In the Kitchen: Furmenty

Dear Constant Reader,

I’ve briefly left Fannie Farmer to cook with Mrs. Crocombe. The latest Victorian Way video from English Heritage has her cooking furmenty. I immediately perked up because we have a lot of wheat berries left over from Christmas Eve dinner when I made kutya. Kutya is a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve dessert made from wheat berries cooked in almond milk, then baked with dried fruit, nuts, ground poppy seeds, and honey. As we could only find the wheat berries in a five pound bag, I’ve got lots in the pantry.

What is furmenty? Also spelled “frumenty” (and apparently “furmity”), it’s a wheat-based dish that goes back to the middle ages. The medieval version was savory and served as a side-dish, usually with venison. Here’s a recipe from Forme of Cury, a 14th century manuscript:

FOR TO MAKE FURMENTY. Nym clene Wete and bray it in a morter wel that the holys gon al of and seyt yt til it breste and nym yt up. and lat it kele and nym fayre fresch broth and swete mylk of Almandys or swete mylk of kyne and temper yt al. and nym the yolkys of eyryn. boyle it a lityl and set yt adoun and messe yt forthe wyth fat venyson and fresh moton.
(To make furmenty. Take clean wheat and grind it in a morter well that the hulls are gone all off and simmer it until it bursts and take it up.  And let it cool and take fair fresh broth and sweet milk of almonds or sweet milk of cows and mix it all. and take the yolks of eggs. Boyle it a little and set it down and serve it forth with fat venison and fresh mutton.)

The Victorian version is sweeter and served as a dessert. It’s very simple and it’s the sort of recipe you wouldn’t find in a cookbook, as Mrs. Cromcombe says “nobody writes down the everyday”.

You need:
Furmenty IngredientsWheat berries, some form of dairy, spices, dried fruit, eggs, and sweetener.

Cook wheat berries. I rinsed mine and then simmered them in water for an hour until tender. You can also soak them overnight to reduce the cooking time or use a pressure cooker. Let cool. You can do this step a couple of days ahead of time.

When you’re ready to prepare the dish, first soak some raisins or currents (I used both!) in hot water or a bit of booze to plump them up. Cook the wheat with milk or cream (I split the difference and used half & half) until hot, then add in the drained dried fruit and spices (I used cinnamon and nutmeg, but you could use pumpkin pie spice).

Add beaten eggs. The instructions with the video recommended “cooking them off the heat if you like a just-cooked result, or on it if you prefer your eggs scrambled.” I do not like my eggs scrambled, but I wanted to make sure they were cooked, so I tempered them with a bit of the hot milk before adding to the pot and cooking for a bit.

Serve with sugar to taste. My taste is not very sweet, so I didn’t add any. Honey or agave would work too and probably blend better.

It was very good! Thick and creamy with some chew from the wheat and fruit. I used half the recipe from the video and got a *lot*. I probably could have cut it in half again and still had some leftovers. A couple of days later I added some chopped dried apricots and warmed the remaining frumenty up. Scratch had the brilliant idea of adding a little candied blood orange peel on top. I also had the last of it for breakfast and it was a nice change from my usual oatmeal.

If I made it again (and why not, it was pretty darn easy), I would add other dried fruits and some toasted nuts, maybe a touch of ginger with the spices. Oh, or maybe chopped crystalized ginger.

Furmenty

Here’s the recipe as I made it, adapted from English Heritage.
Furmenty a la Mrs. Crocombe
1/2 lb. wheat berries (about 1 cup)
2 cups half & half (or milk or cream)
2 ounces raisins
2 ounces currants
Brandy (or hot water or rum or wine or other spirits)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 egg
Sugar (or honey or agave or maple syrup)

Cook wheat berries as directed until tender. I rinsed mine and simmered in 3 1/2 cups water for an hour. Drain. Reserve until ready to cook.

Pour brandy over dried fruit until just covered. Let soak.

Heat wheat and half & half together until hot. Don’t boil.

Drain fruit and add to mixture with spices. Blend very well to incorporate the spices.

Crack egg into a small bowl and beat well. Gradually add some of the hot liquid while beating further. Pour the tempered egg mixture into the pot and stir well until all is combined and hot. It will thicken quite a bit.

Sweeten to taste and serve warm.

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Published in: on 16 April 2024 at 2:30 pm  Leave a Comment  
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In the Kitchen: Fashionable Apple Dumplings

Dear Constant Reader,

You might remember from Queen Drop Biscuits that I’m very fond of The Victorian Way video series from English Heritage. When I saw the video for Fashionable Apple Dumplings, I needed to try it.

Here the original recipe from Modern Cookery In All Its Branches by Eliza Acton (1860):

Fashionable apple dumplings
There are boiled in small knitted or closely-netted cloths (the former have, we think, the prettiest effect), which give quite an ornamental appearance to an otherwise homely dish). Take out the cores without dividing the apples, which should be large, and of a good boiling sort, and fill the cavity with orange or lemon marmalade, enclose them in a good crust rolled thin, draw the cloths round them, tie them closely and boil them for three quarters of an hour. Lemon dumplings may be boiled in the same way.
3/4 to 1 hour, if the apples be not of the best boiling kind.


The first thing I did was knit a couple of plain cotton dishcloths, which you can see on the photo along with some Cortland apples (my favorite), homemade blood orange marmalade, some flour and grated suet (I know, they look almost the same).

Following the video, I made a dough from flour, grated suet, salt, and water. From my years of making Christmas pudding, I knew that suet pastry can hold up to hours of steaming and was a good choice for boiling. I also knew that it was probably going to taste boring.

I peeled and cored the apples. The resulting hollow was filled with delicious marmalade and the whole apple encased in a thin layer of dough and sealed up very well.

I brushed the dishcloth with melted butter, although Mrs. Acton doesn’t say to do so, Mrs. Crocombe does and it seemed like a good idea. Then I put a dough-wrapped apple on a cloth and bundled it up. Then tied the cloth up tightly with a bit of cotton string. In to the boiling water it went for about 45 minutes.

And here’s the result!

The dough took the imprint of the knitted cloth very well! The apple, however, had kind of collapsed within the dough and made for a rather squat dumpling. Maybe I boiled it too long or maybe I should have left the peel on. I feared the crust might be gummy, but it wasn’t, and it didn’t even taste half bad. The apple and orange marmalade combination was quite delightful and worth doing again. Boiling the dumplings in the knitted cloths was rather fussy and utterly Victorian, but one could probably get an easier and equally delicious result by simply wrapping the marmalade-filled apples in pie crust and baking. The dumplings won’t be fashionable, of course…

M2These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Published in: on 5 February 2020 at 3:02 pm  Leave a Comment  
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In the Kitchen: Queen Drop Biscuits

Dear Constant Reader,

I am extremely enamoured of the Victorian cooking web series at English Heritage and recently I tried one of their recipes. The results were interesting!

The recipe for Queen Drop Biscuits is from the personal receipt book of Mrs Avis Crocombe, the cook at Audley End House in the early 1880s. They’re a buttery cookie, packed with currents and a delightful almond flavor.

1/2 lb of butter beet to a cream, 1/2 lb of sugar, 4 eggs 1/2 lb of currents 3/4 of a lb of flour a few drops of almond flavour drop them on paper

It’s pretty straight forward as historic recipes go, with measurements for almost all of the ingredients. You need butter, sugar, flour, eggs, currants, and almond extract.

The method is super simple. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the flour, then the eggs (Victorian eggs were smaller than ours, so probably only 2), then some almond extract and the currants. Drop by tablespoons onto parchment-lined baking sheets at bake at 350F for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned on the bottom.

The first time I baked them, I made a rookie mistake. I only used one stick of butter (1/2 cup) instead of two (1/2 pound). The biscuits were more like small cakes than cookies, but so delicious! I brought them backstage at one of our shows and everyone loved them. So, either way, you win. I think I actually like the less butter version better.


Queen Drop Biscuits
8 ounces (2 sticks) butter, softened
8 ounces sugar
2 eggs
8 ounces currants
12 ounces flour
2 teaspoons almond extract

Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the flour. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add almond extract. Mix in currants.

Drop by tablespoonful onto parchment-lined baking sheets at bake at 350F for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned on the bottom.

Makes about 2 baker’s dozens.

Note: If you go the less butter way, use 3 eggs.

M2These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Published in: on 29 August 2019 at 9:16 am  Leave a Comment  
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In the Kitchen: Christmas Pudding, part 3

Dear Constant Reader,

Earlier in the year I showed you how to make and steam a Christmas pudding. Now that your pudding is good and aged, it’s almost time to serve it!

Take your finely-aged pudding out of its aging container and unwrap it from the cloth. Get your pudding basin and butter it well, then slip your naked pudding into it. Wet the pudding cloth, wring it out, and tie over the top of the basin with your pudding string just like you did before. Steam the pudding for an hour or two until it’s heated through. You really can’t overcook it; just make sure the water never boils away.

Traditionally Christmas pudding is served with hard sauce. It’s not called “hard” because it has booze in it (although it does), but because it can’t be poured. You’ll have to scoop it onto your warm slice of pudding where it will melt into a puddle of deliciousness.

To make hard sauce, you need:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup superfine sugar
2 Tablespoons booze

Superfine sugar, also called bar sugar and caster sugar (in the UK), can be a little hard to find. If you can’t scare up any, use confectioner’s sugar (I don’t care for it because it’s got cornstarch added) or grind up granulated sugar in the food processor. Straight granulated sugar will make your hard sauce gritty.

For the booze, use whatever you’ve been aging your pudding with. In my case, that’s rum. Usually dark rum, but my pudding drank it all.

Cream together the butter and sugar, then beat in the booze. It’s that easy! Keep the hard sauce in the fridge until you’re ready to serve.

Now to serve the pudding aflame!

Place the pudding on a serving platter, preferable one with a bit of a lip. Gently warm 1/2 cup of booze in a sauce pan. Turn out the lights in the dining room and place the pudding platter on the table. Get your camera ready. Pour the warm booze over the pudding and light the vapors with a long match. Voila!

When the flames go out, slice and serve with a generous spoonful of hard sauce.

Here’s last year’s pudding and the proud cook.

If you make Christmas pudding, I want to hear about it!

M2These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page.

Published in: on 19 December 2018 at 2:34 pm  Leave a Comment  
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In the Kitchen: Christmas Pudding, Part 2

Dear Constant Reader,

Last week I showed you how to make a fruity, boozy Christmas pudding. Today we’re going to talk about how to steam it and store it.

To steam the pudding, you’ll need a pudding basin, a pudding cloth, and a pudding string. Fortunately, none of these are too difficult to acquire. You’ll also need a big pot, large enough to hold the basin.

A pudding basin looks like a bowl. In fact, you can use a mixing bowl. The important parts are that it’s heat-proof (mine are ceramic) and it has a lip where you can tie the pudding string and it won’t slip. For this recipe you want a 6-cup basin. There are also metal pudding molds, which can make for a more decoratively-shaped pudding.

The pudding cloth is a big piece of plain, undyed cotton fabric, well-washed. Mine is a square of unbleached muslin. Flour sack towels also work well.

Lastly, the pudding string is just some sturdy cotton kitchen string.

Grease the inside of your basin well, then spoon the pudding batter into it. The pudding should be below the rim of the basin.

Wet your cloth with hot water and wring it out. Some say to also flour the wet cloth to keep the pudding from sticking to it, but I’ve found it just makes a mess.

Place the cloth on top of the basin and tie the string just under the lip to hold the cloth in place. I used a slipped reef knot to make a secure knot that can be untied easily when it’s wet (which it will be).

Now take opposite corners of your cloth and tie them together over the top of the basin. Repeat with the other two corners. You now have a handle.

Now it’s time to steam! You’re going to place the pudding in a pot of boiling water, with the water coming at least half way up the basin, but no more than an inch or two from the top. It’s tricky maneuvering a heavy pudding into boiling water, so I’ve found the best solution is to use a pot with a pasta insert.

I fill the pot with the insert in place, check the water level by putting in the basin, then take the insert and basin out, and start boiling the water. Once it’s boiling I gently lower the insert with basin into the pot. If you don’t have this kind of pot, use the cloth handles to carefully and gently lower the pudding into the boiling water.

Cover, lower the heat, and let the water gently boil for at least 2 hours (more won’t hurt — I’ve seen recipes call for five hours of steaming). You’ll need to replenish the water from time to time as it boils away, so keep a teakettle handy. Make sure the water you add is boiling and that you don’t pour it onto the pudding itself.

After a couple of hours, take the pudding out. Either just remove the insert or use the cloth handles. Be very careful! Everything is going to be steaming hot and wet.


Take off the string and cloth and test the pudding for doneness with a long skewer. The skewer should come out clean. Let the pudding cool a bit in the basin, then turn it out onto a rack. Let the pudding cool completely.

Now we age it. You’ll need your pudding cloth again, and your alcohol of choice, and a container in which to age the pudding. I use a food-grade plastic bucket with a lid that I got it from my local ice cream shop — I think it used to hold marshmallow topping.

Wrap the pudding in the cloth and put it in the container. Pour 1/4 cup booze over the pudding. Cover your container. It doesn’t have to be an air-tight seal — in fact, it shouldn’t be. Put it someplace cool and dry until Christmas. I keep mine in a cabinet in my unheated pantry. If you don’t have a pantry or a cellar or similar, you could keep it in the fridge.

Once a week, flip the pudding and feed it another bit of booze. I know some people who use a pastry brush to gently coat it with alcohol. I’m lazy and just pour a splash of rum on top and let in run down the sides. You don’t even need to take the cloth off.

Puddings should age for a minimum of a month. I’ve aged them for as long as a year and a half. As long as you keep them somewhere cool and keep feeding them alcohol, they’re going to be fine.

Once we get closer to December, I’ll tell you how to prepare your delicious pudding for serving, how to make sauce, and most importantly, how to flame it!

M2These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page.

Published in: on 28 February 2018 at 2:45 pm  Leave a Comment  
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In the Kitchen: Christmas Pudding

Dear Constant Reader,

You may have seen the title of this missive and thought “Mina, Christmas pudding? Christmas is like a year away. Can’t you read a calendar?” Fear not, O Reader, for this pudding wants to be made well in advance and aged like a fine wine or cheese. The longer it sits, the better it tastes. The last pudding I served had been aging for about 16 months and was just amazing.

Now, one does not *have* to age a Christmas pudding — there are Victorian recipes for puddings to be made and eaten right away — nor does one even have to use alcohol for an unaged pudding (the temperance movement, you know), but those are not the kind of pudding we’re going to make.

This pudding is going to be steamed and will require some specialized equipment, which I shall discuss in another missive.

You need a vast array of ingredients (so many I couldn’t get them all in the shot), thusly:

Flour, bread crumbs, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove, mace, various dried fruits, nuts, lemon, eggs, suet, and booze.

The most important ingredient is suet. Suet is a white fat from around beef kidneys and has a very neutral flavor. Any other beef fat (aka tallow) can have a kinda meatish taste. I’m told there is vegetarian suet out there and some people have used vegetable shortening in steamed puddings, but I don’t know how well it ages.

The suet should be grated. I find it’s easiest to freeze it and then grate it with a food processor. If you’re grating by hand, keep it cold, so it stays firm. If it starts to get mushy, put it back in the fridge for a bit. Once I’ve grated a batch of suet, I split it into 4-ounce portions and freeze them until I need them for pudding.

Equally important is the booze. I use rum, but you could also use brandy or bourbon, really whatever brown liquor you prefer. You need this for the aging process. Also for the flaming, but that’s quite a ways away.

Combine the flour, bread crumbs, sugar, salt, and spices in a big bowl. I make my own bread crumbs, but you could use purchased plain crumbs.

Add the fruit and nuts. I use a mix of raisins, golden raisins, currants, dried cranberries, dried sour cherries (from my tree), and candied citron. Sometimes I add candied orange peel, but I didn’t make any this Christmas, so I didn’t have any to hand. You could pretty much add any dried fruit you liked, as long as it was cut into little bits, about raisin-sized. You’ll want 5-ish cups of fruit. For the nuts, I use slivered almonds, but you could substitute your favorite nut, chopped into bits. Toast the nuts for better flavor.

Peel the lemon and chop the zest finely. Add to the batter. Hang on to the rest of the lemon.

Toss the fruit around in the dry ingredients until they’re coated. This will keep the fruit from clumping up and sticking together.

Add the suet and mix it in. Lightly beat the eggs and mix them in. Juice the lemon and add the juice and then the rum. At this point it’s going to be easiest to mix with your hands.

Your pudding batter is ready to be molded and steamed! Steaming is a bit of a process and deserves its own missive. I’ll cover that next week.

Here’s the recipe I use. It’s not based on a specific historic recipe, although I was inspired by Kathleen Curtin‘s workshop at Plimoth Plantation and the book Lobscouse and Spotted Dog.

Christmas Pudding
1 cup all purpose flour
2 cups bread crumbs
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each ground mace, nutmeg, and ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dried currants
1 cup rasins
1 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup dried sour cherries
1/2 dried cranberries
1/3 cup candied citron
1/3 cup candied orange peel
3/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted
1 lemon, zested and juiced
4 oz. suet, finely grated
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup rum

Combine the flour, bread crumbs, sugar, salt, and spices in a big bowl.

Add the fruit, nuts, and lemon peel.

Toss the fruit with the dry ingredients so they’re coated. This will keep the fruit from clumping up and sticking together.

Add the suet and mix it in. Mix in the lightly beaten eggs. Add the lemon juice and then the rum. Mix with your hands.

Stay tuned for the next step!

M2These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page.

Published in: on 21 February 2018 at 11:06 am  Leave a Comment  
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In the Kitchen: Peach Ice Water (1885)

Dear Constant Reader,

It’s starting to cool off a bit, but we had some terribly muggy days this summer. I recommend this delightful Victorian ice recipe to counteract such misery. It’s made with (no surprise from the name) water rather than a cream base. I think it’s more refreshing than ice cream on a really hot & humid day.

From The Book of Ices by Agnes Marshall (1885):

Peach Ice Water
Peel 6 good peaches, and crack the stones, and remove the kernels, which must be pounded; put in a stewpan with 1 pint of water, 4 ounces of sugar, and juice of 1 lemon, cook the fruit for 15 minutes, then tammy, and add a wineglassful of noyeau and 1 glass of orange flower water, a little carmine. Freeze.

Untitled

I assumed that Victorian peaches were smaller than modern ones and halved the amount. This turned out to make the right amount for my ice cream freezer, so hurrah for me. It was a bit of a challenge to acquire peaches in the first place as the crop in the northeast this year suffered badly from our weird winter and the farmers’ markets have been lacking.

The ground peach kernels are used to give the ice an almond flavor. Rather than playing games with cyanide (this small an amount is probably safe, but still…), I used a splash of almond extract instead.

I know the picture shows a fake plastic lemon, but that’s because I took it after the fact and I had used my stock of fresh lemons. Someday I’ll remember to take the ingredient picture first.

A tammy is a fine hair sieve that you would rub the cooked peaches through. Because I don’t have servants, I used an immersion blender and resigned myself to a less than perfectly silky smooth puree.

My research showed that a Victorian wineglass measure was about 2 fluid ounces. Noyeau is a almond-flavored liqueur; I used amaretto. Orange flower water, like its cousin rose water, is very potent. I recommend using very little.

Carmine is a red food coloring made from cochineal, an insect. I actually have some cochineal in its raw form, but that seemed excessively authentic. I considered adding a little red food coloring, but I was out (blue and green coloring, yes, but no red or yellow. Why?). Besides, the puree had a lovely peachy color in its natural state.

If you don’t have an ice cream freezer, there are ways to fake one. Or you can treat this like a granita and freeze for a couple of hours in a shallow pan, stirring every half hour to break up the ice crystals.

Peach Ice

Peach Ice Water
1 lb. peaches
2 cups water
1/2 heaping cup sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup amaretto
1 teaspoon orange flower water
A few drops of red food coloring (optional)

To peel the peaches, dunk them into boiling water for a few seconds and then into ice water. The skins will come right off. Halve the peaches and take out the pits.

Cook the peaches with the water, sugar, and lemon juice for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and puree.

Add almond extract, amaretto, and orange flower water. Let cool completely.

Pour into ice cream freezer and follow the instructions.

M2

Published in: on 24 August 2016 at 12:04 pm  Leave a Comment  
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