Easy Scotch Eggs in the 18th Century

today's episode of 18th century cooking with james townsend and son is a little different obviously we're outside and not in the german kitchen but even more significantly today i'm being joined by a special guest michael dragoo welcome michael thank you sir it's my pleasure michael is a historical reenactor or as he likes to put it a living history demonstrator who purposefully puts cooking or demonstrating 18th century food ways into his historical reenactment routine together over the next few episodes michael will be sharing some of his favorite dishes as well as some reasons why you should consider adding period cooking into your historical routine thanks for joining us today on 18th century cooking with james thompson in some michael before we begin cooking today i want our viewers to get a chance to know you better uh you've been to our store many times in pearson and frankly it's your your passion and enthusiasm for reenacting that's that's got us interested in and uh how long have you and your wife been doing a historical re-enacting just a little over two years so you're a bit of a neophyte at this absolutely what sort of uh historical time period and persona do you do you do oh it's uh french and anywhere up until revolution 1750s to 1780s and that's kind of persona um i haven't developed that yet it's just the 92 percent of the population who were farmers and what we try to do if we're in western virginia is research what would have been available at that time of year there versus ohio or michigan or tennessee right so that's that's we just lower class absolute time frame not looking shabby like i just struggle out of the woods but just trying to make it through the next year right and what would i have had is a typical meal and an area specific we try which is very which varies a lot absolutely absolutely yes berries that are in season in michigan might might be passing so time and location i try to do what's if you were there today in my time what right what i've been working with so michael most reenactors uh choose uh trades or battles or specific soldiers to do but you focus on 18th century foodways what led you to that decision you know deb and i as the public as members of the public would go to these different events and we'd see a lot of people making noise and making smoke or coming out of the woods and and we just wanted to do something different and we didn't see a lot of people just being everyday people and and we liked to cook and the few times we saw people demonstrating cooking sometimes you were seeing things that obviously would be more toward the civil war porcelain plates or things like that and we thought well heck we could do that we could do that we just looked at each other and said let's try it and that's exactly how it happened so michael you've told us you know why you do cooking in reenactments but why do you choose historical reenactment itself when we would go on vacation when i was little um our families would go to um michela mackinac or boonesboro or any place like that we'd always stop at a fort my long-suffering mother would go along with us and and tour the forts but so many people spent time to talk to me as a kid as the age of your youngest child um and and and make sure that i was understanding what they were doing and why and i that that just made an impression on me and and we chose food because we didn't see other people doing food today and and we like to cook but what i'm trying to pass on is that passion to just pass you know get these people to to get a little more out of it than just seeing clashes and smoking and cooking is a good way to engage with everyone cooks i'm just showing them what they would have done instead of tonight's separate home right what my tonight's supper would have been 250 years ago sure yeah so how do you engage the public directly you know when we look through all these old recipes um we try to choose things that are easy and short so that i'm not just doing a five hour in the pot wonder that nobody can see happening we try to turn these things every half an hour to an hour so um i've chosen three recipes that are either variations of things you've already shot videos on or just simple things that anyone could do um at during their reenactments or their demonstrations or whatever or they can take these home with them and still do a absolutely easy simple they can engage even with their own kids or whatever yep and we i get the kids involved i pick things i don't let them do sharp things or hot things but whether it's a grade school kid or a high school kid is i love school days because they have such great questions and there's such an interest because they get to cook at home right and so i let them help grind stuff or mince great stuff or or just anything like that do my prep absolutely yeah it's just fun i never expected to enjoy that as much as i do but i really like that interaction it's just a connection that and everybody loves food oh it's no kidding it's fun yeah so what are we going to make today michael scott's eggs or scottish eggs or scotch eggs it's most commonly referred to absolutely yes okay let's let's make it let's scotch eggs all righty i have minced up a half a pound of ham uh finally with my knife and what i'm gonna do is uh use this it's just like a mortar and pestle and once we have pulverized this so it's no longer looking like little crumbs little squares of ham we are gonna add a quarter cup of breadcrumbs right some allspice a nutmeg to taste and salt and pepper to taste and a well-baked egg so we're just gonna throw that all in here okay i'm gonna sneak up on my salt because each cured ham has has its different consistency of salt i've got just uh i've got some green onion minced because i like that in here and um we're gonna get our egg in here so just one egg yolk just one egg yolk yes thank you john and i'm just gonna mush this all up so it's a nice patty consistency if it's still a little dry just add a little more egg and what we're going to do now is get a patty made up in one hand and a patty made up in the other hand and then with your third hand right there with my third hand we're gonna plop a hardboiled egg in there okay we're gonna encompass it right in between there i'm looking for about a half an inch of meat on this we're just gonna lay it in the pan i've got some some suet in here and the secret is to just be turning this frequently so it's not burning and it's cooking to set the egg because the egg is one of the binders we're just going to keep rolling this slowly and not burn my hand since this is ham it doesn't need to have a whole watercolor right i am just warming it and setting it that's right so i like the attorney i like using the torah because there's no there's no taste of the the animal fat you know with a lard or with butter and stuff it butter burns more easily right and the lard sometimes will you'll taste that and i don't taste anything except yeah the soup has a high high cooking temperature so yep it's very forgiving for this when i can't really control the temperature perfectly we're almost done here i think i'm about ready to pull it out and if i were prepared to have something to pull it out and put it on there you go here we go thank you sir that's it let me get my pan off here we're going to let that cool just a little bit before we cut it it helps it set a little bit and that's just about it thank you sir these look great i can't wait to see what they're going to look like on the inside we'll we'll find out won't we let's just find out oh yeah perfect okay so we got him we get a nice little presentation there and the other thing that we would add is a little sauce here and this sauce is it's nothing but cream a little roux flour and butter i added some pepper a little salt and some of the uh some chicken stock okay that's it go to it okay it's okay you get in here here yep that's it enough that's perfect that's very good and it's not the flavor i was expecting out of it i mean you see this and you you don't think a ham yep um ground up so it definitely is a different flavor i'm i can i can't imagine anybody complaining about getting this for if you'd like a copy of the recipe that we've done here today make sure to check out our savoringthepast.net cooking blog also all the things you've seen here today all these things are available on our website and if you don't have one be sure to ask for a print catalog where you can find hundreds of 18th and early 19th century reproduction clothing items camping supplies as well as cooking products and also be sure to visit our picture reference blog siftingthepast.com where you can find all sorts of paintings and illustrations from the 16th through the early 19th centuries this recipe is really really good i think anybody who gives us a chance takes a little bit of extra effort but it is very very worth it i want to thank you for bringing uh this to us today it's my pleasure thank you love to have you i think this was a great opportunity i want to thank all you for joining us uh and watching today as we savor the flavors of the aromas of the 18th century you

Channel: Townsends

Views: 1,390,585

Keywords: Cooking (Interest), Scotch Egg (Food), Historical cooking, 18th century cooking, colonial cooking, reenacting, revolutionary war, History, Food (TV Genre), Jas Townsend and Son

Id: IN03MUqeUa4

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 30 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/joahfitzgerald]

Am I missing how he gets from a raw egg, to a hard boiled egg in this recipe or is that available in another of his videos?