Christmas PUNCH!

"A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!" (A Christmas Carol).

Punch originated in India. It means 'five' in Hindi and equates to the five mixes for a traditional punch recipe; alcohol (or non-alcoholic juice), sugar, lemon, water and tea or spices. It has been a popular drink associated with Christmas since the 1600s. Dickens' A Christmas Carol makes reference to a 'smoking bishop' (above) which was a type of Punch mostly consisting of oranges and wine.

George Robert's 1869 book Cups and Customs recounts a recipe for Punch by a Mr.Billy Dawson. It is emphasised at the beginning of the recipe:

'let your utensils be clean, and your ingredients of first-rate quality'

Some of the utensils that you would need can be found in the Museum of Kitchenalia to make this recipe, including:

Glass juicer, 1888.

© Museum of Kitchenalia

Tinware 'Gill' Measure

© Museum of Kitchenalia

Victorian cut glass bowl.© Museum of Kitchenalia

19c Sugar Nippers.© Museum of Kitchenalia

Wassail

The Wassail Bowl was traditionally partaken of in England on Christmas Eve.

It is referred to in Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream and in Oxford University it was representative of an ornate silver gilt bowl holding ten gallons of liquid, drunk out of on St.David's Day.
 
Here is an old traditional Wassail bowl recipe taken from George Roberts Cups and their customs (1869). Some objects from the Museum of Kitchenalia used to prepare this would include, sugar nippers to break down the sugar from its solid cone shape and a nutmeg grater to add spice to the drink

19c Sugar nippers

©MuseumofKitchenalia

Georgian Nutmeg grater ©MuseumofKitchenalia

British Sausage Week!

It's British Sausage Week! 

http://www.lovepork.co.uk/blog/article/sausage-week-2012?gclid=CP31qYDavLMCFaTMtAodakQAqQ 

Although this recipe isn't entirely pork based it dates from circa 1900-1920 and is rather unusual.

You might need one of these to mince your meat with!

Meat grinder circa 1920 ©Museum of Kitchenalia

Aberdeen Sausage

1 Ilb lean stewing beef
1/4Ilb fat bacon
2tbsps breadcrumbs
1 dessert spoon Worcester Sauce
1 egg
1tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Mince finely beef and bacon, add seasoning. Mix well with egg. Form in a roll, wrap in a floured cloth and boil for two hours. Unwrap and allow to cool. Slice cold and serve with pickles and salad.

Women's Institute

The Museum of Kitchenalia is now an approved speaker for Gloucestershire WI.

For more information about Museum Education services please visit www.museumofkitchenalia.co.uk

Brioche in the UK

Over 200 different types of bread are manufactured in the UK today. One of these is the French butter rich Brioche. With it's origins in the eighteenth century, it is understood that Louis XIV's wife Marie Antoinette did not say 'Let them eat Cake', but in fact stated 'Let them eat brioche', with reference to food shortages affecting the French poor. Although this phrase has since been typically attributed elsewhere.

Brioche tines from the early 1900s, from a kitchen in Suffolk

©MuseumofKitchenalia

A 'Celebrated Brioche, or Festival of Cake' as it was termed, appears in an article in Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser in 1832, suggesting that this French buttery treat was a known consumable in the UK at least as early as the nineteenth century. And the Museum of Kitchenalia boasts a pair of brioche tins from the early 1900s, illustrated above. These remained popular in domestic kitchens up to the 1950s when they were then produced in shiny tinned steel.

'Consider the Fork'

Bee Wilson's highly promising book Consider the Fork - a study of worldwide kitchen paraphernalia has just been published. To read a review from the Guardian newspaper visit:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/04/consider-fork-bee-wilson-review

Recipe for 'Sack Posset' incorporating objects from the Museum of Kitchenalia

Winter has always traditionally been associated with the indulgence of hot spiced drinks in England. George Edwin Robert's book written in 1869 celebrating 'Cups and Their Customs' recounts an old 17th century recipe for Sack Posset. Sack was a light dry and very strong wine imported from Spain as early as the 1500's and Posset was a sort of curdled milk based spiced drink. So a kind of early version of egg nog! Which would have continued into the 18th century, sometimes mixed with egg yolks.

Recipe for Sack Posset:

You will need a nutmeg grater and a pewter dish

18th century Pewter Dish © Museum of Kitchenalia

Nutmeg Grater c.1820

 © Museum of Kitchenalia

" Boil a quart of cream with quantum

sufficit of sugar, mace, and nutmeg ; take half a pint

of sack, and the same quantity of ale, and boil them well

together, adding sugar ; these, being boiled separately,

are now to be added. Heat a pewter dish very hot, and

cover your basin with it, and let it stand by the fire

for two or three hours."

'Parkin' Recipe with Kitchen Equipment for 1990-1920

With Bonfire night just around the corner you may be interested in this old recipe by Doris Coates in her book Tuppeny rice and treacle Cottage Housekeeping, 1900-20. Traditionally a Yorkshire cake eaten on November 5. 
The newspaper the Graphic published an article in 1888 praising the attributes of Scarborough

"with its bright yellow doorsteps, and the enormous quantities of cakes for sale. Notably the Yorkshire 'Parkin'."

Doris recommends that the cake is kept in a tin for at least a week before eating to become truly moist and treacly.

Equipment you would have had at the start of the twentieth century to make this include:

http://img2.etsystatic.com/000/0/5934984/il_fullxfull.282505494.jpg

http://img3.etsystatic.com/002/0/6296878/il_fullxfull.352703143_q6cu.jpg

 http://www.flyingtigerantiques.com/mm5/graphics/00000001/yllwrebowlrrp20sobv.jpg

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/itemimages/167/452/167452_large.jpg

1lb flour
ilb oatmeal
4oz brown sugar
1 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
milk to mix
6 oz lard or butter
6oz syrup or treacle
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

Mix the flour and oatmeal, rub in the lard or butter and add a few raisins or candid peel for taste. Add the soda, slat and baking powder. Mix well then add the sugar and syrup or treacle and enough milk to stiffen the batter. Butter and line a square tin with baking parchment, pour the mixture in and smooth over. Bake at 140 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Soup kitchens

This month Oxford University students have decided to set up their own soup kitchens in protest of the high charges being imposed for meals http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-20122756

Soup kitchens and 'cooking depot's were organised for the benefit of the poor in some of the bigger cities in Britain during the nineteenth century, particularly in Glasgow. These were not always offering free hand-outs, early cooking depots set low fixed rates providing cheap affordable meals for those who lived in houses with inadequate cooking facilities.

A Dover soup kitchen c.1920s/1930s

(dover-kent.co.uk)

Due to the high numbers of poor and for new migrants entering Britain since the 18th and 19th centuries, soup kitchens such as the one for the Jewish poor established in East London in the mid 1800s survived for many years, until rationing forced production to cease during the Second World War.

Welcome to the Museum of Kitchenalia Blog

Welcome to the new blog for the Museum of Kitchenalia an exciting new mobile and interactive museum education service. The Museum of Kitchenalia is a collection of artefacts spanning three hundred years of kitchen apparatus, equipment and gadgets that tell the narrative of the history of the British kitchen, it's innovative, cultural, social and technological shifts since the 1700s.

This blog will accompany the offical website where you can find more general information and make bookings and enquiries at www.museumofkitchenalia.co.uk
The blog will upload up to date information on the museum and day to day commentary about the history of the objects and their relevance to society today.