More on 1920s cookery

[sienamystic]

Sayers readers take note! An old friend of the ham family appears in the essay on breakfast:

Of course a really first-rate ham, such as the peach-fed Spanish variety, or those excellent but costly brands from Yorkshire, Bradenham, or Cumberland, deserve special treatment in their boiling, such as a bottle of madeira and the addition of vegetables, spices, and herbs. Thus enriched, they should make ceremonial debut at a luncheon or dinner-table, accompanied by Cumberland sauce and a skillfully composed salad before appearing at the breakfast sideboard.

Now I want to try Bradenham ham.

From the essay titled Cottage Hospitality:

Bread and Butter Pudding, for six persons.
Cut about six thin slices of bread and butter from a tin loaf, remove crust, cut into squares or rounds. Arrange in a nice white buttered dish or oven-proof glass oval. Add a few stoned raisins or well-soaked sultanas, sprinkle with castor sugar. Break 2 whole eggs and one extra yolk into a basin, whisk up, pour on 1/2 pint of hot milk flavored with vanilla, and pour this on to bread and butter; then embellish the top with some halved glace cherries and acorn-sized pieces of crushed loaf sugar. Cook to attractive brownness in a slow oven for 3/4 hour,a nd serve with fresh cream. Good both hot or cold.

I could definitely follow this recipe, and I think I will. Although I don't know what a "tin loaf" might be. And I'd have to look up castor sugar, too - I used to know what it was but can't recall.

This one from the Dance and supper essay, on the other hand, seems a waste of a good chicken to me:

For a good cold Cream of Chicken for the supper table, steam a large plump fowl till tender. When cold point the meat, and pass through a hair sieve mixed with enough cream to make it light, season to taste, add 3 or 4 leaves of gelatine dissolved. When nearly set, pour it into a plain round charlotte or brick-shaped mould previously lined with aspic of the chicken stock, turn out, and serve very cold with a garnish of shredded and creamed celery, or a fruid salad, or chopped aspic and cress. a similar treatment of lobster makes a good mousse,a nd the economist can use whiting for its basis.

I'm not sure why that's so off-putting...probably because I'm not a fan of aspics and savory mousses. The flavor is probably very good, but the mouthfeel just doesn't work for me.

Comments

Found a tin loaf recipe for you.

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

See here. You can use any pain de mie recipe as well.

I don't have the faintest idea why it's called tin loaf, though.

My mother (born in 1912) was fond of aspics, and occasionally inflicted them on us. I think they're boring and bland, mostly.

Of the fancy hams listed above, the one I'd most like to try is jamon de Serrano, though I don't think you can get the peach-fed type easily any more. Acorn or compound-fed ham is findable, though hideously expensive. However, it's cured with salt and salt only, so it might not give me a migraine. Cumberland Ham is cured with "saltpetre", i.e. potassium nitrate. Sigh. The cure for Bradenham Ham lists "other ingredients", so it makes me nervous.

THERE, properly edited at last.

[swooop.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's called a tin loaf because it's baked in a bread tin and not free form. I think, Geni, you could probably substitute any good (i.e., not Wonder) white bread.

The idea of cold cream of chicken would put ME off that recipe. Although I'm not a fan of aspics either. I agree with Kiwi, they're boring. Plus, texture issues. At least for me.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Yep, a tin loaf is just a standard loaf of tin-baked bread - the phrase is still in common use, see here.

Caster sugar is the standard sugar for baking - finer than granulated sugar, coarser than icing sugar.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I've never really baked bread before, but the recipe looks pretty straightforward. I wonder if it would be a good bread to learn on. It looks like it would be a great sandwich bread, too.

And I've definitely seen breads of the same shape here - but I think they just get called loaf or sandwich loaf, and I never gave too much thought about how they got the shape.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It looks a very nice recipe.

NB. there is a considerable difference between bread-and-butter pudding as above, and bread pudding. The former is rather bland and sloppy, the latter spicy and dense (I like both).

[(Anonymous)]

The bread pudding recipe is making my tummy growl. I've made bread pudding before and it's quite easy. Use slightly stale bread. If you make this recipe, please follow up!

~Kate-h

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

And then on Top Chef, they just did a chocolate bread pudding with peanut butter sauce...it looked awesome!

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

My gran used to make a fine bread-and-butter pudding. I'd leve off the cherries, if I were you. They'd spoil it - too sweet.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

I do have a very demanding sweet tooth! But I like the idea of a sauce instead of the cherries. I think I've seen a bourbon-vanilla sort of sauce for bread pudding somewhere, and that just sounds fabulous.