Kitchen Pepper

In order to get our period food to taste like it would have 100 years ago we need to season it like it was 100 years ago!  I have found that I have much more nutmeg in my cabinet than ever before, and I bought mace for the first time in my life- all because of period cookery.  This "recipe"  is a blend of spices to use in period kitchens. It comes from The Kentucky Housewife, 1839. 

This blend was pretty easy to put together, and I had everything already in the cabinet (except white pepper, which I grabbed from the Food Lion).   I threw everything into my mortar & pestle. The good thing about modern spices is that most of them are already ground up, making the work a little easier. The instructions say to use 12 blades of mace; mine was already ground, so I used about a tablespoon.  

Mix it together well with the mortar & pestle-it does become a nice fine powder. 

Kitchen Pepper mixed together. 

This does make quite a lot of seasoning.  I had extra that did not fit in by bottle. The extra was put in a modern spice container to use in my kitchen.  This is a spice that does have some heat to it. I am not one that likes hot & spicy foods, and this may be used sparingly in my kitchen. However, I do see where it will enhance the flavor of gravy & I can't wait to try it!

Bottled & Corked!

There is a reference to this pepper in another recipe in the Kentucky Housewife. It is one of the spices found in "Bread Sauce for a Pig".  It only calls for a teaspoon.

Enjoy! 

Common Egg Bread

Common Egg Bread, The Kentucky Housewife, 1839.  This sounded very similar to a dish that we had eaten on our honeymoon in Williamsburg, so when I was browsing books for new ideas, I tagged it as a must try!

I used my new birch-twig whisk for this recipe, I must say it is nice. After beating the eggs well, add 4 cups of milk, salt and butter- I used 2 tablespoons.
The fine Indian meal (corn meal) is where it gets tricky.  Like most mid-century recipes there are no exact measurements. I ended up using about a pound of corn meal to make "a good batter".  It will be a thin batter, I guessed on this part, as it did not specify to what consistency this batter should be.
In a 400* oven it took about 24 minutes to get done.

The top looks similar to eggs that have been cooked a little too long, but it is a nice brown "done" color. It will smell just like corn bread! 

After letting it cool for a few minutes, I served my self a piece with butter- as directed! 

It was still pretty hot, but had a nice corn-bread taste. I think I may have used too much corn meal, as it did not have the light eggy taste I was looking for. Next time I will use less corn meal to see how the results vary. 

Cider Cake

Yes, another Cider Cake.  For some reason I have been hung up on cakes, and since I still had some cider in the house I thought I would go ahead and try the Cider Cake a different way. This go round I tried The Kentucky Housewife's, 1839 version.  The recipe is a bit different, as it call for eggs.

Using a nice large bowl add a stick and a half of butter to 1 cup of sugar, cream together. Add the six eggs well beaten to the creamed mixture, then 2 cups of apple cider (the recipe denotes "sweet" cider as apposed to the popular alcoholic cider of the 19th Century). The recipe calls for 2 grated nutmegs, I added a teaspoon of ground nutmeg, I did not want the flavor to be too overpowering. Then add the flour gradually as you go to make a thick batter. I added the flour one cup at a time, mixing well as I went, I ended up using about 4 1/2 cups of flour to make what I thought was a thick batter, about the consistency of modern cake batter. I did not add raisins to this cake, I was out.

I added the mix to a 10" buttered bunt cake pan and placed it in a moderate (350) oven. This recipe does not specify how long the cake will take to bake, I started checking at 20 minutes. I took the cake out of the oven after about 40 minutes of baking it seemed to be done.

This cake is the opposite of the last Cider Cake. The last cake was crumbly, this one is the opposite. This cake was thick and very dense. The flavor was sweeter than the last one, at least to me.