hello i'm annie gray and i'm kathy
hibberson
regular viewers of english heritage's
youtube channel
especially the videos the victorian way
will recognize kathy as the interpreter
who plays mrs avis croakum
the cook at ordly end in 1881.
ah today we're making brown bread crumb
pudding for a lunch and sweet dish
i'm one of the consultants on the
project
we have got some very interesting news
for you
it's been a very challenging year with
lots of things turned
upside down but behind the scenes
english heritage have been working
really hard to put together how to cook
the victorian way
with mrs crocom and it's finally here
and in amongst this are some really
tasty recipes and we're going to cook
one of these today
[Music]
i'd like to start with you grating if
you will the lemons that are there and
also if you could juice them as well
oh look modern technology oh yes well
the point about this book really
is that uh we wanted the modern cook to
be able to cook from it not just the
victorian one
so while we considered having
instructions like heat up your stove add
some extra coal
make sure that you pummel this by hand
we thought that on balance you'd rather
use a stand mixer and a modern
thermostat
for this recipe you will need
three whole eggs and the white of one
egg
225 grams of caster sugar that's eight
ounces or one cup
55 grams or two ounces that's a quarter
of a cup of butter
salted fleas and at room temperature
two whole lemons on waxed is better if
you can get them but it doesn't really
matter
a teaspoon of honey and 12 or they're
about
rotavia biscuits you could also use
amaretti biscuits
or hard macaroons so where does this
recipe actually come from
this one is from mrs croken's manuscript
cookery book
so it is a one that is written
into her book in her handwriting that we
know that she
probably cooked so in this cookbook
there isn't
just recipes from mrs croken's notebook
no
the notebook is a curious beast it is
lovely there are lots of very very nice
recipes in it
but it's a bit one-sided for example
there are about five recipes for sponge
cake
and there are seven or eight for things
that are effectively shortbread so what
we did
i worked with an amazing team of chefs
is we went through we tested every
single
recipe in mrs crocom's manuscript but
picked the very best of them to go
into the modernized version of the book
and then we supplemented them
with recipes from books that we think
she would have had and so on and so
forth so we could build up a picture of
all of the kinds of recipes that we
think she would have cooked
and it also means that for the modern
cook who wants to put on a victorian
meal
you can put on a full meal or an
afternoon tea
and all of the recipes are there
i'm just going to whisk these eggs until
they're well mixed
this can be done much quicker in a
copper bowl
so um you looked at recipe books like
eliza acton
yes we did indeed books that we knew mrs
croak must have consulted at some stage
because we could see in her manuscript
cookery book that she had copied recipes
verbatim from cooks like that
we were also able to identify some other
books that she must have had access to
books by people like richard dolby
and also william jarring who were very
very popular cookbook writers in the
1830s
i'm just going to add the butter the
sugar to the eggs
so apart from the recipes what else is
in the cookbook
well it is a recipe book it's a very
lovely recipe book but it is also a
history book
so myself and my co-author andrew han
who's another one of the consultants on
the project
worked to really put mrs croatian's life
and her recipes into context
so you'll find essays on all sorts of
things from ordly end and its history
to mrs crokin's life to what it was
really like to work as a victorian
servant
also every single recipe has an
introduction putting it into context
and there are historical tip bits
scattered throughout the book
many of which come directly from the
questions that our lovely youtube
audience tend to ask
i think i'm just about ready for a cup
of tea
everyone here at ordly end house likes a
good cup of tea
i've just put the hob on so you'll hear
a slight whirring sound and that's
because i want to start to melt my sugar
and my eggs and my butter together
so i noticed in the book there are quite
a lot of pictures yes there are
brilliant pictures what we really wanted
to do was make a book that felt like a
modern
glossy cookbook the kind that you keep
on your coffee table to impress your
friends quite frankly
so there are lots of pictures of you
enrolled there are pictures of some of
the other people who play mrs croken
because of course
at all the end you're not the only mrs
frankum pictures of some of the other
servants enroll but also pictures of
ordly itself
and of course glorious pictures of the
recipes in
oh they just look absolutely wonderful
[Music]
now tell us more about this actual
recipe
what have you done so far so far i've
whisked together
the eggs so there are three egg yolks
and one egg white they've been whisked
together
in there has gone the caster sugar so
that by the 1880s is something you would
have been able to buy from the grocer
as a ready powdered version of sugar
there's a bit of butter in there you can
see it
stuck to the whisk and all i'm doing now
is i'm
heating up this pan of water with copper
bowl on top so it acts a bit like a
bain-marie
and that way the custard because that's
really what you're making is going to
come together very very gently so the
egg yolks
won't coagulate and then turn into
scrambled eggs what we
should end up with is a very very lovely
very very unfortunate
and the history of this particular
recipe
where does it come from where did mrs
crocodill get it from
we weren't able to identify an actual
source for this although
almost certainly she would have copied
it from somewhere lemon cheese
kind of goes back really to the end of
the 17th century and at that point you
have a mixture very much like this but
often thickened with almonds
this recipe mrs crocon's version uses
biscuits instead so it's very much a
19th century twist on a recipe that was
about 200 years old
and all of those lemon cheese recipes
really are designed to be put into
pastry
and baked what we've done with this one
is quite a lot of pastry in the book
is that we have also suggested that you
could serve it in glasses a bit like a
set cream which is another really really
popular thing to do on the victorian
table
so this would have been served as part
of the second course if you were serving
an anna frances meal which is the one
where you have lots and lots of dishes
on the table at once
set out over two horses plus dessert and
this is one of those things it's a sort
of palette cleanser
stroke what we would today call kind of
pudding really
and why is it called cheese when it
hasn't actually got any cheese in it so
it's a bit like one of your favorite
recipes
de pom or apple cheese so in this case
cheese just means a mass of something
there are lots and lots of recipes with
fruit
cheeses in victorian cookery books and
this one's just a lemon cheese
well it looks like it's coming together
quite nicely the butter's starting to
melt in there
well you've got your lemon juice just
here and your lemon rind whenever you
are ready
we'll have that in just a minute i think
would you like me to then move on
and wake up i would indeed the
one of the really nice things about this
recipe it's very very sweet but it's
also incredibly lemony
and the biscuits just really set it off
and thicken it so you could use cake
crumbs you could use bread crumbs
anything you want you could even use
almonds but you do need something in
there to give it a bit of
texture i suppose so if you can just
say creamy to taste the zest
[Music]
so that's the lemon juice going in
i'm going to take advantage of this
extremely victorian
thermometer just to check the
temperature when you're cooking eggs you
really don't want them to go
much beyond about 80 to 83 degrees
otherwise they will start to scramble
right now
the lemons for this as well will
probably have been growing
in the hot houses yep
i saw that
right you can see this is starting to
thicken up now
and what kind of consistency does she
say it needs to be mrs kroken says it
needs to be the consistency of
honey when we were testing this recipe
one of the things we thought would be
quite nice was to add some actual
honey so i am going to add in
just a spoonful
of real honey if you wanted to make this
even more modern you could add various
spices as well
so for example you could put some ginger
or some cloves that kind of thing so you
see now it's
really thickening up so i'm going to
just
take it off the heat
like so
and then we'll add the biscuits
if anybody is thinking to themselves
hang on a minute am i
only getting half of mrs croatia's real
manuscript cookbook
they don't need to worry because one of
the most exciting things for me and i
suspect for you as well
is that we have got a full transcription
of avis proton's manuscript book in the
back of this
so if you do want to see quite how many
versions of shortbread there are
you can have a look for yourself it's
also got her roast swan recipe which
we thought was probably going to be a
bit of a stretch for most of our
modern cooks so
now you're going to pour it into the
glass yes so this is going to go into
this glass bowl which we will then
decorate once it's been chilled and also
into two glasses
a lot of the time when the victorians
serve things like custards or jellies
they would serve them in little glasses
like this and then arrange them on a
very beautiful tray
so that each individual could take their
glass and just have a small
portion meals did have an awful lot of
choice in them so
the portion sizes tended to be a bit
smaller than the kind of thing that
we're used to today
and you're going to put in a very modern
fridge i am
yes mrs croco would have used a cold
ladder although of course
there were such things as refrigerators
in the 1880s it's just that they weren't
electric
they were filled with ice and sometimes
salt to bring the temperature down
depending on what you're putting in them
so
there may have been a refrigerator at
orderly end in which case it would be a
yeah it was an icebox yeah it was
refrigerator existed as a word but often
it was called nice box there's a big
wooden box with a lead-lined casket in
the middle and then you pack it full of
ice and there's a drainage hole at the
bottom and it's an enormous amount of
work
if you do want to try it at home be my
guest just
let us know how it goes but if you don't
then i would suggest
a fridge
[Music]
excellent if you can bring the glasses
i'll take the bowl and we'll go and put
them
in our icebox
[Music]
so are they now ready to eat yes they
are you can serve it hot and it's very
very nice
but what we've done is we've chilled it
a bit which is what mrs crocon probably
would have done as well
the main thing is that you can then
prepare this well in advance so she
would have been able to prepare it in
the afternoon to serve
for a meal in the evening and i think a
bit of victorian style decoration is
perfect
of course the exciting thing about this
is that i'm going to actually get to eat
it when i'm playing mrs croakum
mrs krokum is always cooking for someone
else and so this is really exciting to
be able to
get to actually eat something
[Music]
right there we have moment of truth
i shall let you take your own so
it smells lovely oh it does we're not
going to drink it the idea is that
you're serving these in little glasses
they're very much a palette cleanser so
you've had all of your soup your
vegetables your meaty main courses your
heavy puddings and
you're just about now sliding towards
the end of the meal so this is intended
to sort of
enliven the palate and send you dancing
off into the night
and with that much sugar in it
well hopefully some of you will be
inspired to cook
um this or maybe different recipes
from the victorian way cookbook if you
do
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costume
enroll as mrs crocom
thank you annie this is lovely
[Music]
you