It's taken Jimmy so long to bring this ice down from the ice house, I'm surprised on
a hot day like today more of it hasn't melted.
You might have already seen Mrs Crocombe in some of our videos online, but what you might
not actually realise is that she was a real person who worked here at Audley End in the
1880s.
I had wondered if he had gone to Alaska himself for it.
Hi I'm Peter Moore, curator of collections for English Heritage and we're here at Audley
End House and Gardens in Essex.
In 2009, a visitor to Audley End recognised the name of the house and remembered that
it was inscribed in a book that been left to him by his aunt. It turned out that the
book was Avis Crocombe's hand-written collection of recipes and very fortunately the book was
donated to English Heritage.
Anyway, as it's so hot I think it would be nice for the family to have cucumber ice cream
with their dinner. And to make it you will need.
Avis Crocombe was clearly a very versatile cook, there are all sorts of different types
of recipe here. But you get the sense that she really enjoyed cooking puddings. There
are recipes for example for suet pudding, biscuit pudding, cake pudding and one here
for custard pudding which she was obviously very pleased with as she's written in brackets
afterwards 'Very Good'.
We were able to discover that Avis Crocombe had actually worked in domestic service since
she was thirteen years old. First as a servant at her brothers farmhouse in Devon, and then
in her early twenties in a London townhouse belonging to the Viscount Sidney.
Firstly you need to peel and core your apples and then stew them in a light sugar syrup.
When she was in her thirties, Avis Crocombe worked as a cook housekeeper at Langley Hall
in Norfolk. This was something of a promotion, she had three kitchen maids, housemaids and
two laundry maids working under her.
In 1881, aged 43, Mrs Crocombe became cook to the Braybrookes in their London townhouse
but she came to Audley End to work in the kitchens here when the family came to visit
their country estate.
Now that your apples are stewed, you can take them out of the syrup and form the body of
the hedgehog.
So join us at Audley End where these stories really come to life.
And there you have it, Apple Hedgehog. A jolly autumnal dish.