I Only Made Victorian Food for 24 Hours

hello this is inca and i'm gonna be making victorian recipes for 24 hours today i've really actually always been very fascinated by recipes from the victorian era coincidentally i've also been a huge fan of the victorian way series on the english heritage channel it basically involves mrs avis croakum teaching us about how she kind of develops these recipes and the best part is she did actually exist a little over a century ago those recipes are like legit english heritage has gone ahead to put a bunch of her recipes into this book again as you can see i have looked through and kind of picked out the ones that i really wanted to try the most also they have adapted these recipes for us to be able to cook them using a more modern approach since a lot of traditional tools are no longer accessible to us there's a lot of stuff in here that is not things that you would normally find in your average grocery store i think i'll have to go to a bunch of different specialty grocery stores so i'll see you when i have all the ingredients ready [Music] [Music] oh so it is morning time i'm ready to make some breakfast even though i'm pretty sure i woke up later than the maids usually do at the house so mrs kocum would probably be really mad at me if i was actually an employee but here i am ready to make some food okay so for breakfast today a lot of you know that i think breakfast is the most important meal of the day but apparently back then it wasn't so even though mrs kokum did say in a video that sometimes the family would not have lunch until 4 p.m so they did need to have a hearty breakfast but i think that was also like something only for the privileged i will be making kedgeree for breakfast today and kedri is actually a rice dish that has indian origins in the form of kitsuri which is originally a mixture of lentils rice onions and spices the british adaptation of it was to add fish and to drop the lentils it just looked really good it has a lot of seafood in it it has a lot of rice it has eggs it doesn't have a lot of veggies but just looks like something i would really enjoy here's some of the stuff i have i have some cayenne pepper here a bunch of parsley an egg a piece of cod here and i have these quail eggs took me a while to find these i had to go to i think the italian grocery store actually and it was really relieved when i was able to finally source it these two will be used for decoration over here i also have some shrimp a little bit of heavy cream and this is leftover rice for my dinner yesterday honestly looking at all the stuff here i feel like i'm about to make fried rice because of you know the rice the eggs and a little bit of protein oh and then there's also butter which i'm going to grab from the fridge but first things first i'm going to prep some of these things so i'm going to go ahead and cook my quail eggs get some water boiling over on the stovetop just going to wash these really quickly i'm just going to carefully lower these in eggs are in now we're going to get to cooking the fish over here i'm going to put my cod here and i'm gonna take it over to this side yes i am using my oven i am going to get my rice mixture ready now just cracking an egg directly into the cream now i'm just going to whisk it up make sure it's mixed well this is the part that makes me feel like it's more like a risotto than a fried rice since we never use cream here i'm just going to real quickly chop up my parsley this is for decoration okay it's been a couple of minutes my fish has now been cooked i also just used a fork to kind of fluff it up and break it up into little pieces i also have little bits of cooked shrimp in here my quail eggs are also here sitting in an ice bath so i can de-shell them i'm gonna start heating this pan up now and we're going to fry the rice up first thing i'm doing is tossing the butter in let's see oh my god where's my book let me go get my book just good to have a reference by your side next thing is to put in the rice you should spread it out a little bit i'm gonna turn on the vents it's gonna be a little loud i'm gonna add in a little bit of cayenne pepper now oh my gosh maybe i put a little too much but you know what there's only one spice in here not including salt and pepper so that's where i'll be getting most of my flavor i guess a little bit of salt a little bit of pepper now there's a little bit of color in here i know mrs croakum also said that we could add a little bit of turmeric or mustard powder if we wanted it to have more color but i think adding the eggs should make it okay honestly this alone i feel like i could already eat now i can mix in my egg cream mixture there's a lot of cream then we're just going to fold it gently this is the part where i was like it feels more like risotto we're supposed to cook very gently until it starts to coagulate i mean i feel like it's already coagulating but hope i see now the color is a little more yellow it looks more like parts than anything right now i'm a little nervous but i'm going to go ahead and add in the fish now here's that puff if you gently fold that in also i tasted the fish honestly the cod was pretty salty on its own so i feel like we should be okay oh but it smells good i feel like the consistency looks about right this is now done so i'm gonna go ahead and plate it up ready for breakfast [Music] here we are my kedgeree i really just try to do it the way they did it in the book and i kind of love the idea of like just putting little quail eggs and shrimp to the side i am also very curious about this consistency here because obviously i'm very familiar with rice but this is supposed to be very creamy and porridge like look at that all right hmm pretty good i was a little bit worried just because normally i do add a lot more spices to my rice dishes or noodle dishes but i think for this one because of the cod you do get a little bit of that umami and i did put quite a bit of cod in it kenjeri apparently is also something you can also eat cold which i did not know that aside from the fact that there aren't too many vegetables i would say it's like decently nutritious i just made some earl grey tea it's the most british tea i have at home they did mention that you could actually use smoked fish with this i feel like that would have added even more flavor so i'm excited to try that next time but this is probably something i would want to try again so pleasant surprise we have breakfast out of the way i'm gonna slowly enjoy this enjoy the beautiful morning outside and then we'll get ready for lunch all right it is lunch time and i am back in the kitchen and i'm ready to make some soup specifically i want to be making some rhubarb soup i've actually never worked with this before i found the ones that were a beautiful red because apparently the redder my rhubarb is the redder my soup will be even though rhubarb is technically a vegetable a lot of people treat it as a fruit you see it a lot more in desserts here's what else i have some butter just half an onion a tomato two rashers of bacon that's what it said in the book rashers i had to look up what that meant it just meant two strips of bacon some beef stock over here then i also have some bread which i'll use to thicken the soup as well as to make croutons as somebody who hasn't really experimented with rhubarb i'm just really interested in seeing how it pans out just real quickly you're going to chop these up into little pieces it's almost like celery honestly also going to chop up my tomatoes also my onions and of course my bacon is where all the flavor comes and then because it is specified that we want the slice of red without the edges i'm just going to give it a good trim i guess i thought it was funny actually that she said you can also add corn flour if you want but apparently it is more wholesome to put a whole slice of bread so we're going for wholesome today everybody i can eat this stuff all right i think i have everything i need we can start cooking the soup got my book here have my pot here and we are going to start by adding in some butter this is going to be a time intensive recipe since it is a soup so it will need to be reduced and we're going to have to wait for everything to soften first up we have to frap the bacon and wait for this butter to melt slowly but surely butter is melted so i'm going to go ahead and add in the bacon this is some good bacon i feel like i'm making carbonara all right it is getting slightly brown over here so time to add in the onions i thought it was really interesting about what mrs crocumb said in her video about how onions were apparently not a popular thing to have in wealthy families i don't know how i would have survived i love onions i'm just going to cook this for around 20 minutes now so that's the first process and then we'll check back in after that all right it's been a while and as you can see there is a lot more color going on here but now i can add in the rest of my vegetables and fruit since tomato is a fruit i guess think of my tomatoes and my rhubarb also going to add in my beef stock i got a little bit more since i don't think i measured enough i mean it's already looking like soup here's the best part hehe add in my wholesome bread just don't get it let it soak up the goodness so now i'm just going to bring this to a boil once it starts boiling i'm going to cover it up let it simmer for around like half an hour more but in the meantime i'm gonna get started on my sippets which is what mrs crocum called croutons we're supposed to cut the crust which breaks my heart a little bit because the crusts are actually my favorite part she cut them into little triangles i think scissors is the best way to make it the most exact so this is how i can get that perfect triangle i have my bread here i already have it buttered up so i'm just going to essentially i'm just toasting them on the pan i feel like i'd snack on these anyway so i'm just going to make more than i probably need going to flip these when they're golden and then hopefully the timing should be just about right for when my soup is done soup is now pretty much cooked throughout it's not done because i have to blend it together but let's take a look i know it doesn't look too exciting but it smells nice it smells like beef and vegetable soup honestly you can see that the bread has pretty much completely disintegrated well there's like little chunks there but give it a good stir all right i'm going to scoop this out and we're going to blend it up in a sec [Music] ah yeah yeah yeah yeah i knew that was gonna happen at some point i am going to season it now and then i'm going to serve it up oh my gosh i like got soup all over my hand all right lunch in just a second [Music] and here i am with my rhubarb soup i will say it's a lot less chunky because i ran it through a sieve it smells more like bacon and onion than anything else oh wow okay it is very tart which is definitely from the rhubarb like i definitely get the notes of like the beef stock and the caramelized sort of onion and bacon fat but there is an underlying sweetness it's just that i think when you take a sip it's the sour tanginess that hits you first so after a while i think when it mellows out it's like a very pleasant aftertaste but i'm going to try it with the crouton here this one has been soaking up for a while but let me try this so the croutons i made were with sourdough which is also sour so combined with the tartness of the rhubarb this is a little like you know it's like a wake-up call right now but let me try it with one of these unsuped sip its [Music] when it hasn't soaked up so much i think it actually helps i think if i were to make this again i'd probably put a little less rhubarb or just find a way to better balance it maybe add a little bit of sugar i'm going to slowly sip at this probably gonna get some water too and then i will see you guys when i prepare dinner hello it has not been too long after lunch but because dinner is going to take some time to cook i'm going to get started actually like right about now so for dinner i wanted to make pie i think because when i think of english food the first thing that comes to mind most probably because when i was in the uk i felt like pie was the staple at most pubs so pie it is and it so happens that in this cookbook there are some pies devonshire squab pie squab apparently means young pigeon but this squab pie does not actually use any pigeon which is very confusing instead it uses mutton and apples and we'll see how it how it goes speaking of ingredients here's what i have again we only have a few ingredients namely we have the mutton i have some finely diced onion that i've already cut up beforehand and some beef stock as well as two apples that i've already peeled and cored and a little bit of butter the reason i wanted to get mutton instead of lamb was because well one the recipe specified it but also because mutton is leaner than lamb and it also picks up flavors better supposedly so i looked for a while before i found these and unfortunately i could not find the boneless mutton neck cutlets these ones are bone-ins but other than that i also got these really nice apples these are ruby frost apples that i actually personally really like but another fun fact is that britain is the only country that differentiates between culinary apples and dessert apples so one for eating and one for baking i mean i feel like for us it's maybe like granny smith would be like the baking apple all right so first thing i'm going to do now is basically just thinly slice my apples before we start pan frying the mutton so apples are ready to go now to pan fry these up all right these tongs pan is heating i'm going to go ahead and just just go right for it to give them some color wow this is a full pan let that cook we're not supposed to season it until it's in the pies just a little more and then this should be brown i think but meanwhile i'm going to go butter up my pie pan over here i'm just going to start layering it up that's all there is to it i'm just going to start with the bottom layer you know they're doing double layers but like i probably needed like a deeper pie dish oops now i'm going to heavily salt it i'm putting a lot of pepper because it does specify in the recipe that mutton needs to be peppered heavily now i'm going to add in the onions apples last thing i'm going to do is just add in the broth because this is just the sort of initial cooking process i am going to now wrap it in foil tightly you want it completely sealed 400 degrees fahrenheit and i'm just going to now toss it in and this is going to cook for one and a half hours that's why we're starting early okay oh in the meantime i might have to cook a few things for dessert but until then the mutton and apples are almost done cooking i have been spending the past one hour doing just like prep for dessert but here i am now getting ready to roll out some puff pastry just need to make sure it's big enough to cover the entire pie and also we're gonna cut out some shapes all right just bring the pie over okay looking cooked okay there's a tear because we're going to have to cut it open anyways all right i'm just going to trim the sides and then i'll use those little bits to make something let's do this real quick see if we can cut some designs on here they didn't specify where so i'm just going to do whatever feels good here as well because i don't have the little vent thing i'm just going to do some flowers for the heck of it why not last thing i need to do is just do a little brush on top to give it that color before we pop it back in the oven it's all going good y'all all right bye i am going to make a drink for myself because i need a drink because i'm so exhausted yup so i'm going to make a gin punch which is also from the book it says here that it was based on references in the novels of charles dickens it looks really good actually it has lemon sugar honey and cinnamon nutmeg apparently this drink used to be mixed at the table in a mail only ritual generally ending in disarray or at celebrations i am going to break the norm here i guess and make it for myself i already have some lemon in here i'm gonna go ahead and add in a little bit of sweetening this might like give me like a sugar high or something sugar also a bit of honey oh yeah that's nice you know what i'm going to add in this pumpkin spice because it literally has cinnamon ginger cloves and nutmeg which is perfect so a generous pinch gosh that's like very generous okay i have some gin here i'm not going crazy i promise this is the actual measurement all right gin in now for the brandy great hot water to top it off here we go give it a little stir all right well here it is i mean i'm a fan of honey lemon usually this is pretty much just honey lemon right cheers everybody oh that's kind of strong but it's very good kind of like a like a hot toddy i guess gonna be enjoying this while i wait for my pie then dinner should almost be done [Music] we made it to dinner my beautiful pie is here honestly when i pulled it out the oven i was so excited it looked so beautiful the puff pastry just like puffed up so great and then my little leaves actually became like little biscuits even though it is a pie it's more like you know like a chicken pot pie it can't really retain its shape as much but you get all this like beautiful flavor the apple in here has already kind of disintegrated a little bit into the stock it adds that sweetness to the very sort of like meaty broth right this broth i had a sip of it and oh my gosh it is so good which the puff pastry is like slowly soaking up so i'm very excited to eat it as i will right now i mean in terms of looks sure i think this is like not as beautiful as breakfast i think this is one of those dishes where time really did a lot of justice to it in terms of the mutton because mine is not boneless i'm gonna have to cut up a slice here we really just seasoned this with like a little bit of salt and pepper but for some reason or maybe this is why they specified using mutton i feel like it just soaks up that sort of seasoning so well you don't think it works like the apple onion and mutton but it totally does very very sort of pleasantly surprised by this especially because it's mentioned that this dish is supposed to be one of the more plainer ones they only serve this like within the family or like guests that are very very close but if something tasted this good i would serve it to like everyone also have my gin punch here which punch is apparently how they sort of refer to what we now call cocktails if you mix things together [Music] oh oh ah it feels good so yeah just give me a moment to finish this up and see you for dessert all right friends it is now pretty dark outside it's pretty late in the day but i'm back in the kitchen to finish off what i've been prepping for most of the day actually so for dessert i'm actually just gonna go with a trifle apparently one of the most popular treats back then in the victorian era the most important thing is to make sure that it's as boozy as possible that's literally what's written in the recipe so i have some brandy here i have some sherry here i'll be making a mini version of the family portion size that's written in the recipe book so because i've already prepped most of the things today this is going to be pretty easy i think so the first layer the bottom layer that's going to be in here is this sponge cake that i made earlier it is a fatless sponge cake so i basically just whipped up some eggs and sugar then sifted in flour gently mixed it made sure that it was still airy it is a little denser than i think the usual sponge cake which is i think what you want so i'm going to now slice it up gently oh also there's like sugar coated around the cake pan that's why it has like a crunchier crust which is what we want actually just cut it into little pieces like i would a parfait so this is going in i'm going to add in the brandy didn't just specify how much i'm gonna eyeball it whoa maybe eyeballing is a little dangerous but i'll let that soak it up i'm going to add some of this jam that i bought from the farmer's market now to add in my crystallized ginger or candied fruit essentially then i'm going to add a layer of almond biscuits from the italian grocery store i'm going to add a bit of sherry now we're supposed to let this set in the fridge for a little bit but i think we're good to to move on i'm gonna go ahead and add the custard now all right so here's the custard that i made earlier it was basically heavy cream milk vanilla and then mixed it in with some egg yolks kind of made sure to temper it so that it didn't curdle and then kind of cooking it on low heat over the stove top until it thickened the cool thing is though at the very end i added in gelatin as well as some really fine almond flour which is what the recipe suggested to help really thicken it up and as you can see it is actually very thick just going to spread this on i'm putting a bunch because this took a lot of effort then i'm going to pipe my cream on there at the top here we're gonna decorate that real quick since that is one of the most important steps if you're serving this at a house especially they like symmetrical arrangements so making sure to do that also some of that candy ginger from earlier once again doing the symmetrical pattern here and then to finish it off i have some edible flowers it has been quite today today i feel like once again i got to try a lot of recipes that i wouldn't have because i've never even heard of them yeah but it was really cool kind of being able to get a taste i guess of what people used to have in the victorian era even though today technically i was both the maid of the house and the lady of the house since i got to make and eat things but honestly i am pretty happy i finally got to do this i hope i made mrs croakum proud and i will see you guys in the next video a bunch of cleaning up to do gonna get boozed up in the meantime all right bye you

Channel: About To Eat

Views: 543,883

Rating: 4.9583225 out of 5

Keywords: K_fe, about to eat, about to eat inga lam, about to eat victorian food, breakfast, cookbook, cooking challenge, dessert, devonshire squab pie, dinner, food challenge, gin punch, gin punch cocktail, inga lam, kedgeree, kedgeree recipe, kedgeree rice, lunch, mrs avis crocombe, pie, rhubarb, rhubarb soup, rhubarb soup recipe, squab, trifle, trifle recipe, victorian cookbooks, victorian era, victorian food, victorian food recipes, victorian recipes, victorian way, victorian way cooking

Id: uDNdJ6pFA8c

Length: 27min 30sec (1650 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 31 2021