Frontier Comfort Food In The Cabin - 18th Century Welsh Rabbit

welcome to 18th century cooking I'm your host John Townsend and we're doing the very special episode today normally I cook a larger kind of a dish and we have a recipe and the other day we had a big episode in here the finish up episode for the cabin where we made a meal with multiple things but today it's just you and me and I'm going to cook my favorite sort of comfort food from the 18th century such a simple and wonderful dish it's called toasted cheese from John knots cookbook in 1723 later on it's called a Welsh rabbit just a fun recipe and so easy so so wonderful but I really kind of wanted to talk about the spot here today we've done cooking episodes from the outdoors out in the woods we've got an open-faced shelter some of those cooking episodes we've done we're from the the open-faced shelter that's a wonderful spot to cook from we cook in the German kitchen that's a set that's based upon an 18th century kitchen from Germany there's a wonderful example at the frontier culture museum down in Virginia we've also done it from historic sites like Mount Vernon and Conner Prairie and Gunston Hall all these wonderful historic sites but I wanted a spot to cook and a place to cook it was just exactly like what they would have had in the 18th century especially folks out here in the frontier and so that was one of the reasons why we built this this whole cabin so that we could we could do more of the feeling of cooking in the 18th century than just the recipe itself right I I think there's something really really special about getting history not from a book and that's great but feeling history in a totally different way and this cabin the building the cabin being out here at once it was done I've spent some time out here just around the fire and then cooking in it is an experience this is just completely different than anything you would get in a book and very very fulfilling in a new kind of way so if you watched the last episode where we were finishing up the cabin we finished it as the snow was coming down this is not something most of this cabin is either cut logs or mud and you can't work with mud when it's pulled out when it's freezing and so we truly finished it up just in time and it made me really appreciate and understand that idea of people especially in the frontier they have to get in and out of the weather when the winter comes and you only have just so much time to do it it's got to be done you have to go as fast as possible if the weather is coming which it was in this case truly truly a new respect for how much they had to go through to just just survive and how wonderful it is to come in from out of the weather and get around this hearth and this hearth is so warm it's so hot you got this step back from it this it it is it is something to experience it truly is John Knotts recipe isn't the most simple recipe for Welsh rabbit would but I really enjoy it he calls for Cheshire Cheese a fat Cheshire Cheese so this Cheshire Cheese is very creamy it's that we don't have anything quite like it here in North America but I've found yet also we probably you can kind of use equal measures we've got the Cheshire Cheese we're going to add in the to the Cheshire Cheese we've got butter that's nice and cold I've chopped it up fine we've also got bread crumbs so white like Keith calls for the crumb of a penny loaf which is a small loaf of bread in the last ingredient he calls for an egg yolk and in John knots recipe he doesn't specify the egg yolk this one's hard boiled as the later recipes specifically call for so I went ahead and have we've got a boiled egg yolk we're gonna put all these ingredients together in a bowl or he calls for a mortar and to mash them all up so they're all consistent spread throughout and then we take that spread when we put it on top of our pre toasted bread and that we've we toasted it here by the fire and let me tell you there's something really special about bread it's toasted over an open fire now this mixture comes up a little bit dry when it's cold like this so I'm gonna put it over the fire just enough to melt it and bring it together then we take our spread we put it on top of our toasts and then we need to reheat this to melt that mixture down into our toast oh it's so good and for that we're going to use a salamander which is a red-hot hunk of iron we've heated that up in the fire red-hot we passed that slowly over our cheese it's gonna melt that down into it and it's done we need to eat it while it's hot I love these it's got such a wonderful smell especially on a cold day like today still warm since it's just you and me we're just gonna scrape a little bit of nutmeg on tap top to give it just just that over-the-top aroma note let's find out how it turned out this time this is fabulous on a cold day we're out here in the cabin by the open fire so wonderful cheese flavor comes through so rich on this nice warm brown bread already toasted it is fabulous I love this if this if I can eat nothing else I would eat this all day long I love this toasted cheese or this Welsh rabbit as they as they call it later on it's really special to come out into the cabin cook this special dish take some time really kind of reflect on this whole project because it has been huge this project has taken so much time and effort and it's worth it it's just just this just this time alone it's worth it to spend time out here it's worth it to cook in this hearth which is a completely different experience I know this has been a different episode it's a it's a personal one it's just you and me here in the cabin and I want to thank you for coming along with us you know on this adventure whether it's a the adventure of you know the experience of building the cabin or the experience of trying out these foods tasting these foods you know kind of not just looking at history from a long way away but getting right in there and trying it out it's something that just can't be explained you just have to you just have to do it you have to be there make sure to subscribe to the channel if you're not already make sure to check out this cabin building series because it has been monumental for me let me tell you just getting in there and doing it thanks for coming along with us as we savor the flavors in the aromas of the 18th century

Channel: Townsends

Views: 327,724

Rating: 4.971211 out of 5

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking

Id: BeV3DLfeWGQ

Length: 7min 55sec (475 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019