In the novel I’m currently working on, one of my genteel heroines, finding herself in reduced circumstances, is trying her hand at baking to help make ends meet. To write these scenes, I perused a few cookery books from previous centuries, looking for some relative easy recipes for her to try.
Here is the easiest cake recipe I could find in the 1780 edition of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse:
Beat together for an hour with your hand…? There ain’t nothin’ easy about that! I don’t know about you, but that makes me thankful for an electric mixer.
Or how about this “Spunge cake” recipe from Modern Domestic Cookery and Useful Receipt Book by Elizabeth Hammond, 1819:
After beating the whites by hand until a very stiff froth, then you had to beat the remaining ingredients for another forty minutes. Any bakers out there want to give this a try? I’m guessing cooks then had very strong arms.
Then you had to know how to gauge and regulate the temperature in a wood-burning oven like these. A quick oven? A hot oven? A slow oven? This makes me thankful for the dial on my modern appliance.
Do you like to bake? Which modern kitchen convenience are you most thankful for?
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I love to bake, and even used to make a sponge cake when I was a teenager. I think I still have my mom’s recipe, but I guarantee it didn’t need to be beaten by hand for 40 minutes! Wow!
I think I’m most thankful for my Kitchenaide stand mixer. I raised 4 kids with only a hand mixer, and then my kids gave me the Kitchenaide for Christmas 12 years ago. I love it and use it way more than I ever thought I would. Plus, it’s my favorite color: Kitchenaide red!
Not aqua blue or teal?! 😉 Thanks, Deb.
Haha! Well, yes, that’s a given, but always with red accents. 🙂
I love to cook and bake but I know I wouldn’t enjoy it if I had to mix things by hand that long! Goodness! I think my two favorite kitchen appliances (besides the obvious large appliances) would be my KitchenAid mixer and my Vitamix blender. I can’t imagine being without either one of them.
I thought you were going to say your automatic tea maker, Kristine. You sure are a good cook!
How could I have forgotten that?! I can’t do tea kettles for the stove because I tend to leave the kitchen while waiting for the water to boil. A few tea kettles have met their demise in my kitchen by being forgotten on the stove.
Reading about all this hand beating makes me tired. I can’t imagine my arms holding up to an hour of beating anything!I do look forward to this next book and how you incorporate your research into it.
Thank you, Harriet!
When I was very young my grandmother, my mother’s mother, was still using a wood stove. I know this is the way my mom learned to cook and bake. I know for certain that later they were both thankful for their modern day appliances, as am I. I don’t remember if my grandparents had electricity. If they did, I am guessing that they had not had it for very long. I know they had to have strong arms (from working in the fields, carrying wood to burn, etc), but I never thought about the beating by hand.
My grandparents did not have running water at that time. As a child I was fascinated with the cistern and the outhouse and still remember the smell of the water (or more specifically the water bucket and dipper) from the cistern. The outhouse was nestled among the cedar trees and cedar is the smell I remember, thankfully.
Thanks for sharing the recipes, but I think I’ll stick with my regular baking methods. ; )
Oh, my! This gives me an appreciation for just how much more challenging it was to bake in those days. I can’t imagine beating a mixture for an HOUR by hand!
I enjoy cooking more than baking. Baking you have to be so precise or you end up with a flop. Cooking is much more forgiving 🙂
Good grief Julie! I would be black and blue from all of that mixing! 🙂 It is a good thing I have my Kitchen Aid. Those ladies would fall over dead if they could use a secret Kitchen Aid in a back room. 🙂 ROFL!
Love this post! Love you oodles! I can’t wait for the next book.
Mary
Ha! I don’t bake much in this modern age, there is no way I’d be able to do all that! 🙂
I hope that the 40 minutes of mixing was shared between several of the newer/younger girls working in the kitchen. I don’t bake anymore so I don’t have a favorite appliance, but that frees up more time to read your books.