Cooking...the second leading cause of death in
women during the 19th century.
Well not exactly, burns were the cause of
death. But how did you get these burns? By cooking. Despite this fact, we at
the Laura Secord Homestead thought it would be grand to try out some old recipes
now that we have a fire pit. Bad idea. Once you start researching the cooking
methods of the Regency period you can see how crazy (and dangerous) it was to
use fire on a day to day basis. Here are some examples of things we will not
be using/doing on site:
The original candy thermometer- If you have ever made taffy or fudge
you know this instrument well...but what did they use back in Laura’s day? A
good old finger! Most recipes of the day tell you that you can determine temperature
by “keeping a basin of water by you, dip[ping] your finger in it, and put it
quickly in your sugar, then into the water again to remove the sugar” now on
your finger. I don’t know about you, but I scare at the sound of snapping bacon
fat. There would be no way I would shove my finger in boiling sugar.
(PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME)
The seven second bake oven- A seven second bake oven sounds
kind of like a microwave to those who have never heard of this dangerous oven.
It was, however, a great newfangled invention during Laura’s time. This bake
oven was a brick oven heated with hot coals. The coals were removed after a
time, but the bricks remained hot. How could you tell if the oven was the
correct temperature for your bread? Well, you held your arm inside the hot oven
and if you could take the heat for 7 seconds (no more, no less) then you had
the perfect condition for baking your bread!
Cochineal
beetles- Such a pretty colour for those British red coats. How do they get
that colour? Why, you ground cochineal beetles of course! These little South
American cactus beetles are collected and ground to add bright red colouring to
whatever you heart desires...even preserves. Yes, several recipes call for
these lovely little critters to be added to cherries, apples and other
preserves in order to keep the colour bright and appetizing. Want your ice
cream moulds to come out in fancy colours? You can paint in some ground
cochineal to the mold before adding in your sweet treat. As lovely as the colour
is, I think we will stick to food colouring for our trials. (I know, we are no
fun at all!)
A rare but interesting way of
turning a spit- If you have been on our tour you may have seen our lovely 1813 reflector
oven, which is similar to a rotisserie oven. If you wanted to turn your meat on a spit but did not want to do it by hand, as you would do with our oven,
you could try many ingenious solutions. One we will not be trying here at the
homestead is a bigger version of the hamster wheel. Yes indeed, people would
build large wheels that were big enough for a small pooch to fit in. The pooch
would then walk on the wheel and this would in turn spin the spit that
the meat was on. Did you notice the picture on top of the blog sign up? Our
sneaky way of showing how mundane it would have been to see this in action in
the home. Needless to say my new puppy will not be going anywhere near a fire
and her walking will only consist of visits to the new local dog park.
One dog wheel that still survives in an old homestead
That was a fascinating read! I never knew cooking was so dangerous in the 19th century! Quick question though, were summer kitchens common during the Regency period?
ReplyDeleteThank you for replying. To answer your question yes summer kitchen were used quite commonly during the Regency period. In fact it is our belief that the Secord's would have had one where our walk through museum is today.
ReplyDelete