Don't you just love the weird names of British foods?
Bubble and squeak, rumbledethumps,
and of course toad in the hole, and that is what we're making today.
A 19th century Scottish recipe for toad in the hole.
So thank you to Crowd Cow for sponsoring this video as we look at the history
of the toad which in this case is actually Scottish beef.
This time on Tasting History.
So next week, here in the US at least, it is Father's Day and I was racking my brain
on what to get for my dear old pa. He already has more Hawaiian shirts than you can shake a stick at,
so I was kind of at a loss and then it hit me harder than Robert the Bruce hit back at the Battle of Bannockburn.
I could make a video dedicated to him for Father's Day
based on our Scottish heritage something that we both really, really enjoy so that's what this is, but first
our recipe. So this comes from The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie, and is for the vague
toad in a-hole rather than the more specific toad in the hole, but it's basically the same.
"Toad-in-a-hole. Mix a good batter of two or three eggs, some sifted flour, milk and a little salt.
Put some of the batter into a pie-dish. Lay a tender rump steak on it well seasoned, and
then pour in the rest of the batter. Bake it to a nice color, taking care it does not burn.
So anyone who is familiar with this dish will see that the toad or the meat being used is
rather different than what you'll typically find today at least in England. In England
it's usually sausages but in older recipes especially from Scotland it tends to be beef steak.
Also because we do have modern day recipes and other 19th century recipes we can
see that Lady Clark likely left something out of this recipe, and that is to put some grease or
oil into the pan, and get it really, really hot before adding the batter because if you don't,
it doesn't rise. And really then it's just toad in the swamp, so we're going to do that.
So for this recipe what you'll need is: three eggs, one and a half cup or 180 grams of flour,
one and a quarter cup or 300 milliliters of milk, a pinch of salt, one pound or 450 grams rump steak.
I had to roll my r. Rrrrrump steak.
Beef tallow or oil just enough to cover the bottom of the dish,
and some seasoning. Now she's not specific in what seasoning to use. I'm going to be using just salt
and pepper but I think that it would be a good idea to use some fresh herbs, or dried herbs.
Something to really kind of give it some some some spice. You know that's Scottish food. It's-
it's known for its spice. ;)
Anyway batter up.
Crack your eggs into a bowl, and whisk them well.
Then sift the flour into a large bowl and create a well in the center. Pour the eggs into the well
and gently incorporate the flour. When the batter becomes too stiff, start adding the milk in a
bit at a time, and gently whisk until it's all incorporated. Then whisk in your pinch of salt
and then set the batter aside.
Really it needs to rest for about an hour so that the flour can
absorb all of the liquid that it's going to absorb, and while that rests preheat your
oven to 425 Fahrenheit or 220 Celsius.
About 10 minutes before your batter is ready
set the dish with the oil or tallow in the oven. You want it to be sizzling hot when you add the batter.
Now when it comes to the meat you've got a few options. She just says to lay a rump steak
in there. A rump steak is huge. It's going to take up the whole, the whole thing if not more
so I would either slice the rump steak or cut it up into little bite-sized pieces. That's actually what i'm doing.
Either one is going to work. Now you can use pretty much any rump steak, but the rump
steak that I'm using is a fancy rum steak. It is wagyu beef sent to me from today's sponsor Crowd Cow.
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So like I said the rump steak that they sent me is wagyu rather fancy especially for toad in the hole
so this is a fancy toad in the hole, which gave me an idea because a few weeks ago I did an episode
on placenta the roman cheesecake and I put a call out for people to send me images of
Porky Pig dressed in Roman garb. Watch the episode it'll make more sense. And it was like
my favorite thing like of this entire year so far. All of the wonderful pictures that people sent me
and then I shared them on Instagram and Twitter and I think a few here on Youtube as well,
so I would love it if people would send me pictures of a fancy toad in the hole to my
Instagram @ tastinghistorywithmaxmiller.
Now whether you slice up your steak or cut it into pieces,
once it's seasoned go ahead and give it a light searing in a frying pan, and then set it aside.
Then it's time to assemble our toad in the hole. Now working quickly but carefully pull
the dish out of the oven and pour about half of the batter into the dish. Then set the meat in
the dish and cover with the remaining batter. Then close the oven and do not open that oven door.
Not you, not your cat, not nobody, not know how. The moment that you open that oven it will start to deflate,
and nobody wants a deflated toad in the hole.
"It's not that common. It doesn't happen to every guy and it is a big deal."
Now as I said this episode is dedicated to my dad who is quite proud
of our Scottish heritage and that is not going to be the last of my bad Scottish accent so buckle up buckaroos.
Now we hail from the Maxwell clan which is why I am wearing
the Maxwell tartan apron that my dad actually got me.
Now I'm realizing that I'm actually wearing two tartans and that's a little tacky
but you know what it is what it is. Also Maxwell is where I get my name Maxwell, though
my brother says that it's from Maxwell House coffee which although that actually might be true
in a way I refuse to accept that narrative. Though he did somewhat redeem himself last Christmas
when he bought me a one square foot lairdship in Scotland, making me laird Maxwell.
I like that.
Now I'm not going to go into the Maxwell clan history though it is rather interesting
but my ancestors do play a bit of a role in the history that we are discussing today.
The Scots love cows, always have. From the adorably woolly highland cattle to the aberdeen angus which
is now found all over the world. Now the obvious reason to love cows is because they're cute.
Look at him.
But they're also useful as beasts of burden and sources of milk, cheese, leather, and meat,
and in Scotland one thing that made them so special was that they could walk.
In Medieval Scotland cattle were a great source of mooovable wealth, and that is where my ancestors
come in because it turns out the Maxwell clan were quite the cattle raiders. Border raiders actually.
So it was mostly the English they were raiding hence instead of shameful, it's a badge of honor.
But Scotland was infamous for cattle raids not only across the English border but also
within feuding clans like in the infamous raids of Urquhart.
In the aftermath of the Battle of the Shirts in 1544
the Cameron clan doubled down on their victory by raiding clan Grant's castle
and taking 100 cows, 100 calves, 40 young cows and a bunch of other livestock but being on the border
with England the Maxwell's preferred to take their cattle from the South and were known as Reivers.
I've always thought that like the people in Game of Thrones who are always kind of coming over the
wall from the North. That's what they're based on, my family.
Now the raids were mostly carried out
during the early winter months when the cattle were at their most plump and then the Maxwells
would skedaddle right across the border back to castle Caerlaverock.
In a poem called "The Reivers Wedding" by Sir Walter Scott
he talks of the cows that the Reivers had taken and how they added to the wedding feast.
"And loud and loud in Harden tower the quaigh gaed round w' meilkle glee;
for the English beef was brought in bower and the English ale flowed merrilie."
Later writers like Will H. Ogilvy romanticized the Reivers but in actuality, they like the cattle that they had been stealing,
were domesticated some centuries earlier.
By the 17th century most Scots focused more on raising cattle
then stealing them.
By the late 1600s cattle drivers could take thousands of cattle
down drovers roads all the way from the highlands through Scotland and into the market towns of
Northern England with relatively little fear of being attacked.
Relatively.
And this lasted until 1906 when the last big drove happened. After that pretty much all of the railroads had replaced the drover's roads.
They took our jerbs!
Now just like cattle ranchers everywhere keeping your cattle safe was a full-time job.
And even after rival clans and border Reivers were no longer a major concern,
there was a far more sinister enemy of the cow lurking in the green pastures of Scotland...
....elves.
Mentioned as far back as the Leechdoms or the medical texts of Anglo-Saxon Britain
elfshot was the scourge of British cattle and what is elfshot you may ask.
Well they're invisible arrows shot by elves of course and sometimes fairies though those were called saighead sithe or
fairy arrows.
In 1867 a Mr. Hugh Morrison claimed to have seen a cow who had been murdered
by fairies.
When it was pointed out to him that the cow had likely just
fallen in such a way that its horn had gotten stuck in the ground and that it had starved to death.
Mr. Morrison said that that is exactly how a cow falls when it has been shot by a fairy arrow.
Hmmm.
And in 1884 a farmer claimed "I've gotten an ill job this mornin' in the death o' a fine stirk by elfshot...
when asked if it could have been due to illness, he said "that could not be, my neighbor and me
opened up the breast and there was a hole through his heart."
It's hard to argue with that.
Now it's kind of silly and seems like something to be laughed at the Scottish belief in fairy arrows
and elfshot had some real non-bovine victims.
In 1662 Isabel Gowdy was tried for witchcradt
and supposedly without torture she confessed to cavorting with the king and queen of the fairies,
and her confession has a detailed explanation of how they made elfshot.
"We sprang them from the nails of our thumbs... The Devil sharps them with his own hand, and delivers them to Elf -boys,
what whittles and ditties them with a sharp thing like a packing needle."
Isabelle was part of the last of the great Scottish witch hunts of the 17th century and it's thought that seeing
as she confessed without any coercion, supposedly, that it was possibly due to either mental illness
or ergotism which has a fascinating history and is definitely food history. It's something that makes
people go crazy and think I should do an episode on that maybe around Halloween.
Also how messed up is this, Isabel Gowdy was put on trial for witchcraft partly for making elfshot but in 1607
Barbara Patterson of new battle Scotland was also put on trial for witchcraft for trying to cure elfshot,
but she did it with a charm.
"I charmed thee for arrow-shot, for dor-shot, for wondo-shot,
for eye-shot, for tongue shot, for her shot, and the maist, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."
You're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't. Women just could not catch a break back then,
but perhaps most insidious of all is instead of murdering these bovine by
their own hand these elves and fairies would force humans to do their dirty work for them.
Like in the Highland story of Black Donald.
While plowing a strip of land on the Isle of Tiree
he was swept up by a horde of fairies and flown over the Isle of Skye. When he returned he explained to people what had happened.
"He confessed that he regretted nothing of his experience except that,
at the bidding of the fairy throng he had dropped from the eddy an arrow that killed on the Isle of Skye
a speckled cow. And from that day until his death the folks of Tiree knew Donald by no other name
than Black Donald of the Fairy Throng."
Heartbreaking. Now the thing about when an animal died of elfshot or a fairy arrow
is that it never left a mark on the outside of the beast,
Go figure. Instead the symptoms tended along the line of bad milk or they stop giving milk altogether,
or lethargy, loss of appetite, or they start having seizures.
And if caught before actually killing the animal there were remedies to the elfshot.
Amulets hung about the cow's neck, or pages of the Bible waved over her back while she's made to sniff tar to induce coughing.
Cold water poured in her ear or one of my favorite Scottish remedies which is sure to work
where "The wise-man boils, in a clean pan, a pound of gun-powder, and a crooked sixpence. This is placed
before the cow. She is made to drink the mixture. The gunpowder immediately blows the elf-arrow out
through the hole and the sixpence fitting on the heart covers the wound made by the stone.
If after the treatment the cow does not recover she dies because god chooses it, and not from the elf shot.
That is from 'The General View of the Agriculture of Caithness' from 1815.
That is not that long ago boys and girls.
1815, we have come so far so fast.
Though while many believed in elfshot and their cures,
there are some scholars who believe that the earlier mentions from like the Anglo-Saxon era
are more metaphorical and tended to just kind of explain things like heart attacks,
and strokes. Things that would kill people where there was no obvious reason of why they died,
but since in those books they also mentioned things like hags and witches and stuff,
I'm not sure that i can give them too, too much credit for not being at least somewhat superstitious.
That's okay, but whether protecting them from elves or border Reivers cattle have always been
a precious commodity in Scotland and so it's no wonder that Lady Clark chose the caldonian cow
as the feature of her toad in the hole, soon to be my toad in the hole.
So at 30 minutes and not a moment sooner, unless it's burning and then a moment sooner,
take the dish out of the oven and serve immediately.
And here we are toad in a hole.
The outside looks nice and crispy and the inside looks kind of gooey, but done.
Honestly the only thing that could make this better
is a nice glass of scotch.
Well there you go! It's a Father's Day miracle.
Let's do this thing.
That's actually really good.
Hm!
I usually don't drink scotch with things but it actually works with this.
The meat is excellent. The dough is wonderful, it's soft, and a little bit crispy, and yet
maybe a little stodgy as well, but I actually don't mind it because the flavor is really, really nice.
I'm going to try some of just the crispy bit here, that's my favorite part. I mean-
it's Yorkshire pudding what's not to like. I honestly think that you know either doing it
like this or with the sausages, either way is going to work but do get a good meat because
you do get a lot of the meat. You know it's not actually covered up with anything. That said
modern times and actually probably in the 19th century she just didn't include it,
5his dish is usually served with gravy and a gravy would be really nice right now.
I know Gordon Ramsay has a really good onion gravy recipe that he puts on his toad in the hole,
so maybe I'll give that a shot. But essentially Lady Clark's dish is like a
19th century version of I don't know pigs in a blanket. That's kind of what it tastes like
but with good steak instead of hot dogs.
So a happy Father's Day to my dad and all of the fathers out there,
and make sure to click on the link in the description.
Crowdcow.com/tastinghistory for 15% off your first order
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.