Book report: Cornish Recipes
Oct. 2nd, 2008 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI can resist big glossy cookery books, the ones with a picture for every recipe; but I'm a sucker for little pamphlets produced as fundraisers, or to promote local produce, or to preserve traditional recipes. So much the better if they're old. So, I have a copy of Cornish Recipes - Ancient and Modern, originally issued by the Cornwall Federation of Women's Institutes in 1929, though this twenty-first edition was published in 1962. I don't know where I got it from - possibly from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler's mother, and she seems (from the crumbly white blob encrusted on the back cover) to have baked from it at least once. The fifth - 1930 - edition was revised and enlarged, gaining a foreword by Arthur Quiller-Couch, who also contributes his recipes for pickled damson and claret (or cider) cup, which he suggests you serve alongside the ham for which a recipe is given elsewhere in the book.
In addition to the curing of ham and bacon, there are chapters on the baking of bread, cakes, pasties and pies, a chapter on cream (admittedly, a single page chapter; it includes a recipe for fried eggs with clotted cream: fry eggs until quite brown, and serve with a lump of clotted cream on each), chapters on soup, fish, remedies ("medical and otherwise") and a description of a traditional Cornish oven, supplied by a member of St Kea W.I. in response to an appeal for a descripton of the old ways of baking.
This is the essence of the book, I think: it is an attempt to record the old ways of cooking and baking, the traditional dishes of Cornwall. Many of the recipes come with a footnote: "This is an old recipe dated 1805" (one of the ten recipes given for saffron cake), "Dated 1698" (one of four for metheglin, or mead). A gingerbread recipe "was given to a Falmouth member by a woman who made and sold them at a stall in the streets of Redruth." Even without these notes, the quantities involved are characteristic of old recipes (the gingerbreads require three pounds of flour and two of dark treacle).
I wonder if some of the omissions from the book reflect this emphasis on the old-fashioned: did the contributors and editors simply not bother to record things that were still current at the time? There is no chapter dedicated to vegetables, and very few vegetables appear - and when they do, it is mainly in pies. There are herbs, plenty of potatoes, parsnips, leeks and an unexpected broccoli pasty ("Boil broccoli until nearly cooked, but still quite firm, strain it and fill pasty in usual way, adding salt.") Perhaps vegetable recipes were felt not to be interesting, because unchanged, or perhaps cleaning and boiling vegetables wasn't felt to require a recipe.
Almost anything, on the other hand, could be made into a pie or a pasty: the chapter on pasties lists, alphabetically, apple, broccoli, chicken, date, eggy pasty, herby pasty, jam, mackerel, meat and potato, parsley (actually lamb or mutton with parsley), pork, rabbit, rice, sour sauce (sorrel), star-gazing pasty (with herring), turnip and windy pasty (the last piece of pastry left over from making pasties, baked empty and served spread with jam).
There are three recipes for star-gazy pie, seven for squab pie, not all of which contain squabs (young pigeons). The version "as taught by the Phoenicians when they mined tin in Cornwall" uses mutton chops). Another recipe for squab pie, contributed by Penzance W.I., involves layers of veal, ham, mutton, beef, a cormorant and as much clotted cream as it will take. This is such a massive and baroque undertaking that I don't suppose it was cooked very often, but a recipe for rook pie has a more believale air. There's also a recipe for curlew pie, but I really don't want to think about that...
durham_rambler's mother, and she seems (from the crumbly white blob encrusted on the back cover) to have baked from it at least once. The fifth - 1930 - edition was revised and enlarged, gaining a foreword by Arthur Quiller-Couch, who also contributes his recipes for pickled damson and claret (or cider) cup, which he suggests you serve alongside the ham for which a recipe is given elsewhere in the book.In addition to the curing of ham and bacon, there are chapters on the baking of bread, cakes, pasties and pies, a chapter on cream (admittedly, a single page chapter; it includes a recipe for fried eggs with clotted cream: fry eggs until quite brown, and serve with a lump of clotted cream on each), chapters on soup, fish, remedies ("medical and otherwise") and a description of a traditional Cornish oven, supplied by a member of St Kea W.I. in response to an appeal for a descripton of the old ways of baking.
This is the essence of the book, I think: it is an attempt to record the old ways of cooking and baking, the traditional dishes of Cornwall. Many of the recipes come with a footnote: "This is an old recipe dated 1805" (one of the ten recipes given for saffron cake), "Dated 1698" (one of four for metheglin, or mead). A gingerbread recipe "was given to a Falmouth member by a woman who made and sold them at a stall in the streets of Redruth." Even without these notes, the quantities involved are characteristic of old recipes (the gingerbreads require three pounds of flour and two of dark treacle).
I wonder if some of the omissions from the book reflect this emphasis on the old-fashioned: did the contributors and editors simply not bother to record things that were still current at the time? There is no chapter dedicated to vegetables, and very few vegetables appear - and when they do, it is mainly in pies. There are herbs, plenty of potatoes, parsnips, leeks and an unexpected broccoli pasty ("Boil broccoli until nearly cooked, but still quite firm, strain it and fill pasty in usual way, adding salt.") Perhaps vegetable recipes were felt not to be interesting, because unchanged, or perhaps cleaning and boiling vegetables wasn't felt to require a recipe.
Almost anything, on the other hand, could be made into a pie or a pasty: the chapter on pasties lists, alphabetically, apple, broccoli, chicken, date, eggy pasty, herby pasty, jam, mackerel, meat and potato, parsley (actually lamb or mutton with parsley), pork, rabbit, rice, sour sauce (sorrel), star-gazing pasty (with herring), turnip and windy pasty (the last piece of pastry left over from making pasties, baked empty and served spread with jam).
There are three recipes for star-gazy pie, seven for squab pie, not all of which contain squabs (young pigeons). The version "as taught by the Phoenicians when they mined tin in Cornwall" uses mutton chops). Another recipe for squab pie, contributed by Penzance W.I., involves layers of veal, ham, mutton, beef, a cormorant and as much clotted cream as it will take. This is such a massive and baroque undertaking that I don't suppose it was cooked very often, but a recipe for rook pie has a more believale air. There's also a recipe for curlew pie, but I really don't want to think about that...
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-02 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 08:56 pm (UTC)8 oz self raising flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
1 oz sugar
2oz margarine / butter
7 tablesppons milk
2 - 3 oz currants / sultanas / candied peel
Sieve flour, baking pwder, sugar together. Rub in fat. Add milk gradually and mix to a soft dough.
Turn out onto a floured board, work into a ball, roll out to about half inch thick, cut into rounds.
Place on an oiled baking sheet; brush tops with a little more milk.
Bake in a hot oven for about 15 minutes.
(Or leave out the sugar and fruit and add 4 oz grated cheese before adding the milk. Also a pinch of paprika, if you like).
Enjoy!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 09:03 pm (UTC)Very well, here's the recipe supplied by Falmouth WI (because I like the description of the texture)
A pound and a half of flour
quarter pound butter or cream
quarter pound beef dripping or good lard
2 dessertspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
small bit of lemon peel
three quarters of a pound of currants
Don't put the butter and lard too fine in the flour; after it is mixed with water roll it out and then roll it up and put it aside for an hour or two, then roll it out again, cut across with knife, the cake will then be light and shaley. Time for baking: 20 - 30 minutes, according to size.
Other recipes just mix the ingredients, roll out and bake.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 09:15 pm (UTC)I'll have to try this out and report back to you. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 09:48 pm (UTC)recipes in cornis book
Date: 2008-12-02 11:42 am (UTC)Pickled butter
Date: 2008-12-03 12:48 pm (UTC)Recipe supplied by Perranporth W.I.
Re: Pickled butter
Date: 2008-12-18 11:01 am (UTC)Re: Pickled butter
Date: 2011-01-10 03:57 pm (UTC)Very interesting subject.
Thanks
Bev
Re: Pickled butter
Date: 2011-01-11 12:40 pm (UTC)