don't want to have something like a copper pot that if you set it by the fire and you forget it it's going to damage it so the cast iron pot is perfect for this purpose and what we do is take our cast iron pot we're going to put our uh our uh already minced up suet we're going to pour it into this pot and uh there that's probably enough um we're gonna set it close to the fire we're going to set it right beside our fire we're not going to put it in the fire or over the fire because we don't want to cook the suet we're really just warming it up we just want to get it uh so that it we're separating this uh leftover connective tissue that's still in here with the oil or the fat that's inside the suet I'm going to hang this near the fire but I don't want to hang it directly over it or put it right in it [Music] you definitely want to take your time on this you want to keep a close eye on it you don't want it to cook you just want it to stay warm this whole process is going to take several hours you're going to want to come in here every once in a while and stir up the batch [Music] if you're working in a modern kitchen there's there's an easier way to do this and that is with your slow cooker you can take your diced suet and you can dump that in your slow cooker in the morning then you can set that on low or medium go to work and when you come home at night it'll be ready our suet is all uh rendered down here it's all completely melted but of course there's still uh some connective tissue that is floating around in here in fact earlier experiments that we've done with this has shown that even after we've uh pulled it all apart and diced it up that it's still about one quarter of this connective tissue so you're going to get a yield of a about three quarters of this is going to be uh the good suet I've got here it's all melted and I'm going to pour it through this sieve here to separate them out if you don't have a sieve then you can use a piece of cloth foreign there we go [Music] these uh leftover little pieces of the connective tissue those are called Graves and even in the 18th century they had uses for this too now that we've got this strained what I'm going to do while it's still in its molten state is to pour this off into a couple little pans I've got here you can also pour this straight into a pan of water and let it solidify and that and that also helps separate out some of the impurities our 18th century recipes call for uh once this uh the suit has solidified to actually take our cake and then wrap it in paper and then wrap that paper in linen for long-term storage suet preserved in this way can last a long time several months and they used it in the 18th century for dozens of uses it's used in puddings pies dumplings it's also used in pickling and preserving here are some branded peaches that are sealed off with suet and it's also used in deep frying and Grilling in addition to those there are many non-food uses candles soap shoe polish salves and medicines leather treatment lamp oil they used it as a rust inhibitor they also use the leftover Graves as fish bait we even found an 18th century recipe where they used the suet and they made an 18th century version of carbon paper suet was an important part of 18th century food ways and life in general I hope you've enjoyed this episode in this episode of 18th century cooking with James Townsend and son we're going to be cooking this delicious meat pie with a standing crust pastry raised pies like this have been cooked for centuries in English kitchens they can be eaten hot or cold and they make a great portable meal today I'm going to show you how to make this delicious 18th century meal to go thanks for watching [Music] in a previous episode we covered how to make a standing paste you're going to want to watch that video because today we're starting where that one leaves off standing or raised crusts are made by using flour boiling water and fat in the previous video I mentioned we used an equal portion of butter and lard today we've used rendered suet in our crusts period recipes make it clear that different types of fat were a possible ingredient for this type of crust Sometimes they used butter muscle fat lard or Tallow now the first three the butter the lard and the muscle fat all can be worked while the dough is cold they actually work a little bit better when the dough is cold to roll it out if you're working with the suet you really need to work with it while it's still warm and the recipes call for that tell you to work it while it's still warm we've made two small pastry cups with our standing crust for our pie you can also make a larger pie with exactly the same type of crust Richard Briggs in his 1788 cookbook the English art of cookery mentions that you can make these pies with several different kinds of meat other 18th century references mention standing crusts being used for mince pies or even custards today we're going to be using pork once you have your pastry shells made the rest of this recipe is rather simple we're going to be using about a pound of pork for this pork shoulder is an excellent cut for this particular thing the recipes in the 18th century actually call for pounding this pork out to tenderize it but since today's pork is already very tender as it comes from the store we really don't need to do that we're going to slice this thinly in smaller pieces you're gonna want this meat fairly lean you want to cut away any fat or silver skin [Music] our seasoning for this is rather simple we want some salt and a good healthy dose of pepper another variation of seasoning this would be using some nutmeg a little bit of sugar and some apples and that you would call a Cheshire pie when you pack this meat into your shells you want to pack it fairly tightly the the meat as it bakes in the Shell will shrink up and it'll leave an air space around the outside now it's time to put on the lids to get them to adhere properly we're going to take a little bit of egg wash and brush it on the inside lip here of are pie crusts now here is where it's critical that your Lids are kept warm if you're at home you can pop them in a microwave for a few seconds or keep them by the fire if you're at a camp you want them to be warm so they're pliable we also need to brush our lids with the egg wash kind of warm it's soaking in we're gonna just turn that in and Tuck that all around I'm going to seal nicely all around the edge it's nice and warm it makes it really easy do the other one there we go it's sealing nicely I'm gonna go ahead and cut a one inch hole in the top of each one of these I'll explain why later foreign the last thing we need to do before we put these in the oven is take our egg wash and cook them all over on the outside except of course for the bottom these are now ready for the oven you can bake these in an Earthen oven like we're going to use today you can also bake them in a dutch oven that would work well or if you're baking them at home in your regular home oven you'd bake them at 375 degrees for about an hour maybe an hour and a half you want to keep an eye on them make sure they don't burn or a Scorch on the bottom foreign s are baking let's make a gravy for them a gravy in the 18th century was a very loose term it could mean a lot of different things a simple broth a thickened and fortified broth or even a gelatin our gravy is going to be a gelatin gravy this might also be called a caudal or a leer we're going to make it by boiling pig's feet we're going to pour in just enough water to cover these up then we're going to put them by the fire and have it simmer for about an hour or until it reduces by about half if the thought of boiling pig's feet in your kitchen is not desirable then you can take a couple of packets of unflavored gelatin and boil them in about a cup and a half of water [Music] our pie is done and we've let it cool a little bit we also have our gravy which we've strained now this is why we've cut a little hole in the top of our lid we can take that off and now we can pour in our gravy to fill this up to the top foreign there we go well all these wonderful smells I've got this one ready to go this one's cool and the gravy has set it's ready to eat let's try it out [Music] in the 18th century pies like this the the crusts weren't necessarily intended to be eaten a lot of people would take them cut them open on the top eat out the internals and then just throw away the crust foreign it's really good these meat pies are perfect portable thing if you want to uh I haven't prepared beforehand you can bring these to an event all ready to eat or you can make them at an event they're not very difficult really wonderful tasting everybody's gonna love this hmm even the crust a few episodes ago we showed you how to make an 18th century style lemon cheesecake today we're going to be doing yet another style of cheesecake [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] today in the United States when we say cheesecake everyone thinks of a cream cheese style cheesecake made famous by Lindy's restaurant in the mid 20th century cheesecake was popular in the 17th and 18th century and earlier but most of the time it was made with cheese sometimes not with cheese but had a cheese-like consistency the cheesecake we're going to be making today is one of those cheesecake inconsistency only type cheesecakes now the first ingredient we need today potatoes yeah I threw you off with that one didn't I what we're going to do is peel and chop one half pound of potatoes we're going to toss them into some boiling water and boil them until they're tender we need to prepare the other ingredients we need three eggs plus three egg yolks we also need to have some butter melted you'll need about eight ounces or half a pound of butter our butter is melted but it's not so hot that it's going to cook our eggs so we're gonna go ahead and pour the uh the butter in and whisk it up with our eggs our potatoes have finished boiling and I've strained them out and let them cool and now I'm just going to mash them up with a spoon here you want to make sure to take the time to get these potatoes mashed up very nice and finely very smooth because we're looking for a very smooth consistency now that we've got our potatoes all mashed up we can put them in with our eggs and butter let's see if we can get this uh whisked into a nice smooth consistency our last two ingredients here sugar we need about two tablespoons or so for this size that looks about right and we're going to need some nutmeg um about uh half or maybe a quarter of a nutmeg a grated now let's whisk these up one final time we need to have a pie pan ready to go for our filling I've greased a redware pie pan here and I've placed some puff paste just around the outside edge we're really just adding this for looks and it also helps a little bit in knowing when our pie is finished cooking [Music] this amount fills our redware pie pan which is about an eight or a nine inch pie pan really well you want to make sure that you don't overfill your pan because this is going to grow a little bit so about two-thirds full or maybe half full is a good amount in your pie pan this is ready for baking I'm going to put this in our Earthen oven and it needs to bake approximately 20 to 30 minutes it really depends on your oven temperature if you're going to bake this in your oven at home then 350 degrees preheat your oven and about 30 minutes should be right but you want to make sure to watch this you don't want it to overcook uh your your puff paste is going to help you know when it's getting cooked but you want to make sure to cook it enough so that it solidifies you don't want it to be liquid in the center so that's the thing to watch for watch that Center make sure it's cooked up well our Pie has cooled now is the the real test what's it taste like this is um really wonderful I don't think anybody would guess this is uh one-third potato a very wonderful texture nice taste the uh the nutmeg is really something different you're not really used to that kind of flavor it's really really great and this is very simple I mean just a couple ingredients very easy to make you can bake this uh right there in the camp in a dutch oven or in your kitchen at home really a wonderful little dish when we think of Pancakes today usually in the United States we think of a light and fluffy pancake probably made from a box mix drenched over the top with a brown and sticky sweet substance this is only the most recent version of a dish that's been popular for thousands of years in the 18th century pancakes were popular for both common folks and the Gentry for some it might be the final course of the meal for others it might be all they had to eat today we're going to be cooking an authentic 18th century style pancake using William Ellis's cookbook a country housewife's family companion thanks for joining us foreign pancake appears in the English dialect in the 1400s but pancakes have been made and enjoyed since at least the Roman times modern North American pancakes differ from English style pancakes in that we normally use baking powder a 19th century development which causes a light and fluffy pancake English Pancakes on the other hand really haven't changed for hundreds of years the pancakes we'll be making today are common Milk pancakes they're a wide variety of pancake recipes in 18th century cookbooks some use common ingredients While others are more expensive one of the most helpful books in understanding this variation in pancake is William Ellis's country housewife's family companion in this book he gives examples from very simple pancakes for poor people using just water or beer to a much more luxurious pancake using a cream sherry wine and even Brandy for our 18th century pancake batter we're going to start off with two cups of flour to that we're going to add some spices because most of the 18th century recipes are spiced very interestingly compared to our pancakes this has a half a teaspoon of nutmeg a half a teaspoon of salt and a full teaspoon of ginger [Music] we're going to add one egg to our flour and then we're going to add some milk we're going to start off with about a cup of milk we're gonna get this all Incorporated and then we're going to add more milk until we get to the right consistency [Music] now that this is a little thinner I'm going to switch to a whisk with modern American pancakes you only whisk the bare minimum to get the Greek ingredients stirred up with these style pancakes you want to whisk it until the batter is completely consistent and smooth you want to thin this down until it's about the consistency of heavy cream if you're doing this at home don't be afraid to do it in a blender I've melted some butter in our pan and now I'm going to put in about a quarter of a cup of batter [Music] and we're going to swirl it around just a hair to get it nice and thin [Music] here we go we're gonna fry these on one side and then when they're done flip them over the other side should only take about 30 seconds a common variation of this would be to peel core and slice apples very thinly and fry them in a little butter once they've softened pour a little batter right on top of them this would be the fritter and there you go authentic 18th century style pancakes sprinkle a little bit more sugar on top squeeze a little lemon which even today is a traditional sauce for English style pancakes you know you can use these for dessert you can also make this the entire meal you can wrap these up in a cloth and send them out into the field to be eaten cold any way you stack them these are great in our last episode of 18th century cooking with James Townsend and son we made common Milk pancakes today we're going to be making a much finer version of pancake called a choir of paper from John Farley's cookbook the London art of cookery thanks for joining us [Music] a choir is a term borrowed from book binders and printers it's a bundle of pages that are put together folded over and bound into a book our recipe today is a choir of paper which is an 18th century version of modern day Crepes the ingredients we're using today would be a bit expensive in the 18th century this recipe would likely have been enjoyed by the Gentry as opposed to Common folk we're going to start off this recipe with just three tablespoons of flour I know it doesn't sound like much but just three tablespoons to that we're going to add a good pinch of salt we're going to add two or three teaspoons of sugar and we're also going to add some ground ginger to this which is very common in all these recipes about a teaspoon of ground ginger in a separate Bowl we're going to mix our wet ingredients I've got three eggs here and about a cup of cream [Music] I've got [Music] four ounces of melted butter I know sounds like a lot now we're going to add to that sack I've got about we're gonna add about three tablespoons of sag maybe just a little here and for our final ingredient we've got orange blossom water we need about a tablespoon of that you can get orange blossom water online or at a Middle Eastern Market now I'll add the dry ingredients don't be alarmed by how runny this batter is if you find your mixture a little too lumpy it's probably the butter too cold try warming up your mixture it'll probably smooth right out I'm going to use about a quarter of a cup of our batter here [Music] and then we're going to spread it out foreign you'll want to Brown These until they're nice and crispy on the edges you want to make sure these are separated from the pan then get your spatula under the far Edge and flip it these can be very difficult to flip over in the pan there are many of the recipes called for the experienced Cooks to actually flip them in the pan without a spatula they are very tricky to flip over they do take a good bit of practice you can sprinkle a little bit of sugar on this and then squeeze a little lemon on it or for a different sauce you can have a little sugar butter and Sack it's delicious [Music] in past episodes we've done a couple of different dishes that were called cheesecakes but were different from what we know as a modern day cheesecake today we're going to be cooking something that's a good bit closer to what we might call a cheesecake but with an interesting twist [Music] thank you [Music] today's recipe is from William abasha's whole body of cookery dissected it's from 1682. the recipe reads thus to make a cheese tart take about three quarters of a pound of old cheese of Parmesan and Grate it and put it into a stone mortar with about a dozen eggs casting away six of the whites put there in half a pound of sweet butter melted with some ginger cinnamon grated nutmeg and salt with a penny manchet grated season it with sugar and Rose Water then beat it into so much cream that it may be thin or thinner than batter for fretters you may make it in a dish on a sheet of paste and put over it cross bars of puff paste so bake it and garnish it this recipe makes quite a bit of filling so we're going to cut it in half we're going to start off here with six ounces of freshly grated Parmesan cheese [Music] now we need eggs we need three whole eggs and three egg yolks [Music] now we're going to add four ounces of melted butter foreign spices in here some very standard ones of course we've got uh here a teaspoon of salt I've got a teaspoon of Ginger I've got about a teaspoon of cinnamon and we're going to need maybe about a half a nutmegrated up [Music] Now the recipe calls for a penny Mansion loaf grated manchit is a common thing you'll see in recipes in the 18th century Mansion loaves were a very white bread the loaves were typically around a six ounce loaf you'll see them in a lot of period paintings especially in the 17th century they look a bit like hamburger buns they were baked on a big sheet with lots of loafs together and so you'll see them where they've been pulled apart anyway I've got three ounces of the manchet braided up here we're going to toss it in now this pie seems to be a very adjustable pie if you want a savory pie then just include one tablespoon of sugar if you want something a little sweeter a little bit more on the dessert end then go ahead and put in two or three tablespoons of sugar and then after your pie is mixed just before you slide into the oven sprinkle sugar on top okay we got this all Incorporated and the next thing to do is to add cream until we get to a Fritter like consistency now that's a pretty runny batter so we need to add quite a bit of cream foreign batter looks about right I've already got a a little uh pewter bowl here lined with a short paste and uh make sure to butter this first these uh pewter bowls are really great for little jobs like this you can use them for baking they're a perfect eating Bowl they're virtually indestructible so they're a great period Bowl to use you can get these on our website or from our print catalog I've got enough batter here for probably a half a dozen little tarplets this size or at least two regular size pies you want to give this batter a quick stir right before you pour it in now the final little garnish we're going to put a couple of strips of puff paste onto the pie you could make a lattice but it just calls for crossbars that'll that looks equally good just gonna put that on there like that [Music] cut off the excess [Music] now I'm going to sprinkle a little sugar on top and now it's ready to go in the oven this should be baked at 350 in a regular home oven for probably 30 minutes or so for one this size if you're doing a full-size pie it might be up to an hour it's something you're going to want to watch as it bakes the puff paste really helps you know when it's done and you'll also see it sort of puff up a little bit and brown nicely on the top then you'll know it's done let's get this one in the oven foreign [Music] well it's all baked it makes a very beautiful looking pie let's get this sliced and get a taste this is a really good pie it's got a very interesting texture it's a lot more like a cheesecake texture even though it's got a lot of Parmesan cheese it doesn't have a real hard parmesan bite you can leave it like this it's it makes a nice savory pie if you don't too much sugar in it it would go great with fruit if you want to add more sugar to it you can make a nice dessert pie it's not very overbearing at all so if you want to add a little bit more a one spice of the other so you can get a real different kind of flavor it's a great pie that makes a base for many different flavors in an earlier episode we showed you how to make a small standing crust that could be used for individual meat pies in this episode we're going to be making a larger standing crust sometimes called a coffin to be used for Meats vegetables or sweet pies thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] we've tried several different recipes for standing crusts today we've settled on Mrs Frazier's recipe from her 1791 cookbook a practice of cookery most of the period recipes make several pie crusts we've cut back the portions on today's recipe to make a single eight or nine inch pie crust we'll start with 12 ounces of water boiling in our Pipkin and to that we're going to add six ounces of butter that's about a stick and a half in a large bowl I've got six cups of flour to that I'm going to add one whole egg [Music] and just one egg yolk saving this white for later [Music] once your butter and your water are boiling then you can add the entire amount to your flour foreign this for a while to make sure all our ingredients are incorporated then I can turn this out onto our floured work surface to need this will have a grainy texture like Play-Doh after kneading this for a while you can let it set for five minutes that'll help it relax and smooth out I'll cut our piece of dough into thirds and then I'm going to roll out one piece about 3 8 inch thick I want to work this while it's still warm it's much easier to work in this state foreign cake ring as a template this will be the base for our pie I'll repeat this for the top any extra dough that we have remaining we can work back into the lump next we need to roll our wall out it needs to be 25 to 27 inches long and about a half inch thick [Music] we're going to use our peel handle as our as our straight edge I want to cut this about two and a half inches wide now I have the base the top and the sides I'm going to set these aside so they can cool completely the dough we have left over here we're going to roll out to about an eighth of an inch thick and then we can cut out our Leaf decorations [Music] the last little bit of dough here I'm gonna cut into a thin strips and then twist [Music] as this dough cools it will stiffen up and you'll appreciate this trying to build a coffin out of warm dough is very difficult so I suggest making your parts three to four hours in advance even better overnight we'll start the construction with the egg white that we saved earlier on we're going to take some of that egg white and brush it around the edge of the base thank you now it's time to add our wall it needs to rest on top of the base flush with its outer edge if the wall overlaps at its ends trim it down so the ends meet neatly together be sure to brush one of the ends with the egg white as well [Music] now you'll need to make sure everything is pressed together and sealed tightly [Music] I will also brush the egg white on the back of our decorations and press them onto our coffin you should cover up the seam in your walls with one of the leaf decorations while we're at it let's put a few leaves on the lid now let's brush the entire outside with what's left of our egg white we're going to partially bake our crust now this half baking process will set the crust and make it sturdy enough so that it can withstand the steam when we put in our contents and bake them before we do that we need something to support the lid I've got this tin plate here and that will support it perfectly and finally uh we're going to need something that might help support the walls as this bakes so I've got some dry rice here [Music] if you're baking this in a home oven you need to set it for about 450 degrees you want to bake it for about 15 minutes until it gets just some light brown edges you'll definitely want to make sure to bake this at that 450 degrees any cooler and it's likely to Sag while it's baking there is our Half Baked and ready to be filled standing crust we've already removed the rice filling we've baked it just long enough for the very edges to Brown up so it's sturdy enough to move you may have found that the bottom here has puffed up a little bit if you need to it's still rather flexible especially while it's warm that you can press that back down into shape in our last episode we showed you how to make a large standing crust ready to receive whatever filling you desire today we're picking up where we left off and we're sharing with you a 1795 recipe for vegetable pie from Sarah Martin's cookbook the new experienced English housekeeper thanks for watching [Music] this vegetable pie would be served in the summer when vegetables are plentiful a spring version of this same pie you could use all the wild things that come up right away in the spring the recipe we're using today calls for cabbage cauliflower onions celery and and dive if your Endive is too bitter then you can substitute spinach in her cookbook Sarah Martin routinely suggests boiling vegetables in milk and water I believe she does this so that she can use this leftover broth as a richer base for other sauces later on so in here I've got boiling or simmering a 50 50 mix of milk and water I've chopped all our vegetables and I'm gonna parboil them I'm going to start off with our potatoes and our cauliflower since they take the longest to cook we'll let these boil for about five minutes next we'll add some sliced onions celery and cabbage and we'll let this boil for another five minutes and finally We'll add our chopped Endive and we'll let this go for just a few more minutes our total cooking time has been about 15 minutes it's time to take this off the fire strain the vegetables out and set them aside we boiled all our vegetables together so that's the way they're going to go into the pie if you boil your vegetables separately then you can layer them into the pie as the recipe suggests now for the coffin standing crusts in the time period weren't necessarily intended to be eaten they were designed to serve as cooking vessels many times when it was done the contents would be served up and then the the shell would later on be discarded or used as a thickening agent in soups and stews in addition especially with meat pies the lid would be sealed to the body a small hole would be cut in the top and they would be baked once the pie was cooled they would pour in melted suet or clarified butter seal that top back up and they could use this standing crust as a storage vessel these might be stored for two or three weeks in a cool Pantry the pie we're serving today is meant to be served up immediately let's get back to our vegetables I'm going to season them with a teaspoon of salt a teaspoon of Mace and a pinch of cayenne foreign [Music] [Music] for the oven if you're baking this at home I recommend a 350 degrees it'll probably take about an hour but make sure to watch that crust you don't want to burn it while this is baking we can work on our fricassee sauce I'm starting off with butter about the size of a very large chicken egg I've dredged it in flour and I'm going to put it in the pan here to Brown this flour to this we're going to add two or three cups of our milk broth that we use to boil our vegetables the butter and the flour are going to thicken this up into a creamy white fricassee sauce we'll season this with a little salt a little pepper and maybe some sweet herbs [Music] okay our pie is done it's beautiful we should be able to take off our lid here it comes right off now we can pour in our white fricassee sauce let's give this a try wow all those flavors go together wonderfully all those different vegetables and the fricassee sauce very very good flavors that all all come together the pie is beautiful I think you're gonna love this [Music] in our last episode of 18th century cooking with James Townsend and son we made a wonderful beef pasty with a thick puff paste crust in this episode we're going to be doing a beef pasty which is probably what most people think of today also very common in 18th century cooking thanks for watching [Music] while it seems apparent that the most common type of pasty recipe in the 18th century was one baked in a dish handheld versions did exist some 18th century recipes suggest making meat pies in the same fashion one would make an apple pasty also called an apple foot where the puff paste was folded over the filling and crimped along the edge Charles Carter in his 1749 cookbook the London and Country Cook offers a recipe for little meat pasties that are deep fried and John Mallard in his 1808 cookbook the art of cookery Made Easy and refined includes a recipe for a beef pasty he calls a puff for a journey today's recipe comes from an earlier version at Mr mallard's cookbook it's called puffs with a force meat of vegetables let's get started to make this dish you'll need to make a puff paste be sure to watch our earlier episode on how to do that this recipe calls for a pound of veal if you don't have veal a regular beef will do also we need two ounces of what the recipe calls fat bacon in the grocery store today you'll find either salt pork or jowl bacon that's what you'll need to use in addition we'll need some green beans or what they call French beans some mushrooms some asparagus and onion and we also need some parsley of all the vegetables I've got about a cup each in here it's all been coarsely chopped even the meat it's all added in I want to season this well with salt and pepper next I'll place the fat bacon in the pan I'll fry this for just a couple of minutes to render out some of the fat then I'll add the remainder of the ingredients and then fry this all up for about five minutes I'll also squeeze the juice of one lemon into it after I fry this for about five minutes I'll transfer it to a bowl and allow it to cool for a few minutes now this is cooled off we can add about a cup of bread crumbs if you've got a ship's biscuit this is perfect you can pound this up or grate this up otherwise regular bread crumbs in a separate Bowl I'll mix about a half a cup of cream with one egg yolk then I'll add that to our vegetable mix now to our puff paste I've rolled this out to an eighth of an inch thick now we're going to cut it in about six inch squares I'll spoon some of our vegetable mix in the middle of each Square then I'll brush the edges with egg wash and fold the puff paste over to form a triangle you can crimp the edges or just pinch them with your fingers be baked if you like you can put these on a paper lined cooking sheet and for 45 minutes that are about 350 but the recipe calls for this to be fried so that's what we're going to do this recipe calls for lard I've placed a pot over the fire and I've got it to about 350 degrees of course you'll need to use Extreme Caution if you're cooking with this oil especially over an open fire these should fry 15 or 20 minutes if your oil is too hot they will Brown too quickly and the insides will still be doughy okay I can't wait these are just cooled off enough let's give it a try [Music] these are excellent very good [Music] welcome to 18th century cooking with James Townsend and son today we're going to be cooking a traditional sea going dish called lob Scouts [Applause] [Music] back in our second season we showed you how to make ships bread or hardtack as it's sometimes known in the 19th century this food was a staple for 18th century Sailors sometimes issued to soldiers or given to Travelers also the problem with this food is that it's very difficult to eat and so there were special dishes made just to make use of this very sturdy food one of these special dishes is called lob Scouts lob scouse is a bit of a generic term in the 18th century for a simple kind of Stew made with meat with ships bread and sometimes vegetables now none of the 18th century cookbooks I've looked at reference lob Scouts specifically but there are references to it in 18th century literature and these give us some really good hints as to what it would be like and Francis grouse's 1785 a classic dictionary of their vulgar tongue he describes lob scouse as this a dish much eaten at Sea composed of salt beef biscuit onions well peppered and stewed together and Janet Shaw in 1774 wrote this in her journal of a lady of quality she writes lob scouse is one of the most Savory dishes I ever ate it is composed of salt beef hung by a string over the side of the ship till rendered tolerably fresh and then cut into nice little pieces and with potatoes onions and pepper is stewed for some time and with the addition of a portion of water this is my favorite dish let's get started today we're going to be using a fresh beef in the 18th century it's more likely you're going to be using a salt pork or a salt beef if you're going to be using a salt beef or a salt pork then you need to soak this first you'll need to have the the salt meat in fresh water for a couple of hours probably want to change the water once or twice to get rid of the excess salt first we're going to chop up our meat into its small pieces I'm using about a pound maybe a pound and a half this I'm using uh chuck roast you can get stew meat from the grocery store that'll work great too there we go there's all our meat chopped up also let's chop up some onion to go with it [Music] let's get our meat browned up I've got some uh some drippings here the ship's cook would have used slush which is the drippings that come to the top of the meat while it's boiling earlier I put two quarts of water in a cast iron pot to get it nice and hot if you are using salt beef you don't have to Brown it like this all you need to do is put it in the cold water and then start it boiling if you're using fresh beef like this you want to Brown it first and then you want to put it into boiling water foreign water is boiling so we can put the meat directly in [Music] now we've got our meat in here we're going to allow this to boil about an hour or until the meat is nice and tender we want to make sure to check it every once in a while so that the the water doesn't all boil away and if you've got a lid for your pot it's a good time to put a lid on it now that this is boiling let's prepare our other ingredients lob Scouts doesn't necessarily have to have vegetables but vegetables make a great addition to this we're going to peel and chop up a couple of potatoes and several carrots we're also going to need pounded up chips biscuit and I've gotten some fresh biscuits here well they're still nice and hard I've also got some of the a very old uh biscuits and the old ones you want to check for bugs it was common in the 18th century for the the biscuits to have bugs in them and even today they very easily get bugs if you look at these biscuits here you'll see the little worms in there it's usually it's it's uh they're easy to to tell right off the bat because you look in the little holes and if you see a little bit of something like sawdust that that means there are our weevils are our worms inside of your biscuit looks like um that if you use whole wheat in your biscuits they're a little more likely to get worms the ones where you use a a white bleached flower they seems like the worms don't like them quite as well anyway I'm gonna pick out um about a pound of biscuits here that don't look like they have too many worms in them put them in a nice cloth here uh in a pudding bag would be good and take a uh a rolling pin or a tomahawk or an onboard ship they'd probably use a Marlin Spike there our biscuits are all pounded up and ready let's go see how our meat's doing the meat's um tender enough it's been boiling about an hour we can go ahead and put in our potatoes and carrots at this point we're going to let this boil for another 15 minutes or so and then we're going to add our pounded up biscuits [Music] let's give this a little stir get everything nice and mixed up uh if you want a very soupy mixture then you want to put these potatoes and especially the ship's biscuit in a little bit later like I did here if you want it to be very thick then you want to put these ships biscuit in very early sometimes as early as when you put the meat in to begin with or more likely in right there with the potatoes and the carrots and let them boil up for a good half hour that'll make a very thick and Hearty dish I'll let this cook for another 15 minutes this is one of the cast iron pots that we sell at James Townsend and Sun this is the five quart pot we also have a smaller two quart pot uh this pot is perfect for this kind of use it spreads the heat out very evenly and is virtually indestructible pot so if you'd accidentally leave it on the fire too long you can't really damage the pot you might have to re-season it but that's it while these are very heavy they're also really good for this kind of use this has been cooking for about 15 minutes and it looks perfect it's thickened up nicely so let's dish this up foreign well we've let this cool a little bit and it smells wonderful Let's uh well let's add some salt and pepper to it first uh usually this is made with salt beef and salt pork so it's naturally going to be a little bit saltier so I'm going to add some salt to it because this was just fresh stuff and of course they call for pepper in a lot of the descriptions wow this is really excellent sort of like a a sailor's beef stew and the uh the ship's biscuits are really good in this if you put them in early they kind of really break up and and make a a real thick mixture or if you wait a little bit later they still keep a lot of their texture and they're almost like little bits of meat they have a really interesting flavor to them in a dish like this everyone is gonna like this

Channel: Townsends

Views: 332,922

Keywords: 18th century, 18th-century cooking, colonial, colonial lifestyle, compilation, historic site, historical food, history, john townsend, jon townsend, marathon, townsends, cooking marathon, cooking compilation

Id: vBshHnFKB0I

Length: 96min 25sec (5785 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022