The Royal Heritage Cookbook E-Book

The Hon. Sarah Macpherson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 102

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

During the eighteenth century, ladies of high society kept handwritten notes on recipes and it became fashionable to exchange the most successful with friends and neighbours. This charming book is a compilation of fifty of the best recipes taken from the archives of the country houses of Britain and Ireland. Each recipe is shown in its original form accompanied by an up-to-date version created by professional chefs so that the recipes can be recreated today. In a world dominated by additives and synthetic foodstuffs, these traditional recipes contain only natural ingredients and show that simple ways are often the best when it comes to creating dishes that stand the test of time.

Leseprobe

First published 2015

This paperback edition published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Sarah Macpherson, 2015, 2023

The right of Sarah Macpherson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 239 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Turkey by Imak

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Conversion Tables

Menus

Starters

Spinach, Goats’ Cheese & Salmon Roulade

Spinach or Watercress Mousse

Gruyère à la Crème Soup Served in a Pumpkin

Scallop (or Oyster) Loaves

Smoked Haddock Chowder

Smoked Trout Pâté Surprise

Light Lunches

Chicken, Cream & Leek Pie

Salmon & Oyster Pie

Fish Sauce à la Lacock

Mustard & Yoghurt Sauce

Rabbit Pie

Stuffed Vine Leaves

Meatballs

Main Courses

Marinades

Roast Beef

Marinated Sirloin (or Rump) Steak

Alternative Sauces

Small Barrel Fillet Steak

Royal Venison Casserole with Berries

Venison Casserole with Allspice & Sherry

Venison Steak

Crown Roast of Lamb & Roast Vegetables

Pheasant, Partridge or Grouse with Cider & Caramelised Apple

Pheasant Casserole with Dijon Mustard

Family Meals

The Great Lamb Pie

Lamb Pies

Lemon & Ginger Lamb Pasties

Historic Pastry

Fish Pie

Curries

The Thirlestane Castle Curries

Raj Curry Powder

A Milder Dry Curry & Herb Mix

A Slightly Stronger Curry Mix

Buttered Curried Chicken

Curried Vegetable Side Dish

Curried Meatballs

Desserts

Apple & Apricot Tansey

The King’s Favourite Pudding no. 1: Fresh Apricot & Apple Crumble

The King’s Favourite Pudding no. 2: The Winter Alternative

Oranges with White Chocolate & Honeycomb Mousse

Royal Cherry Cheesecake

Cherry & White Chocolate Trifle

Raspberry & Ginger Cheesecake

Meringues

Syllabub

Sweet Wine Ice Cream no. 1

Sweet Wine Ice Cream no. 2

Best Restaurant-Standard Ice Cream

Mary Queen of Scots Mousse

Best Possett Brûlée

Sack Possett

Old Irish Flummery

Cheese Board Selection

Cakes

The Duke of York’s Cake

Rich Fruit Cake

‘Maids of Honour’ Cakes

Violet Cakes

Raspberry Cakes

Orange Meringue Kisses

Almond Bakewell

Orange Bakewell

Chocolate Porter Cake

Notes

Acknowledgements

My personal thanks and acknowledgement to:

The wonderful members of our Historic Cooks Company: Carole Awnack, Wendy Bailey, Ros Blount, Chris Carr, Sarah Cozens, Sue Wynne Davies, Kate Hunloke, Maeve Hunt, Ginnie Keen, Jane Lees-Millais, Jeni McGregor, Jan Penn, Jan Pink, Jenny Potter (Dunford), Jophy Powell, Jennie Shaw, Ros Spicer, Jo and Annette Whitworth, Juliet Wilmot and Joyce Wood.

Deborah Loader, historic cook and personal assistant; Francis Pearson, wine merchant, for constant and wise advice; Paul Whitaker, chairman of the Pink Elephant Club of Bristol Dining Committee, and his predecessor, Mike Dowdeswell; Hilary Pearson and Lizzie and Colin Legge, historic cook leaders and advisers; Sandy Bagnall, historic cook leader; Emma Fourie (Maitland-Carew) for videos of the secrets of Thirlestane Castle, and Lisa Saunders, of All About Cupcakes, cake decorator.

Elizabeth Gibb, Meg Holbrook and Marlene Lewis, compilers for the Lacock Papers; Claire Skinner and Mike Marshman of Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, for all their support with Lacock Abbey Papers; all the staff at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre and the volunteers of the ‘Lacock Unlock’ project.

Cllr Richard Tonge, Wiltshire County Council; Professor Ron George, Lacock Parish Council; Katherine Manning and Ann Cox, Lacock Abbey National Trust Administration; Stephen Wundke of Swirrel Mas, adviser and food festival organiser; Sarah and Matthew Jackson, The Red Lion, Lacock; Jenny Rowlands, public lectures assistant; Anna Blundell-Williams, for her design advice; Ronan Colgan, Beth Amphlett, Chris West and the team at The History Press; Katherine and Markus Bolder, for all their technical and computer help; Caroline Gray, cookery adviser and party organiser; Ian Macpherson, my editor and cheese consultant, for his love and endless support and Nick Brink of Carlton Books Ltd at Carlton Publishing House, for arranging the rights to include extracts from Court Favourites by Elizabeth Craig (Andre Deutsch, 1953).

The professional recipe testing and advice from gourmet restaurateurs Neil and Sarah at the Foxham, Wiltshire, has been invaluable. They have my grateful thanks.

And a special acknowledgement to Andy Crump of K. & E.J. Crump & Son, Royal Wootton Bassett, for their generous meat sponsorship.

Introduction

As a domestic historian, I have published books on my own family history as well as recently discovered National Trust old recipes and remedies used by the upstairs and downstairs life inside a great house of bygone years.

The National Trust has yet again allowed me to open a Pandora’s Box in Wiltshire – an entire chest of untouched manuscripts! Opening the lid of the box, I found a treasure trove of royal and noble recipes from approximately 300 years ago.

A unique history of cooking was revealed as I reached inside to find written proof of King Charles ll’s favourite food (sirloin, and apple and apricot pie) and King James ll’s favourite teacake, along with another 1,500 forgotten recipes.

I determined to convert the best of these into an up-to-date ‘book of royal recipes’; some were suitable to be used almost straight from the manuscript, for family lunches, others needed a bit of work to bring them up to date, while others still have provided the inspiration for new dinner party dishes. I have also made extensive use of their knowledge of alcohol, marinating, and herbs in creating these wonderful dishes.

Many of the recipes in the box were almost unreadable, many were faded, and many were written at a time before properly standardised written English, so much of the spelling was quite incredible.

They revealed an intriguing story of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire between the years 1685 and 1745; a behind-the-scenes view of very unusual domestic and noble interaction.

My work has taken more than two years of research and gathering together a wonderful group of professional and historic cooks, who have tested and advised, and brought the spirit of the old dishes back to life. They have cooked non-stop to produce these delicious and easy-to-prepare dishes, and they too have been an inspiration.

‘Mullicatawnie Soup & For Walking Shoes’, Lord Ilchester and Lord Belmore, 1745.

Lacock Abbey – Who Wrote the Recipes?

The recipes cover three generations of the Talbot family, relatives of the Earl of Shrewsbury.

In all there are some twelve notebooks and manuscripts, written in several different hands. The only names identifiable were:

Lady Ivory (née Talbot) 1662-1720; her daughter Barbara Davenport (née Ivory) (m.1715, d.1748); and a granddaughter, Ann Talbot (1723-1752), who began writing the recipes aged 22, and who tragically died unmarried just seven years later. Ann Talbot’s sister Martha Davenport (1720-1790) was most likely the elder Mrs Davenport, who has a receipt for ‘A Toupee’ dated 1772.

There are also important manuscripts by a Mary Davenport, with older handwriting and an illegible date, possibly 1692. She is probably Lady Ivory’s cousin (b.1674), and possibly lived at Lacock as a relative/companion. She did not marry until she was 46, in the year 1720, which is notable because it was the year Lady Ivory died. She later married a second time.

In several cases, I have used the handwriting as my nearest guide to the probable date. Other original writers were either visitors (some of them royal guests) or other members of the Talbot family.

To discover more about the secrets of Lacock Abbey scan here.

The Lacock Papers: Interesting and Unique

Lacock Abbey is different from most country houses, because the mistress of the house, Lady Ivory, started the family tradition of writing the recipes down. These are very early; a period of sixty years passed before Hannah Glasse became the first woman to publish a cookery book in England.

When Ann Talbot married Sir John Ivory in 1682, she appears to have flaunted the tradition of the kitchen and trespassed into the domain of the cook below stairs, pen, ink and paper poised – constantly disturbing the kitchen staff and demanding to know the ingredients and method of cooking of every single dish made.

Until about fifty years ago, the kitchen of a large country house was the domain of the cook and her kitchen maids, where even the scullery maids always remained at their washing up. The lady of the house held weekly meetings with her cook and housekeeper – above stairs.

It seems that the cook was regularly in a bad mood, as many of the recipes are far from complete, and often far from being palatable as a result! One of my tasks has been to fill in the missing details and recreate these dishes, testing and trying them out for your delight.

My book, M’Lady’s Book of Household Secrets (The History Press, 2013) explains the duties of the mistress of the house, and the army of servants below stairs. The remedies and duties in the book are taken from the same Lacock Abbey Papers, and from my own family home, Castletown in County Kildare.

Other Sources

I was fascinated to find some of the ancient puddings at Lacock, especially the possetts and tanseys, were similar recipes to a favourite family dish from my own childhood. ‘Old Irish Flummery’ is included here, taken from my book The Children of Castletown House (The History Press, 2012).

Built by the family in 1722, Castletown is Ireland’s first and finest Georgian house. Writing about my ancestors’ adventures and intrigues, and how individual servants interacted with the Master and Mistress of the House, I discovered, for instance, that ‘a great black porter’ was first brewed in our village … and that Guinness was the name of the family butler in the middle 1700s, some years before the Guinness brewery was founded in Dublin. He brewed his beer for the servants, as was the custom (upstairs drank wine). He was the father of Arthur Guinness, whose signature is on every bottle.

Our ‘Black Porter Cake’ recipe here has been created specially for you. It is made with Guinness, and was inspired by our family stories of the butler and his brew.

The second source of my own family recipes is in the handwritten ‘Household Cookery Book’ from an enchanting, pink-sandstone fairytale castle in Scotland. Thirlestane Castle, Lauder, my mother’s birthplace, has 14ft-thick defensive walls, secret passages, and was a childhood delight.

What makes this cookery book interesting is its recipe for mixing authentic Indian curry powders, straight from the days of the Raj, which taste different from shop-bought varieties. They have been adapted here for use in the curry recipes we eat today.

Though these are of a later date, the mid-1800s, we are able to compare them with a curry dish from Lacock Abbey over 100 years earlier. And what a difference!

But what makes Lacock Abbey so very special is the discovery that the very modern habit of exchanging recipes after a lunch or dinner party was already alive and well amongst that handful of rare English families who took an interest in recipes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Scan here to find out more about Castletown House and the Conolly-Carew family.

Scan here for some behind-the-scenes shots of Thirlestane Castle.

Royalty and Food Fashion

Lacock Abbey is a noble house with many royal connections.

It was built in 1232 as a nunnery by the Countess of Salisbury, whose husband was an illegitimate son of Henry ll. After the monasteries were sacked or closed by Henry Vlll in the mid-sixteenth century, Lacock Abbey was converted into a private house, and eventually passed down to the Talbots, the Earl of Shrewsbury’s family.

Nowadays Lacock and the abbey are part of a National Trust picture-book village caught in an Olde England time warp, but with very modern attractions which led to the area being used as one of the Harry Potter film locations. Approximately 400 years ago, Lacock enjoyed a golden age, and a bridge built near the abbey diverted the main London-Bath road down the middle of Lacock High Street.