Ickworth Real Lives

The refurbished housekeeper's room at Ickworth complete with 1930s housekeeper

An enormous amount of nostalgic interest has recently been aroused in the life style of upper-class English families and their servants by popular television dramas such as Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs. This craze, which some cynically call the 'mobcaps and pinnies syndrome', is particularly evident in the US where viewers just cannot get enough of these programmes. Both dramas are good fun and have huge audiences, but it has to be remembered that they are of course entirely fictional productions and as such do not necessarily reflect life in these great houses as it really was. For the past three years I have been involved in a marvellous project which has recreated part of the servants' quarters at Ickworth Park near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England. Unlike the television dramas this project has been generated by a real historical research programme, which has meticulously examined the role of the servants in this palatial mansion in the first half of the twentieth century. Much of the evidence has come from interviews with real local people who once worked in the house, gardens and larger estate in the 1930s. The oral testimony of these people, many of them sadly no longer alive, underpins the whole project, which fittingly has been called 'Ickworth Real Lives'.

Ickworth is dominated by its huge Italianate rotunda

At over six hundred feet long, Ickworth is among the largest houses in Britain. It was conceived by Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol (1730-1803), more as a vast kunsthaus than a functional family home. Hervey, sometimes called the Bishop-Earl (he was the Bishop of Derry), spent much time in Italy where he amassed a considerable art collection. Ickworth was designed to display this impressive assemblage, which unfortunately was stolen by the French when they invaded the Italian peninsula. Hervey died a lonely man in Albani in 1803 and never saw his dream house, which was completed by his brother Frederick Hervey, the 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol.  

At the east end of the complex is a formidable wing which the Hervey family used as their home base

The property was so grandiose that the family spent most of their time in the east wing, only using the state rooms in the Rotunda for the occasional entertainment. The east wing was provided with a well designed suite of domestic offices in its basement. This was based on the usual country house arrangement of servants' hall, kitchen, scullery, butler's pantry, housekeeper's room etc. and it worked perfectly when the family had their everyday meals in the east wing dining room. However, important functions such as dinner parties in the shooting season were held in the Rotunda dining room, more than 100 yards from the kitchen and scullery. This created a tremendous amount of extra work for kitchen and serving staff. Food and washing-up had to be wheeled backwards and forwards along a long basement corridor. It was a nightmare. 

Miss Sangster, Lord Bristol's cook in the East Wing kitchen. Behind her is an Eagle range and a roasting screen, both of which are still extant. The fish kettle on the range also survives and can be seen in a photograph below, sitting on top of  the dresser in the refurbished rotunda kitchen. 

In 1907, the 4th Marquess of Bristol, Frederick William Fane Hervey inherited the property. He immediately set about a programme of improvements, which was superintended by the London architect Arthur Blomfield. He commissioned a DC electrical generator, a novel new rainwater collection system, central heating boilers and most importantly of all for the servants, a new kitchen directly under the rotunda dining room. These works were completed in 1911. The new kitchen was designed just to be used when dinner parties were being held in the rotunda to ensure that the food arrived at the table hot. It has sometimes been called an 'occasional' or 'finishing' kitchen. Most meals for the family and servants however continued to be prepared as usual in the old kitchen in the East Wing. Although there is evidence that a scullery and a larder were originally planned to service the new kitchen, they never materialised. This of course meant that semi-prepared food and washing-up still had to undergo the long journey along the basement corridor. 

The equally large west wing was a floor-less void until the National Trust completed it in 2006

A number of ex-servants recorded vivid memories of pushing trolleys of food and washing-up from one kitchen to another. Lord Bristol's partridges en papillotes may have arrived at table in a much warmer state than before, but Blomfield's new kitchen made very little difference to the lives of the hard-pressed servants. The nightmare continued.

Arthur Blomfield's 1911 occasional kitchen is in the basement of the rotunda

The Hervey family preferred a degree of invisibility in their servants. This sunken moat enabled staff to go from one part of the rotunda to another without being visible from the gardens

The newly refurbished rotunda kitchen. Miss Sangster's fish kettle sits on the top left of the dresser; her brass seasoning box in the middle of the table

When the National Trust completed the refurbishment of the West Wing of the house in 2006, the tea room and shop were moved out of the rotunda and into the new wing. This move allowed the basement of the rotunda to be renovated and returned to its original function. My role was to survey Blomfield's occasional 1911 kitchen and assess how it could be returned as closely to its original state. When I first saw it, although its principal fittings, ranges and dresser were intact, everything was concealed behind bookshelves. These were eventually removed; the kitchen sink was reinstated and a brand new table and second dresser installed. We have now returned the kitchen to its original state. A number of important utensils have been installed on the dresser from the Hervey collection and many more items have been gifted or purchased to ensure that the kitchen can actually be used. Over the last few months I have been involved in initiating an enthusiastic group of costumed volunteers into the arcane practice of cooking English country house food from the 1930s.

Detail of a copper stew pan dating from the time of the 2nd Marquess of Bristol

Some items of kitchen copper are marked with a coronet and a B for Bristol. This mark is on a sauté pan which dates from the time of the 3rd Marquess. Identification marks like these enabled the copper retailers to return the utensils back to the correct property after they had been sent into their workshops for re-tinning.

The row of Victorian ice cream moulds on top indicate that ice cream had been an important aspect of entertaining at Ickworth in the past. The two white ceramic jelly moulds made by Shelley are from the 1920s and 30s. These date from the time that Miss Sangster ran the kitchens at Ickworth, the period where we have fixed our kitchen activities

Over the next year this kitchen team will be exploring many aspects of food at Ickworth. If you visit the rotunda basement you might well find them preparing a servants' hall dinner, a tennis tea for the marchioness and her guests, a picnic lunch for an estate shoot or perhaps some cakes for a school treat on the Ickworth lawn.  

A school treat in 1911 on the Ickworth lawn for local children. Lady Bristol is wearing her robes and coronet from the coronation of George V. Lord Bristol, the 4th Marquess is the gentleman wearing the blazer and hat.

The National Trust opened the doors of the basement to the public for the first time last weekend and we had over 700 visitors. The feedback was entirely positive. When visiting the servant's hall and housekeepers' room, an elderly friend of mine in his 90s and a true child of the thirties, said he felt a strong feeling of nostalgia when he walked into these incredibly convincing spaces, 'Uncanny' he remarked.

Find out more about Ickworth Lives at the National Trust website

Lady Westmorland's Sweetmeat Pudding

Lady Westmorland's Sweetmeat Pudding is a 'whitepot', the forerunner of bread and butter pudding

I recently gave a lecture and cookery demonstration at the Marmalade Festival at Dalemain Mansion here in the English Lake District. The subject of my talk was an important manuscript of medicinal and cookery receipts which has been in the Dalemain library since the early eighteenth century. This collection was compiled in the second half of the previous century by Elizabeth Rainbow, wife of Edward Rainbow, who was bishop of Carlisle between 1662 and 1684.  Elizabeth (d.1702) was the daughter of Henry Smyth, Master of Magdelene College, Cambridge. She married Edward in 1652. You may remember I introduced you to Elizabeth's excellent skirret pie in a former posting, where you will find her portrait.

My rather forlorn copy of Jonathan Bank's biography of Edward.  

Being a marmalade festival, my lecture touched briefly on the history of this popular preserve and I discussed some interesting recipes for orange, quince and cherry marmalades in Elizabeth's book. However my main focus was the social context of her cookery recipes. Many of them were donated by friends, who are often named in the title of the recipe or in a marginal annotation. These particular recipes tell us a great deal about the aristocratic circles in which Elizabeth and her husband moved.

Edward followed in the footsteps of Elizabeth's father as Master of Magdalene College in 1642. He was a very smart man and numbered among his intellectual friends the scientist Robert Boyle. He was also personal tutor to two important young noblemen, George and Henry Howard, who became the 3rd and 4th Earls of Suffolk respectively. Their father, Theophilus Howard the 2nd Earl (1584-1640) energetically supported Edward's early career as a cleric and had a great admiration for his piety. Edward's mastership of Magdelene was by the gift of Theophilus' eldest son James, who became the 3rd Earl on his father's death in 1640. Edward personally conducted the wedding ceremony of James's sister Catherine Howard to Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland in 1642. Edward was almost one of the family. He also enjoyed intimate friendships with members of the noble families of Northumberland, Warwick and Orrery. 

Lord Newburgh was James Livingstone, 1st Earl of Newburgh. Photo © Dalemain Estates. 

Quite a number of Elizabeth's recipes reflect the close friendship the couple enjoyed with these powerful English families. A marginal annotation next to a recipe for 'Cherry Marmalate' tells us that it was given to Elizabeth by Lady Ann Walsingham, another of Theophilus's daughters. Ann Howard married Sir Thomas Walsingham in 1670. A recipe for a quince preserve entitled 'Lord Newburgh's Marmalade' would have been from the Scottish peer James Livingston, 1st Earl of Newburgh, who married Catherine Howard, yet another of old Theophilus's daughters in 1649. James was Catherine's second husband. She was the widow of the dashing royalist George Stuart, Lord d'Aubigny who fell at Edge Hill. She was a great beauty, as can be seen from the portrait of her by Van Dyck, which hangs on the stairs at Dalemain. Her husband's marmalade recipe is excellent. It contains half the amount of sugar that would normally be used today. There is also a recipe for 'Lord Newburgh's Cake'.

Lord Newburgh's wife Catherine Howard by Anthony Van Dyck. Photo © Dalemain Estates. 

A number of other recipes, including one for 'Spanish Cream' and another for 'Lumbard Pie' are from a Lady Sedley. This was Catherine Sedley, daughter of John Savage, Earl of Rivers, who married Sir Charles Sedley the poet and courtier in 1657. A surviving book of receipts (mainly medical) dated 1686 by Lady Sedley survives in the library of the Royal College of Physicians. Lady Sedley's husband, a favourite companion of Charles II was noted for his drunken, often lewd behaviour. Pepy's recorded a particularly odious episode of Sedley's anti-social behaviour that I really do not want to go into here, but if you are inclined, have a search through Sam's diary yourself. Their daughter and sole heir, also called Catherine (1657-1717) followed in this family tradition and became notorious as the mistress to James II (VII of Scotland). She was made Countess of Dorchester by James in 1686. Elizabeth Rainbowe includes a recipe from 'the young Lady Sedley' for 'buttered loaves'. It is fascinating that a recipe from this notorious lady is included in a cookery book compiled by a bishop's wife, especially since Edward frequently railed against immorality. If Elizabeth ever made them for him, 'the Young Lady Sedley's Buttered Loaves' must have turned to ashes in his mouth.

Catherine Sedley the Younger by Peter Lely

Of great interest to me are a series of recipes originating from a 'Lady Westmerland'. Included among these are ones for 'stewed beef', 'lumbard pie' and 'clear cakes'. There is also a truly outstanding recipe 'To make a sweet meat pudding Lady Westmorland's way', which I think is one of the great English puddings - as does everybody else who has tried it! 

There were a number of noblewomen who could claim the title Lady Westmorland during Elizabeth's lifetime, but the most likely authoress of this wonderful recipe was Elizabeth Nodes, who married Charles Fane, the 3rd Earl of Westmorland in 1665. She was the subject of the marvellous portrait below by John Michael Wright, which sold in 1999 for the bargain sum of $27,000. If I had known it was for sale at the time on such a low reserve, I would have broken into my piggy bank and placed a bid! At the price of a modest family car, it would have been a great buy (and a much better investment). Elizabeth is leaning on a stone plinth, behind which are carvings of Ceres and her daughter Proserpine. This is an appropriate iconography since Ceres was the goddess of wheat and therefore by default also of puddings! I do not suppose for a moment that Wright intended this particular symbolism - though you never know. Perhaps he too had tasted her amazing sweetmeat pudding! By the way John Michael Wright is not only my favourite 17th century portrait painter, but also one of my 'food idols'. I will be discussing the reasons for this in a future series of postings about my culinary heroes, both living and dead.

Elizabeth, wife of Charles Fane, 3rd Earl of Westmorland, by John Michael Wright

Anyway, to get back to the subject of Lady Westmorland's sweet meat pudding, here is the recipe in Elizabeth Rainbow's hand. Do try it because it is extraordinary.

Photo © Dalemain Estates

Lady Westmorland's pudding is really a kind of 'whitepot', the early modern period ancestor of bread-and-butter pudding. Whitepots were a family of baked puddings and at some future point I will attempt to sort out their taxonomy on this blog. Elizabeth gives us a number, including 'Sussex Whitepot',  'Norfolk Whitepot'. 'Whitepot with Apples' and others. However, the real jewel in the crown is Lady Westmorland's recipe.

Preserved citron, bitter orange, cherries, plums and apricots - these are Lady Westmorland's sweetmeats

Like many other whitepots, it is made with layers of bread slices soaked in an egg yolk custard. In between the layers we are instructed to place pieces of preserved fruits, namely apricot, citron (or orange peel), plums and cherries. Most other whitepot recipes call for raisins, currants and dates. By preserved fruits, Lady Westmorland specifically meant fruits and peels preserved and stored in sugar syrup, not candied or glacé fruits, though these would do I suppose. I preserve peels and fruits all the time and tend to keep them in their syrups rather than drying or candying them. They stay much more succulent that way and also retain their intense flavour.

Pieces of preserved plum, orange peel, cherries and apricots are layered between slices of manchet bread soaked in custard

Elizabeth gives plenty of  recipes for preserving these fruits and peels, so it is likely that they were all to hand in her closet for including in dishes of this kind. In making them she generally followed the same procedure that I do. That is to gently poach each kind of fruit in water for a short time - this takes longer with peels - and then to cook them for a short while in a thin syrup. I make mine with a pound of sugar to a pint of water. Every day the fruit is removed and the syrup boiled for about 10 minutes. The syrup is poured back over the fruit, which is allowed to steep in it for another 24 hours. The next day the process is repeated and this is continued for 12 days. This seems like a lot of work, but it is only about 10 minutes a day. I store the finished fruit in jars. Elizabeth would have done the same, but would have sealed her 'glasses' by tying on a bladder dipped in brandy.

It is important to remove the stones before preserving the fruit in this way, so the syrup can work its way into the centre. The best way to do this by holding the fruit and pushing out the stone with the end of a goose or ostrich quill, an old confectioner's trick I learnt from Frederick Nutt.

Cherries, apricots and other stone fruits can be pitted by pushing the stone out with a quill

This often does n't work with plums, so it is best to pierce them a few times with a fork to encourage the syrup to penetrate

I follow Elizabeth's suggestion to flavour the pudding with a little musk and ambergris, commonly used in high status dishes at this period, but both are very difficult to obtain today. I have a small amount of musk that was purchased in China in the 1930s. It is still incredibly pungent and a very small quantity will create a pleasant odour. I tend to dissolve a few grains of musk and ambergris in rosewater, a preparation once known as 'muskified rosewater' and add this to dishes that require these materials. Musk has been quite rightly an illegal substance, as it is harvested from the threatened Himalayan musk deer. Mine was gathered decades before the ban, so I can use it without feeling any guilt. Ambergris, although it is created by sperm whales, is not a threat to their survival as it is found floating in the sea or washed up on the beach. Unlike musk, it can be purchased today, though it is very, very expensive. I luckily have a lifetime's supply of the two substances, a gift from a friend who is a professional perfumer. A spoonful of good quality rosewater added to the cream is a good substitute.

Ambergris (left). Musk (right).

A slice of Lady Westmorland's Sweet Meat Pudding

The Pudding King?

George I (School of Godfrey Kneller). Is that an orb with a sceptre and cross on the table? 

Just dip into the vast amount of material that has been written about the history of Christmas pudding and fairly soon you will come across references to King George I (reign 1714-1727). You will quickly learn that he was served plum pudding as part of his first Christmas dinner as newly crowned monarch in 1714. You will also find recipes that claim to be for the very pudding. Some sources even give us the exact time of the brand new king’s initial experience of this curious English dish – 6 pm on December 25^th 1714.  As a result of these strong connections to the dish you will also learn that George was given the nickname the ‘Pudding King.’

Or is it something else?

However, the eighteenth century archival record is curiously silent on this matter. There does not seem to be anything on the story in any of the nineteenth century records either. It is not until the twentieth century that the story surfaces. And it surfaces with a clamour, with many leading food writers telling the story of the Pudding King, some claiming that it was George himself who was actually responsible for making it our national Christmas dish. So if there are no eighteenth century primary sources for the story, where on earth does it come from? Many food authors cite the recipe and the legends attached to it, including worthies like May Byron (1929) Florence White (1932), Dorothy Hartley (1954), and Elisabeth Ayrton (1974). However, all are unanimously silent on one important matter – none of them give their sources.

Plum pudding is liberally steeped in myth as well as brandy

Plumcake, Food History Jottings research assistant has made a special project of this problem and has been delving through the historical evidence to find out how the story emerged. She has made some interesting discoveries and what follows is based on her research. The very earliest record she has found so far linking George I to plum pudding is an article about a royal family Christmas at Sandringham during the reign of George V (1910-1936), who came to the throne 196 years after the death of his namesake. This was published in the Strand Magazine in 1911. It is highly likely that this is the original source of our story - it is certainly the earliest so far discovered.  

The article is entitled THE HOME LIFE OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. The author is unnamed, but is described in bold uppercase type by the Strand Magazine as  ‘AN OFFICIAL OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD.’ It goes on to say that the article ‘IS PUBLISHED WITH GRACIOUS PERMISSION AND APPROVAL OF THEIR MAJESTIES THE KING AND QUEEN. THE ACCOMPANIED PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ROYAL CHILDREN HAVE BEEN EXPRESSLY SELECTED FOR THE ARTICLE BY THE QUEEN HERSELF.’  It is definitely an article with impressive royal approbation.

This Christmas gathering was the first one for the royal family after George V’s coronation in June 1911. The article describes how after breakfast the royal children paid their compliments to the recently widowed Queen Mother and then the whole family attended morning service,

 ‘After service a return has been made in the past to Sandringham in order that the children may enjoy their Christmas dinner, which is composed of the traditional roast turkey, sausages and plum-pudding. The latter, by the way, is made from a recipe that has been in the possession of the Royal Family since the days of George I, and is compounded in the huge kitchens at Windsor Castle.’

The recipe is given in a footnote. Here it is –

We are glad to be able to give, by permission, this recipe, which is composed as 
follows: 1½ lb. suet (finely shredded), 1lb. Demerara sugar, 1lb. small raisins, 1lb. plums
 (stoned and cut in half), 4oz. citron (cut into thin slices), 4oz. candied peel (cut into thin 
slices), teaspoonful of mixed spice, half a grated nutmeg, two teaspoonfuls of salt, 1lb. 
bread crumbs, ½ lb. sifted flour, 1lb. of eggs (weighed in their shells), wineglass of brandy. Beat the eggs to a froth and then add to them half a pint of new milk and mix the
 various ingredients. Let the mixture stand for twelve hours in a cool place. Then place in
 moulds and boil for eight hours. The above would make three ordinary-sized puddings.
 The Strand Magazine, Vol. 42, [1911] p.634 (No.252, December 1911).

What this article actually says is that this recipe had been in the possession of the Royal Family since the days of George I. What it does not say is that it is for making a pudding that was actually served to him. Anyone who has experience of early Georgian recipes will realise that this cannot be an exact transcription of the original. Its structure and language are entirely modern. If it is based on an eighteenth century original it is very much an adaption for an early twentieth century reader. We know of no other eighteenth century pudding recipes that instruct the cook to weigh the eggs. Nor is Demerera sugar an ingredient that is usually named in eighteenth century recipes.  It might be common ingredient now, but surprisingly candied peel is not an ingredient that occurred in eighteenth century plum puddings. The earliest recipe that Plumcake has found for one which includes it is in John Mollard, The Art of Cookery (London: 1801). Moulds for boiling puddings are described in nineteenth and early twentieth century recipes, but not in those from the early Georgian period.

If George I ate plum pudding at Christmas, it would have been boiled like this, in a cloth

Plum puddings were boiled in fancy moulds in the 19th and early 20th century. However, in 1911 the word mould could also mean a plain basin like those used by most cooks today

The instruction to use ‘plums’ in the recipe is also interesting. Well it is a plum pudding is n’t it, so what is strange about that? However, when plums are called for in recipes for this dish, it usually means something else. After an initial definition of the word ‘plum’ as the fruit of the plum tree, Dr. Samuel Johnson in A Dictionary of the English Language (London: 1755), gives us an alternative meaning,

Dr Johnson's alternative definition of 'plum'

The Victorian economic historian Stephen Dowell in A History of Taxation and Taxes in England (London: 1884, IV. i. vii. 37) tells us more, ‘The dried grapes‥we term simply raisins when used for eating uncooked, and plums when they form an ingredient in the famous English plum pudding.’

But we are getting distracted into a different issue. Why plum pudding is called what it is and the additional meanings of the word ‘plum’ will be dealt with in greater detail in another posting. Let us return to the Pudding King. We do not doubt that there is a recipe in the Royal household somewhere for plum pudding that dates from the time of George I, but its wording would be completely different from the one published in the Strand Magazine. Compare the above to the language of this recipe from 1723, which incidentally, is also a recipe ‘from the days of George I’.

A Plum-pudding

Shred a Pound and a half of Suet very fine, and sift it; add a Pound and a half of Raisins of the Sun ston’d, six spoonful of Flour, and as many of Sugar, the Yolks of eight Eggs, and the Whites of five, beat the Eggs with a little Salt, tye it up close in a Cloth and boil it for four or five Hours.

George I had four more years to reign when John Nott published the above recipe in 1723 in The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary. It is likely that the royal recipe published in the 1911 article was adapted to suit contemporary kitchen practice, or its language would have been closer to Nott’s instructions.

It is not until 1929 that we hear of George I’s Royal Christmas Plum Pudding again, this time in May Byron’s Puddings, Pastries and Sweet Dishes. Mrs Byron offers a slightly different version of the recipe, substituting the plums for Valencia raisins and the small raisins for sultanas. It is likely that she was trying to clarify the word plum for a readership that no longer understood its alternative meaning. She also doubles the quantity of flour, but it is pretty obvious that her source for the recipe is the 1911 article.

And so it goes on. In her lovely Good Things in England, Florence White, founder of the English Folk Cookery Association offers the same recipe, giving a version, which apart from a little more flour is pretty faithful to the 1911 original. The journalist Hayden Church cites the recipe in a rather interesting article written for the New York Times in December 1931 and syndicated two years later to The World Almanac and Book of Facts. But Church tells us that the pudding was made from ‘a recipe used in the royal household since the seventeenth century and preserved in an old cookery book at Windsor Castle.’  So we are now being told that the royal recipe predates the reign of George I. In her 1974 version, Elisabeth Ayrton includes self-raising flour, glacé cherries and dates, telling us more about 1970s taste than an authentic attempt to replicate an eighteenth century dish! Elisabeth! We thought that this was supposed to be the very pud that George ate in 1714 - shame on you! 

Many other journalists and cookery authors right up to recent years have given versions of the recipe first described in the 1911 article, some of them elaborating on the story. We think that those who actually give us the exact time and date of George I’s first Christmas dinner were probably making a well educated guess! But whoever made up the story about him being called the Pudding King? He certainly was not called that in his lifetime, or even in the two centuries after his death. This particular variation on the theme seems to have emerged in the decades after World War II.

So it seems to us that the tales of the Pudding King are myths that have gradually grown on top of a recipe cited in a journalistic account of a Royal Christmas in 1911. However, to get to the real truth we need to see the royal cookery book with its recipe, hopefully still on a shelf somewhere in Windsor Castle. Is there anyone out there with some good royal connections who could organize that for us?  If there is just the slightest chance that Your Majesty reads this blog, could Plumcake and I come to Windsor to look through your cookery books please?

To demonstrate how the recipes claiming to be for George I’s Plum Pudding are derived from the 1911 Strand Magazine article, Plumcake has constructed this detailed analytical chart - click on the link below.

George I Plum Pudding Recipe Chart

George V. The real Pudding King?

There is an ironic coda to this story of kings and Christmas pudding. George V, whose first Sandringham Christmas is described in the 1911 Strand magazine, probably has more legitimate claims to the title ‘Pudding King’ than his Hanoverian ancestor George I, whose links to the dish seem to be tenuous. On Christmas Day 1927 George V gave his whole-hearted support to a propaganda campaign organized by the Empire Marketing Board to encourage trade within the British Empire. He sat down that year at Sandringham with his family and instead of eating the usual pudding ‘from the days of George I’, he sampled the delights of Empire Christmas Pudding, supposedly invented by his chef André Cédard. This pudding was made with ingredients grown all over the British Empire. That Christmas the king’s loyal subjects throughout the Empire were encouraged to follow suite. Perhaps they should have toasted their monarch with,
‘The Pudding King is dead. Long live the Pudding King!’

Trayne Roste - A Fifteenth Century English Spit Cake

Trdelník, sometimes called chimney cake because of its hollow cylindrical form

If you have ever been to Prague at Christmas time you will almost certainly have visited the wonderful Christmas fair held in the Old Town Square. Although it is always pretty cold at this time of year, street vendors selling hot punch, spit roast ham and a host of other Bohemian street foods, offer plenty of opportunities to warm up by the fires at their stalls while you enjoy their wares. One hot delicacy which I particularly love is Trdelník, a spit roasted cake which is one of the most fascinating foods on offer. This is made with a sweetened yeast dough, which is spiralled round a metal cylinder, rolled in sugar and spices and then rotated rapidly over hot charcoal. The sugar caramelises on the outside making the crust of the Trdelník very crispy. It is delicious.

Trdelník is closely related to Kürtőskalács, an ancient chimney cake which has been made in Hungary for a long time and which is said to have originated in Transylvania. Many other European countries have cakes which are also baked on specialised spits in front of a fire. In Austria there is Prügelkrapfen, Germany has Baumkuchen, Sweden Spettekaka, France gateau à la broche, which is closely related to the Šakotis of Lithiania and the sękacz of Poland, both used to celebrate Christmas and at weddings. And there are others. There is a recipe for baumkuchen in Marx Rumpoldt's Ein new Kochbuch (Frankfort: 1589). And Conrad Hagger in Neues Saltzburgisches Koch-Buch (Augsburg: 1719) gives an illustration of a specialist spit fitted with a wooden cone for making the sensational Hapsburg pyramidal spit cake.below.

But what about Britain? Well I am afraid that just about the only thing that you will see rotating on a spit nowadays in this country is a doner kebab. There are no contemporary spit cakes. Which is a sad state of affairs, since the British were once famed throughout Europe for the quality of their spit cookery. However, at one time there was an English spit cake, probably the most unusual in the whole of Europe. Sadly it has been extinct since the days of the Plantagenet monarchs. There are a number of recipes in some fifteenth century court cookery books. It was usually called a trayne roste, though there is a variant called a hastelet of fruit. The recipe below is from Harl. Ms. 4016 in the British Library. It dates from about 1420.

Take Dates and figges, and kutte hem in a peny brede; And þeñ take grete reysons and blanched almondes, and prik hem thorgh with a nedel into a threde of a mannys length, and one of one frute and a-noþer of anoþer frute; and þeñ bynde the threde with the frute A-bought a rownde spete, endelonge þe spete, in maner of an hasselet; And þeñ take a quarte of wyne or Ale, and fyne floure, And make batur thereof, and cast thereto pouder ginger, sugur, & saffroñ, pouder of Clowes, salt; And make þe batur not fully rennyng, and noþer stonding, but in þe mene, that hit may cleue, and than rost the treyne abought the fire in þe spete; And þeñ cast the batur oñ the treyne as he turneth abought the fire, so longe til þe frute be hidde in the batur; as þou castest þe batur there-on, hold a vessell vndere-nethe, for spilling of þe batur/ And whan hit is y-rosted well, hit wol seme a hasselet; And þeñ take hit vppe fro þe spit al hole, And kut hit in faire peces of a Spañ length, And serue of hit a pece or two in a dissh al note.

I recently roasted a trayne roste for the Hairy Bikers, a popular television food programme produced for the BBC. For those who would like to see in detail the very interesting process of making this extraordinary cake, here is the video below. 

There is some more information about trayne roste and other spit cakes on my website

Pumping up the Syllabub

To make whip syllabub the most common tool was a birch whisk used to excite a mixture of wine, lemon juice and cream into creating a layer of bubbles on top. 

Since this is the third posting on the subject, readers of this blog might get the impression that I have more than a passing interest in syllabub. You would be right. I started experimenting with old syllabub recipes nearly fifty years ago. I had my first go at making syllabub using the oft cited method of milking a cow into some sweetened cider when I was fourteen. It was a miserable failure. The milk curdled and made a terrible mess. What was I, or the cow doing wrong? I found the same thing happened when I tried recipes that called for warm milk to be poured from a great height into the mixture - resulting again in stringy and inedible curds.  In my early days of syllabub experimentation there were very few modern recipes. It was not until Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson started publishing some in the late 1960s that the British general public started becoming aware of what until then been an almost  totally extinct dish.

What a contrast that is to the situation today. Google the word and you will find a myriad modern recipes - champagne syllabub, turkish delight syllabub, amaretto syllabub, iced cappuccino syllabub, hogmanay syllabub, passionfruit syllabub etc. What I have noticed though is that nearly all of these contemporary versions are made by whisking whipping cream with the other ingredients until it sets into a uniform thick whip. This type, which seems to be the only one made in modern times, is derived from those revived recipes by Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, which they based on what was once called solid syllabub. This sort, also known as everlasting syllabub, was technically a flavoured alcoholic whipped cream. After a while a small amount of liquid might form at the bottom of the syllabub glass, but generally this type consisted of a uniform creamy whip. 

A solid or everlasting syllabub in a panel moulded double handled syllabub glass of the mid -eighteenth century. This is the model for just about every modern syllabub. It is really a type of whipped cream

A glass salver set with ribbon jellies and solid syllabubs. Photo: Vicky Osborne.- courtesy Delomosne and Son.

As the bubbles rose they were skimmed off with a spoon

Another syllabub, older in origin than the solid kind, was the whip or whipped syllabub. If the very large number of surviving recipes is anything to go by, it seems to have been very popular, This was very different in nature to solid syllabub. It does not really seem to be understood by modern cooks. The cream/wine mixture was whipped in a large bowl, usually with a birch whisk, but chocolate mills were also used. As the bubbles rose they were skimmed off the surface and put on a sieve to drain overnight. 

The foam was allowed to drain over night until it turned into a much lighter and dryer froth

It is not as fiddly as it sounds and a very large amount of bubbly suds can be accumulated in a fairly short time. Interestingly a very old and ubiquitous rural name for a sieve was a sile or syell, commonly used in dairies for straining milk. Syllabubs were originally made in dairies rather than kitchens. In seeking for an origin for the word syllabub, the etymologists have complete ignored this Old Norse word. Above you can see a sile covered in bubbles - any thoughts?  Once the bubbles had drained thoroughly, which usually takes about twelve hours, an incredibly light,  rather dryish foam of a most ethereal texture is created. This was then floated on top of some wine or whey which had been poured into the syllabub glass. This is much lighter and of a completely different character to the modern version of the dish. The evidence points to the fact that the pan top syllabub glass was designed specifically for whip syllabub. The pan helps to support the foam above as below.

Whip syllabub floating on wine in an eighteenth century pan top glass 

Now all this whipping, whether with whisks or chocolate mills, especially when catering for a large company, was a lot of hard work. So a number of pieces of equipment were designed to make the process easier. The earliest of these was a syringe known as a wooden cow. These are first mentioned in the late seventeenth century. A lot of bubbles can be created by squirting air into the mix with one of these curious implements. They were similar to a device called a butter squirt, which could also be used to make syringe fritters. Syringes of this kind had various applications in the kitchen and dairy. I have never seen any English early modern period images of these things, but Bartolomeo Scappi in his Opera (Venezia: 1570) does illustrate a kitchen syringe. This is a woodcut version from the 1621 edition.

Choose your weapon. Birch whisk, chocolate mill, syllabub pumping engine or wooden cow?

A variation on the wooden cow was the 'syllabub pumping engine', which appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century -  

“Dr. Hayles hath actually published what has been for some time talked of, a tube of tin with a box of the same at the lower end of it...that is full of small holes. This engine, with the help of a pair of bellows, blows up cream into syllabub with great expedition. This complex machine has already procured the doctor the blessing of the housekeeper in this palace, and of all such as she in the present generation (who know the time and labour required to whip this sort of geer), and will cause his memory to be held in reverence by all housekeepers in the generations that are yet to come.” A. Hartshorne, Old English Glasses, (London and New York: 1897), p. 307.

I have reconstructed this 'engine' and it works very well, blowing 'up cream into syllabub with great expedition. I have had a love affair with this uniquely English dairy food most of my rather long life and have written three published papers on the subject. Syllabub has spawned its own unique material culture and I also collect both the tools which were once used to make it, as well the beautiful glasses that were designed for serving it. With this kind of long experience of the subject, it is always tempting to feel smug and consider oneself some kind of an expert. However, it is humbling to find out that in fact one really knows very little. I recently learned that in nineteenth century North America special mills called syllabub churns were manufactured to make solid syllabubs. After nearly fifty years of studying the subject I had never heard of them. As far as I know, there was never anything like these made in Britain, but I could be wrong. 

Below are some photographs of one of these churns, which according to one or two folk who have used them are incredibly effective. They work rather like a plunge butter churn. By pushing the shaft up and down the mixture gets thoroughly aereated. If there are any US readers of this post who have experience of these fascinating utensils, I would love to hear from you. Happy syllabub pumping everybody!