Tag Archives: Mrs. Beeton

Mrs. Beeton’ s Rice Cakes

 

Rice flour cookies

Gluten Free Rice cakes or biscuits or cookies.

When I offered a plate of these little cookies to a friend and assured her that Mrs. Beeton’s rice cakes are gluten free, she asked in surprise, “Mrs. Beeton had gluten-free recipes?”

Well, yes and no.  The recipe was certainly not labeled as gluten free, so it is almost an accident that it fits with one of the dietary concerns that people have in the 21st century. Do they look like sugar cookies? They also taste pretty much like sugar cookies, but that term was not in use yet, so they were called “cakes.” Or if you’re British and persist in calling cookies biscuits–that’s possible, too.

Isabella Beeton

Isabella Beeton (1836-65). Hand-tinted albumen print, Scanned from Colin Ford’s Julia Margaret Cameron: 19th Century Photographer of Genius, ISBN 1855145065. Originally from: National Portrait Gallery. Public Domain

The British wife of a publisher wrote Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. When the book packed with helpful hints and recipes was first published in 1861, it quickly achieved block-buster success. Isabel Mayton Beeton’s book sold two million copies in its first seven years in print.

Do you remember Hints From Heloise, newspaper column from the 50s and 60s?  Mrs. Beeton’s book combines practical hints worthy of Heloise, or a Family Circle magazine along with detailed recipes and small essays on food worth of today’s staple of the kitchen, Joy of Cooking. Like Heloise, Isabella Beeton’s book was first published as monthly installments in a magazine, and later compiled in a book.

The book was not necesssarily written with you in mind.  The full title is:

The Book of Household Management Comprising information for the Mistress,Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler,Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work,Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.—also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort.

So while the Mistress of the house was included, it appears that Mrs. Beeton had in mind a book that would help the mistress (Upstairs) in the instruction of her many servants (Downstairs). It is ironic that this class-concious book was embraced by the do-it-yourself ground breaking women of America as well as the British aristocracy.

I hold Isabella Beeton in high regard. A person setting out to write a book this comprehensive today would have a staff of a dozen. And she incorporated so many innovations.  Just think what she might have accomplished, had she not died in 1865, when she was only twenty-eight years old. But her book goes on and on.

Although Mary Morgan would not have had the book in her kitchen in the 40’s and 50’s, it is appropriate because Mrs. Beeton would have been writing about tried and true techniques that had been around for a while. Cooking equipment had not changed much by the 1860s.

Mrs. Beeton’s Recipe

Her recipe for Rice Biscuits or Cakes is a typical example of the detail she goes into, even in a very simple recipe.  Each recipe is numbered, and they are arranged by category. This one comes in Chapter 35, Breads, Biscuits and Cakes, under the heading Baking: Recipes. (As opposed to Baking: General.)

Mrs. Beeton pioneered the now-familiar technique of separating the list of ingredients and the method of preparation.  She goes a step further and tells you how long it will take, what it will cost and how much it makes.  Thank goodness Bob’s Red Mill makes rice flour for me, so I don’t need to make my own. But if I did–Mrs. Beeton to the rescue.  She even is aware of her International audience–British and American. What a woman!

1746. INGREDIENTS – To every 1/2 lb. of rice-flour allow 1/4 lb. of pounded lump sugar, 1/4 lb. of butter, 2 eggs.

Mode.—Beat the butter to a cream, stir in the rice-flour and pounded sugar, and moisten the whole with the eggs, which should be previously well beaten. Roll out the paste, shape it with a round paste-cutter into small cakes, and bake them from 12 to 18 minutes in a very slow oven.

Time.—12 to 18 minutes. Average cost, 9d.

Sufficient to make about 18 cakes. Seasonable at any time.

GROUND RICE, or rice-flour, is used for making several kinds of cakes, also for thickening soups, and for mixing with wheaten flour in producing Manna Kroup. The Americans make rice-bread, and prepare the flour for it in the following manner:—When the rice is thoroughly cleansed, the water is drawn off, and the rice, while damp, bruised in a mortar: it is then dried, and passed through a hair sieve.

My Modern Adaptation

Although the cookies melt in your mouth and are satisfyingly sugary, I found them to be quite bland, and am looking forward to trying them again with a little more flavor–like lemon rind, cocoa or even cardamon.

But nothing could be simpler than these little cookies. Just four ingredients, stir, cut, bake, and eat.

Mrs. Beeton’s Rice Cakes

Serves 12
Prep time 15 minutes
Cook time 25 minutes
Total time 40 minutes
Allergy Egg
Dietary Gluten Free
Meal type Dessert, Snack
Misc Child Friendly, Freezable
From book Mrs. Beeton's Household Management
Only four ingredients in this mid-19th century recipe for cookies made with rice flour. Yes, they are gluten free.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups rice flour (white or brown rice flour)
  • 1/2-3/4 cup white sugar
  • 1/4lb butter (salted)
  • 2 eggs (medium--not jumbo)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees
2. Beat butter until creamy.
3. Stir in 1 1/2 C rice flour and the sugar.
4. Beat eggs, and mix enough into flour mixture to make a soft, moist dough. Add more rice flour, a Tablespoon at a time, if necessary.
5. Chill dough briefly
6. Roll or pat out dough on floured (with rice flour) surface. Cut with round cookie cutter or glass.
7. Move cookies with spatula to lightly greased bakig pan. Sprinkle with sugar or cinnamon sugar if desired.
8. Bake 12-18 minutes at 350 degrees.

Note

If you use unsalted butter in the rice cakes, be sure to add a pinch of salt.

The dough for the rice cakes will be easier to handle if you chill it before patting or rolling. My dough was far too sticky to roll, so I just patted it out.

This dough is very delicate, so I do not recommend using fancy shapes--just round rice cakes.

This makes a rather small bunch of cookies.

If you wish, sprinkle sugar or cinnamon sugar on top before the cookies go in the oven.

Since the rice cakes are a little bland,you can experiment with other flavors, such as a little lemon rind, a few drops of peppermint extract or some cocoa powder, but don't tell Mrs. Beeton. That lady did not even use any vanilla for flavoring in these "cakes."

HEIRLOOM

The cookies are pictured on a delicate hand-crocheted doiley that I love.   Unfortunately, I do not know who made this doiley.  Best candidates are two aunts on my father’s side of the family--Irene Bucklew or Blanche Kaser.  Aren’t those pansies adorable? Every time I see this, I have a pang of regret that doileys have fallen out of favor in our no-nonsense age.

 

 

 

Bread Pudding for 3 Generations

I live in Arizona, and I recently saw a map showing this year’s flu outbreaks state by state. I would show you the map, but it changes each week, so check to see what the Centers for Disease Control is saying about YOUR state.  By now, the epidemic may be lessening, but just in case Arizona still needs some invalid food, Mrs. Beeton has a suggestion:

TOAST SANDWICHES.

 INGREDIENTS.– Thin cold toast, thin slices of bread-and-butter, pepper and salt to taste.

Mode.– Place a very thin piece of cold toast between 2 slices of thin bread-and-butter in the form of a sandwich, adding a seasoning of pepper and salt. This sandwich may be varied by adding a little pulled meat, or very fine slices of cold meat, to the toast, and in any of these forms will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid.[/info]

Doesn’t sound terrible appetizing to put pieces of bread between pieces of toast–even with, or especially with salt and pepper?

Here’s a better use for the bread–one of my favorites, Bread Pudding.  Mrs. Beeton has three versions, baked, broiled, and what she calls butter-bread pudding.  I’ve chosen the baked version.

Bread pudding

Bread pudding with currants

Actually, I’m going to give you three versions of bread pudding, (1860s, 1920s and 1980s) because they illustrated one of the things that I find so fascinating about the history of the way we eat. We keep changing our ways of preparing food and popularity waxes and wanes.

Once I had tried the bread pudding with whiskey sauce recipe that I picked up in New Orleans at the Presidential Nominating Convention in 1988, I never went back to ordinary bread pudding. (Although I have to admit that I do not always indulge in the whiskey sauce.)

In looking to see how our ancestors may have cooked bread pudding, I found a striking difference between Mrs. Beeton’s Civil War era recipe and my vintage 1920’s Buffalo Cooking School Cook Book. See what you think.

BAKED BREAD PUDDING

 INGREDIENTS.– 1/2 lb. of grated bread, 1 pint of milk, 4 eggs, 4 oz. of butter, 4 oz. of moist sugar, 2 oz. of candied peel, 6 bitter almonds, 1 tablespoonful of brandy.

Mode.– Put the milk into a stewpan, with the bitter almonds; let it infuse for 1/4 hour; bring it to the boiling point; strain it on to the bread crumbs, and let these remain till cold; then add the eggs, which should be well whisked, the butter, sugar, and brandy, and beat the pudding well until all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed; line the bottom of a pie-dish with the candied peel sliced thin, put in the mixture, and bake for nearly 3/4 hour.

Time.– Nearly 3/4 hour. Average cost, 1s. 4d.

Sufficient for 5 or 6 persons.

Seasonable at any time.

Note.– A few currants may be substituted for the candied peel, and will be found an excellent addition to this pudding: they should be beaten in with the mixture, and not laid at the bottom of the pie-dish.

NOTE:  Bitter almonds are not sold in the United States, as they contain poisonous substances. According to a Wikipedia article, in Italy they are/were used to flavor some cookies, but generally apricot pits have been substituted.  If I were following Mrs. Beeton’s recipe, I think I might  just use some apricot pits. I could not imagine what a bitter taste adds to this pudding. However, if she follows a complicated procedure outlined in this Victorian mansion web site, they would lose their bitterness. And Mrs. Beeton is not poisoning anyone since she is heating the bitter almonds and then straining them out of the milk before adding the milk to the pudding, two steps recommended in the linked article.

According to nineteenth century cookbook writer Eliza Leslie, Lady Cake “must be flavored highly with bitter almonds; without them, sweet almonds have little or no taste, and are useless in lady cake.” Bitter almonds (which are actually poisonous in large amounts) needed to be properly prepared prior to baking – the use of heat would safely extract their strong, bitter taste. This rather tedious process was done by blanching shelled bitter almonds in scalding water, and then placing them in a bowl of very cold water. They were then wiped dry and pounded (one at a time,) to a smooth paste in a clean marble mortar, along with a bit of rose water to improve the flavor and prevent them from becoming oily, heavy and dark. Miss Leslie suggests blanching and pounding the almonds the day before to achieve better flavor and a lighter color, thus enhancing both the taste and whiteness of the cake.

By the way, if you are a mystery book reader and are familiar with detectives using the smell of almonds to indicate cyanide poisoning…..they are referring to the smell of bitter almonds.

Moist Sugar is another name for Muscavado or Barbados sugar, a dark brown sugar with a pronounced molasses flavor. I would use dark brown sugar or just molasses instead, if I couldn’t find Muscavado sugar in the store.

Next, we have the Buffalo Evening News Cooking School Cook Book.

 

BLAND BREAD PUDDING

  • 1 quart scaled milk
  • 1 Cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/3 tsp salt
  • 2 C stale bread crumbs without crust
  • 1 1/2 tsp. lemon juice

Soak the bread in milk until soft. Add eggs beaten slightly, salt and sugar and then flavoring.  Bake in a buttered dish until a knife inserted in the pudding comes out clean.

NOTE:  Bland!  Other than the lemon juice, no extra flavoring. I find that blandness in many of the vintage cookbooks from the early 20th century.

Next we have the New Orleans version–anything BUT bland.

BREAD PUDDING WITH WHISKEY SAUCE

  • 1/2 Stick butter (4 Tablespoons)
  • 2 C milk
  • 1 quart cubed day-old bread French bread
  • 1/2 C cubed pineapple
  • 1/2 C cup raisins
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 eggs, beaten

Combine milk and butter in a saucepan and heat until butter is melted.  In a large mixing bowl combine bread, pineapple and raisins.  Add milk and butter.  Mix and let stand several minutes to let bread absorb liquid. Combine sugar, salt and spices. Add beaten egg and vanilla and mix well.  Pour over bread-milk mixture and stir until well mixed.  Pour into a well-greased 1 1/2 quart baking dish or black iron skillet. Bake at 350 degrees for forty minutes. Serve warm with whiskey sauce.

[Note: I use currants and pecans or raisins and pecans instead of pineapple]

WHISKEY SAUCE

  • 1/2 stick butter [4 Tablespoons], softened
  • 2 cups powdered sugar
  • 1/3 cup Bourbon

Cream together butter and powdered sugar. Slowly beat in Bourbon.

NOTE:  My how times have changed.  As I mentioned earlier, the whiskey sauce is optional, but oh, so good, if you decide to use it.

Because we do not care for pineapple, I substitute chopped pecans (Yes, entirely different!) and if you have them on hand,  use golden raisins.

There you have your choice of three generations of bread puddings, and although they make fine food for invalids, you don’t have to get sick to try them.

Sick Food: Barley Water For Invalids

No, not food that is sick. Food you eat when you are sick, like barley water.  A better term is the chapter heading in one of my vintage cookbooks: “Invalid Cookery.”

1925 Cook Book

1925 Cook Book Cover

I had noticed this intriguing chapter title in the 1925 book, The Home Makers’ Cooking School Cook Book by Jessie M. DeBoth (cover title: Buffalo Evening News Cooking School Cook Book).  This book, which qualifies as an heirloom, belonged to my great aunt, Maud Stout Bartlett.  As I’ve explained before, a number of newspapers across the country carried Miss DeBoth’s column on cookery, and each published a book of recipes, putting their own name on the cover.

I’ve had a cold that knocked me down this past week, and I kept thinking if I had the energy to get up, I’d cook something from the chapter on “Invalid Cookery.”  Now I’m back up and at the computer, and still feeling the need of comfort food, although not feeling good enough to actually cook anything complicated..

Sick Child

Child in Sick bed, photo from The London Blitz, 1940, Photo by Cecil Beaton, public domain

We all have our sick food favorites, some the same from childhood. Mine include Vernor’s ginger ale (it has to be Vernor’s and if I have to explain why, you’re not from the mid-West); pudding of any kind, but particularly rice pudding; tea with lemon juice and honey; white bread toast to dunk in the tea–or spread with applesauce. Soup and club crackers. It has now been scientifically proven that chicken soup actually IS good for you when you’re ill.

From Mrs. DeBoth’s Cook Book

Back to the book. The introduction to the chapter “Invalid Cookery” is preachy and thorough– as is every chapter introduction in this book. It encourages the housewife by saying,

Caring for the invalid falls to the lot of a large majority of homemakers at some time.  Very often the homemaker has much to do with the recovery of the invalid.  Special foods must be cooked, appetites must be coaxed back to normal, and the patient must be catered to in every possible way.

That is a proposition that I am sure every husband would agree to, and every homemaker might wonder just who was going to “cater to [ME when I get sick]..in every possible way.”

Not only must you prepare the right food, but the appearance of the food affects the appetite.

Sick person breakfast tray

From American Food Roots website.
In “Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent,” Fannie Merritt Farmer called for setting a pretty breakfast tray to stimulate the appetite. / Courtesy of Little, Brown and Co. and the USDA National Agricultural Library

A simple dish of pudding can be made to look so attractive that the person for whom it is intended will be glad to take it no matter what it is.  Daintiness is of primary importance.  The tray must be attractive.  The portions should be small.  A large serving may look so overwhelming that the patient will not try to eat it.  When hot liquids are served, they should be brought in a covered pitcher to be kept hot.  By pouring it in the room, there is not the danger of spilling in carrying.  Nothing so quickly mars the appearance of a tray as a saucer into which some of the liquid of the cup has been spilled.

Oh, dear! Heaven forfend that I should slop some liquid into a saucer!

Monotony should be avoided, even if only the garnish on the food is changed.  When the diet is so limited that great variation is not possible, it sometimes helps to change the dishes with which the patient is served.  A bit of parsley in place of other garnish makes the plate look a little different.  Cress, too, makes an attractive garnish.

The author of this book, does not apparently have a high opinion of the brain power of the reader.

Special care should be taken that no liquid food is ever served in the glass which has contained medicine.  Even if the glass has been thoroughly washed, it may have a slightly unpleasant taste or odor.

Okay, got it! Be dainty. Don’t spill stuff. Add some parsley. Don’t put the lemonade in the paregoric glass. But what should I prepare?  Some suggestions sounds okay, but some just sounds downright weird.

Rennet

When I was a child, and my children were small, I made rennet custard.  My vintage cook book calls for Junket tablets in an eggnog, which sounds awfully good, but I didn’t have any Junket (a brand name) rennet tablets on hand, so I couldn’t try that.

Barley Water

Nor did I have pearl barley on hand for barley water.  (See UPDATE below) But I know that barley water was a headliner in feeding injured soldiers during the Civil War, and it hung on into the twenties. By the way, have you been watching Mercy Street on PBS? Set in a Civil War hospital, where the head nurse spends quite a bit of time worrying about what the soldiers are eating.

In case you want to try it:

  • 2 Tablespoons pearl barley
  • 1 Quart cold water
  • 1/2 Teaspoon of salt
  • Juice of 1/2 lemon
  • A little sugar if desired.

Wash the barley, pour the water over it and soak for several hours.  Add salt and cook in a double boiler for at least three hours.  Strain through cheese cloth or a fine strainer, flavor with lemon, and add sugar if desired.

Note: Most current day recipes call for cooking barley for 45 minutes–but that is for eating it as a grain. Also, pearl barley has had a lot of the nutrients removed (which apparently Ms. DeBoth hadn’t caught on to, so its benefit to invalids is a bit questionable.)

The Book of Household Management by Mrs. Beeton has a similar recipe for barley water , but a more intriguing one proposes barley gruel made with red wine. Mrs. Beeton’s book, published just before the Civil War, must have been quite influential. I found her book at the intriguing site called Ex-Classics and from another site that contains her whole book, Mrs. Beeton.com.

Mrs. Beeton’s barley water recipe.

INGREDIENTS – 2 oz. of pearl barley, 2 quarts of boiling water, 1 pint of cold water.

Mode.—Wash the barley in cold water; put it into a saucepan with the above proportion of cold water, and when it has boiled for about 1/4 hour, strain off the water, and add the 2 quarts of fresh boiling water. Boil it until the liquid is reduced one half; strain it, and it will be ready for use. It may be flavoured with lemon-peel, after being sweetened, or a small piece may be simmered with the barley. When the invalid may take it, a little lemon-juice gives this pleasant drink in illness a very nice flavour.

Time.—To boil until the liquid is reduced one half.

Sufficient to make 1 quart of barley-water.

UPDATE: I could not stand the suspense, so finally got out to buy some pearl barley and try making barley water.  I used Mrs. Beeton’s recipe, because it sounded a little more logical to me.  The tiny amount of barley in relation to the water, gives the barley water a pinkish-brown hue. I got just over a quart of liquid at the end.  I added to one glass, 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice and 2 teaspoons of sugar (channeling my grandmother Vera Anderson who would put the maximum amount of sugar in anything).  Neither of the recipes specify drinking it warm or cold, but I drank it cold, thinking that would be more soothing for a sore throat.

 It really is not bad. You get a bit of the flavor of the grain, plus the lemon and slight sweetness.

Medieval Recipe for Barley Water

Finally, if you want to go back to Medieval days for a recipe for Barley Water for Invalids:

This is an excerpt from Libre del Coch
(Spain, 1520 – Robin Carroll-Mann, trans.)
94. Barley-water for Invalids. You will take barley and cook it the night before, according to the quantity that you wish to make. Then take a pullet or cockerel, and break its bones and then make a pot boil with water that is clean; and moderately, in such a manner that when you cast in the pullet or cockerel, the water only covers it; and [this is] if it is little, of necessity you will have to cast in more water if the pullet is larger, and it is necessary that it cooks longer; and it must cook or boil constantly, and never cease to boil. And do not cast in salt until the last, when you know that there is no more than a dishful of broth, because it will be more flavorful. And having done this, after the patient has supped, you will take a few peeled almonds and grind them with a little of the white meat of the pullet in a mortar; and blend them with the broth of the cockerel or pullet; and when you have strained it, put this milk in a little pot; and if you wish, cast in a tiny bit of starch; you can cast it in at the same time as the milk; and then take the barley or ordio when it is cooked, and take a hemp-tow which should not be very thin, and put it in that ordio or barley, and press down the hemp-tow very well, in such a manner that all the liquor comes out of the barley; then take that milk that you removed, and strain it through a sieve, in such a manner that little of the starch passes through it; and then strain everything again, the barley and all; and it should be a little clear and thin. Because in resting overnight it will turn thick. And I wish to say this now: let it cook the night before with sugar; and in the morning, when the patient is going to drink it, make it boil a little, and that will make it of great benefit; and when you give this barley-water, cast a little sugar over the dish; and if you don’t wish to cast in starch, do not cast it in, [and see] that nothing goes into it.

The things you can find on the Internet!!

What I Will Not Cook

I’m going to pause here, but promise that I’ll bring you some more–but probably NOT “Toast water” (a piece of stale bread soaked in boiling water). And NOT Irish moss (it’s a seaweed and is controversial because it is the source of carrageen which some health experts warn against.) So while cold and flue season is still upon us, I’ll be back with more Invalid Cookery in the future.

Source in addition to those linked above: A Manual for Invalid Cookery. (1880) (available on line)