Michelle Keeley (LJMU, 3rd year) This was first published on Michelle’s blog ”Typewriter and Teacakes‘ Yesterday afternoon, 68 Hope St played host to a Victorian bake sale in aid of Comic Relief. Organised by Victorianist and history lecturer, Dr Lucie Matthews-Jones, the idea was that you had to create a cake from scratch using a Victorian Recipe with no modern electrical equipment. People then paid £2 on the day to eat unlimited cake, drink unlimited tea and judge the best
Read moreTag: Food
How I cooked a Victorian dish and lived to tell the tale
Tim Train You know those blogs written by perfect cooks who spend their time cooking the perfect meal perfectly, and usually begin things by posting picture after picture of their perfect cooking for their readers? I hate those blogs. They make everyone else feel so inadequate, and me too. If anything, in this post, in which I detail my questionable attempts to come to grips with unfashionable recipes, I trust I will make your readers feel perfectly adequate about themselves
Read moreMrs Beeton’s not so great lemon biscuits
Emma Vickers (LJMU) This post forms part of the JVC Bake off in aid of Comic Relief. You can sponsor all our bakers efforts here. I decided to attempt Mrs Beeton’s Lemon biscuits on the basis that they looked relatively simple. No Viennese flour, no weird solid sugar and a ‘drop’ biscuit to boot. I pre-heated the oven to 150 used Google to change the old measurements into usable ones and followed the recipe. The amount of butter seemed fine but I
Read moreWhere’s the cheese Mrs Beeton? Apple cheesecakes
Maria Damkjaer None of the cheesecakes in Beeton’s Book of Household Management have any cheese in them whatsoever. As far as I can make out from Andrea Broomfield’s Food and Cooking in Victorian England, these recipes are a relic of pre-Reformation fasting practices.[i] In the 1816 edition of her A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Rundell includes recipes both with and without cheese curd, but by the time of Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management, the cheeseless cheesecakes have
Read moreTranscribing Bentham’s baked apple pudding from the page
Tim Causer This post forms part of the JVC Bake off in aid of Comic Relief. You can sponsor all our bakers efforts here. Thank you to Helen and Lucinda for allowing a pre-Victorian to take part in the Bake Off. Since the award-winning crowdsourced transcription project, Transcribe Bentham, began making available digital images of the manuscripts of the philosopher and reformer, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), volunteer transcribers from around the world have discovered a number of interesting and hitherto unknown things in
Read moreWibble Wobble?: Dr. A. W. Chase’s Chocolate Jelly Cake
Mary Addyman (University of Warwick) This post forms part of the JVC Bake off in aid of Comic Relief. You can sponsor all our bakers efforts here. When I read about this Bake Off, I knew exactly where to head to find a recipe – my mother’s book shelf. Since starting to volunteer in the Victorian kitchen at Charlecote Park a couple of years ago, she has developed a keen interest in nineteenth century cooking, and her book collection has expanded accordingly.
Read moreCarrot pudding, Carrot Cake: Same difference?
Beth McConnell (LJMU 3rd year student) I chose to bake a carrot cake because not only is it my specialty, but it also appears to be a quintessential Victorian bake. I managed to find the recipe from Mrs Beeton’s very own cookery book (1861), although she called it ‘Carrot Pudding’. The thought of making this cake without using any modern electrical appliances was initially very daunting! Once I got into it I found that it was worth the challenge. However,
Read moreMargaret Sim’s ‘Solid’ Vinegar Cake (1883)
Claire Furlong Flicking through Margaret Sim’s Cookery,[1] a recipe book dating from 1883, I catch sight of the Vinegar Cake and am immediately intrigued. I am more than usually fond of vinegar, but even I will admit that as a cake flavouring it’s unorthodox. One minute of googling teaches me that it’s not meant to be a flavouring; it is a raising agent and should leave behind no trace of acidity. This dispenses with my biggest concern about baking a
Read moreSally & Dex’s Gingerbread Cakes, or rather treacle thin cakes
Sally Holloway This post forms part of the JVC Bake off in aid of Comic Relief. You can sponsor all our bakers efforts here. While completing my PhD at Royal Holloway on the material culture of romantic love between c. 1730 and 1830, I discovered that gingerbread cakes were one of the most popular gifts given from a man to a woman in the early stages of courtship. This inspired me to try and recreate these tasty romantic treats for the JVC
Read moreLet’s Bake Victorian Style! Comic Relief and this year’s JVC Bake Off
Lucinda Matthews-Jones (LJMU) Inspired by the recent celebrity Great British Bake Off, Helen Rogers and I have decided to do our own bake off at Liverpool John Moores University for Comic Relief. We’re in the process of inviting staff and students across the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences to join us; the results of which will be tasted and judged at a Victorian tea party in early March. Pictures will be uploaded on to the website. Rather than keep
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