It's the age-old question
how do you convince your local sin eater to devour all of the sins
of your dearly departed loved ones?
Well you can't go wrong with corpse cake or these Victorian funeral biscuits.
So thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as we bake something for history's most piteous job
the village sin eater, this time on Tasting History.
"In Cumberland, the mourners are each presented with a piece of rich cake,
wrapped in white paper and sealed, a ceremony which takes place before the 'lifting of the corpse'
when each visitor selects his packet and carries it home with him unopened."
Throughout history these funeral finger foods could be anything from a plain loaf of bread to a fancy yeast in cake
though by the 18th and 19th century they were mostly what we would consider biscuits or cookies.
Most popular were gingerbread, shortbread with caraway seeds or ladyfingers,
and they varied by region. In 1893 a woman who had moved to the United States from England was quoted in a newspaper saying
"There is one prejudice that I have had to overcome since coming to America,
which is my antipathy to sponge cake and lady fingers, as so often served over here with ice cream.
My associations with them are of the gloomiest sort. Lady fingers are served in all parts of England,
with light refreshments, at funerals, and usually go by the name of funeral biscuits."
So ladyfingers or shortbread will do the trick but I have decided to go with gingerbread using a recipe
from Eliza Acton's 1845 'Modern Cookery for private families'
Now she actually has several gingerbread recipes, one being good common gingerbread
but since this is for our daily departed loved ones I figure
we could splurge and make "Richer Gingerbread.
Melt together three quarters of a pound of treacle and half a pound of fresh butter, pour these hot onto a pound of flour mixed with half a pound of sugar
and three quarters of an ounce of ginger. When the paste is quite cold, roll it out with as much flour as will prevent its adhering to the board;
bake the cakes in a very gentle oven."
So these should make a fine fare for a Victorian funeral,
but as it happens earlier today I was actually researching for an upcoming video
on food for a much older funeral, that of King Tut,
and as I often do I fell down the research rabbit hole with a little help from today's sponsor Wondrium.
See that is the blessing and the curse of Wondrium's vast catalog of over 6,000 hours
of videos on almost any topic you can imagine from food and history to science, and travel,
and they're taught by experts in their field so it's a bit like taking a college class from your favorite professor.
Anyway while I was researching King Tut a video came up entirely devoted
to a board game called Senet, this is not only the oldest board game in the world
but also the most enduring being played for the better part of 3,000 years
not one game of it, it's not Mononpoly.
So four of these games were actually found inside of King Tut's tomb,
and maybe he was just a huge Senet stan but Egyptologists also think that the game had religious meaning
and could be part of a mummy's journey to the afterlife,
and it's interesting because while this was thousands of years ago in a few minutes I'm going to talk about how just a couple hundred years ago
eating cakes and drinking ale played a part in moving someone along to their afterlife.
Things haven't really changed,
but before we get there let me encourage you to sign up for a free trial of Wondrium
at wondrium.com/tastinghistory or just click the link in the description to start your free trial today.
Now before we talk about how this gingerbread could help you get past Saint Peter I think we need to make it.
So for this recipe what you'll need is one cup or 340 grams of treacle or molasses,
two sticks or 225 grams of butter, three and a half cups or 450 grams of flour,
one heaping cup or 225 grams of sugar. Now she uses brown sugar in other recipes and
in this one she does not specify so I'm pretty sure that she does mean white sugar
which would allow the spice to really come through and hence the richer gingerbread.
2 heaping tablespoons or 21 grams of gingner,
and in her other gingerbread recipe she does include a bit of clove and a bit of mace,
so if you want to add those I don't think she's going to be mad.
So first sift the flour into a bowl and then add the sugar, and the ginger, and other spices and then whisk together.
Then put the treacle in a saucepan and the butter and set it over a low heat until the butter is melted
though don't let it boil. Also give it a little stir every once in a while just so nothing burns.
Once melted slowly pour it into the flour while mixing. Then stir it in until combined into a dough,
and keep working the dough until it is smooth and glossy.
As it cools it'll start to firm up so just wait a couple minutes and then you'll be able to turn it out and form it into a disc,
and then wrap it in either parchment or Saran Wrap and pop it into the fridge until as she says
"When the paste is quite cold". I'd say a couple hours at least but preferably overnight.
Once the dough is chilled set it on a lightly floured surface and roll it fairly thin. Now you can go anywhere from like a quarter inch
to a little over a half inch the thicker it is the softer it's going to be otherwise it's going to be quite crisp which is fine.
Then cut these into any shape you like.
Now while these cakes started out plain and unadorned, by the 19th century it had become de Reger to decorate them
with symbols of death, whether that be a rose or cross or an hourglass,
or more macabre a skull or a coffin.
Can you imagine going to a funeral today where they hand out skull-shaped cake pops?
It's actually what I want at my funeral.
So not to be outdone by the Cictorians I've decided to
cut mine into the shapes of coffins and some will be embossed with a skull.
So here's the thing and I kind of saw this coming when I looked at the recipe but I wanted to try it out just to make sure
and it is indeed the case that these cookies no matter if you freeze them no matter what you do
they're going to spread a lot and so any shape that you give it
is going to pretty much lose its shape but just like lace cookies when they are still hot
you can actually re-cut them and they will hold their shape very well after that,
so we'll get to that but for now put them in whatever shape that you want
and pop them in the freezer for about an hour. Then put them in the oven at 325 degrees Fahrenheit or 160 Celsius for 15 minutes.
Now while those bake go ahead and hit the Like button if you are enjoying this video and I can't imagine
why you'd still be here if you're not and Follow me
as we trace back the history of this rather bizarre baking tradition.
One of the oldest behaviors that we know about is the leaving of food and drink
for our dead loved ones for them to enjoy in the afterlife.
The ancient Egyptians would fill tombs with mummified meat
and the Romans would make offerings of entire feasts before eating the food themselves while seated around the actual sarcophagus.
Even today leaving food at the graves and shrines of the dead is observed in many cultures
and if nothing else some still pour one out for the homies,
but while those traditions imply that the food or drink is for the actual deceased person to enjoy and wherever they ended up
corpse cake and funeral biscuits are more meant for the living.
Now where the tradition comes from is really unknown but 19th century historians would often try to trace it back
to the ancient Druids of Britain who the Roman author Pliny the Elder claimed
"would murder a man, and eat his flesh to secure the highest blessings of health."
Spooky but unlikely because even if the Druids did practice cannibalism which is very much up for debate
linking that to the funeral biscuit is definitely the product of an overactive Victorian imagination.
Rather the practice may have and I say may have come from the idea that a baked good could absorb someone's essence after they die
some suggest that in Medieval Europe bread dough was left on the chest of a corpse
the dough rising with some positive aspect of the person's personality.
Then the bread and the virtue could both be consumed by the family,
but again this health code violation is probably an attempt of later writers
to explain this odd ritual of putting food on a dead person.
Now another and much more well documented possible origin is that the food was not meant to absorb someone's virtue
but quite the opposite, it would absorb their sin.
The first mention of sin eating that I could find
came from 1686 when antiquarian John Aubrey wrote of a curious custom carried out in the Borderlands
between England and Wales known as The Marches.
According to Aubrey when someone would die the body would be brought outside and a loaf of bread
and a Mazer bowl full of beer would be set on their chest or else beside them.
It was believed that this meager meal would then absorb all of the
unatoned sins that the person had and then the family would
"hire poor people, who were to take upon them all the Sins of the party deceased."
Now it's unclear exactly how prevalent this practice was and was it a public affair
where the town kind of got together to watch this person eating sins?
Or was it more of a private affair?
One account from around 1800 definitely points toward the latter.
Kind of a spur of the moment last minute ah we need somebody to get rid of their sin before the body gets cold.
A traveler found himself lost in the Welsh bogs after dark when he happened upon a cottage
but "Just as I came up, hoping lodging, I heard sounds of wailing within, and soon a woman came out into the dead of night,
late as it was, and cried a name to the top pitch of her wild voice.
When I looked in there lay a corpse of a man, with a plate of salt holding a bit of bread,
placed on its breast. The woman was shouting to the Sin-Eater to come and do his office."
Which implies that it wasn't just anyone willy-nilly who was willing to do this on a given day
but it was someone whose dedicated task was to be the sin eater.
"This was some desperate being who, being past redemption, lost to all hope of salvation
did for a slight reward, or to gratify the relatives of the one lying dead,
take on his own soul all the sins of the deceased by a formal act."
This person was essentially the human form of the goat mentioned in Leviticus.
This scapegoat who had all the transgressions of Israel laid upon it by Aaron and like the sin-saddled scapegoat the sin eater
would be sent off into the wilderness.
"Abhorred by the superstitious villagers as a thing unclean,
the sin eater cut himself off from all social intercourse with his fellow creatures
by reason of the life he had chosen; he lived as a rule in a remote place by himself,
and those who chanced to meet him avoided him as they would a leper."
These people were often also accused of being in cahoots with the Devil or would dabble in witchcraft.
"Only when a death took place did they seek him out,
and when his purpose was accomplished they burned the wooden bowl and platter from which he had eaten the food handed across,
or placed on the corpse for his consumption."
Though when the author says that it was because of the life they had chosen that's not really true because
usually the sin eaters were the most desperate and impoverished people in a community and so simply to make ends meet
they agreed to take on the sin "whatever the consequences might be in the afterlife-
in returnn for a miserable fee and a scanty meal."
That miserable fee was usually sixpence
but this is not always the case. Not only might they not be poor but they also might not be treated as an outcast but rather
a hero of sorts. This was the case for Richard Munslow the last known sin eater in Britain.
He was a well-established farmer near the village of Ratlinghope in Shropshire
and in 1870 three of his four children got sick and within one week they all died,
and the village did not blame Munslow but they did blame unatoned sins that were in the community at large
and so Munslow wanting nobody to have to go through what he had just gone through agreed to become the sin eater for the village.
He believed that he was sacrificing his own immortal soul for the good of his neighbors,
and it's pretty clear that his neighbors appreciated this because in 1906 when he died
he was buried at the local church with respectable gravestone.
Now while it was this part of England and Wales where the practice flourished it never really took off in the rest of England or rather
if it had then it kind of had died out fairly early on
but there were perhaps remnants as John Aubry said in the 17th century "It seems a remainder of this custom, in the county of Oxford,
where at the burial of every corpse one cake and one flagon of ale just after the internment
were brought to the minister in the Church porch."
Though this could also be related to the custom of Avril or Arval in Old Norse meaning air ale or succession ale.
Originally it was thought to be an entire feast not to commemorate the dead but to welcome the new heir but as time went along
the feast started to get smaller and smaller. In the 14th century there is a record of a feast being so large
that they required many kegs of wine and ale, and "One and a half butts of cider."
That's around 200 gallons of cider, definitely a big feast and I just like saying butts of cider.
Now by the 17th century the Arval had really dwindled down to
"Cold posset, stewed prunes, cake and cheese."
And in 1673 an Arval was declared "Rather shabby... with nothing but a bit of cheese, a draft of wine,
a piece of rosemary and a pair of gloves."
Why the gloves? Well by this time instead of a feast to welcome a new heir
it had become a small meal to give to pallbearers to enjoy just before the lifting of the coffin.
and by the 19th century Avril or Arval, either one works, had become just a little bit of cake and ale
to be enjoyed as people sat around the coffin.
And I find this to be the most likely ancestor of funeral biscuits. When it split off
I don't really know but in 1789 'The Gentleman's Magazine' ran an article that said
"I observed on a window the following advertisement:
'funeral biscuits sold here.' And it is, it seems, the custom, at the funerals of the middling and lower class of people,
to provide a kind of sugared biscuit, which are wrapped up, generally two of them together,
in a sheet of white paper, sealed with black wax and thus presented to each person attending the funeral."
So it's kind of like when you would go to a birthday party as a kid and the mom would hand everybody
that little plastic bag of goodies as they walked out.
You get the mini Troll Doll, some Pop Rocks and if you were lucky
a slap bracelet.
Though eventually it shifted from something that you received at the funeral to something that was received during the invitation to the funeral
essentially someone would drop off the biscuits and it would be wrapped with the paper and the paper would have
the invitation with all of the pertinent information to attend the service.
They also started printing Bible verses and other little poems about death on the paper,
and some of them were really quite macabre.
"When ghastly Death, with unrelenting hand, cuts down a father! brother! or a friend!
The still small voice should make you understand, how frail you are- how near your final end.
But if regardless, and still warned in vain, no wonder if you sink to endless pain:
Be wise, it is too late, use well each hour, to make your calling and election sure."
Funeral Biscuits, by BRAMLEY. Confectioner, Tea Dealer, and Milliner.
Love that little advertisement that they just stuck there at the bottom of the funeral invite but I don't think it holds a candle to the ad for
"Peter Robinson's Family Mourning Warehouse, 'Regent Street' Offers Advantages to the Nobility and Families of the Highest Rank.
Also to those of limited means."
Mourning warehouses were just that, not little shops but department stores where you could fulfill all of your funeral needs,
and these Home Depot like mortuaries were necessary in Victorian London because
funerals were a big big deal. Often they could cost up to $60,000 dollars in today's money,
and there was a point where one quarter of all of the Savings in British Banks was earmarked for people's funerals.
And while I'm sure that coffin makers and hearst drivers were cashing in
the fact that bakeries were posting ads saying "Bride cakes and funeral biscuits made on the shortest notice."
Makes me wonder if the entire industry was not devised as a way to sell more funeral biscuits
like the ones I'm about to eat.
So once your biscuits are baked, take them out and put them onto a cooling rack
and now is the time to give them whatever shape you want. Basically in the first 45 seconds or a minute after coming out of the oven
if you re-put a cookie cutter or a stamp on there it will maintain that shape
so do that now and then put them onto a wire rack to cool completely.
And here we are funeral biscuits from Victorian England.
So if you rolled it out thin it's going to snap like that delicious
but if you rolled it out thicker and not a lot thicker but it will bend like that so it's going to be a little bit chewier.
I'm going to give one of those a shot after I drop it on the floor.
I'm not going to eat the piece that fell on the floor though
[Chomp]
Hm!
So much ginger.
But it's not sweet and it is more bread like than cookie or biscuit like, and she calls it gingerbread and it really is
more like gingerbread. Even the crisp one I feel like
more like a ginger cracker or something.
[Crack]
But the key word is not the bread it is the ginger these are packed with ginger flavor,
more than any gingerbread I would have today. It's just like
walloping you with ginger but in a very good way because they are still quite sweet
but then there's also a little hint of bitterness from the molasses or the treacle. There is that bitterness.
Really, really nice and
flavor wise nice and flavor wise I actually wish that more modern gingerbread was this spice forward.
Now as these were meant in part to help your soul along into the afterlife
I think it's important to have something else to bake in case you've already been dead for a while and
require other people to pray for your immortal soul.
Luckily there is a baked bribe that is intended to do just that and those are soul cakes.
So if you want to learn about soul cakes and the history of trick-or-treating then watch this video right here
and I will see you next time on tasting history.