Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and this week we are going back
in time to make 200 year old Bomboons and pastilles or what we'd call lollies
or candy. The cookbook I'm using is called the Compleat Confectioner and
it's written by Hannah Glasse. Hannah was born in London in 1708 and sadly her mum
died when she was only 16 years old. Soon after that her dad also became ill so
Hannah was sent to live at her grandmother's house. In the same year
that she moved there she met and married a 30 year old Irish ☘️widower John Glasse
which is where she gets her last name from and together they had ten children...
five of whom died when they were only young. The couple was struggling
financially so Hannah decided to write a cookbook. Amongst the 972 recipes in the
book it had the first known curry recipe to be printed in English, an early recipe
for ice cream and she was the first person to use the term Yorkshire pudding
in print. Her book the art of cookery was published in 1747 and sadly in that same
year her husband also passed away. The book went well and it went to reprint
the first year but in order to support herself and her children Hannah started
a dressmakers business along with her eldest daughter in Covent Garden in
London. She even made dresses for princess Augusta the then Princess of
Wales. Although her business looked like it was doing well she had borrowed
heavily and after seven years she couldn't repay her debts so she was
actually declared bankrupt and imprisoned for 6
months. Her assets were sold off and she was forced to sell all the rights to her
book The Art of Cookery. The book went on to become the best-selling recipe book
of the 18th century! With more than 20 editions printed and it was still being
published well into the 19th century. Of course Hannah saw none of that money
because she no longer owned any of the rights to the book. She went on to write
two more books ... The Servant's Directory and the Compleat Confectioner, the book
we're using today but neither of them were commercially successful. Not much
more is written about Hannah apart from that she died at the age of 62 in London.
And now 260 years after she sat and wrote out these recipes we are going to
follow some of them today. To make nut bomboons, take a pound of Spanish nuts
...now I looked up Spanish nuts and it seems like this could have been almonds
or could have been peanuts because we've got someone with a peanut allergy in the
house I'm going go with almonds. Boil them in an iron pan and when they are
well boiled rub off their skin with a napkin if some stick to hard pair it off
with a knife. Now I've never done this before and I must say I am surprised at
how easily the skins just slide off the boiled almonds I thought it would be
much harder than this and even though it is easy it is time-consuming because
there are so many nuts and they all have to be separated from the skins that keep
sticking to my fingers. Next it says take a tin grater and grate your nuts very
fine on a sheet of paper ... talk about time-consuming to individually grate a
pound of almonds it's gonna take me hours, I'm sorry but I just have to use a
food processor for this one I am cheating just to highlight how blessed
we are to have modern gadgets that can do something that would take hours in a
matter of minutes. then it says take a pound of powdered sugar to a pound of
nuts and put it in a pan over a slow fire, when your sugar is all melted in
stirring it perpetually with a wooden spoon put in your nuts. Personally I have
never like to making caramel with a dried
sugar it tends to clump for me and her recipe needs you to stand there stirring
it for so long ... finally it's all melted and if I test it
in a glass of cold water you can see it sets immediately which is what's called
crack hard but it tastes burnt so I'm gonna start again with the sugar because
I don't want to waste the almonds and this time I'll start with some water in
the pan and this will all just evaporate off so it makes no difference to
the recipe it just makes it a little bit easier. Stir it until it's dissolved and
then brush down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush and leave that
to boil unstirred until it starts to go golden and it's crack hard then the
recipe says to: "put in your nuts and work them well till all is well mixed and
pour it upon a tin plate, take a wooden rolling pin and spread it which you must
be very quick doing because it cools down very fast". To me this seems like
it's crystallized and gone hard as soon as the nuts were stirred in. There's no
way that I can spread this out with a rolling pin so something's definitely
gone wrong. At the very end of the recipe it says: "You must take care the sugar
should not be too much melted for it is very apt to soften when the nuts are
joined to it". So it looks like I'm gonna have to start again. This time I am going
to use store-bought almond meal I am not re-blanching and peeling my own almonds.
Stir it just a little bit and then tip it onto a tray. Recipes are so much
easier to follow with videos so you can see what it's supposed to look like or
at the very least pictures ... with just words it's quite tricky I'm gonna put
another sheet of baking paper over the top because my antique wooden rolling
pin is losing little splinters of wood and I don't want that in the candy. Next
it says: "When it is cold cut it into what shape you please". It is pretty hard I
don't think there will be any cutting happening but instead let me try
smashing it. That worked much better, it has a fairly firm compact texture and
good but it's a little bit overly sweet for me
I'd prefer just to have that caramel crack had caramel poured over whole
almonds that would be yummy. Next to make the coffee cream Bomboons ... "Take a
pint of coffee made with water and put in it a pound of loaf sugar set it on
the fire and boil it to a high degree then add a full pint of double cream and
let it boil again. Keep continually stirring until it comes to a caramel
height. To know when it has come to that point you must have a basin of water by
you dip your finger in it and put it quickly in your sugar and then into the
water again to remove the sugar which will have stuck to it". What!? There is
no way on earth I'm sticking my finger into lava hot caramel 🔥 The poor kitchen
servants that read this recipe and tried that! Instead I'm just gonna use a spoon and
get some of the caramel and pour it into the water in the glass now at this stage
it's just turning into a liquidy mess so I know it's not ready. A few minutes
later and it is starting to get stringy. Hannah's recipe says: "Take a bit of it in
your teeth and if it's hard in its crackling take it off it's to the height
required." Now if I pull it out you can see it's not crack hard yet it is a
little bit softer than that but I know from experience that this will set into
a nice firm chewy caramel at this stage so I'm gonna pull it off now instead of
heating it up to crack hard. There's nothing wrong with having a firmer I
just like caramels that are chewy. Then she says: "Pour it upon a tin plate
and when it is warm you may cut it into little squares, lozenges, or any other
shaped pastilles and draw a few strokes over them with a
knife." Now I've left it for about 30 minutes to cool and you can see it's
started to crystallize a little bit in the middle but not at the edges. Let's
just see if I can indent it enough so that I can cut it once it's cold
and you can see while it's warm it's still very soft but the next day it's
now set up to a really firm chewy coffee caramel
and it tastes awesome. You really should make some of these just don't stick your
finger in the caramel while it's boiling! Now I'm going to wrap these
individual ones in little foil squares. Now for a lemon Pastil recipe ... it says
take half a pound of pounded loaf sugar sifted as fine as possible. Now 200 years
ago you could buy loaf sugar it looked a bit like this. It used to be made in
pottery molds and the sugar would be compacted down into it and there'd be a
hole at the bottom and they would keep pouring a small amount of sugar syrup
over the top and it would run down through the sugar slowly and take out
all the molasses leaving you with a loaf of white sugar. So this is how sugar came
from the shop and then they had to pound it up to get it smaller. Now in this
recipe she says it needs to be as fine as possible so I'm cheating and starting
with what we call caster sugar already and then pounding it. If you've watched
any of my 200 year old recipes previously you'll know that I'm not very
good with a mortar and pestle it's not one of my strong suits. After five minutes of
pounding my arm is sore and we have what I call a mixture between icing sugar and
sugar. it's still got some grainy bits in there but it's also got some really
powdery icing sugar type stuff too. Next it says: "Take three or four lemons which
squeezed over your sugar mix it well with a spoon until you see it makes what
is called a royal paste. A little thick-ish that you may take it upon a knife."
Again with no pictures we can only guess what a little thick ish means... I'm
thinking it's about this consistency but that only took one and a half lemons.
Well next it says: "Take half a sheet of paper and cover it with little round
flat drops which we call pastils of the size of a farthing." How many
centimetres is a farthing? 📱"I found this on the web..."
I was trying to find out how big a farthing is and look good series come up
with 🤣... okay that's not what I was looking for let me try again
How big is a farthing in diameter? 📱I found this on the web ... right
scrolling down it's got the weight after the size they got 20 millimeters, so
about two centimeters or three quarters of an inch. I really want to pipe these
to speed up the process but there were no piping bags yet so we're just gonna
have to drop little spoonfuls onto the paper. Then it says: "Place it in the stove
with a slow fire till it is quite dry and take it off from the paper. You may
add to it if you choose some of the skin of the lemon rasped or grated but not
chipped for as it is a melting pastil still some of the bits would remain in
the mouth which is not quite so well. 😣" After being in a low oven for about an
hour they look like this they're quite firm and they are very lemony and sweet.
pretty good but the coffee caramels are definitely my favorite. With thanks to my
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here debunking videos here and giant chocolate bars here make it a great week
by being kind to others and I'll see you on Friday 💕