'So serve it up': festive recipes from the archive
Planning your festive menus? This year we have been taking a look through the recipe books in our ‘Healing words’ exhibition for some tempting fare.
Recipe books were highly collaborative, incredibly detailed, and painstakingly handwritten household manuals. Produced mainly within rural communities, they contained recipes for preparing and preserving food, household products, and medical remedies.
Among the culinary recipes are instructions for preparing main dishes, deserts, treats and drinks – the kind that might grace our tables at Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year. The main ingredients are often familiar and unfamiliar at the same time!
The main course – turkey or beef?
Turkey may not have always been a traditional Christmas meat, but it's very popular today. There are several recipes for turkey in these books, probably intended for eating at any time of year. This 17th century version is 'To smother a turkey’: a whole bird simmered in gravy.
Recipe in MS506 from 1650
Transcription of the recipe 'To smother a turkey'
‘Take a young hen turkey of last year’s late hatch. Take down the breast bone quite as the breast lies in a manner flat to the back. Truss the legs in at the sides (as you would truss a pullet for boiling), only beat or press it down to lie as flat as may be. Put it into a stew pan with so much thin veal gravy as will something more than cover it, & for seasoning throw in an onion that is peeled & 8 or 10 cloves stuck into it. Also put in 2 or 3 blades of large mace, a few corns of whole pepper, sum few bits of the clear fat of bacon cut clean from any rust. So let it boil gently until it is tender.
Have in another pan a very strong veal gravy. Take blanched celery cut into small pieces & some pretty big ones. Boil the celery in your rich gravy until fully tender, then have in readiness a lemon all the peel and white cut off. Mince it small then throw it in to have one boil up (but no more with your celery). Warm a side dish & put your turkey in & pour upon it your strong gravy & the celery so as to cover the turkey. Garnish the dish with sliced lemon. So serve it up.’
When we’ve had our fill of turkey a nice beef roast might be an idea for Boxing Day or New Year. In Mary Goodson’s 17th century recipe book we found this tasty sounding recipe for a stewed rump of beef, or ‘Beofe A la mode’.
Recipe in MS251 ‘Booke of receipts by Mary Goodson’ from 1687
Transcription of the recipe 'Beofe a la mode'
‘Take a large young fat rump of beofe and beat it with a rolling pin a good while then season it pretty high with pepper [and] salt [and] a little cloves [and] mace [and] nutmeg: a little lemon peel shred: two or 3 bay leaves: [and] a little bundle of sweet herbs [and] an onion then have a pan ready that will hold it: then break about half a pound of beef suit in pieces as big as ones thumb into the pan: [and] put to it as much water as will half cover [the] beofe: then set it over a gentle fire: [and] it will require 5 or 6 hours stewing: when it is half enough turn it and so let it slow: [and] when you think it is almost enough then put in a pint of Clarret wine: [and] let it stew gently: [and] when it is enough: take [the] boofe up: [and] dish it: then blow [the] fat of [the] liquor it is in [the] stewing pan: so stir it about: [and] pour it out over [the] beof: [and] so serve it up.’
The desserts – spice cake or trifle?
No matter how big the main course we always seem to find space to squeezing some delicious puddings. Here we have a recipe for a trifle using a macaroon instead of sponge base and a white syllabub topping instead of cream. The ‘sack’ mentioned at the start is a fortified wine that was very popular at the time.
Recipe in MS251 ‘Booke of receipts by Mary Goodson’ from 1687
Transcription of recipe 'to make a Triyfel'
‘Soak mackroons in sack take off the … lay them in a chana dish put a good custard on them harden it in the oven then putt white silebub.’
In a slightly later book from the 18th century we found the ingredients for an aromatic spice cake. The recipe only says a small amount about the method with a great deal of knowledge about cooking times assumed after you have your ingredients mixed.
Recipe in MS500 ‘Receipt book on cookery and remedies’ from 1700
Transcription of recipe 'To make spice cake'
‘Take a pint of milk, a pound of butter, a pound of currants half a pound of sugar or a little more, about a quarter of an ounce of mace [and] a little cynamon three eggs, a quarter of a pint of rose water, putt [the] currants [and] the butter into a [..]dish …set the milk seething, then put [the] milk into them [and] [the] rose water [and] …. it till it be cold enough to putt into the flower because the currants should swell’
The treats – ginger bread or a traditional mince pie?
The festive season wouldn’t be complete without a few teatime treats.
Mary Goodson’s 17th century recipe book also contains a recipe to make the delicious sounding Royal Ginger Bread. While it has a list of ingredients there is an assumption that the reader knows the baking times this kind of sweet treat.
Recipe in MS251 ‘Booke of receipts by Mary Goodson’ from 1687
Transcription of recipe to make 'The Royal Ginger Bread'
‘A quarter of lower Two pound of Treackle a pound of five penny sugar, two ounces of caraway seeds a quarter of an ounce of ginger a pound of butter three ounces of canidied orange and lemmon peel’
Mince pies are a very popular treat at Christmas time. This recipe dates from sometime between 1650 and 1750, and it shows that mincemeat really did formerly contain meat. The ‘neat’s tongue’ mentioned at the start was a salted or smoked tongue from a cow or an ox: ‘neat’ is an archaic word for a bovine animal.
Recipe in MS506 from 1650
Transcription of recipe for 'mince pies'
‘Take a neat’s tongue & parboil it then chop it very small & to two pound of tongue put three pound of beef suet small chopped, four pound & a half of currants washed and picked, a little mace, nutmeg & cinnamon, the peel of 2 lemons minced very small, the juice of 3 squeezed in, 8 pipins [apples] pared & chopped small, 5 or 6 spoonful of vinegar & a pint of canary [wine], sweeten it with sugar to your taste, which must be by warming some over the fire in a porringer, so also for the quantity of spice. Some like candied orange peel and citron cut small and mixed with the rest.’
Drinks - why not try some boiled cider?
If you need a drink to wash any of these meals down, why not try some boiled cider? The recipe notes that ‘the best season for making is between Michaelmas and Christmas’.
Recipe in MS509 recipe book, 1750
Transcription of recipe for boiled cider
‘Take a hogshead and a half [c80 gallons] fresh from the press. Boil it till it comes to a hogshead and skim it very well then put in of brown yellow sugar 7 or 8 pounds according as your cider is sweet or sharp.’
If none of these appeal, maybe there’s something else in the recipe books that will spike your interest. Other dishes described include larks in jelly, crayfish soup, clear quince cakes, bacon omelette, and oyster loaves. You can explore all the recipes books online via the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/rcplondonmanuscripts
Whatever you decide to have at over the festive season this year, we hope that you have an enjoyable and delicious meal.
Gail Chapman and Pamela Forde
Public programmes officer and archives manager